‘Be quiet this instant,’ she hisses. ‘You overstep. You know nothing about what is going on, and believe me, my girl, you are better off that way. Do not trifle with Claudine – it will not serve you well, trust me. Ask fewer questions, and do what you’re told.’
Cecilia’s bravery is washed away in the face of her mother’s fury. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to know the truth.’
Penelope ignores her, pacing before the bed, then lighting upon a pin on the table. ‘Your appearance is shabby, and I won’t have it,’ she declares. ‘You run about like a child but play at being an adult, going off to university. You won’t even pierce your ears. I am still your mother and what I decide is law. Silly modernnotions.’ She advances on Cecilia, who backs away.
‘I’m sorry. I won’t ask any more questions.’
‘Keep still.’
‘Mama – don’t—’
Penelope has backed her against the bed.
‘I don’t want to change my body for fashion,’ says Cecilia, choosing the words Odette used when they agreed they would be like the suffragettes and new women and spurn piercing.
Penelope laughs. ‘You’re a hypocrite, my girl. You wear a corset and shoes with a heel, curl your hair and pinch your cheeks red. You cannot opt out of living in the world, and the world will not let go of you so easily.’
‘No – I don’t want to,’ says Cecilia, her eyes fixed on the pin in her mother’s hand.
‘Stay still. This will only hurt if you make a fuss about it.’
Penelope pushes her flat on the bed, puts a cork behind Cecilia’s earlobe and pushes the pin through.
There is a pressure against her ear and then a tearing sensation, like paper ripping. Then the pain and shock hit her body. She is hot and cold at once, shaking and about to cry.
Penelope leans across her to the other side, repeats the action.
This time, Cecilia’s body is braced for pain, and the needle is sharp enough that she feels as though her whole head is being stuck through with it.
Penelope pushes stud earrings through the holes and fixes them in place. ‘There. Leave those in.’
She gets up and goes back to organising her jewellery, the anger seemingly expended from her body.
Cecilia lies flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She thinks she is crying. Her head throbs on both sides, like a pulsing noise too big to think around.
Penelope looks over at her and tuts. ‘Stop crying – that wasnothing. Sit up.’
Cecilia sits.
‘Would it hurt you to look up from your books once or twice while you are at Oxford?’ She takes in her daughter. ‘There will be any number of young men around, and I am sure many of them will be in want of a wife.’
Cecilia says nothing.
‘Of course, I do not encourage you to any indiscretion, but it is no crime to flutter your eyelashes at a boy or two. They are quite simple, really; they want to feel wanted. Smile, ask them questions andlistenand don’t talk about yourself too much, and you will find no trouble gathering suitors.’
‘I suppose.’
‘You think I don’t understand that you have a different life planned to the one I lived, but you are wrong. Life is not the easy thing it seems at nineteen, and I would not see you drowned for want of learning how to swim. So put on a nice dress and, for God’s sake, smile. Do you understand?’
Cecilia looks at the floor. ‘Yes, Mother.’
2
Odette
ODETTE HAS NO MEMORYof how she has come to be on Waterloo Bridge. She is standing in the middle, carts and carriages rolling behind her. The reflected gas lamps shiver in the dark waves of the Thames, hiding the sewage and flotsam that lap against the embankment stones and grit-sand beaches.
Death has left on her only the beautiful.
