The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“I wasn’t noble,” Hal said. Her throat was sore, as if trying to stop her from saying the words, but she swallowed hard and forced them out, huskily. “I—I knew, when I got Mr. Treswick’s letter, that there had been a mistake. I let you think that I was as confused as the rest of you, but the truth was, I wasn’t. I came down here—” She stopped. Could she bear to do this? “I came down here to deceive you all. You don’t know—you can’t understand what it’s like, any of you, to struggle so much, to never know where the next month’s rent is coming from. You were rich, to me, and it felt like . . .” She stopped again, twisting the bedsheets with her fingers. “I felt like this was fate’s way of righting the scales, and a few thousand here or there would mean nothing to you—and everything to me. I was on the run from a loan shark.” How small and unimportant it seemed now, Mr. Smith and his small threats, in comparison with what she had survived. “And I only needed a few hundred pounds to make it all okay. I hoped—I hoped I could walk away with a little bit of money, and start again. It was only when I met you I realized I was wrong, and when I found out the legacy wasn’t something small, but the whole estate, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. But I think I know why Ezra wouldn’t agree to the deed of variation.”

“Why is that?” Abel asked, and there was a kind of wariness in his tone, as if he couldn’t bear to be ambushed with more revelations. He looked, Hal thought, years older than when she had waved hello to him beneath the clock at Penzance station, but the pain and lines on his face somehow made the kindness in his eyes more apparent, and she felt ashamed of her suspicions, and that she could ever have thought poor Edward was behind all this.

“I think . . . I think he was worried that Harding would sell the house, and what they might find if he did. In the lake.”

“What do you mean, Harriet?” Mitzi said. She leaned forwards, put her hand on Hal’s. “Did Ezra tell you something, before he died?”

“I think my”—the word hurt, digging into her bruised throat—“my m-mother is still there, I think she’s buried in the boathouse, in the lake. Can you ask—” She swallowed again, and coughed, her throat raw with too much speaking. “Can you ask the police to dredge inside the boathouse?”

“Oh God,” Abel whispered. “Oh my God. And Mother lived with that for twenty years.”

Silence fell on the little room, each of them bound up in their own thoughts, their own memories, their own horror.

Just then, there was the rattle of curtain rings, and a slanting ray of almost eye-hurtingly bright sunshine fell across the bed. In the opening of the curtains stood the brisk nurse from before.

“Visiting hours are over, I’m afraid, Mummy and Daddy,” she said, rather archly. “Bye-bye until tomorrow, if you please. And our young lady needs to rest her voice.”

“Just—just one minute,” Abel said. There was a catch in his voice as he stood up, smoothing down his trousers, and Hal saw him blink as he smiled at her. “I’m sorry, Hal, it’s unconscionable of us keeping you talking for so long, I know it must be painful for you. But there’s one more thing I must give you before we go.” A pained look passed over his face, and he rummaged in his pocket, and pulled out a photocopied piece of paper. “I was of two minds about whether to show this to you, Harriet, but . . .” He held out the photocopied sheet.

“I gave the original to the police, but we found this in Mrs. Warren’s belongings. It’s . . . it’s a letter. There’s no need to read it now, but . . . well . . .”

Hal took it, puzzled.

“Well, isn’t that lovely,” said the nurse. “But now it’s time for our patient to rest.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow, darling,” Mitzi said, and she bent and kissed Hal’s cheek. “And in the meantime, I know what hospital food is like.” She patted the tin she had set down on Hal’s bedside table. “Homemade coffee and walnut, help fatten you up a bit.”

“Well, Mummy,” the nurse said. “Off we pop, for now. Oh, and if you could bring her day clothes when you come back tomorrow, Doctor has said she’s ready to be discharged, so you can take her straight home.”

“Oh,” Hal said. She felt her heart sink, thinking of the long train journey back to Brighton, the cold little flat. . . . “I’m—Mitzi’s not my mother. I can’t, I mean, I don’t—I live alone.”

“Don’t you have a friend who could come and stay?” the nurse said, looking a little shocked.

“I’m her aunt,” Mitzi said, drawing herself up to her not-terribly-full height, “and we would be delighted to take Harriet home to ours until she’s ready to return to her own flat. No!” She turned to Hal, silencing her openmouthed objections with a single look. “I don’t want to hear another word about it, Harriet. Good-bye, darling, we’ll come back with some clothes tomorrow. And in the meantime, I want every scrap of that cake eaten, or you will have me to deal with.”

Hal watched them as they walked down the corridor, arm in arm, and she smiled at the companionable little wave Abel gave her as they turned the corner to the main ward; but in truth, when she lay back on her pillows, it was with relief, at being alone with her thoughts. She closed her eyes, feeling a great tiredness wash over her. The pain in her throat was a lot greater than she had let on to Mitzi and Abel, even without the horrifying range of possible outcomes the doctor had listed yesterday.

They ranged from the mild but worrying—like permanent harm to her vocal cords—through to the most serious of all: invisible damage to her brain from the lack of oxygen, or dislodged clots from broken blood vessels, which could cause strokes or even death weeks down the line. But that was very rare, the doctor had reassured her. Something to be aware of, but not to worry about, and in truth Hal was not worried—not anymore.

She was about to lie back on her pillow and close her eyes, when something crackled beneath her fingers, and she realized she was still holding the piece of paper Abel had passed to her. Slowly, she unfolded it.

It was a single page, covered in a long, looping handwriting so familiar that it made her breath catch in her throat. It was her mother’s writing. Not the rounded, unformed characters of the diary—but the writing she had grown up seeing on Christmas and birthday cards, on shopping lists and letters. Seeing it now, she wondered how she could ever have thought that the same hand had written the diary entries. There were similarities, certain peculiarities, a kind of superficial resemblance, but there was an energy and a determination in the handwriting of the letter that made her heart clench in her chest, with a painful recognition.

Mum.

As she tried to focus on the page, Hal realized that her eyes were swimming with tears. It was like hearing her mother’s voice unexpectedly—a shock in a way that the diary never had been.

She blinked furiously, and the letters swam into focus.

8th May, 2013

Dear Mother,

Thank you for your letter. And thank you too for the cheque you enclosed—I have put it towards a laptop for Harriet’s birthday—she’s hoping to go to university next year, so she badly needs one of her own.

However, this letter is not only to thank you. It’s also to warn you of something.

I am writing to let you know that I have decided to tell Hal the truth. She turns eighteen next week, and she deserves to know her own story, and I cannot hide behind my own cowardice any longer.

The fact is, I have been frightened of him for too long—frightened of what he might do to Maggie when we were at Trepassen, frightened of how he might stop us from escaping, frightened of him tracking us down, and frightened of what he had done to her when she didn’t return that last time. For I knew, Mother. I always knew. There is no way in the world Maggie would have left her newborn baby without a word. She went back there to face him, to fight for the future Hal deserved—and she didn’t return.

I have blamed you bitterly for your silence—and yet I’ve committed the same crimes myself. I could have told the police my suspicions. I could have asked them to dig in the grounds, or dredge the lake, or search the cellars. But if I had done that, I would have lost custody of Hal to Ezra, if they found nothing. And I could not do that, Mother. I couldn’t take the risk. I was too late to save Maggie with the truth—but I could save her child with my lies.