by Ruth Ware
“I—I do—” she managed. Her voice was croaky, despite her efforts.
“Oh, Hal, darling, come here,” Mitzi said. She held out her arms, and almost in spite of herself, Hal found herself swept into a hug.
It was incredibly alien—Mitzi’s slim, wiry frame, no taller than Hal’s own; the scent of her perfume and hair spray strong in Hal’s nostrils; the painful impression of her chunky necklace against Hal’s ribs. But there was something so simple, so instinctually maternal about the gesture, that she could not bring herself to break away.
“I just wanted to say,” Mitzi whispered into her ear, not trying to hide what she was saying, but meaning it for Hal rather than for general discussion, “that you were a complete darling to say what you did earlier, about the deed of variation. Whatever you decide—and you mustn’t let yourself get swept up in all this nonsense, or to feel responsible for what your grandmother did—it was very noble of you to think of it.”
“Thank you,” Hal managed. Her throat felt stiff and hoarse, and she let her fingers rest on Mitzi’s shoulders, half wanting to free herself, half unable to stop herself from hugging her back.
“We aren’t going to let you disinherit yourself,” Mitzi said sternly, as she released Hal. “There is no question of that. And regardless of what happens, you have a family now, so don’t you forget it.”
Hal nodded, forcing a smile, in spite of the tears that still threatened to fall. And then she picked up the tin full of cards, made her excuses, and escaped up the stairs to bed.
11th December, 1994
My aunt knows. I don’t know how—but she knows. Did Maud tell her? It seems impossible—I’m as certain as I can be that she wouldn’t say anything, not after her promise. Lizzie, perhaps? From the way she looks at me I have a horrible feeling she may be putting two and two together. But I can’t believe . . .
In the end, it doesn’t really matter. She has found out.
She came to my room as I was getting ready for bed, bursting in without knocking.
“Is it true?”
I was half-undressed, and I clasped my shirt to my chest, trying to cover my swollen breasts and stomach, under pretense of shyness. I shook my head, pretending I didn’t know what she meant, and she drew back her hand and slapped me, making my head jerk backwards, leaving my ears ringing and my cheek flaming with the shock of the smack. The shirt fell to the floor, and I saw her looking at me, at my changed body, and her lip curled, as she realised she didn’t need to ask the question.
“You disgusting little slut. I took you in, and this is how you pay me back?”
“Who told you?” I said bitterly. I picked up the shirt and put it back on, wincing against the stinging pain in my cheek.
“That’s none of your business. Who is he?” she demanded, and when I didn’t answer straightaway, she grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a rat, making my teeth rattle. “Who’s the boy who did this?” she shouted.
I shook my head again, trying not to cringe away from her fury, trying not to show my fear. My aunt has always intimidated me—but I had never seen her like this, and suddenly I understood how Maud hated her so much.
“I w-won’t t-tell you,” I managed, though it was hard to speak. I can’t let her know. Her anger would be unspeakable and I would never see him again.
She stared down at me for a long moment, and then she turned on her heel.
“I can’t trust you. You’ve shown that. You’ll stay in your room and I will have supper brought up to you. You can stay here and think about what you have done and the shame you’ve brought on this family.”
She slammed the door shut, and I heard a kind of scraping sound, as if someone were scratching something across the top and bottom of the door. It took me a minute to understand, and even when the truth dawned on me, it was with a kind of cold disbelief. Was she—was she locking me in?
“Aunt Hester?” I said, and then as I heard her heels click away down the corridor, I ran to the door, rattling the handle, banging on it with my fists. It didn’t open. “Aunt Hester? You can’t do this!”
But there was no answer. If she heard me, she said nothing.
Still in disbelief, I tried to force the door, leaning against it with all my strength, but the bolts held.
“Maud!” I screamed. “Lizzie?”
I waited. There was no answering call, only the slam of a door. I wasn’t sure which one, but I thought it could be the door at the foot of the attic stairs. A sense of complete hopelessness stole over me as I realised. It was almost eight. Lizzie would have gone home, long since. And Maud—I don’t know where she was. In bed? Downstairs? Either way, it wasn’t likely my voice would carry all the way through two sets of doors, and down the maze of corridors of this rambling house.
I didn’t call for Mrs Warren. There would be no point in that. Even if she heard, she wouldn’t come.
I went to the window, looking out between the bars into the quiet, moonlit night—its tranquillity a terrible contrast to my raw throat and my fingers, bruised from hammering.
And a realisation came over me.
I am trapped. I am completely trapped. She could send Maud away to school, sack Lizzie, and keep me here for . . . for how long? For as long as she wants—that’s the truth. She could keep me until the baby comes. Or she could starve me until I lose it.
The truth of this makes something inside me turn weak and soft with fear. I should be strong—strong for myself and strong for my child. But I am not. This house hides secrets, I know that now. I’ve been here long enough to hear the stories, of the unhappy maid who hung herself in the scullery, and the little boy who drowned in the lake.
My aunt is someone. And I am no one. I have no friends here. How easy it would be to say that I simply . . . left. Ran away in the night. No one would raise a fuss. Maud might ask questions, but Mrs Warren would swear to have seen me leave, I’m sure of it.
If she chooses to, she can simply lock the door and throw away the key. And there would be nothing I could do.
I sank to my knees by the window, the moonlight flooding the room, and I put my hands to my face, feeling the wetness of tears, and the cool hardness of the ring I still wear, my mother’s engagement ring. It’s a diamond—just a very small one. And as I knelt there in the moonlight, something came to me, a desire to leave a mark, however small, something she cannot erase, no matter what she does to me.
I took off the ring, and very slowly I scratched upon the glass, watching the moonlight illuminate the letters like white fire. HELP . . . ME . . .
CHAPTER 26
* * *
Up in her room, Hal lay flat on her back, her forearm flung over her eyes to shut out the moonlight, and she could not sleep.
It was not just the moonlight, painfully bright through the thin curtains. It was not even the reading that weighed upon her, or not only the reading. It was everything. Abel’s expression as he fled. Edward’s exasperation. Mitzi’s whispered remarks as she held Hal close . . .
The deed of variation. The thought of it was like a noose around Hal’s neck, not yet tight, but slowly tightening, and already making it hard to breathe. When she had suggested it, it seemed like such a simple solution—she would refuse the bequest, melt away back to Brighton, disappear out of their lives.
But Mitzi’s last words—so kindly meant—made it clear that that was never going to happen. Even if she renounced this legacy, she would still be trapped in a web of bureaucracy and forms and ID—this tangle of family loyalties and resentments, dragging her under as it had the others. But what could she do? The only way out of it was to admit to her fraud.
Hal sighed, and turned from her back onto her front, pressing her face into the crisp white pillowcase to try to get away from the moonlight that pierced the thin curtains. It cast long dark shadows of the bars across the bed, and as she shut her eyes, she had a sudden, jolting image of herself as she would look to someone standing across the room—like the girl from the ten
of swords.
Betrayal. Backstabbing. Defeat.
A prickle of fear ran through her, and suddenly Hal could no longer bear to lie still. She sat up, shivering in the cold, and then got out of bed and paced to the window. There she stood, looking out through the bars across the moonlit landscape.
It looked so different by night. The emerald greens and rain-washed blues were turned to a thousand shades of black, the moonlight serving only to cast long, warped shadows that, without her glasses, made familiar shapes blurred and strange. Even the sounds were different. The roar of the occasional car along the coast road had gone, the cawing of the magpies had fallen silent—and all Hal could hear was the far-off crash of the waves, and the hoot of an owl, hunting. Hal closed her fingers on the window bars and rested her forehead on the glass, wishing, wishing she were a hundred miles away, at home in Brighton, out of this nightmare tangle of lies and guesses.
HELP ME
The letters stood out clear and bright in the moonlight, and Hal suddenly knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they had been scratched on just such a night as this, by someone even more desperate than her.
Perhaps this other girl had not been as lucky. Perhaps for her the shackles had been not just emotional, but literal. Perhaps she had sat here looking out over the frosty lawn, wondering how or even if she could escape.
Well, Hal was not trapped. Not yet. There was still time.
As quietly as she could, she pulled off her pajamas and got back into her jeans, top, and hooded sweater. Then she dragged her case out from under the bed, lifting it so that it made as little noise as possible on the bare boards.
Her spare clothes were already inside, neatly divided into clean and worn. Aside from that, there was only her wash-bag, book, and laptop to pack.
Hal’s hands were trembling as she pushed them inside and zipped up the case. Was she really going to do this?
You owe them nothing, she told herself. You’ve taken nothing. Not yet.
And, after all, what was the worst they could do? They had her address, but it didn’t seem likely she would be able to stay there for long, not now that Mr. Smith’s minders had tracked her down. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to disappear completely—simply scoop up her things, the most important papers, her mother’s photographs—and walk away into a new life. There were other towns. Other piers.
The idea of starting again was frightening, and Hal thought of the huddled bodies on the pavements in Brighton, people just like her who had taken a leap—and slipped, falling between the cracks to end up homeless and friendless and alone.
It was a risk—a real risk. Hal had no safety net—and if she fell, there was no one to catch her. For a moment Mr. Treswick had seemed to promise a very different existence, one with savings, and safety, and security. But that moment, that promise, had gone. And whether it was Mitzi’s words to her today or the scratches on the windowpane, something inside Hal had crystallized into a cold, hard realization: she had to get away.
Everything was packed—almost. The final thing Hal did was to settle her glasses on her nose and pick up her tarot cards, shoving the tin into her back pocket.
Then she turned the handle of the door and pushed.
Nothing happened.
Hal felt her breath catch in her throat, and her heart seemed suddenly to be beating painfully hard.
The bolts. The bolts on the outside.
But no—it wasn’t possible. She would have heard. Surely she would have heard? And who—why?
A fluttering panic rose up inside her.
Forcing herself to breathe slowly and steadily, Hal set the case quietly on the floor, wiped her sweating palms on the back pockets of her jeans, and tried again.
The handle was turning, but the door still didn’t open to her shove. It was bowing at the top, but stuck at the bottom.
Hal’s breath was coming quicker now, but she made herself slow down—think rationally. There’s no reason for anyone to lock you in. You’re only panicking because you saw the bolts. Yesterday this wouldn’t even have occurred to you. Remember what Mrs. Warren said—damp makes the frame swell.
Taking a deep breath, she turned the door handle and pushed until a crack appeared around the edge. Then she put her foot against the part that was still sticking and leaned, slow and steady, with as much force as she dared, trying not to make any sudden movements that might wake the sleepers below.
There was a long, protesting creeeak, and then the door gave with a bang that sent Hal stumbling forwards, her hand over her mouth.
She waited for the protesting voices, the sound of feet on the stairs . . . but nothing happened, and at last she plucked up the courage to pick up her case and tiptoe out. As she left the bare little room, she could not stop herself looking back at the door, checking to see if . . .
But no. She was being paranoid. The bolts were drawn back, undamaged. It was just as Mrs. Warren had said—the damp, and nothing more.
Still, though. The kind of house that had locks on the outside of the doors was not one Hal wanted to sleep in any longer.
Holding the case in front of her like a shield so that she could fit down the narrow flight, she went as quietly and quickly as she could to the hallway below, and the one below that, and from there down the long curving staircase to the ground floor, and freedom.
13th December, 1994
I have to get away.
I HAVE to get away.
The words I scratched on the window are like a taunt, now. An admission of defeat. Because no one is going to help me except myself.
It is three days since I was locked in here, and apart from a hurried, whispered conversation with Maud, I have seen no one except my aunt. She brings up trays at odd times, and sometimes not at all, leaving me terrified and hungry.
And always—always the same question. Who is he. Who is he. Who is he.
Today, when I shook my head, she hit me again, so that my head snapped back with such a force that I heard my neck crunch, and the hot flare in my cheekbone blossomed across my face and into my ear, making it ring with pain.
I staggered backwards into the bedframe and I looked up at her, holding on to the metal with one hand, the other pressed to my face, as if to hold the bones together. For a moment she looked almost frightened—not of me, but of what she had done, what she might have done. She had, I think, lost control—perhaps for the first time since I had known her.
Then she turned on her heel and left and I heard the scraping of the bolts before she clattered down the stairs.
I sank down on the bed. My hands were shaking, and I felt a wave of cramps in my stomach, followed by a wash of sickness. At first I thought I might be losing the baby, but I sat quietly, waiting, and the pains subsided, though the heat in my cheek and the screech of tinnitus in my ear remained.
I wanted to write in my diary—to do as I always do when things get too much—let it out onto the page, like a kind of bloodletting, letting the ink and paper soak up all the grief and anger and fear until I can cope again.
But when I got the book out of its hiding place under the loose board, I looked at it with fresh eyes.
I can’t tell her the truth. Not just because if I do, I will never see him again. But because I am seriously beginning to fear that if I do, she may kill me for real. And for the first time, after today, I truly think she is capable of it.
She can’t make me tell her—but if she searches my room, she doesn’t need to. It’s all here.
So after I’ve finished this entry, I’m going to make a fire, and then I’m going to rip out every single page about him, score out his name, tear out every reference and burn them.
Because, whatever she does to me, she can’t make me confess. I just have to hold on until I’ve seen him—and after that we’ll decide what to do, together. Somehow, I will get word to him. I can pass a letter to Maud, perhaps. After all, I have paper here, and pens. And I can trust her—at least . . . at least, I hope I can.
He will come, when he gets that letter, surely? He’ll come. He has to. And then—we’ll go somewhere, run away—together. We’ll figure it out.
I just have to hold on to that thought.
I just have to hold on.
CHAPTER 27
* * *
The stairs creaked painfully as Hal made her way downwards, holding her breath at every sound, at the screech of an owl hunting in the garden, at the drip, drip of a far-off tap.
At last she reached the passageway on the ground floor, and, holding her suitcase rather than risk the rattling wheels, she tiptoed as quietly as she could towards the entrance hall, where the glass panes above the door cast moon-bright crescents on the panels opposite.
The door was bolted, top and bottom, and Hal struggled with the stiff fastenings, but after what seemed like a silent, trembling age, she worked them out of the shafts and turned the door handle.
It was locked. And there was no key. Hal looked around the entrance hall—beneath the silver salver that held letters and bills. Behind the dusty vase of dried leaves. On the lintel of the door. No key. No key.
Her heart was beating fast now. Leaving had become, instead of a longing, an imperative. If she was found here now, stealing out of the house like a thief in the night, it was quite likely someone would call the police. But it no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting away.
Hal scanned the hallway, and then picked up the case and retreated into the drawing room. The tall windows in there were closed and shuttered, but on the inside, and after a long moment of struggling with the bar, it gave with a sudden thump, and the shutter swung open. Behind it, the window itself was fastened with just a simple latch, and Hal lifted it, her heart racing with a mix of relief and anticipation. The panes opened into the room, letting in a gust of frosty air, and she peered out into the night, making sure that she was not about to step out into a six-foot drop.