by Ruth Ware
“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.
But Hal is about to become an adult now, and I can’t hide behind excuses anymore. The only way I can lose her now is if SHE chooses to cut herself off from me. I would not blame her if she did—God knows, I’ve lied to her for so long, though I told myself my motives were good. I have deceived her unforgivably—I just hope that she can, in fact, forgive.
There is much that I will never forgive you for, Mother. But in spite of that, you have kept my secret faithfully these past few years, and I felt that you deserved to know the reasons for my decision. I don’t know what Hal will do with the information—it’s hers to decide. But it’s possible she will come and seek you out. Be kind to her, if she does.
Yours,
Maud
Hal let the letter fall to the sheets, feeling her eyes well with tears, wishing that she could reach out and hug her mother, back through the years.
How had Mrs. Warren come by this letter? Had it ever reached Mrs. Westaway? Or had Mrs. Warren intercepte
d it? Either way, someone had told Ezra. And for the second time in his life, but not the last, her father had killed an innocent person to protect himself.
If only, if only her mother had not sent the letter. It seemed unbelievably naïve—to give up such hard-fought-for anonymity, to warn her mother of what she was about to do.
Had Maud underestimated Ezra? Or had she simply trusted Mrs. Westaway too much? They had been corresponding for a while, that much was plain from the letter. Perhaps she had slowly trusted more and more—thinking that if her mother had kept her secret safe thus far, she could trust her a little further, until at last she had entrusted Mrs. Westaway with a secret she could not keep.
But Hal wasn’t sure. There had been something about Mrs. Warren’s attempts to warn her . . . a kind of long-held guilt. She thought of that sitting room, the framed photographs of the cherubic little boy Mrs. Warren had loved for so long, and the man he had turned into.
Perhaps, for the sake of that little boy, she had written a letter—warning Ezra to be careful, to keep away.
And only afterwards realized what she had done.
Hal would never know the true chain of events. All she knew was that this letter was the first piece in a swift chain of betrayals that led to a hot summer’s day, and the screech of a car’s brakes, and her mother’s crumpled body on the road outside her own house.
She closed her eyes, feeling the tears squeeze from between the lids and run down the sides of her nose, and she wished, more passionately than she had ever wished anything before, that she could go back and tell her mother, It’s okay. There is nothing to forgive. I trust you. I love you. There is nothing you could do to change that. Whatever angry things I might have said or thought or done, I would have come back to you, in the end.
“Are you awake, my darling?” A Cornish accent broke into her thoughts, and Hal opened her eyes to see an orderly standing there beside a tea trolley, a white china cup in one hand and a metal pot in the other. “Tea?”
“Yes please,” Hal said. She swiped surreptitiously at the trickle beside her nose, and blinked away the rest of the tears as the woman poured her a cup.
“Ooh, homemade cake. Aren’t you the lucky one? I’ll give you another saucer,” the woman said, and she helped Hal to a generous chunk, and put it on her bedside tray.
After she had gone, moving on to the next person, Hal broke off a piece and put it between her lips, the buttercream melting on her tongue, soothing her sore throat, and taking away some of the bitterness of her thoughts.
She could not dwell in might-have-beens, she could only move forwards, to a different future.
The letter was still on her lap, and she folded it up carefully and laid it on the locker beside her bed. As she did, her hand knocked against the Golden Virginia tin, lying there, and on a sudden impulse she opened it up, closed her eyes, and shuffled the cards.
With her eyes closed, she might almost have been at home, in her little booth on the pier, feeling the soft frayed edges of the cards between her fingers, feeling their polished backs slide over each other, every movement changing the possibilities life dealt out, asking different questions, revealing different truths.
At last she stopped, holding the cards between her cupped palms, and then she cut the deck and opened her eyes.
A single card stared back at her, upright—and she found herself smiling, in spite of the tears that still clung to her lashes.
It was the World.
In Hal’s deck the World was a woman of middle age with long dark hair, looking directly out at the querent. She was standing tall, her legs planted firmly apart, in the center of a garland of flowers. At the corners of the card were the four symbols from the Wheel of Fortune—showing that, like the wheel, the world was always turning, and the way that however much one might journey, in some sense one would always end up where one began.
The woman was smiling, though with a hint of sadness. And in her arms she held, almost as if cradling a child, a globe of the world.
Hal had had no question in her mind when she cut the deck, and yet here was her answer.
She knew what she would have said, had she turned up this card for someone in her booth.
She would have said: This card shows that you have come to the end of a journey, that you have completed something important, that you have accomplished what you set out to do. The world has turned—the cycle is complete—your quest is at an end. You have endured hardship and suffering along the way, but these have made you stronger—they have shown you something, revealed a truth about yourself and your place in everything.
Because the way that we see the world from above in this card, cradled in the arms of the woman, shows that at last you can see the full picture. Up until now you have been traveling, seeing only a part of what you wished to see—now you can see the whole system, the world, and its place in the universe, your part of the whole scheme.
Now you understand.
And it was true. It was all true. But it was not what Hal saw when she looked at the card—or not only what she saw. As a child, Hal had called that card by a different name. She had called it the Mother.
There was no mother card in tarot—the nearest thing was the Empress, her golden, abundant locks symbolizing femininity and fertility. But when Hal looked at this card, at the fearless dark-haired woman cradling the world in her arms, Hal saw her mother’s face. She saw her dark eyes, full of wisdom and a little cynical; she saw her capable hands, and the sadness in her smile, as well as the compassion.
She had seen her mother in the World because her mother had been her world.
But the truth was, the world was stranger and more complicated than she had ever imagined as a child—and so was she.
She felt suddenly tired, immensely, unbelievably tired, and she pushed the cake away, packed the tarot cards back into their tin—all but the one she held in her hand—and then lay down on her side, her cheek against the cool white pillow, with Maggie’s tarot card propped beside the locker, looking into Maud’s face.
Her eyes drifted shut, and sleep began slowly to claim her.
As she lay there, she seemed to see patterns against her closed eyes—fiery shapes that changed from drifting sparks into spiraling leaves, and then into a flock of birds, bright against the red-black darkness, and she thought of the magpies at Trepassen House, wheeling and calling against the sky, and of the rhyme that Mr. Treswick had quoted that first day, as they drove up towards the house.
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told
And she thought of all the secrets down the years—of Maggie, tearing pages from a diary; of Maud, lying to protect her, in order to keep her safe from her own father. She thought of the secrets her father had kept, hugging his guilt to himself, until it had grown into a poison that had shaped his whole life.
She thought of Mrs. Westaway, and Mrs. Warren, living year after year with the terrible truth of what their darling boy had done, and the ugliness that lay in the leaf-strewn darkness of the boathouse.
And she heard the voice in her ear, her own voice now, firm, uncracked, unchanged by all that had happened. No more. No more secrets, Hal.
She had the truth. And that was all that mattered.
A Scout Press Readers Group Guide
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Ruth Ware
This readers group guide for The Death of Mrs. Westaway includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Ruth Ware. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Twenty-one-year-old Hal has been down
on her luck since her mother’s death two years ago. With a loan shark and his cronies beating on her door and physically threatening her, Hal is struggling to eke out a living at the tarot-reading booth she took over from her mother on Brighton’s West Pier.
But on a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a glimmer of hope in the form of a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot reader might help her claim the money anyway.
Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased . . . where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
1. Hal learned tarot, her eventual trade as an adult, from her mother at a young age. What else did Hal inherit from her mother? How does Hal’s understanding of her inheritance, physical and otherwise, change over the course of the novel?
2. How does the unknown identity of the writer of the diaries from Trepassen affect your understanding of the events? Did you guess at the identity before it was revealed?
3. How does the solicitor, Mr. Treswick, change the outcome for Hal and the Westaway family? Did he do his due diligence in finding and vetting Hal? Do you think Hal is glad to have been found, in the end?