The Death of Mrs. Westaway(30)

“Is it the boy thing, do you think?” I asked.

Maud shrugged, trying to look unconcerned, but I wasn’t fooled. Her cheeks were wet where she had cried after supper.

“Girls aren’t worth educating,” she said, with a bitter little laugh. “Or not worth paying to educate, anyway. But whatever she thinks, I’ve got twice his brains. I’ll be at Oxford while he’s still sitting retakes at some shitty crammer in Surrey. I’m going to show her, this summer. Those exams are my ticket out of here.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking. Which was—what about me? If Maud leaves, what will I do? Will I be imprisoned here, alone, with her?

“I used to hate this room,” Maud said softly. “She used to lock us in here as children, for punishment. But now . . . I don’t know. It feels like an escape from the rest of the house.”

There was a long silence. I tried to imagine it—tried to imagine having a mother who would do that—and what it would do to you as a child to suffer through that—and my imagination failed.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” she asked, and I nodded.

She rolled over, and I switched out the light and turned on my side, my back to her, and we lay in the darkness, feeling the warmth of each other at our spines, and the shift and creak of the mattress whenever the other moved.

I was almost asleep when she spoke, her voice a whisper so soft I wasn’t sure at first if she was speaking, or sighing in her sleep.

“Maggie, what are you going to do?”

I didn’t answer. I just lay there, staring into the blackness, feeling my heart beating hard in my chest at her words.

She knows.

CHAPTER 13


* * *

The next half hour was a blur of questions and evasions, harder than Hal had ever imagined, but strangely exhilarating at the same time.

As she stumbled through the conversation, desperately trying to remember what she had said to whom, she found herself abandoning the chess analogy and returning to the image of herself as a boxer, strapping up her knuckles before clambering into the ring to dodge punches, sidestep questions, and turn awkward inquiries back onto the person opposite her.

And yet, this was no one-to-one sparring match. A single opponent would have been a setup much more within her comfort zone. She was used to that—although this was very far from the controlled environment of her little kiosk. But this confused melee was something entirely different: jumbled voices, cutting across each other, prodding her for answers before she had finished responding to another speaker, butting in with anecdotes and reminiscences. It was so unlike what she was accustomed to that she felt almost punch-drunk, pummeled by the sound.

All her life family had meant one thing—her and her mother. The two of them, bound together, self-sufficient. Growing up, Hal had never felt that there was anything missing, but she had sometimes yearned for the big family holidays of other children at school, the endless ranks of brothers and sisters and cousins to play with, and piles of presents at Christmas and birthdays that came from a large tribe of relatives.

Now—as they crowded around her, talking over each other in jangling voices, asking her about her upbringing, her schooling, her current situation—she found herself wondering how she could ever have envied the other children their uncles and aunts.

Harding was the most difficult—direct question after direct question, barked in that rather sergeant-major voice, like an interrogation. Abel’s style was very different, lighter, friendlier; time and again when Hal ran up against something she couldn’t answer, he broke in with a chuckle and an anecdote of his own. Ezra said nothing, but Hal felt his eyes upon her, watching.

It was Mitzi who interrupted at last with a laugh that Hal would have found grating under other circumstances.

“Good heavens, boys!” She pushed into the circle of dark suits, swatting Abel on the shoulder and taking Hal’s hand. “Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes! Look at her—she’s quite overwhelmed. Can I offer you some tea, Hal?”

“Y-yes,” Hal said. “Yes p-please.”

On the pier she tried to hide her occasional stammer, and she deliberately kept her voice low and slow, to seem older than her years and emphasize the fact that she was in control, and the querent was on her territory. Here, she realized, as Mitzi led her away from the group, her discomfort was her alibi, and she could use it to her own ends. She shouldn’t try to hide her confusion, or her youth—far from it. As she followed Mitzi across the drawing room, she hunched her shoulders to make her already slight frame seem even smaller, let her hair fall over her face like a shy teenager. People tended to underestimate Hal. Sometimes, that could be an advantage.

She let Mitzi usher her to a sofa by the fire, where one of the Westaway grandsons was sitting, jabbing at his phone in a way that made Hal think he must be playing some kind of game. It wasn’t Richard. Who was the other one . . . Freddie?

“There you go,” Mitzi said comfortingly, as Hal sat down. “Now, can I get you something? Are you old enough for a glass of wine?”

Yes, and have been for several years, Hal thought, but she didn’t say that. Drinking here would not be a good idea. Instead she gave a deliberately uncertain laugh.

“I’d prefer that tea you mentioned, thank you.”

“I’ll be right back,” Mitzi said, and tapped her son sharply on the head. “Freddie, turn that off.”