The Death of Mrs. Westaway

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. She has found out.

She came to my room as I was getting ready for bed, bursting in without knocking.

“Is it true?”

I was half-undressed, and I clasped my shirt to my chest, trying to cover my swollen breasts and stomach, under pretense of shyness. I shook my head, pretending I didn’t know what she meant, and she drew back her hand and slapped me, making my head jerk backwards, leaving my ears ringing and my cheek flaming with the shock of the smack. The shirt fell to the floor, and I saw her looking at me, at my changed body, and her lip curled, as she realised she didn’t need to ask the question.

“You disgusting little slut. I took you in, and this is how you pay me back?”

“Who told you?” I said bitterly. I picked up the shirt and put it back on, wincing against the stinging pain in my cheek.

“That’s none of your business. Who is he?” she demanded, and when I didn’t answer straightaway, she grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a rat, making my teeth rattle. “Who’s the boy who did this?” she shouted.

I shook my head again, trying not to cringe away from her fury, trying not to show my fear. My aunt has always intimidated me—but I had never seen her like this, and suddenly I understood how Maud hated her so much.

“I w-won’t t-tell you,” I managed, though it was hard to speak. I can’t let her know. Her anger would be unspeakable and I would never see him again.

She stared down at me for a long moment, and then she turned on her heel.

“I can’t trust you. You’ve shown that. You’ll stay in your room and I will have supper brought up to you. You can stay here and think about what you have done and the shame you’ve brought on this family.”

She slammed the door shut, and I heard a kind of scraping sound, as if someone were scratching something across the top and bottom of the door. It took me a minute to understand, and even when the truth dawned on me, it was with a kind of cold disbelief. Was she—was she locking me in?

“Aunt Hester?” I said, and then as I heard her heels click away down the corridor, I ran to the door, rattling the handle, banging on it with my fists. It didn’t open. “Aunt Hester? You can’t do this!”

But there was no answer. If she heard me, she said nothing.

Still in disbelief, I tried to force the door, leaning against it with all my strength, but the bolts held.

“Maud!” I screamed. “Lizzie?”

I waited. There was no answering call, only the slam of a door. I wasn’t sure which one, but I thought it could be the door at the foot of the attic stairs. A sense of complete hopelessness stole over me as I realised. It was almost eight. Lizzie would have gone home, long since. And Maud—I don’t know where she was. In bed? Downstairs? Either way, it wasn’t likely my voice would carry all the way through two sets of doors, and down the maze of corridors of this rambling house.

I didn’t call for Mrs Warren. There would be no point in that. Even if she heard, she wouldn’t come.

I went to the window, looking out between the bars into the quiet, moonlit night—its tranquillity a terrible contrast to my raw throat and my fingers, bruised from hammering.

And a realisation came over me.

I am trapped. I am completely trapped. She could send Maud away to school, sack Lizzie, and keep me here for . . . for how long? For as long as she wants—that’s the truth. She could keep me until the baby comes. Or she could starve me until I lose it.

The truth of this makes something inside me turn weak and soft with fear. I should be strong—strong for myself and strong for my child. But I am not. This house hides secrets, I know that now. I’ve been here long enough to hear the stories, of the unhappy maid who hung herself in the scullery, and the little boy who drowned in the lake.

My aunt is someone. And I am no one. I have no friends here. How easy it would be to say that I simply . . . left. Ran away in the night. No one would raise a fuss. Maud might ask questions, but Mrs Warren would swear to have seen me leave, I’m sure of it.

If she chooses to, she can simply lock the door and throw away the key. And there would be nothing I could do.

I sank to my knees by the window, the moonlight flooding the room, and I put my hands to my face, feeling the wetness of tears, and the cool hardness of the ring I still wear, my mother’s engagement ring. It’s a diamond—just a very small one. And as I knelt there in the moonlight, something came to me, a desire to leave a mark, however small, something she cannot erase, no matter what she does to me.

I took off the ring, and very slowly I scratched upon the glass, watching the moonlight illuminate the letters like white fire. HELP . . . ME . . .

CHAPTER 26

* * *

Up in her room, Hal lay flat on her back, her forearm flung over her eyes to shut out the moonlight, and she could not sleep.

It was not just the moonlight, painfully bright through the thin curtains. It was not even the reading that weighed upon her, or not only the reading. It was everything. Abel’s expression as he fled. Edward’s exasperation. Mitzi’s whispered remarks as she held Hal close . . .

The deed of variation. The thought of it was like a noose around Hal’s neck, not yet tight, but slowly tightening, and already making it hard to breathe. When she had suggested it, it seemed like such a simple solution—she would refuse the bequest, melt away back to Brighton, disappear out of their lives.

But Mitzi’s last words—so kindly meant—made it clear that that was never going to happen. Even if she renounced this legacy, she would still be trapped in a web of bureaucracy and forms and ID—this tangle of family loyalties and resentments, dragging her under as it had the others. But what could she do? The only way out of it was to admit to her fraud.

Hal sighed, and turned from her back onto her front, pressing her face into the crisp white pillowcase to try to get away from the moonlight that pierced the thin curtains. It cast long dark shadows of the bars across the bed, and as she shut her eyes, she had a sudden, jolting image of herself as she would look to someone standing across the room—like the girl from the ten of swords.

Betrayal. Backstabbing. Defeat.

A prickle of fear ran through her, and suddenly Hal could no longer bear to lie still. She sat up, shivering in the cold, and then got out of bed and paced to the window. There she stood, looking out through the bars across the moonlit landscape.

It looked so different by night. The emerald greens and rain-washed blues were turned to a thousand shades of black, the moonlight serving only to cast long, warped shadows that, without her glasses, made familiar shapes blurred and strange. Even the sounds were different. The roar of the occasional car along the coast road had gone, the cawing of the magpies had fallen silent—and all Hal could hear was the far-off crash of the waves, and the hoot of an owl, hunting. Hal closed her fingers on the window bars and rested her forehead on the glass, wishing, wishing she were a hundred miles away, at home in Brighton, out of this nightmare tangle of lies and guesses.

HELP ME

The letters stood out clear and bright in the moonlight, and Hal suddenly knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they had been scratched on just such a night as this, by someone even more desperate than her.

Perhaps this other girl had not been as lucky. Perhaps for her the shackles had been not just emotional, but literal. Perhaps she had sat here looking out over the frosty lawn, wondering how or even if she could escape.

Well, Hal was not trapped. Not yet. There was still time.

As quietly as she could, she pulled off her pajamas and got back into her jeans, top, and hooded sweater. Then she dragged her case out from under the bed, lifting it so that it made as little noise as possible on the bare boards.

Her spare clothes were already inside, neatly divided into clean and worn. Aside from that, there was only her wash-bag, book, and laptop to pack.

Hal’s hands were trembling as she pushed them inside and zipped up the case. Was she really going to do this?

You owe them nothing, she told herself. You’ve taken nothing. Not yet.

And, after all, what was the worst they could do? They had her address, but it didn’t seem likely she would be able to stay there for long, not now that Mr. Smith’s minders had tracked her down. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to disappear completely—simply scoop up her things, the most important papers, her mother’s photographs—and walk away into a new life. There were other towns. Other piers.