Cecilia knows that Leo is restraining himself from rolling his eyes. Instead, he leans on the dresser and lights a cigarette. ‘We’ve much more important things to be doing than worrying aboutfashion, Mother. That’s yours and Cecilia’s domain.’
‘Hardly Cecilia’s,’ says Penelope, eyeing the stained hem of Cecilia’s skirt. ‘University girls don’t go in for that sort of thing,apparently.’
Cecilia tucks away the soiled patch. ‘I don’t think there’s any rule in the college handbook that says we can’t take an interest in dressing well. I suppose it is simply that the women worry they will not be taken seriously if they come to lectures dressed as finely as they might wish to.’
Leo snorts. ‘Tell me, are blue stockings evening wear or only for casual use?’
Cecilia scowls. ‘I am not a bluestocking.’
‘So, whydoyou want to go to Oxford? Isn’t it a bit much? I thought there were correspondence courses and lectures for ladies in London.’
Leo went to Durham and feels the slight keenly. He told her once that it was far easier for her to study at Oxford than it would be for him, because of all the allowances they made for girls.
‘Somerville suits me, and I believe I will be happy there. Besides, why shouldn’t I go?’
‘I suppose I just don’t know what it’s allfor,’ he says. ‘You can’t take a degree – you’re hardly going to get ajobafter, so why bother?’
There are more reasons than she can count, but none that Leo or her mother would understand. In the midst of Lydia’s illness, university has been the bright star on the horizon, the moment when the world will be set back on its proper track. Odette, who is hazy and distracted, Odette, who cannot leave her mother’s side, will be given respite. They can take the first step into the life they have planned for themselves.
That is only for her to think about. She must have some private things, some places in her mind where her mother is never allowed – otherwise she will become so filled with hatred and anger she could take a letter opener and stab them all.
Cecilia smiles sweetly. ‘Would you be happier if I went to a finishing school?’
‘Lord no, what a waste of money – no school could finish you up to a decent standard.’ Leo laughs, and Cecilia lobs a hairbrush at him.
‘Stop it at once,’ snaps Penelope. ‘You are both adults; do not replicate the schoolroom for want of anything else to do. Leo, go downstairs and be good company. Cecilia, put something clean on – you embarrass yourself. Now, don’t protest – you must come down and occupy Odette so that she doesn’t sulk about like a dark cloud. And do not exchange those glances that you think the rest of us can’t see. It is quite trying.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
Penelope appropriates a necklace in gold and the bracelet still on her arm, and returns to her room.
Cecilia considers the clothes in her wardrobe churlishly: all picked by Penelope, all entirely fine and proper. She would rather go naked than wear them.
No, she will not go downstairs yet.
Whenever Odette is with Lydia or otherwise indisposed, and Cecilia finds herself untethered, she slips again into the walls and makes her mouse-like way between morning room and scullery, attic and bedroom, tracking each of the occupants of the house, picking up each discarded line of conversation and unguarded look.
It pleases her to have some small thing for herself, a secret to carry around like something to nurture.
Everyone in Herne House has their secrets.
Claudine most of all.
At school, they did not call Cecilia ‘Mouse’. They called her ‘Rat’. Always squirming and scurrying and putting her twitching nose into unwelcome places – so the girls would tell her as they held her down and scrubbed her delicate skin with a nail brush or poured ice water down the back of her neck. They would never dare do the same to Odette; they only called her cold andhaughty behind her back and ignored her when she was present. Cecilia didn’t care. She and Odette only ever needed each other.
For Odette’s birthday, Cecilia has bought her a fine volume of John Donne’sHoly Sonnets, bound in green leather and inscribed with a coded message of love. It does not feel like enough. She wants to give Odette something truly special, to take her to the top of a mountain and shout about her love or to swim an ocean for her. It never feels like enough.
Claudine must not ruin it.
Cecilia has seen no more strangeness in Herne House, beyond the strangeness that Lydia’s illness and Claudine’s rise brings – and perhaps that is strange enough. But of the blackmail, the secret her mother harbours – nothing.
It worries her, like a snake in the long grass. It does not move while she stays still, but if she were to act, she fears it would strike.
So, to her mousing.
In the kitchen, the cook is scolding a kitchen maid over blunt knives. In the study, George stretches his back at the desk. Several guest rooms are occupied, and in the morning room, a game of bridge is being fought over. Mr King pours the drinks, the dark curl of hair hanging across his forehead again. Cecilia does not want to look at him. Does not want to remember.
Lydia’s studio has no easy spyhole. That will be where Odette is, with her mother.
