The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“You don’t know what any of the letters said?” Hal asked. She almost held her breath, waiting for the reply, but Lizzie shook her head.

“No, I didn’t open them. Only one I saw—and that because your ma didn’t have an envelope, and she asked me to put it in one for her. It was the last one.”

“Wh-what did it say?”

Lizzie looked down at her lap, her pink fingers fretting anxiously with the rubber gloves she held there.

“I didn’t read it,” she said at last. “I’m not that sort of person. But it was folded in a way I couldn’t help but see one line, and it stuck in my head in a way I’ve never been able to shake. It said, I’ve told him, Maud. It was worse than I ever imagined. Please, please hurry. I am afraid of what might happen now.”

There was a long silence, Lizzie reliving those memories, Hal turning the words over and over in her mind, feeling the chilly dread within her growing.

“Who—” she said at last, and then stopped.

“Who was the ‘him’ in the letter?” Lizzie asked, and Hal nodded dumbly. Lizzie shrugged, her plump, cheerful face grave and rather sad. “I don’t know. But I always assumed . . .” She bit her lip, and Hal knew what she was about to say, before the words were spoken. “I always assumed she’d told your father about her pregnancy at last, and it was him she was afraid of. I’m sorry, my darling.”

“So . . .” Hal found her lips were dry and she licked them, and took a sip of the tea Lizzie had set before her when they sat down, though it had gone cold in the cup. “So . . . what happened next? I know my mother did move to Brighton and had me. What about Maud?”

“Well, that set the cat among the pigeons,” Lizzie said. Her face broke into a smile, and she took a long draft of her own tea and set the cup down. “It was maybe late January, or early February. Maud had come back from Oxford or wherever she was supposed to be, but I knew that wasn’t the end of it. There were letters coming back and forth, and Maud whispering on the phone in the hallway, jumping like a thief when I came round the corner. Anyone else, I would have thought it was a boy, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t that.

“I wasn’t there the night they left, but I came up the next day to clean and the house was in an uproar. The girls were gone in the night, they’d taken only their clothes, seemingly, and not so much as a note left. Mrs. Westaway was tearing apart the attic room and Maud’s bedroom, saying things I hope never to hear again—foul things about both of them, her own daughter too. But they never called the police, I know that, for my brother-in-law was in the force and he said they never had no official report of the girls going. Perhaps she was afraid of what would come out, I don’t know. So in the end, I suppose, in a way, she let them go. Maud, or maybe Maggie, I was never sure, sent one letter to the house—I know, for I saw the envelope lying on the hall table and I recognized the handwriting from all those days and weeks ferrying papers back and forth—they had rather similar writing, but it was definitely one or the other. I don’t know what it said, but I saw Mrs. Westaway read it through the crack in the drawing room door. She read it, and then she tore it up and threw the scraps in the fire, and then she spat after them.”

“And that was it?” Hal said uncertainly. “You never heard from them again?”

“That was it,” Lizzie said. “Almost, at least. I got a postcard from Brighton one day in March. All it said was Thank you, Mx and no return address, but I knew who it was from.”

“And they never came back,” Hal said. She shook her head wonderingly, but Lizzie shook her head in reply.

“No, I didn’t say that. I never heard from them again, but Maggie, she came back.”

“What? When?”

“After she had you. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened, but I know she came back, for Bill Thomas ran a taxi from Penzance in those days—he’s long dead now—and he took her up to the house, and told me afterwards. He said he dropped her off and asked if he should wait, but she said no, she would call when she wanted to be collected. He said she had a look on her face like a maid going into battle. ‘A Joan of Arc look’ was what he called it.”

“But why?” Hal found herself frowning, shaking her head. “Why would she go back, when she tried so hard to get away?”

“I don’t know, my darling. All I know is, that really was the last I heard of her. Of either of them. Neither of them ever returned again, after that, and I never heard a word from them again. I often thought about them—and about that baby, you, I suppose it would have been! I often wondered how they were doing. You say your ma became a fortune-teller?”

“Tarot,” Hal said. She felt a little numb, battered by all the information that Lizzie had imparted. “She had a booth on the West Pier in Brighton.”

“That’s no surprise,” Lizzie said. Her broad face broke into a smile. “Oh, but she loved her tarot cards, treated them like fine china, she did. And many’s the time she read for me. Three children, she said I’d have, and three children I did. And what about Maud? I always thought she’d go on to become some university professor at a women’s college. History, it was, she wanted to study, I remember. She said to me, ‘There’s nothing you can’t learn from history to tell you how to deal with the present, Lizzie. That’s why I like it. However evil men are now, there’s always been worse.’ So that’s what I’m guessing.” She took another sip of her tea, her blue eyes twinkling at Hal over the cup. “Professor of history at the University of London, that’s my betting. Am I right?”

“I don’t know,” Hal said. Her throat had closed, and her voice, when she managed to speak, was stiff and croaky. “I never met Maud, at least not that I can remember. My mother never even mentioned her name.”

“So she just . . . disappeared?” Lizzie said. She raised her eyebrows, faint blond shadows almost disappearing into her yellow fringe.

“I suppose so,” Hal said. “But wherever she went, she must have gone before I could even remember her face.”

CHAPTER 36

* * *

The walk back to Trepassen House took Hal much longer than the outward one. She had refused the offer of a lift from Lizzie, and partly the slowness was because the walk was uphill, and the rain had started making the verges slippery, forcing her to stop and wait for a gap in the traffic every time she passed a deep verge-side puddle, or risk getting drenched by the splash-back.

Partly, though, the plain truth was that she was deliberately walking slowly, trying to sort out the tumble of thoughts before she had to face Harding and his brothers with the truth.

She had to come clean—she had known that, even before Lizzie had spoken the words. She had known it, Hal thought, even before she left for Brighton. She had been running away from the whole situation—from the confession she knew she must make.

She tried to imagine the words.

I lied.

I have been lying to you since I got here.

My mother was not your sister.

She felt sick at the thought—there had been something about the relief with which Harding and Abel had welcomed her back yesterday, almost as if she had been their own sister, come home at last. And now she was going to tear that all away from them again—plunge them back into the decades-long uncertainty they had endured before Hal walked into their lives. How would they react?

Harding would rage and bluster. Abel would shake his head—Hal could almost see the disappointment in his eyes. Ezra? Ezra she didn’t know. He was perhaps the only one of the three she could imagine taking the news with equanimity, maybe even laughing. But then she thought of the barely suppressed rage and grief she had witnessed beneath the surface when he spoke of his sister’s disappearance . . . and suddenly she was not so sure.

Whatever happened, though, however angry they were with Hal herself, Harding at least would be relieved, once the news had sunk in. For Hal’s bequest would fail, and . . . then what? The money would return to the pot, presumably, and would be treated as if their mother had never made a will.