The Death of Mrs. Westaway

A book. A buttercup-yellow book with no lettering on the cover or spine.

It wasn’t hers, and she could not place where it had come from, and yet . . . and yet it was somehow familiar. She had seen it before. But where?

Hal sat up, feeling the chill air of the room at the back of her neck, and she pressed her fingers to her closed lids, trying to picture it, where she had seen it, why her subconscious was needling her now.

She had almost given up and was about to lie back down and put it down to a tired imagination, when something came back to her in a sudden rush. Not a picture—but a smell. The smell of dust, of cobwebs, of fraying leather. The feeling of thick, sticky plastic between her fingers. And she knew.

It had been that first morning at Trepassen. The study, frozen in time, and the book on the high shelf that she had started to look through, only to be interrupted.

The photographs. Perhaps they would show her something she was missing. Edward, maybe, as he had been as a young man. Or even her mother.

And more than the photographs—the footstep in the dust.

Someone, that very first morning at Trepassen, or perhaps a week before, had been in that study to look at the pictures. It might have been nostalgia, but Hal thought that of all the people she had ever met, the Westaways had not a bone of nostalgia in their bodies. The past for them was not a happy place, full of golden memories, but a minefield charged with pain. No—if Abel, Ezra, Harding, Edward, or any of the others had got down that album, it had been for some other, very practical reason. And suddenly Hal wanted to know that reason very much.

There was something in that album that someone had wanted to see, or check, or remove. But why?

And if she and Ezra left first thing tomorrow, she might never have another chance to find out.

Swinging her legs out of bed, Hal pulled her coat back on as some protection from the chilly night air, and shoved her bare feet back into her cold shoes. Then she pushed open the attic door, and tiptoed quietly down the stairs.

At the first landing she paused, listening, but no sound of snores reached her ears. If Ezra was asleep—and he must be, for he had looked exhausted enough to fall asleep on his feet—he was a silent sleeper.

And then she was down in the hallway, in the dark.

Hal did not dare to turn on a light, but the house was no longer the unfamiliar maze of that first morning, and she did not need one; the faint light coming in through the hall windows was enough for her to pick her way past the drawing room, past the library and the billiard room and the boot closet. She pushed through a dividing door, and there on her left was the breakfast room, the dirty dishes still laid out on the table. The sight made Hal stop in her tracks—had Mrs. Warren done anything since they left? But she could not stop now to wonder about that.

The next part was the most dangerous, for it took her right past Mrs. Warren’s sitting room, and Hal had no idea where she slept. If she slept. Somehow she would not have put it past her to be still awake at midnight, rocking in her chair in front of the hissing fire.

The stone floor of the orangery was cold, and too noisy to risk. However, there was no way round it—it was the only route to the study, or the only one Hal knew, at least. In the end, she bent and took off her shoes, tiptoeing across the frosty flags, wincing at the chill striking up into her bare soles.

And then she was through, and in the little vestibule on the far side, and her hand was on the study door.

• • •

WHEN SHE ENTERED THE STUDY, Hal had, for the second time, the strangest sense of having stepped back in time. The dust of years was soft beneath her feet as she stepped across the fraying carpet, the only resistance the minute crunch of small insects or gusted leaves, crushed beneath her toes.

The room was shrouded in darkness, and Hal had no choice but to fumble for the switch of the green-shaded desk lamp. It was very old, the cord fraying and fabric-covered, prewar at the least, she thought, but when she found the brass switch and clicked it, it came on without protest, illuminating the room in a soft, verdant glow.

There were the steps, untouched since her last visit, the footprint upon them clearly visible. And there, at the top, was the book she had hurriedly replaced, still sticking out at a very slight angle into the room.

Her heart beating in her mouth, Hal set her foot onto the library steps, in the footprint of that other person, and stepped up, up, and up once again, until her hand closed on the soft yellow spine, and she slid the book out into her waiting arms.

• • •

BACK DOWN AT THE DESK, Hal sat in the wing-backed chair and angled the desk lamp towards the book. Then, with a sense almost of trepidation, she opened the softly creaking spine.

The pictures were just as clear and old-fashioned as she remembered. Harding as a baby, chubby-necked in his scratchy-looking sweater, Harding riding on the shiny tricycle, and then a few pages later Abel’s first appearance: A.L. 3 months.

But this time the caption rang a bell. Al. Why was that? Hal was racking her brains when it came to her suddenly—the entry in her mother’s diary, Maud calling her brother Al. Hal had not thought of it at the time, but now it made sense.

She flicked forwards through the album, faster now, through pictures of Abel toddling on the beach, playing with a ball; through a holiday in France, or perhaps Italy, Harding and Abel sitting serious-faced on the steps of some European church, ice creams in their fists; through a family Christmas, and then . . .

Two little babies, swaddled side by side. Margarida Miriam (l) and Ezra Daniel, 2 days old.

They were asleep, eyes tight closed, and with their eyes shut she would not have been able to tell which was which, without the caption. How strange, that two twins who had looked so similar in babyhood, had grown up so unlike each other. Their faces were peaceful, turned to each other as they must have turned in their mother’s womb, no hint of the strife and pain that was to come.

Maud.

Hal let her gaze rest on the tranquil little face, cherubic in repose.

Where are you, Maud? she wanted to ask. Dead? Running? Hiding? But how could she do that—how could she leave her brothers, her twin in pain for so many years?

She turned the page, to see Maud as a fat-legged toddler pushing a battered wooden dog across a hearthrug, and beside her Ezra, playing with a huge bear, almost larger than himself. The next few pages were just of Ezra—age four, on a brand-new bicycle, shining in the sun. Age five, grinning a gap-toothed smile. Hal shook her head, remembering Abel’s bitter remark about Ezra being his mother’s favorite.

She was about to turn the page, in search of another picture of Maud—but suddenly it was too painful to carry on, watching this little girl growing towards whatever oblivion had snatched her up, and Hal sighed and closed the album, pressing her fingers into her eyes, pushing back the ache in her head, and her heart.

Whatever answers she was looking for, she had been foolish to think they would be here. She should put it back where it came from, go to bed, to sleep, and follow Ezra’s advice to forget the past—give up this stupid obsession with finding out what had happened, so many years ago.

But who had got the album down, that first morning? One of the brothers? Edward? He had barely arrived, but he might have just had time. The only other option was Mrs. Warren, and that was stranger still.

One thing was for sure—the truth about her mother did not lie within these pages. Unless—

She stopped, the thought snagging at her, and then opened her eyes, her blurred vision refocusing painfully on the buttercup-yellow cover in front of her. Once again, she picked it up and leafed slowly forwards through the pages, her stomach clenched with uncertainty, unsure of what she was about to see.

The confirmation came slowly—not from a single picture, but shimmering into focus, like a Polaroid photo developing in the light, features appearing from an unformed blur.

First there was a round, childish face sharpening into features that were painfully familiar, baby-blue eyes deepening and darkening into black ones. Limbs lengthening, skin tanning, an expression that changed slowly from openhearted trust to wariness.

And then at last, the final photograph in the book—The Twins’ 11th birthday—there she was. Staring out of the page through a dark, tangled fringe, her dark eyes alight with the bright reflection of the candles, so like her brother that Hal wondered how she had ever managed to miss it.