The Death of Mrs. Westaway(72)

Hal had read that look quite differently—she had seen the connection between her mother and the viewer as their own relationship, as if her mother were gazing out of the past at her.

But now she understood. It was not she herself that her mother was looking at—for how could she? It was the photographer. It was Hal’s father. Ed.

CHAPTER 30


* * *

That night, Hal’s bed had never felt softer or more welcoming.

She slid under the covers and shut her eyes, but sleep didn’t come. It wasn’t that she was not tired—she was, almost to the point of nausea. It wasn’t even the thought of Mr. Smith’s men. She had dragged a chest of drawers across the front door, and she didn’t think that even they would come in the middle of the night, risking waking all her neighbors, and the consequent 999 calls.

What stopped her from sleeping was that every time she shut her eyes, she was back—between the pages of the diary, in the claustrophobia of that little room. The picture was so vivid: the narrow attic, the barred windows, the two metal bolts, top and bottom . . . when she shut her eyes, they rose up in front of her mind’s eye, as if she were back there herself, and she felt a kind of sick dread. Not just for her mother—who, after all, had escaped, and made her way here, to Brighton, and made a life for herself and her child away from Trepassen. But for those other children—for Abel and Ezra, locked in that room as children, as punishment for whatever childish misdeeds they’d committed. And most of all for Maud.

The first few times Hal had read the entries, she had been looking for her mother—trying to picture the person behind the words, and compare them to her own memories. Then she had read it again, scouring it for mentions of the boy who might be her father. Ed. Edward? She found herself remembering that cool, handsome face, the appraising blue eyes, trying to pick out any features that might have belonged to her.

Come on, Ed. The words rang inside her head as though her mother had shouted them aloud in the little room.

Ed. It was a common enough name. There must be dozens of Edwards, Edgars, and Edwins scattered around Cornwall. And yet . . .

All evening she had gone round and round, combing for other mentions that might give evidence either way, arguing for and against, back and forth. But her mother had kept her word, and apart from that small slip, every reference to her father’s name had been ripped out, or scored through.

Now, though, in the stillness of the night, as Hal went back again and again over words she had committed to memory, she found herself looking for mentions not of Ed, but of Maud.

Her own mother was oddly shadowy—perhaps it was because she spent so many of the entries describing others, but it was hard to match the uncertain, romantic girl writing this diary with the strong, practical woman she had become, after years of single motherhood. Without the evidence of her own eyes, Hal could never have imagined her mother writing with such heat and yearning about a man. Perhaps this was the first, and last, time.

But Maud—Maud was different, somehow. Though she only flitted through the pages, she felt like a constant presence in the diary; and as the clock ticked past midnight, and the rain spattered at the window, Hal found herself scouring her memory for references to Maud.

It was not just the fact that it was Maud’s legacy that she, Hal, had been handed on a plate. It was that there was something about her that spoke directly to Hal. Perhaps it was her fierce determination, her refusal to be quashed, her desire to break free. Perhaps it was her wry humor, or her generosity. For Maud’s love and concern for her cousin ran like a thread of gold in the dark throughout the diary, and even across the gap of twenty years, Hal found herself smiling at her remarks. What was it she had said about the tarot cards? Load of wafty BS, that was it. It was so close to what Hal sometimes found herself thinking when she met the more earnest practitioners that she had almost laughed aloud when she read it.

But what had happened to her? To Maud—to the real Margarida? Where was she now? And why did no one talk about her? Was she dead? Or had she made good her vow to escape?

Perhaps she had disappeared abroad, changed her name, made a new life for herself. Hal hoped so. For Maud’s own sake, but also because she knew the truth of what had happened in those torn-out pages. She knew the truth about Hal’s mother, and her father.

Abel, Ezra, Harding, Mr. Treswick—thanks to Hal, they all believed that Maud had died in a car crash, three hot summers ago. Only Hal knew the truth—that it was not Maud who had died, but Maggie, her cousin.

It was possible, even probable, that Maud was still alive, still out there, still holding on to the truth of what had happened to her cousin, and the secret of Hal’s own identity.

But to find her, Hal was going to have to go back. Back to Trepassen, where she could start again, pick up the threads of Maud’s life from the beginning. And there was only one way that Hal could think of doing that.

CHAPTER 31


* * *

The next day was Sunday. It was eight when Hal dragged her duvet to the living room and curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee in one hand, and a pile of letters in her lap.

On top of them was Harding’s business card.

She waited until nine thirty before she dialed the number, but it went through to voice mail, and she could not stop a small spurt of relief when she heard the smooth female voice of the automated message.

“This is the voice mailbox of—”