The Death of Mrs. Westaway(46)

They had stopped walking, and Abel reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled photograph, folded and dog-eared, and yellowed with that strange golden haze that always seemed to come over photographs a few decades old.

“I’m sorry, it’s not in very good condition, but—well, you’ll see.”

Hal took the piece of paper from Abel, and bent over it, trying to make it out.

When she did, her breath caught in her throat, and she almost choked.

“Harriet?” Abel said uncertainly. “I’m sorry—maybe this isn’t—”

But Hal couldn’t speak. She could only stare at the photograph in her hand, pressing her fingers together, so that their shaking couldn’t betray her shock.

For there, on the lawn outside Trepassen House, was a little group of four people—two girls, a boy, and a slightly older man in his early twenties.

The man was Abel—his honey-colored hair cut into a painfully nineties Brit-Pop crop, and his clothes very far from the expensively cut outfit he was wearing today, but unmistakably him.

The boy was Ezra, his black hair and curving smile making him instantly recognizable—and sitting next to him was a fair-haired girl wearing battered Doc Martens, laughing at him. She must be his long-lost twin sister—the missing Maud.

But the fourth member of the group—the last girl, sitting on her own a little way from the others, her dark eyes looking directly at the camera and at the person taking the photograph . . . that girl was Hal’s mother.

Hal found she was not breathing, and she made herself inhale, long and slow, and let it out again, trying not to let her trembling breath give away how badly shocked she was.

Her mother had been here—but when? How?

“Harriet?” Abel said at last. “Are you okay? I’m sorry—it must still be very raw for you.”

“Y-yes,” Hal managed, though her voice was a whisper of its usual self. She swallowed, and forced herself to hold the photograph out towards Abel. “Abel—there’s you, Ezra, and m-my mother, but—” She swallowed again, trying hard to work out how to phrase this, how to ask the question she needed to know, without giving everything away. “Who’s the other girl?”

“Maggie?” Abel took the photograph from her fingers, and smiled fondly at the little group, forever seated in the sunshine, frozen in their teens and twenties, forever young. “Goodness. Little Maggie Westaway. I’d almost forgotten about her. She was . . . well, I suppose a sort of distant cousin. Her real name was Margarida too, I believe, like Maud, though we never called either of them that—too much of a mouthful. She used to call Mother her aunt, but I think in fact her father was my father’s . . . nephew, or cousin? Something of that kind. Her parents died when she was in her teens, a lot like you, Hal, and she came here to finish her final year at school. Poor thing. I don’t think it was a very happy time for her.”

Hal looked at the girl sitting on the grass, at her unflinching dark eyes, and she saw what Abel meant. There was something wary and equivocal in the girl’s gaze. She was the only member of the little group who was not smiling.

“I see,” Hal managed. She tried to steady the trembling in her legs and keep her muscles from betraying her. “Thank—thank you for sharing this with me. It means a lot.”

“It’s for you,” Abel said. He held out the picture, and Hal took it, wonderingly. She let her finger trace over her mother’s face.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course. I don’t need it—I have enough memories of that time, and they’re not all of them very good ones. But this was a lovely day, I remember we all went swimming in the lake. It was before—well, never mind. But I’d like you to have it.”

“Thank you,” Hal said. She folded the photograph carefully along the existing line and pushed it gently into her pocket, and then she remembered her manners, and made herself smile. “Thank you, Abel, I’ll treasure it.”

And then she turned and walked away up the frozen slope towards the house, unable to keep up the pretense any longer.

? ? ?

AS HAL HURRIED UP THE stairs towards the attic, she could feel the shape of the photograph in her jeans pocket, and she had to stop herself from putting her hand over it, as if to hide it from sight.

Her mother. Dear God, her mother.

Hal was panting as she climbed the last set of steps to the attic bedroom, and inside she shut the door, pulled the photograph out of her pocket, and sank to the floor with her back against the door, staring at the little image.

It all made sense—the coincidence over the names, Mr. Treswick’s mistake—the only strange thing was that Abel himself hadn’t guessed the truth on seeing the photo. For it was so painfully clear now that Hal had the evidence in front of her own eyes.

Maggie, Abel had called her mother. Hal herself had never heard her mother use the nickname—but it made sense. It was an obvious shortening for Margarida. A family name, her mother had said once, when she’d asked why her grandparents had chosen such an odd, hard-to-spell name. And then she had shut down the conversation, as she often did when Hal wanted her to talk about her childhood and her long-dead parents.

Her real name was Margarida too, like Maud.

Two cousins—both called Margarida Westaway. And in looking for one, Mr. Treswick had stumbled upon the other, without realizing. Had he even known of the other Margarida’s existence? Presumably not, or he would have made sure to find the right person when he searched. But if all he had was a name, and an unusual name at that . . . If you found Joan Smith, you would make damn sure you’d found the right one. But Margarida Westaway—he could be forgiven for assuming he had found the right woman.