by Ruth Ware
“What does he do?” Hal croaked.
“He’s a lobbyist on behalf of various children’s charities. Rather a well-known one, apparently, if you’re in that particular world. But he’s also simply one of the nicest people I’ve ever met—I can’t think where he got it from, or how he survived his mother’s treatment intact, but there you go. I’m sure it would have reduced anyone else to a bitter shell! But listen to me rabbiting on, distracting you.” She touched the soup tray with one finger. “You should be finishing your soup. You’ve hardly eaten.”
“I think I’m too tired to eat much, I’m sorry, M-Mitzi.” Hal stumbled over the name, unsure what to call her. Mrs. Westaway? Aunt Mitzi? It seemed more and more wrong, laying claim to a relationship she didn’t have. Fortunately Mitzi did not seem to notice, and only sighed and stood up.
“Well, manage what you can, but a good night’s sleep is probably what you really need. Sleep well, my dear.”
“Thank you,” Hal said, or tried to—but she found her throat was stiff, and the words stifled and lost in the noise of Mitzi’s feet as she turned and made her way back down the stairs to the others.
After she had gone, Hal pushed away the bowl of cold, congealing soup, switched out the light, and put her hot cheek against the pillow. The fire had died down, leaving only a red glow of coals in the little grate, but there was a gap in the curtains, and the moon shone fitfully in through the bare tree branches, making abstract patterns against the white walls.
My walls, Hal thought dazedly. My trees.
They are not yours.
The words whirled in her head, mingling with the yammering voices of the brothers, the thousand questions she needed to find answers for before tomorrow, the hundred whys and what-ifs and hows. . . .
If only, if only the legacy had been what she had been hoping for—a couple of thousand pounds, as befitted a long-lost granddaughter. That, she could have claimed with few if any questions, before slipping back into the shadows to resume her old life.
The reality felt like a terrifying millstone, weighing her down as she struggled to free herself from what she had done. There would be no quick claims here—no slipping back to Brighton to strategically “lose touch” with her supposed relatives. Whatever she did, whether she succeeded in fooling Mr. Treswick long-term or not, she was chained to this place now.
But why had Mrs. Westaway chosen to cut out her sons and leave everything to a girl she had never met, daughter of a woman she had not seen for years?
And why had she chosen to do it this way—springing the act upon her family after her own death? Was it cowardice? It didn’t seem to fit with the portrait her children were painting—the image Hal was piecing together was of a woman who was indomitable, unyielding, and quite unafraid.
She felt suddenly impossibly tired, her eyes heavy with an exhaustion that seemed to have washed over her all at once.
Closing her eyes, she lay still in the little cot, feeling the cool of the pillow against her cheek, and listening to the sound of the house settling down for the night, feeling the suffocating presence of the Westaways all around. There was a sudden spatter of fresh rain against the glass, and she thought she heard—though perhaps it was her fancy—the far-off sound of waves against a shore.
An image came into Hal’s mind—of rising waters, closing above all of their heads, while Mrs. Westaway laughed from beyond the grave—and she opened her eyes, a sudden flood of fear making her skin prickle and shiver.
“Stop it,” she whispered aloud. It was a trick her mother had taught her when she was a little girl—when the nightmares became too real, sometimes saying the thing out loud was enough to break the spell, silence the voices inside your own head, in favor of a real-life voice.
The image receded—back to whatever paranoid fantasy it had come from. But the flavor of it lingered . . . an old, bitter woman, gone beyond harm herself, and abandoning the living to their fate.
What had Hal got herself mixed up in? And what had she started?
CHAPTER 16
* * *
When Hal awoke, the attic room was bright with sunlight, and she lay still for a long time, blinking and disoriented. There was a strange heaviness upon her, and she had to fight off the thickness of sleep and force herself to sit up, yawning and gritty-eyed, trying to remember where she was.
Her situation came back with an unsettling rush.
She was not safe at home, in her tiny flat in Marine View Villas, waiting to make her way down to the pier for the day’s work—she was in Cornwall, in this strange cold house. And even before memory came fully back, she knew from the uneasy tightness in her gut that she was in deep, deep trouble.
For a few moments she sat quietly, letting the events of the day before come back, feeling the ache in her limbs, which were heavy and limp and reluctant to obey her. She was tired, no, not just tired, more than that—wrung out, thickheaded, as if the fog of sleep were still clinging in the corners of her mind.
As she forced her legs over the side of the bed, she remembered Edward handing her those blank, unmarked pills, and his insistence that she take them, and she shivered—not just from cold. But surely not. He was a doctor, after all. And besides, what would be the point?
More likely she was just suffering the hangover of the chill she had caught at the grave, and the effects of bumping her head. Cautiously, she put her hand up to the bruise beneath her hair, but although it felt a little tender, there was no swelling. She felt cold, but not the strange, trembly hot-cold of the night before. This was just normal, winter’s morning cold, her feet shrinking from the chilly bare boards as she padded across the room to her suitcase, where her phone sat charging.
7:27 a.m. Early, but not stupidly so. There was also an unread text message in her inbox, from a number she didn’t recognize. Someone at the pier?
Hal fumbled for her glasses, slipped them on, and then pressed the text message icon.
FIVE DAYS, was all it said.
No sign-off. But Hal did not need to wonder who it was from.
Gone was the sleep-fuddled dread. Instead she was suddenly wide awake, her skin prickling with fear, as if at any moment the man with the lisp and the steel-toe-capped boots might come through the door, drag her out of the narrow bed, punch her in the face. Broken teeth . . . broken bones.
She found she was shivering.
They can’t find you here. You’re safe here.
The words slowed her heart, and she repeated them like a mantra until her shaking fingers were steady enough to unzip her case.
You’re safe. Just get through today. One step at a time.
One step at a time. Okay. The little room was unbelievably cold, her breath huffing white as she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. At the bottom of her case was her jumper. It was bundled up with a wad of other clothes, and Hal dragged it out hastily, not noticing the tin that was caught in its folds. It fell with a thud at her feet, the lid flew off, and the tarot cards scattered across the floor, like brightly colored autumn leaves.
On top was the card she had cut before the journey—the page of swords—his head cocked, staring defiantly out of the frame with a little half smile that could have been anything from a challenge to resignation. It was a card Hal had seen a million times, and she knew every detail, from the bird at his feet to the tiny tear in the top right-hand corner. But as she gathered it up along with the others, she paused for a moment, held by something in his face, trying to analyze what that could be.
Whatever it was that had stopped her, it eluded her, and she dropped the cards on the bed and, with a shiver, unfolded the jumper and pulled it over her head.
The familiar warmth wrapped her like a hug, and when she had put on her socks and pulled on her knee-high biker boots, she felt in a strange way armored, more ready to face the rest of the family as herself, rather than the impostor she had somehow become yesterday.
Finally she raked her fingers through her hair, picked up her mobile ph
one from the bedside table, and looked around to see if there was anything she had forgotten.
In the stark morning light the room looked somehow different, less spooky, perhaps, but sharper, bleaker, even less forgiving. All the details she had noticed yesterday were picked out in sharp relief—the metal bars across the window black-painted, like the metal bedstead; the tiny grate, no bigger than a shoe box; the damp-speckled paint on the ceiling. In daylight, she could see that what she had taken for a shadow at the top of the sash window was in fact a sizable gap where it hadn’t been properly closed. As she got closer, she could feel the draft from the cold air whistling through—no wonder the room was so cold.
Hal put a hand through the bars and shoved at the frame, trying to close the sash properly, but it seemed to be stuck, and the position of the bars prevented her from pushing with any effective force.
Nevertheless, she wriggled both hands through the bars and tried again, crouching to try to get a better angle, and as she did, something glinting on the glass caught her eye. It was a scratch on the glass—in fact, more than one. It was writing.
Hal straightened, trying to make out the letters. They were tucked behind one of the bars and hard to see, but as she tilted her head to one side, suddenly the low morning sunlight caught the marks at just the right angle, illuminating them so that they glowed as if written in white fire.
HELP ME, it said, in tiny crabbed capitals.
Hal’s heart quickened. For a long moment she just stood there, staring at the writing, trying to understand what it meant.
Who had written this? A maid? A child? And how long ago?
It wasn’t a cry for help. There was no hope of the message being seen from outside—or even from the inside, angled as the letters were. If anything they were hidden, deliberately, behind the bars. Hal herself would never have seen them if she hadn’t stood in this exact spot.
No, this was something . . . something else. Not so much a desire to be heard, but more the expression of a thought too terrifying to keep inside.
She thought of her mother—telling her to speak aloud, to dispel the nightmares inside her head; remembered her own whispered STOP IT, a mantra to chase away demons. Was this the same thing? Were these scratches the marks of someone trying to anchor themselves to reality, chase away the whispering voices of fear inside?
HELP ME.
In spite of the jumper, Hal was suddenly cold—very cold, with the kind of chill that comes from within, and inside her head was a voice she could hear, repeating the words again and again.
HELP ME.
In her mind’s eye Hal could see a girl, just like herself, alone in this room. There were bars on the window, and a locked door.
Except . . . the door was not locked. Not for her, at any rate. And whatever had happened up here, this was not her concern. This was not her family, and not her secret, and she had better things to worry about than some long-gone girl with a penchant for dramatic gestures.
Whatever had happened in this room, whatever the past of this house, it didn’t matter. What mattered now was getting through today without giving herself away, and finding as much information as she could about Maud. Once she had that—a birth date, perhaps, even a middle name, if she could somehow come up with a plausible way of finding the information—she could escape back to Brighton and forge a birth certificate that would convince Mr. Treswick. Touch wood.
Touch wood. She knew what her mother would have said to that. In fact, she could picture her so exactly, the wry shake of her head, the smile quirking at the corner of her mouth. Suddenly Hal longed for her so much that it was like a physical pain around her heart.
Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies.
Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt.
That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back.
The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.
Well, if there was one thing Hal had learned, it was that she would not be caught in that trap. She would shape her own life. She would change her own fortune. She would make her own luck.
CHAPTER 17
* * *
The drawing room where they had sat last night was empty, the ashes in the grate cold, three abandoned whiskey glasses on the table. But the hum of a vacuum cleaner sounded from somewhere deep inside the house, and Hal followed the sound, along a tiled corridor lined with stuffed birds of prey poised beneath dusty glass, and through a room laid for breakfast. There were boxes of cereal, a tub of margarine, and a bag of cheap sliced bread laid out next to an ancient toaster.
Beyond that was a conservatory full of grapevines and orange trees—or at least, it had been, at one time. There were no orange trees left, but the labels on the pots still bore their names—Cara Cara, Valencia, Moro. A few vines remained, their thick, gnarled stems rising from the ground, but they had almost all died. The leaves were yellowed, and a few bunches of raisin-like grapes clung to the stalks. The only living things were the thin strands of grass that clung tenaciously between the bricks of the floor. It was very cold, a chilly draft blowing from somewhere and making the withered leaves on the dead vines flutter and rustle; looking up, Hal saw that one of the panes in the roof had smashed, and the wind was blowing through.
The vacuum cleaner was loud now—and coming from the room on the other side of the conservatory, so Hal pushed through the dead vines and opened the door at the far end.
The room was some kind of sitting room, very dark, and furnished with a Victorian level of clutter—all tasseled curtains and side tables and overstuffed sofas. In the middle of the room, standing on the hearthrug, was Mrs. Warren, her stick laid to one side, pushing the hoover back and forth with grim determination. For a moment Hal thought about retreating, but then she reconsidered. She still needed information on Maud, and this might prove the perfect opportunity—a quiet interlude, one-on-one . . . it would be much easier to control the conversation, bring it round to what she wanted to know. And she could use Mrs. Warren’s age and slight deafness to her advantage—old ladies usually loved to reminisce, and it would be easy to cover any slips by pretending Mrs. Warren had misheard what she had said.
Hal coughed, but the housekeeper did not hear her over the sound of the motor, and at last she cleared her throat and spoke.
“Hello? Hello, Mrs. Warren?”
The old lady swung round, the hoover still going, and then switched it off.
“What are you doing here?” Her expression was accusing. Hal felt herself quail a little in spite of herself.
“I—I’m sorry, I heard the hoover, and I—”
“This is my sitting room, private, d’you see?”
“I didn’t know.” A mixture of defensiveness and annoyance rose up inside her. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t
have known it—”
“You should have known,” the old lady snapped. She clicked the hoover back into its upright position, and picked up her stick. “Coming here, swanning around like you owned the place—”
“I wasn’t!” Hal said, goaded out of politeness. “I wouldn’t do that at all—I just didn’t kn—”
“You ask, do you hear me? You don’t go poking into things that don’t concern you.” Mrs. Warren stopped, pursing her lips shut as though she would have said more, but had thought better of it, and glared at Hal with undisguised hostility.
“Look, I said I’m sorry,” Hal said. She crossed her arms protectively across her chest, nettled by the injustice of it—and yet unable to defend herself, because she could not afford to antagonize someone she might need to mine for information. Besides, at bottom the old lady was right. She was an intruder, however much she might pretend otherwise. “I’ll go back to the other wing. I was—” A sudden inspiration came. “I was just going to ask if you needed any help.”
She smiled, pleased with her own quick-wittedness, but it faded from her lips as she saw Mrs. Warren draw herself up to her not-very-full height, her expression venomous.
“Well, aren’t we the gracious little lady. I may be getting on, but I’m not quite in my dotage, and I don’t need help from the likes of you.” Mrs. Warren managed to make the final words sound like an insult. “Breakfast will be at eight.”
And she turned and switched on the hoover again.
Hal retreated quietly, closing the door behind her, and went back into the conservatory, feeling ruffled by the encounter. How could Mrs. Warren have taken her last words so personally? It was as if she had wanted to take offense.
Aren’t we the gracious little lady.
The implication stung—the more so because it was so untrue. If it had been Richard or Kitty at the door, then she could have understood. But Hal’s upbringing had been about as far from being born with a silver spoon as you could possibly get. She thought of her own childhood, of pushing their ancient, coughing hoover around the living room after school, before her mother got home from the pier, wanting to take some of the load off where she could. The secondhand clothes her mother had picked over at the charity shops, the boys’ shoes she had been forced to wear when there were no girls’ ones in her size. You know what? her mother had said, pleading with Hal with her eyes to like them. I think they’re cooler anyway. They suit you. And Hal had smiled and nodded and worn them with as much pride as she could muster. I prefer them, she’d told the girls at school. They’re better for running and jumping and playing football.