Cecilia hesitates, warring with her frustration. Is it not obvious?
‘Aunt Lydia was good to us, in her way,’ she tries.
‘Of course she was. We all love her still, but people move on.’ Before Cecilia can protest he continues. ‘You can’t control what other people do, much as you may want to, or live forever on the hope that they will come round to thinking just as you do. You must look out for yourself, secure a path of your own, and leave other people to their own mistakes.’
‘That seems a little heartless. Don’t you think we all owe each other something?’
‘Perhaps we do, but if the other party isn’t interested in paying, what’s the use in wasting your life rattling an empty tin at them? Uncle George and Claudine are looking out for themselves. So am I; so is Mother. It’s simply how the world is.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘I know you don’t, Mousy.’
He ruffles her hair in an exaggerated gesture of brotherly affection and she sticks out her tongue. For a moment, they are so young again, arguing about stolen toys and bruised knees. Family, she thinks, is loving people who cannot love you back in the way you need them to, and going on loving them all the same. She worries she is not very good at it.
A flash of lightning sends Cecilia and Leo skittering out from under the tree in shock and nervous laughter. Barely a breath later, thunder cracks through the air and the deluge comes.
6
Odette
ODETTE SLINKS DOWNSTAIRS ASsoftly as she can in rubber-soled boots. She does not want to be caught leaving. She might be asked where she is going – and that she cannot answer. But at the morning-room door, she pauses, looks inside.
‘Who gave you that?’ she asks Claudine with a frown.
Claudine wears a shawl of lavender silk embroidered with white lilies.
She lets the shawl hang casually from her arms. ‘This? George thought I might like something of Lydia’s as a keepsake.’
‘It wasn’t enough that you took her husband – you had to take her clothes, too?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Before Odette can reply, George steps into the hall and steers her away. ‘Oh dear,’ he says, smiling. ‘You two really are chalk and cheese, aren’t you?’
Odette stares at him, blank with shock. He cannot be serious, surely? ‘Chalk and cheese?’ As though they are simply two clashing personalities in a West End play.
‘Give it time and the two of you will find some common ground,’ he says, almost jovial in his tone. ‘You are unused to a mother like Claudine, so naturally it will not be easy.’
Odette bristles. ‘She is not my mother.’
‘No, perhaps you are too old for that.’
She steps away from his grasp. ‘I’m going out.’
‘May a father ask where?’
‘Only – out. With Cecilia.’
He smiles, glad of an easy way to please. ‘Of course. I’m glad to see you two getting on again.’
Another maddening statement. When did he think they fell out? What does he know of any of it? And yet he will tell her how it is, define the world for her.
Was he always like this? Did she simply not notice before? Or has it come with Claudine, this evasiveness? He has more to hide now, she imagines, and Odette loses patience with it. She cannot play this game anymore, she cannot work to uphold his narrative.
She thinks, abruptly, that now her mother is gone, there is no irrational figure to range themselves against, stood side by side. Her father must have an abject counterpart, so he can stay the steady one, the sane one. Who stands on the other side now?
It is her, Odette realises. It is her.
