The Death of Mrs. Westaway(12)

When she got back to the kiosk, the door was closed, though she had no memory of shutting it. She put her hand to the salt-rusted knob and turned the door handle, and slipped inside the dark booth, feeling relief as the wind dropped and the vestigial warmth from the space heater enveloped her.

“Hello, sunshine,” said a voice, and the red-shaded lamp on the table clicked on.

Hal felt the blood drain from her face, and her heart started beating in her ears with a sound like the crash of waves on a beach.

The man standing in the pool of lamplight was very tall, and very broad, and very bald, and he was smiling, but not in a pleasant way. He was smiling like someone who enjoyed scaring people—and Hal was scared.

“Wh . . .” she tried, but her voice didn’t seem to be working. “What are you doing here?”

“Maybe I’ve come for a reading,” the man said pleasantly, but he had his hand in his coat pocket, caressing something in there in a way Hal didn’t like. He spoke with a slight lisp, his speech whistling through a gap in his two front teeth.

“I’m closed,” she managed to say, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Ah, don’t be like that,” the man said reproachfully. “You could manage a reading for an old friend of your ma’s, now, couldn’t you?”

Hal felt something inside her grow cold and still.

“What do you know about my mother?”

“I’ve been asking around about you. Friendly curiosity like.”

“I’d like you to leave,” Hal said. There was a panic button in her booth, but it was on the far side, where the man himself was standing, and in any case, it would all depend on whether the pier security guard was in his office.

The man shook his head, and she felt the panic rise up, choking her.

“I said, get out!”

“Tut-tut,” said the man, shaking his head, the smile slipping for a moment, though it was still there in his eyes, a kind of amusement at the terror he saw in her, and at the way she was trying to hide it. The lamplight glinted off his bald head. “What would your ma say to her little girl, treating an old friend of hers like that?”

“I’m not a little girl,” Hal said through gritted teeth. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop her hands shaking. “And I don’t believe for a second you knew my mother. What do you want?”

“I think you know what we want. You can’t say we didn’t try to do this the nice way. Mr. Smith wrote you that note himself, he did. He wouldn’t do that for all his clients.”

“What do you want,” Hal repeated stonily, but it wasn’t really a question. She knew. Just as she knew what the note meant. The man shook his head again.

“Come on, now, Miss Westaway. Let’s not play games. It’s not like you didn’t know the terms when you signed up.”

“I’ve paid off that money three, four times over,” Hal said. She heard an edge of desperation creeping into her voice. “For God’s sake, please. You know I have. I must have given you more than two thousand pounds. I only borrowed five hundred in the first place.”

“Terms is terms. You agreed to the interest. If you didn’t like it, you shouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“I had no other choice!”

But the man only smiled again, and shook his head.

“Naughty, naughty. We always have choices, Miss Westaway. You chose to borrow money off Mr. Smith, and he wants it back. Now, he’s not an unreasonable man. Your debt is currently at . . .” He pretended to consult a piece of paper he held in his hand, though Hal was pretty sure it was all for show. “Three thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds. But Mr. Smith has kindly offered to take three thousand cash as a final payment and we’ll call it settled.”

“I haven’t got three thousand pounds!” Hal said. She felt her voice rising and swallowed, forcing herself to lower it from a shout to a more reasonable level.

Slow down.

It was her mother’s voice in her head, soft and calming. Hal remembered her telling her about how to deal with difficult clients. Make them realize you’re in control, not them. Don’t let them make all the demands—remember you’re in charge of this reading. You ask the questions. You set the pace.

If only this was a reading. If only she had this man across a table with the cards in between them . . . but she didn’t. She would just have to work with the situation she was in.

She could do this.

“Look,” she said more reasonably. She drew a shaky breath, made herself unfold her arms from their defensive posture, spread her hands to show honesty. She even forced herself to smile, though it felt like a rictus grin. “Look, I want this settled as much as you do—more, actually. But I haven’t got three thousand or any way of getting it. You might as well ask for the moon. So let’s try to work out what I can offer that your boss will find acceptable. Fifty pounds a week?”

She didn’t stop to think about how she would come up with the money. Fifty pounds a week was money she just didn’t have at this time of year. But maybe Mr. Khan would let her defer the rent by a month, and Christmas often meant a small surge in business, with work Christmas parties and late-night shopping. Regardless, she would find the money.

“Here—” She went to the table, picked up the latched box that she kept on the side with the day’s takings. Her hands were shaking almost too much to work the lock, but at last she got it open, and when she held out the notes, she made herself look up at him through her lashes and smile, a little girl’s smile, shy and pleading, appealing to his better nature—if he had one. “Look, there’s . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . nearly forty pounds here. Take that to be going on with.”