She is so used to her mother being fragile, unreliable, shethought she was inured to it.
She finds she was wrong.
There is always something left to lose.
She comes to sit on the floor at Lydia’s feet, her customary place once she became too big to sit on her lap, and she rests her back against Lydia’s leg. Her dress smells of cedar from the mothballs in her clothespress, and the sharp note of turpentine.
It has been a month since her mother fell so gravely ill, a month since Claudine arrived. The summer has been given over to doctor’s visits, the airing of sickrooms, tinctures and delicate broths, the sound of vomiting, the smell of blood. Cecilia and Penelope stay on at Herne House, though Leo comes back and forth when work can spare him.
Claudine has martialled it all. At some unseen point Odette cannot identify, Herne House became Claudine’s domain. Directing Lydia’s care, the running of the house – she has become necessary. It almost seems too neat, her place solidified with such readiness. It is as disorienting as the change in her mother. The year is rushing by too quickly, the turn of the seasons, the day of her departure to Cambridge drawing closer – though how can she even think of leaving for university with her mother so gravely ill? – and she cannot find a firm grasp on anything.
At times, Lydia rallies, at others, slumps again; across it all there is a slow, sloping descent towards – towards something that no one wants to name.
It is a constant push and pull. Every moment with Lydia is unbearable, as though Odette is being swallowed up, but each one apart feels like a betrayal. She cannot know how much more time she will have with her mother, whether this illness will pass like a storm or drown them all, and the fear of it drives her back to her mother’s side time and time again.
Lydia runs her fingers through Odette’s hair, which Odettehas left loose intentionally, then begins to pull it into a French plait.
‘Do you mind awfully having a mother who is ill?’ she asks.
‘Of course not. You do not want to be ill.’
Lydia does not reply for a while. There is only the soft carding of her fingers through Odette’s hair.
‘I have always been weaker than others, even at your age. No one ever made any allowance for it. They couldn’t understand that I had a fragile constitution, and they forced me to keep up with them all, when it was quite beyond me. I suppose it is no surprise I would find myself enduring an even greater suffering.’
‘Is the medicine helping?’ asks Odette.
‘A little.’
There has been a course of treatment prescribed; the doctor is due back in a few days to assess its efficacy.
‘You will write to me about Cambridge, if you have time?’ asks Lydia.
‘I will. And you’ll visit me,’ says Odette.
She must paint the fantasy of it: the future when Lydia is well again.
Lydia smiles faintly but does not reply.
‘I suppose I ought to begin packing before long, though I do not like to go.’
‘You must go. It is such a balm to me to see you excited.’
They do not talk of the money and the exhibition anymore. Odette cannot bring herself to ask. She wants the money, but she wants her mother restored to health more, so she must leave it alone. Of course it was never going to happen.
Lydia is fading again, so Odette takes up the copy ofEmmaon the table and reads to her, as she has done all summer. Lydia plaits, and Odette reads, and like this, perhaps it is possible, pleasant even, to be together.
At the end of the chapter, Odette closes the book. ‘We cancancel my birthday party tomorrow,’ she says. ‘I do not want to be with anyone but family.’
Lydia ties off the plait, lets it run down her back. Odette turns around so Lydia can admire her work.
‘You must not let me ruin things,’ says Lydia.
Before Odette can reply, there is a knock at the door.
When she opens it, she is surprised to see Mr King on the threshold.
‘My apologies, I did not realise I was interrupting.’ He smiles, and it seems entirely genuine and open. ‘Miss Hutton invited me up for the party, and I thought I would pay my respects – but I see perhaps you were not told.’
