The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“I miss her so much,” he said. There was an anguish in his voice that Hal had never heard before, a depth of feeling she would not have believed from his dry, sarcastic everyday demeanor. “God, I miss her, like a hole in me. And I’m so fucking angry. I’m angry all the time.”

And suddenly Hal understood the source of Ezra’s lightness, his perpetual sarcasm, the dry smile that always seemed to hover around his lips. He laughed, because if he did not, something inside him would break free, a raging loss that he had been containing for twenty years.

“I’m so sorry.” Hal felt a lump in her throat. She thought of her own mother, of the fury she herself had felt at the way she had been snatched away, so abruptly, so meaninglessly. But at least she knew. At least she had been able to stroke her mother’s hair, to bury her, to say good-bye. At least she knew what had happened.

“When I heard about the car accident, I thought—” He stopped, and Hal saw him draw a deep, shuddering breath, and then force himself on. “I thought that was it, that I knew what had happened, and however much it hurt that I’d never see her again, I thought that at least if we—if we knew—”

He broke off, and Hal realized afresh what she had done to this family with her little deception, and the way that it had grown and grown out of all proportion to what she had intended. What she had done to Ezra, to this man standing in front of her now, holding himself together with such pains.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again. She sank back onto the hard plastic chair at the coffee table, and put her head in her hands, wishing she could tell him exactly how sorry, but she could never do that, not without confessing what she had done. “Ezra, I’m—I’m so sorry.”

“It makes me so angry—the waste. Maggie. Maud. Mown down in front of your own house—what a fucking waste of a life.”

“Ezra—”

“It’s all right,” he said at last, though she could tell from his voice and the way that he scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve that it was not. He drew a long breath, and turned around to face her, even managing a twisted smile.

Across the food court the boy had started sweeping again, and the servers at the hot food counter had turned off its lights.

Hal found she could not speak, but she nodded. Ezra closed his eyes for a moment, and suddenly she had a great urge to put her arm around him, tell him that it would be okay, that they would find the truth about his sister, but she knew she could not do that. It was not a promise she could make.

“Due to the inclement weather”—the announcement broke into their silence, tinny and echoing in the high rafters—“and road closures, this service station will be closing in thirty minutes for health and safety reasons. All customers are requested to complete their purchases and return to their cars within the next thirty minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Well . . .” Ezra cleared his throat, and picked up his jacket from the back of the plastic chair. “We should probably get going anyway. It’s getting late, and we’ve got a long way still to go. Do you want anything else?”

Hal shook her head, and Ezra said, “I’ll get us a couple of sandwiches at the shop, we won’t have time to stop again.”

• • •

OUTSIDE THE SNOW HAD NOT stopped falling; if anything, it was coming down faster. Ezra shook his head as they climbed into the sports car and buckled in.

They drove in silence for perhaps twenty minutes. The roads were not busy, but as the visibility worsened the traffic in front of them slowed. A few miles farther on, Hal put her hand out towards Ezra’s arm and he nodded.

“I’ve seen it.”

It was a long line of stationary red lights in the distance, faintly visible through the falling snow. He was pressing on the brakes, slowing the car as it caught up with the jam, and then they stopped completely, the yellow wink of hazard indicators flashing all around them as the cars behind caught up and signaled the delay.

Ezra put the hand brake on and then sat, staring into the distance. Hal, too, was lost in her own thoughts, mulling over the conversation at the service station. After what seemed like a long time, but might have been anything from five to twenty-five minutes, a driver up ahead leaned on his horn, a long mournful beeeeeep, like a foghorn sounding across the hills, and then another took it up, and another.

Ezra glanced at the clock, then back at the line of stationary traffic, and then he seemed to make a decision.

“I’m going to turn around,” he said. “They must have closed the road over the moor. We’ll try going round, via St. Neot. The snow might be worse, but this traffic is going nowhere. I think we’ll make better time.”

“Okay,” Hal said. There was a brief flurry of horns as he executed an awkward turn, and then they were making their slow way down the road away from Bodmin, back along the route they had come.

Hal yawned. The car was warm, the heater comfortable, and she pulled off her coat and crumpled it up beneath her head, where it rested against the window. Then she closed her eyes, and let herself drift off into sleep.

• • •

HER DREAMS WERE TROUBLED, A confused tangle of chasing through the long corridors at Trepassen with Mrs. Warren’s stick tap-tapping ominously in her wake, and however fast she ran, she could never outpace it. Then somehow she was at the head of the stairs again, and though she knew the thread was there, stretched across it, she tripped and fell, and as she looked back over her shoulder she saw Edward, standing there at the top, his head thrown back, laughing at her. She had time to think, I’m going to die, but when she fell, it was not with the bone-crunching impact she had feared, but with a splash, into cold, cold water, dappled with leaves and dead insects. When she surfaced, the smell of the boathouse was in her nostrils, the scent of stagnant water and rotting wood, and the slime of the leaves was beneath her and around her as she thrashed in the frozen water.

Help! she tried to scream, but the icy water rushed in, choking her.

She awoke with a shock and a beating heart to darkness, and for a moment she couldn’t remember where she was, but then she saw. She was in Ezra’s car. They were in a lay-by beside a deeply sunken lane, and the snow was still falling, and Ezra had turned the engine off.

“Are we stopping again?” Hal’s mouth was dry, and the words came thickly.

“I’m afraid so,” Ezra said heavily. He rubbed his eyes, as if he too was very tired. “This fucking snow. I’m sorry, we’re not going to get through. It’s gone eight and we’re not even at Plymouth.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry. What about your crossing?”

Ezra shook his head.

“There’s no way I’ll make it. I’ve rung and they’ve said I can pay a fee to change the ticket to tomorrow.”

“So—so what do we do?”

Ezra didn’t reply straightaway, just nodded back along the way they had come. Hal bit her lip. The snow continued to fall with a soft patter on the glass of the windscreen.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, seeing her expression. “I did think about trying to push through, at least to Brighton, but I’m just too tired—and it’s too dangerous, none of these roads have been gritted.”

“So . . . we go back . . . ? To—” She swallowed. “To Trepassen?”

“I think we have to. It won’t take as long going back, the roads going south are pretty quiet. We can try again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Hal said. She felt something shift inside her at the thought of returning to the cold house, and Mrs. Warren’s waiting figure, rocking by her fireside, mistress once again of all she surveyed. It was not an inviting prospect. But what was the alternative—a B&B? She had no money for a room, and she could not very well ask Ezra to pay.

“Okay,” she said again, trying to make herself sound—and feel—more positive. “Back to Trepassen it is, then.”

“It’s not likely to be a very warm welcome,” Ezra said, as he turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared out into the quiet. “But at least we won’t freeze.”