The Death of Mrs. Westaway(113)

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?