The Death of Mrs. Westaway(4)

Excitement? Yes.

Trepidation too, a good deal of it.

But most of all something she hadn’t dared to feel in many years. Hope.

CHAPTER 3


* * *

Hal woke late the next morning. The sun was already up, slanting through the bedroom curtains, and she lay still, feeling the mingled excitement and dread in the pit of her stomach, and trying to remember the source.

Recollection came like a twin punch to the gut.

The dread was the pile of bills on the coffee table—and, worse than bills, those two typed notes, hand-delivered. . . .

But the excitement . . .

She had spent all last night trying to talk herself out of it. Just because it was where Hester Westaway had lived, there was no guarantee that she had actually owned that huge rambling place on the postcard. People just didn’t have houses that size these days. The fact that she’d died there didn’t mean she owned it. In all likelihood, it was a retirement home now.

But the housekeeper, whispered a voice in the back of her head. And that line about opening up a room for you. They wouldn’t say that about a retirement home, would they?

“It doesn’t matter,” Hal said aloud, startling herself with the sound of her own voice in the silent flat.

She stood, smoothing down her rumpled clothes, and picked up her glasses. Settling them on her nose, she gave herself a stern look in the mirror.

It didn’t matter whether Hester Westaway owned a room, or a wing, or a cottage in the grounds, or the whole damn place. There had clearly been some sort of mistake. She was not Hal’s grandmother. The money belonged to someone else, and that was all there was to it.

Tomorrow she would write back and tell Mr. Treswick that.

But today . . . Hal looked at her watch, and shook her head. Today she had barely time for a shower. It was 11:20 and she was very nearly late for work.

? ? ?

SHE WAS IN THE SHOWER, the hot water drumming on her skull, driving out all other thoughts, when the voice whispered again, beneath the roar of the water.

But what if it’s true? They wrote to you, didn’t they? They have your name and address.

It wasn’t true, though, that was the long and the short of it. Hal’s only grandparents had died years ago, long before she was born. And her grandmother hadn’t been called Hester, she had been called . . . Marion?

Maybe Marion was a middle name. People do that, right? They use one name for everyday, and have a different one on their papers. What if—

Shut up, Hal said inwardly. Just shut up. You know it’s not true. You’re persuading yourself because you want it to be true.

Still, the voice niggled away in the back of her head, and at last, more in an effort to convince herself than anything else, Hal turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and made her way back into the bedroom. Beneath the bed was a heavy wooden box, and she dragged it out, wincing at the screech of castors on the wooden floor, and hoping that the downstairs neighbors weren’t treating themselves to a lie-in.

Inside was a rat’s nest of important papers—insurance documents, the rental contract on the flat, bills, her passport. . . . Hal sifted through the layers, feeling like an archaeologist of her own history. Past the insurance schedule, past the bill for the time a pipe had burst in the attic, and then down to a stratum that was nothing but pain—her mother’s death certificate, the copy of her will, the police report, her faded driver’s license, never used again. Beneath them all was a veil, folded into a neat square—fine black gauze, edged with droplets of jet.

There was a lump in Hal’s throat as she put it aside, hurrying past the bitter memories to the older stuff underneath—papers her mother had chosen to keep, more neatly filed than Hal’s haphazard shoving. There was an envelope with her own exam certificates, a program for a school play she had been in, a photograph of herself looking sheepish with a long-gone boyfriend.

And then at last a plastic folder marked Important—birth certs in her mother’s neat hand, and inside, two red-and-cream certificates, handwritten, and topped with the extravagantly ornate crown emblem. Certified copy of an entry, read the top of the page. First Hal’s: Harriet Margarida Westaway, born 15th May 1995. Mother: Margarida Westaway, occupation: student.

The space for “father” was left blank, a line drawn firmly through the box, as though to stop anyone from adding their own theories.

And then, beneath it, another certificate, older and more creased—Margarida Westaway. Her mother. Hal’s eyes skipped to the “parents” column—Father: William Howard Rainer Westaway, occupation: accountant and beneath that Mother: Marion Elizabeth Westaway, maiden name: Brown. No occupation was given for her grandmother.

Well, that was that then.

She didn’t realize how much she had been hoping against hope until the sense of deflation set in, tentative thoughts of debt repayment and security collapsing like a pricked balloon.

Substantial estate . . . whispered the voice in her ear, seductively. Beneficiaries of the will . . . family members . . .

There’s always your father, whispered the voice again, as she dressed. You have another grandmother, you know. Hal shook her head bitterly at that. If your subconscious could betray you, Hal’s just had.

For years she had fantasized about her father, spinning increasingly elaborate tales to the girls at school to cover her own ignorance and her anger at her mother for telling her so little. He was a pilot who had gone down in a crash in the sea. He was an undercover policeman who had been forced to return to his real life by his superiors. He was a celebrity, whose name couldn’t be revealed, or they would be hounded by the tabloids, and her father’s life would be ruined.