The Death of Mrs. Westaway(31)
Freddie didn’t even pretend to put his phone down as his mother left, but he glanced sideways at Hal.
“Hi,” Hal said. “I’m Harriet.”
“Hi, Harriet. What’s your tattoo?”
“My tattoo?” Hal was momentarily surprised, and then realized that the cotton dress had slipped a little, showing one shoulder, and the tip of a wing. “Oh, this one?” She pointed to her back, and he nodded.
“Looks like a bird.”
“It’s a magpie.”
“Cool.” He spoke without looking up, apparently negotiating a tricky bit of the game. Then he added, “I want to get a tattoo, but Mum says over her dead body.”
“It’s illegal before you’re eighteen,” Hal said briefly. Here at least she was on safe ground. “No reputable tattooist would agree to it, and you don’t want to be going to the ones who would. How old are you?”
“Twelve,” he said sadly. He shut down his phone and looked up at her for the first time. “Can I see it?”
“Um . . .” She felt an instant sense of intrusion, but she didn’t know what else to say. “I—yes. I guess.”
She turned, and felt him pull down the cotton of the neckline, exposing the bird, its head cocked to one side. His fingers were cold against her skin, and she tried not to shiver.
“Cool,” he said again, enviously this time. “Did you pick it because of this place? You know—all of them.” He waved a hand at the trees outside the window, and Hal turned. It was too dark to make out much more than the light from the window glittering on wet boughs, but in her mind’s eye she saw again the line of magpies perched on the dripping branches of the yew. She shook her head, pulling the neckline of her dress back up to cover the bird.
“No. My—my mum’s n—”
Too late she realized she had let her guard down and had been on the verge of making a horrifying mistake. The truth was that she had got the tattoo in memory of her mother. Margarida. One for sorrow. It had seemed apt at the time. But cold horror washed over her at the realization that she had been about to admit her mother’s real name. Stupid, stupid.
“Her—her nickname for me was Magpie,” she said, after a pause long enough to feel like a chasm opening beneath her feet. As cover stories went, it was beyond lame, but it was the best she could manage on the hop. Regardless, the boy didn’t seem to have noticed the yawning pause.
“Is she Dad’s sister?” he asked.
Hal nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, I guess I should say was Dad’s sister. She’s dead, right?”
“Freddie!” Mitzi came up with a cup of tea, and when she set it down on the table she lightly slapped her son’s knee. “That is not—I’m so sorry, Harriet. He’s a teenage boy—what can I say.”
“It’s okay,” Hal said, truthfully. It wasn’t just the nugget of fact he had held out to her, confirming what she had already guessed. It was the fact that she was suddenly on safe ground here. There was no shock in hearing the words from other people—in fact, she preferred the boy’s bluntness, rather than the delicate passed away, or fell asleep that some people used. It wasn’t true. Her mother was not asleep, or in the next room. She was dead. No amount of euphemism would soften that fact. And this, at least, was true.
“Yes, she’s dead,” she said to Freddie. “I got this tattoo in her memory.”
“Cool,” the boy said again, semiautomatically. He looked awkward now, in the presence of his mother. “Do you have any others?”
“Yes,” Hal said, at the same time that Mitzi broke in.
“Freddie, for heaven’s sake, stop bothering poor Harriet with personal questions. This isn’t appropriate conversation for—”
She stopped, the words a funeral unspoken on her lips.
Hal smiled, or tried to, and picked up the tea.
“Really, it’s fine.” Questions about her tattoos were easier to answer than the ones Abel, Harding, and Ezra had been asking. She felt a shift in her stomach as she saw Harding pat one of his brothers on the shoulder and then follow his wife over to the fire.
“Warming up, Harriet?” he said as he came up to the little knot seated on the sofa. “Very wise. This place is nothing short of perishing, I’m afraid. Mother didn’t really believe in modern comforts like central heating.”
“Has it—has it been in the family long?” Hal asked. She remembered her mother’s advice about conducting readings: Don’t let them ask all the questions, ask some of your own. It’s easier to direct the conversation if you’re in the driving seat, and they’ll feel flattered if you show an interest. “My mother didn’t ever talk about this place,” she added honestly.
“Oh, donkey’s years, I believe,” Harding said carelessly. He settled himself with his back to the fire, fanning up the hem of his jacket to let the heat reach his back. “The oldest part of the building is this bit where we’re sitting now, which was built in the seventeen hundreds and was quite a modest farm for many years. Then your great-great-grandfather—my mother’s grandfather—made rather a lot of money in the late eighteen hundreds from china clay, up near St. Austell, and he used it to completely revamp the place in rather grand style. He kept the Georgian core of the old farmhouse as the reception rooms and main bedrooms, but built a sprawl of wings and servants’ quarters in the Arts and Crafts style, turning it into quite an imposing place. However, unfortunately his son wasn’t a very good businessman and he lost control of the mine to his business partner. Since then there’s been very little money for upkeep, so the house is somewhat frozen in the nineteen twenties. It needs a good million-pound investment to bring it up to spec, certainly not money your average buyer has hanging around, though it’s the sort of thing one of the big hotel chains might accomplish. Of course, the land is what’s really worth the money now.” He looked out of the window, across the rain-swept expanse of grass, and Hal could almost see him calculating—imagining identical new homes sprouting up like mushrooms, hearing the kerching of cash registers as each new seed germinated into a sale.