The Death of Mrs. Westaway(69)

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IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF the afternoon when Hal reached her flat, footsore from carrying her case all the way from Brighton station. She had no money for a cab, and her bus pass had expired.

As she drew closer to Marine View Villas, she found her heart was thumping hard in her chest—and not just from the long walk. Words hissed in her ear in time with her footsteps: Broken teeth . . . broken bones . . .

“Stop it.” She said the words aloud, crossing the road, and a boy of about fifteen looked sourly round at her.

“I’m eighteen, innit. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Hal shook her head, wanting to tell him that whatever he’d been talking about, it didn’t matter to her. But he was gone, and she was turning into her road, her heart going at a sickening rate now.

When she got to the narrow front door, there was no sign that it had been forced, but instead of unlocking it, she rang the bell for the ground-floor flat.

The man who answered it looked surprised, as well he might. Hal had never seen him before.

“Yes? Can I help?”

“Oh . . . I’m sorry.” Hal felt discomfited. She had been planning to ask Jeremy, who lived here, to accompany her up to her flat. “I didn’t realize—is Jeremy here?”

“Is he the guy who lived here before? I don’t know. I only just moved in this week. Are you a friend of his?”

“Yes—no. Not really,” Hal said. She hitched her case up, feeling her feet aching. “I live here, upstairs.”

“Oh. Right. Well, remember your key next time, eh? I was having a kip.”

“I’ve got my key,” Hal said. “It’s not that. I just wondered—look, you haven’t seen anyone hanging around here, have you? A bald man, bouncer type?”

“Don’t think so,” the man said briefly. He had lost interest now, and had retreated back to his own front door, plainly wanting to get back to his bed. “Ex, is he?”

“No.” Hal shifted her grip on the case, wondering how honest she could be. “No, I . . . I owe him some money, actually. And he’s not been very . . . understanding.”

“Ohhh . . .” The guy held up his hands, showing Hal his palms, really backing away now. “Look, I’m not getting mixed up in that, love. Your money, your business.”

“I’m not asking you to get mixed up,” Hal said crossly. “I just want to know, did you see anyone?”

“No,” the man said, and he closed his flat door in her face.

Hal shrugged and sighed. It was not very reassuring, but it was as good as she was going to get.

As she climbed the stairs to her attic flat, she held her suitcase in front of her like a shield once again, and the image came to her, fresh and sharp, of that narrow staircase back in Cornwall, and a girl disappearing upwards, into darkness. When she shivered, it was not entirely at the thought of what might be waiting upstairs.

At the top she paused, trying to still her breathing, listening for any sound behind her front door. It was shut, and locked, and showed no signs of being forced, but then it had looked okay last time too. Clearly they had got in once, they could do so again.

When she bent and peered beneath the doorway, only a cool breeze blew in her face. There was no sign of any movement showing through the narrow crack, no feet standing silently behind the door.

At last, holding her phone like a weapon, her finger poised over the nine, she put her key into the lock as silently as she could, and then twisted and opened it with one swift movement, kicking the door hard back against the wall of the living room with a bang that echoed in the quiet hallway.

The room stood empty, silent, the only sound Hal’s pounding heart. No feet came running. Nevertheless, she didn’t put down her phone until she had checked every nook and cranny, from the bathroom, to her wardrobe, right down to the alcove behind the living room door where she kept the hoover.

Then, and only then, did her heart begin to slow, and she shut the front door, drawing the chain and bolt across, and let herself sink down on the sofa to rub her shaking hands over her face.

She could not stay here, that much was obvious.

Hal rarely cried, but as she sat there on the worn old sofa that she had jumped on as a child, in front of the cold gas fire her mother had lit so many afternoons after school, she felt her throat close with unshed tears, and a few self-pitying drops traced down her nose. But then she took a deep breath and scrubbed them away. This wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t help. She had to move on.

But before she did, she needed to find the truth, the answers to the questions she had been asking herself ever since Mr. Treswick’s letter had come through. She was sick of lies and lying. It was time for the truth.

Hal’s stomach was rumbling, so she made herself a piece of toast, and took it through into her bedroom. Then she pulled the box out from under the bed, tipped the contents upside down onto the rug, and began to sift through.

Upended like this, the first pieces of paper were the oldest—expired passports, exam certificates, old letters, photographs—though the dates were jumbled, the contents moved from drawer to drawer too many times to be strictly chronologically ordered. Hal opened an envelope at random, but it was nothing very interesting, just some of her mother’s old bank statements.

Beneath it there was a sheaf of baby photographs—herself, presumably, about six months old, smiling up at an unseen photographer. Another envelope contained the original rent contract for the flat, the ink faded, the staple in the corner beginning to rust. It was dated January 1995, a few months before Hal’s birth. Sixty pounds a week, her mother had agreed. It seemed impossibly low, even back then, and Hal thought she might almost have laughed, had she not been so close to tears.