Claudine knows it is a message just for her.
Tap-tap-tap.
Odette slinks back, towards the one window that is not yet fully boarded up. Rain lashes the glass, and the wind sends the tree branches outside clattering against the side of the house.
This time, she gives a quick and constant rapping, faster, louder, harder, until—
‘I am here.’
Claudine stands in the doorway.
Odette forgot how much taller she is than Lydia.
She is dressed to receive guests, in arsenic-green silk with midnight-blue voided velvet in a brocade pattern like snakeskin.
Odette crouches by the window, back against the glass, a washed-out shadow.
‘It is me you want,’ says Claudine. ‘Isn’t it?’
Still, Odette says nothing.
She thinks, briefly, how foolish it was of her to drop the gun. It would be clean and quick. One bullet for Claudine. One bulletfor herself. All of it over.
Claudine is shaken, she cannot let the silence stand. ‘Messy, that you let so many others suffer and die for your impassioned cause.’
‘You killed only one person, I suppose,’ says Odette at last, a quiet voice in the night.
Claudine smiles coldly. ‘We have sent for the police. I did not think you would be foolish enough to do something so incriminating, but youareLydia’s daughter. None too bright.’
What will she do, now she has Claudine? What does she want from her?
Her mother’s cold hand at her throat.
Yes: a confession. The truth.
For Claudine to pay.
Leant against the wall beside her is a length of broken picture frame in heavy mahogany. A nail juts from one end.
‘When the police come,’ Odette says, ‘will you tell them how you poisoned your sister? That is how you did it, is it not?’
‘Enough. Why do you not know when you are beaten?’
Claudine’s patience has snapped sooner than Odette expected, and she realises, abruptly, that Claudine is truly frightened. Odette wonders what she looks like, hunched and blood-smeared, wet hair plastered to her skull and nothing but desperation to drive her on.
Claudine is right to be afraid.
Odette smiles. ‘Are you so sure of your victory?’
‘There is no victory. Only fact,’ says Claudine, though her voice wavers. ‘George is my husband. This is my house. You are a child who has overstayed and refuses to grow up. Playing your silly little games with that lunatic Cecilia – you are a spoilt brat, and no one has had the courage to put you in your place.’
‘So you lock me up as a madwoman.’
Claudine bares her teeth. ‘I should have done it sooner. Youhave destroyed our lives – you have destroyed your father’s life. You should be on your knees, begging us all for forgiveness.’
‘And I should have realised sooner that you are a monster,’ says Odette. ‘Why am I such a threat to you?’
Her hand closes around the wood.