‘Do not touch me!’
‘You’re getting overwrought.’
‘Of course I am overwrought, you fool – do you not hear this?’
‘I will admit it is unusual.’
‘If they mean to make me feel guilty, they will not succeed,’ snaps Claudine. ‘I have done nothing wrong!’
‘No one has said you have,’ says George soothingly.
‘I did what I had to! I lost twenty years of my life because of her – I will not lose the next twenty!’
Odette stops the noise at once.
What does Claudine mean by that?
But it is guilt – some sort of guilt.
Claudine takes the silence as success. ‘I will find out who you are, and you will be gone with no reference – I promise you that.’
George says something soft again, but Claudine interrupts.
‘This room will be completely stripped back and remade. You will engage the tradesmen tomorrow,’ she instructs.
‘Yes, darling.’
One set of footsteps leaves, and finally Odette risks peeking out around the edge of the wardrobe to take in Claudine, stood in the middle of the room, hair falling out of her plait, colour high in her cheeks.
Behind her, in the shadows, is a face.
Lydia’s gaunt and angular skull looms out as she emerges, one hand reaching for Claudine’s throat.
Claudine stiffens and spins around.
Lydia is gone.
Claudine flees.
Once the house is asleep once more, Odette squeezes out from her hiding place and patters back up to the studio.
Amongst the detritus of her dead mother’s half-life, she curls up and laughs and laughs and laughs.
5
Cecilia
CECILIA EMERGES LATE FROMher room in the morning. She has missed breakfast, claiming a headache kept her in bed. It has: her ears throb badly, though she has iced them, and she cannot bear to look at them in the mirror. Mired in thought since leaving the Jermyn Street Gallery yesterday, she feels strongly in need of a hot bath to scrape the last of Mr King from her. She can feel his eyes on her still, the touch of his hand at her waist.
Leo is in the parlour, stretched out on the settee, reading a document.
‘Not at the office today?’ she asks.
‘I do get some time off, you know,’ he says. ‘But as it happens, I’d left some papers at home, so I have to crib them now before meeting some terribly clever fellows who are likely to eat me alive.’
‘I see. Where’s Mother?’
‘Claudine called her round to discuss some crisis or another. The cook used lemon instead of lime in the ices, or the haberdasher’s sent half a yard of Belgian lace instead of French, perhaps.’
