The Death of Mrs. Westaway(17)
Hal learned how far to generalize and when to backtrack when you had hit a rut. She watched how her mother stopped trying to apply a statement when the client was stubbornly shaking his or her head, and how she changed tack with an unruffled, “Ah, well, I will leave that image with you to decipher. Perhaps its meaning will come to you later, or it may be a warning for the future.”
So much she had picked up without even trying. But to conduct a reading herself . . . that was another matter.
In the end, though, she had no choice. A couple of days before Hal’s eighteenth birthday, her mother was killed in a hit-and-run on a hot summery day, right outside their flat, by a speeding driver who was never found. Hal was left reeling, grieving—and broke.
When the pier manager, Mr. White, came to her a few weeks later, his ultimatum was not unkind—he wanted to give Hal first refusal, he said. But the kiosk could not remain empty in the height of the season. If she wanted her mother’s booth it was hers, no question. But she would have to start soon. It was June, the pier was full every day and every evening, and shuttered kiosks were bad for everyone.
And so Hal had picked up her mother’s cards, turned on the neon sign outside the booth, and become Madame Margarida in her turn.
The regular clients were easy. She had watched her mother read time and again for these people, had listened to them spill the details of wayward husbands, tetchy bosses, unhappy children. And the drunken walk-ins were not too bad—she could bluff her way through those, and besides, they tended to be tourists who would never be back.
No, it was the bookings that worried her. The people who paid for a full hour’s consultation, who rang up beforehand to make sure she would be in.
For those, Hal did something her mother had never resorted to. She cheated.
It was scary how much you could find out online. Hal had never used Facebook before her mother’s death, but in those early, uncertain days she created a fake profile, with an unthreatening picture of a blond girl taken from Google images, and christened her “Lil Smith.”
Lil was a conscious choice—a name that could be short for Lily, Lila, Lillian, Elizabeth, or a hundred other names. Smith was obvious, as was the unassuming prettiness of the girl.
It was amazing how readily people accepted a friend request from someone they had never met, but much of the time she didn’t even need to do that, for their privacy settings were wide open, and she could find out details of their family, their employer, their education and hometown, all without ever leaving her room.
Now, as the train sped west, she opened up her laptop and turned her attention to the Westaways, a nervous fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
The first Google hit was a death notice in the Penzance Courier for Hester Mary Westaway, born September 19, 1930, died November 22, 2016, at Clowe’s Court, St. Piran. The brief obituary stated that she was the widow of Erasmus Harding Westaway, by whom she had had three sons and a daughter. She is survived by her sons, Harding, Abel, and Ezra Westaway, and her grandchildren, read the notice.
Was she supposed to be the daughter of one of these men?
Neither Abel nor Harding was a big Facebook user, but nor were they hard to find. Only one hit came up for each name, and Harding had helpfully listed his hometown as St. Piran, and tagged Abel as his brother. As Hal scrolled down through his profile, looking at photographs of weddings and christenings, family parties and first days at school, she felt a lump in her throat. There was a wife, Mitzi Westaway (née Parker), and three children, Richard, Katherine, and Freddie, ranging from early to mid teens.
Abel was younger by a good few years, a kind-looking man with a neat brown beard and hair the color of dark honey. His relationship status wasn’t visible, but scrolling through his profile pictures Hal picked out a handsome blue-eyed man called Edward in many of the photos. There was a tagged photograph of the two of them together in Paris on Valentine’s Day 2015, and another of them hand in hand at some kind of formal event. Black and White Ball for the Orphans of the Philippines, read the caption. Both men were wearing black tie, and Abel was smiling up at his companion with a kind of anxious pride.
Both profiles exuded an air of comfortable wealth that made Hal’s heart hurt with a kind of longing envy. There was nothing ostentatious, no yachts or Caribbean cruises. But there was casual mention of holidays in Venice, skiing in Chamonix, private schools, and tax planning. The evolving slide show of profile pictures showed children on ponies, four-wheel-drive cars, and polo equipment, and their Facebook memories were of restaurant meals and family get-togethers.
Of Ezra there was no sign.
Judging by Facebook, both Abel and Harding were old enough to have a child in her twenties, but it was the daughter who kept drawing Hal’s attention. She is survived by her sons. What had happened to the daughter?
Without a name, there was no way of finding out, and there was no mention of a sister on either Harding’s or Abel’s Facebook profile. After a moment’s thought, Hal—or rather, Lil Smith—put in a friend request to Harding’s eldest son, Richard Westaway. She deliberately did not ask Abel. He had only 93 friends, and didn’t look the type to accept unsolicited friend requests from mystery girls. Harding was an even worse choice—he had only 19 friends and didn’t seem to have checked his account for almost four months. Richard, on the other hand, had 576 friends and had already posted an update checking in at a service station outside Exeter.