by Ruth Ware
Farther up the corridor she could see a door to the garden standing open, presumably where Ezra had made his exit, and she followed the stiff breeze and crunched her way out onto the gravel at the front of the house. Ahead of her was a wide sweep of drive, dotted with weeds and self-seeded saplings. To the left was a block of low buildings—garages, or perhaps former stables, she thought—but the smell of cigarette smoke filtering around the corner told her that that was where Ezra had gone, and she had no desire to face him just now. In fact, she needed a break from them all.
Instead she turned right, past a rather dismal shrubbery with a strong scent of cats, and round to the façade she had seen on that postcard, the long low house, the lawn falling away to the sea. We had a very good tea at Trepassen House. . . .
What had happened to that house, and that family? The picture-postcard tranquility she had seen in that photograph, tea on the lawn, like something from an Agatha Christie novel, all that had vanished—swallowed up in decay and something stranger and more worrying. It was not just the sense she had of a house long neglected. It was something darker, the feeling of a place hiding secrets, where people had been terribly unhappy, and no one had come to comfort them.
Wrapped in her thoughts, Hal crunched across the frosted lawn, feeling the frozen blades of grass crackle beneath her boots. The air was crisp and cold, and she huffed out, watching her white breath disappear. When she stopped to look back at the house, she realized how far she had come, and how large the grounds really were—from her attic room it had been hard to see where the garden ended and the surrounding countryside began; but now that she had walked almost to the copse at the bottom of the lawn she was a good couple of hundred yards from the house, and she could see that the copse itself formed part of the grounds—a cluster of trees with something at the center. Hal thought she could see something dark glinting through the trees. Could it be water?
“Admiring your domain?”
The voice, coming from behind her up the slope, made Hal jump, and she jerked her head around to see Abel walking down across the lawn, his hands in his pockets.
“No!”
The word slipped out defensively, before Hal had properly considered her reply, and she felt her cheeks flush with something that was not just cold; but Abel only laughed. He pulled at his mustache.
“I’m not Harding, you don’t need to worry about me on that score—there’s no ill feeling on my part, I assure you. I had no expectations anyway.”
Hal wrapped her arms around herself, unsure of what to say. It struck her that for someone who kept stressing how very unconcerned he was about being cut off, Abel talked about it a lot. She remembered Mitzi’s words in the library: Oh, Abel, stop being such a saint! Was anyone really that selfless? Could someone survive being disinherited by their only parent and honestly feel no bitterness at all?
Abel seemed to feel her equivocation, or at least her discomfort about the topic, for he changed the subject.
“But tell me, what happened at breakfast?”
“At breakfast?” Hal faltered. She remembered Harding and Ezra’s near fight, and felt herself hedging, unwilling to get caught in the complicated web of resentments and loyalties she sensed between the brothers. “I—I’m not sure what you mean. Harding and Ezra had . . . well . . . a bit of a . . . disagreement.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about them,” Abel said with a laugh. He fell into step beside her. “They’ve been sparring since Ezra could first talk. By the way, if we head to the left here, I can show you the maze.”
“There’s a maze?”
“Not a very good one. It’s over there.” He pointed away from the copse of trees, towards the far side of the lawn. “But that wasn’t what I meant, actually—I was talking about the plumes of smoke floating up the stairs.”
“Oh, that!” Hal said. She echoed his laugh, relieved to be on less touchy ground. “The toaster caught fire.”
“Oh, was that it. I thought perhaps Mrs. Warren had tried to burn the house down rather than let it pass to the unworthy.”
Hal felt her cheeks flush in sudden shock at the word, and Abel’s face changed.
“Oh God, Harriet, I’m sorry—that was incredibly crass of me. I didn’t mean you—I just meant—well, look, Mrs. Warren’s always had a touch of the Mrs. Danvers about her. I don’t think she would have been happy with any of us inheriting—except maybe Ezra.”
“It’s okay,” Hal said stiffly. She could hardly admit how close to the bone Abel’s remark had struck. “Why does she like Ezra so much?” she managed after a moment’s awkward silence.
Abel blew into his hands, sending a cloud of white breath gusting ahead of them, as if thinking about her question.
“Who knows,” he said at last. “There’s no reason—on paper, at least. He’s always been charming, but heaven knows, Mrs. Warren is pretty resistant to stuff like that. He was always Mother’s favorite too. Youngest child syndrome, maybe. Youngest boy, at least. Your mother was actually the youngest, of course—by a few hours, anyway.”
“They were twins?” Hal said unguardedly, and then wanted to bite her tongue off. She had got to stop saying the first thing that came into her head. She had never thought of herself as a particularly garrulous person—quite the reverse, in fact; people who knew her often remarked on how self-contained she was, how little she volunteered. But she had not understood before coming here how impossible any conversation at all would be, how every chance remark could be a trap. It wasn’t just a case of not giving away too much of herself, and concealing the gaps in her knowledge—every step she took was on false ground that could give way at any moment. She could not afford to forget that.
Fortunately, though, Abel didn’t seem to have noticed the oddness of her question. He only nodded.
“Fraternal, of course. They were . . . they were very close. I was four years older, and Harding older still—he’s eight years older than me, so he was away at school by the time they could walk. But Maud and Ezra . . . that’s why, I think, he never really got over her disappearance. He was always a tempestuous personality, but after she ran away . . . I don’t know, Harriet. Something changed. It was like all that fire turned inwards, onto himself. He spent years looking for her, you know.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hal said. Her throat was stiff and sore with falsehood.
Abel put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She felt as if his touch should have burned her, but it did not.
“She—she was a remarkable woman,” he said softly. “I don’t know how much she told you about her childhood, but it can’t have been easy being here with Mother after Harding and I had broken away. Ezra was at boarding school for most of the time, and even when he was at home, he somehow always managed to escape the worst of it, but . . . well, my mother wasn’t an easy person to cope with at the best of times, and she got stranger and more irascible as she got older. I think in the end Mrs. Warren was really the only person who could stand to be in her company—and I’m not sure she really got away unscathed. But listen.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and drew a breath, then smiled determinedly. “The reason I came to find you—I found something in my room, and I thought you . . . well. I thought you might like it.”
They had stopped walking, and Abel reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled photograph, folded and dog-eared, and yellowed with that strange golden haze that always seemed to come over photographs a few decades old.
“I’m sorry, it’s not in very good condition, but—well, you’ll see.”
Hal took the piece of paper from Abel, and bent over it, trying to make it out.
When she did, her breath caught in her throat, and she almost choked.
“Harriet?” Abel said uncertainly. “I’m sorry—maybe this isn’t—”
But Hal couldn’t speak. She could only stare at the photograph in her hand, pressing her fingers together, so that their shaking couldn’t betray her shock.
For there, on the lawn outs
ide Trepassen House, was a little group of four people—two girls, a boy, and a slightly older man in his early twenties.
The man was Abel—his honey-colored hair cut into a painfully nineties Brit-Pop crop, and his clothes very far from the expensively cut outfit he was wearing today, but unmistakably him.
The boy was Ezra, his black hair and curving smile making him instantly recognizable—and sitting next to him was a fair-haired girl wearing battered Doc Martens, laughing at him. She must be his long-lost twin sister—the missing Maud.
But the fourth member of the group—the last girl, sitting on her own a little way from the others, her dark eyes looking directly at the camera and at the person taking the photograph . . . that girl was Hal’s mother.
Hal found she was not breathing, and she made herself inhale, long and slow, and let it out again, trying not to let her trembling breath give away how badly shocked she was.
Her mother had been here—but when? How?
“Harriet?” Abel said at last. “Are you okay? I’m sorry—it must still be very raw for you.”
“Y-yes,” Hal managed, though her voice was a whisper of its usual self. She swallowed, and forced herself to hold the photograph out towards Abel. “Abel—there’s you, Ezra, and m-my mother, but—” She swallowed again, trying hard to work out how to phrase this, how to ask the question she needed to know, without giving everything away. “Who’s the other girl?”
“Maggie?” Abel took the photograph from her fingers, and smiled fondly at the little group, forever seated in the sunshine, frozen in their teens and twenties, forever young. “Goodness. Little Maggie Westaway. I’d almost forgotten about her. She was . . . well, I suppose a sort of distant cousin. Her real name was Margarida too, I believe, like Maud, though we never called either of them that—too much of a mouthful. She used to call Mother her aunt, but I think in fact her father was my father’s . . . nephew, or cousin? Something of that kind. Her parents died when she was in her teens, a lot like you, Hal, and she came here to finish her final year at school. Poor thing. I don’t think it was a very happy time for her.”
Hal looked at the girl sitting on the grass, at her unflinching dark eyes, and she saw what Abel meant. There was something wary and equivocal in the girl’s gaze. She was the only member of the little group who was not smiling.
“I see,” Hal managed. She tried to steady the trembling in her legs and keep her muscles from betraying her. “Thank—thank you for sharing this with me. It means a lot.”
“It’s for you,” Abel said. He held out the picture, and Hal took it, wonderingly. She let her finger trace over her mother’s face.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. I don’t need it—I have enough memories of that time, and they’re not all of them very good ones. But this was a lovely day, I remember we all went swimming in the lake. It was before—well, never mind. But I’d like you to have it.”
“Thank you,” Hal said. She folded the photograph carefully along the existing line and pushed it gently into her pocket, and then she remembered her manners, and made herself smile. “Thank you, Abel, I’ll treasure it.”
And then she turned and walked away up the frozen slope towards the house, unable to keep up the pretense any longer.
• • •
AS HAL HURRIED UP THE stairs towards the attic, she could feel the shape of the photograph in her jeans pocket, and she had to stop herself from putting her hand over it, as if to hide it from sight.
Her mother. Dear God, her mother.
Hal was panting as she climbed the last set of steps to the attic bedroom, and inside she shut the door, pulled the photograph out of her pocket, and sank to the floor with her back against the door, staring at the little image.
It all made sense—the coincidence over the names, Mr. Treswick’s mistake—the only strange thing was that Abel himself hadn’t guessed the truth on seeing the photo. For it was so painfully clear now that Hal had the evidence in front of her own eyes.
Maggie, Abel had called her mother. Hal herself had never heard her mother use the nickname—but it made sense. It was an obvious shortening for Margarida. A family name, her mother had said once, when she’d asked why her grandparents had chosen such an odd, hard-to-spell name. And then she had shut down the conversation, as she often did when Hal wanted her to talk about her childhood and her long-dead parents.
Her real name was Margarida too, like Maud.
Two cousins—both called Margarida Westaway. And in looking for one, Mr. Treswick had stumbled upon the other, without realizing. Had he even known of the other Margarida’s existence? Presumably not, or he would have made sure to find the right person when he searched. But if all he had was a name, and an unusual name at that . . . If you found Joan Smith, you would make damn sure you’d found the right one. But Margarida Westaway—he could be forgiven for assuming he had found the right woman.
But now that she was over the first shock of seeing her mother—young, fearless, here—the disquiet began to sink in.
The question that had beat in her head as she hurried up the stairs was how Abel could possibly have seen that photograph and not joined the dots—and now, as Hal stared down at the faded, yellowed picture, the thought recurred, more unsettlingly. For the other Margarida, the real Margarida, the one sitting on the lawn next to Ezra, was fair, like Harding and Abel. Hal’s mother was dark, like Hal herself.
All her life, Hal had heard people remark on her likeness to her mother, and she had never really been able to see what they were talking about, beyond their obviously similar coloring. But now . . . looking at the photographic evidence in front of her, her mother at an age so close to her own . . . now Hal could see it only too clearly. From the suspicious dark eyes, the color of espresso coffee, to the straight black hair, the hawkish nose, even the defiant tilt of her mother’s chin—Hal saw herself.
Here, right in front of her, was concrete evidence of the truth—and of the mistake that had been made. How long would it be before Abel—or someone else—realized that?
Restlessly, Hal stood and walked to the window, looking out. The day had grown overcast, and far away in the distance she could see a gray mass, flecked with white, rising to meet the sky. It might have been a cloud, but Hal thought—though she could not be sure—that it was probably the sea.
All of a sudden she felt a powerful urge to get out, get away—and she found herself gripping the bars as if she could prize them apart and escape the confines of the little room and the prison she had created for herself with this situation.
Because, as she shoved the photograph away in her pocket for the second time, Hal realized that the evidence in the picture was only half the issue. The real problem was something far worse.
In taking that photo, in asking the questions she had in the way that she had, Hal had crossed a line. She was no longer simply the passive recipient of Mr. Treswick’s error, swept up in a mistaken assumption, with no provable wrongdoing on her part.
No. In that moment of accepting the photograph, she had begun to actively deceive the Westaways, in a way that could be tracked back to her and proven. And the potential result of her deception was no longer a few thousand pounds, but a whole estate—stolen from under the noses of Hester Westaway’s rightful heirs.
Up to this point, Hal thought, she might at a stretch have claimed ignorance or confusion. She could have cited Mr. Treswick’s letter coming out of the blue, the fact that she had never met her grandparents—she could have painted herself as an innocent bystander caught in a mix-up, a trusting young woman, too shy to question the discrepancies in what she had been told.
But now, by taking this photograph and failing to mention that the other woman in the picture was her real mother, she had begun something very different.
She had begun to commit an active, traceable fraud.
6th December, 1994
I couldn’t sleep last night. I lay awake, my hands over my stomach, tr
ying to press it back to flatness, and I thought about the night it happened. It was late in August, when the days were longer and hotter than I could ever have imagined, and the sky was that fierce Cornish blue.
The boys were back from school and university, filling the house with an unaccustomed noise and energy that felt strange after the stifled silence I had grown used to these last few months. My aunt had gone up to London for some reason, and Mrs Warren had gone into Penzance to see her sister, and without their dark, crow-like presence the atmosphere felt light and full of happiness.
It was Maud who came up to find me in my room, where I was reading—she burst in, holding a towel and her bright red swimming costume in one hand, and her sunglasses in the other.
“Get a move on, Maggie!” she said, plucking the book out of my hand and tossing it onto the bed, losing my place, I noticed with a flash of irritation. “We’re going swimming in the lake!”
I didn’t want to—that’s the strange thing to remember. I don’t mind pools or the sea, but I’ve never liked lake swimming—the slimy reeds, and the mush at the bottom, and the mouldering branches that catch at your feet. But Maud is a hard person to say no to, and at last I let her pull me downstairs to where the boys were waiting, Ezra holding a set of oars.
In the crumbling boathouse Maud untied the rickety flat-bottomed skiff, and we rowed out to the island, the lake water dappled and brown beneath the hull of the boat. Maud tied the boat to a makeshift jetty and we climbed out. It was Maud who went in first—a flash of scarlet against the gold-brown waters as she dived, long and shallow, from the end of the rotting wooden platform.
“Come on, Ed,” she shouted, and he stood up, grinned at me, and then followed her to the water’s edge, and took a running jump.
I wasn’t sure if I would go in—I was content to watch the others, laughing and playing in the water, splashing each other and shrieking. But the sun grew hotter and hotter, and at last I stood, shading my eyes, considering.
“Come in!” Abel yelled. “It’s glorious.”