The Death of Mrs. Westaway(80)

“Don’t worry,” Hal said, though she felt her heart deflate like a pricked balloon, a great reservoir of hope that she didn’t know she’d been holding on to leaching away. “Tell me about . . . tell me about what happened after. With the letters.”

“Well. That was the real scandal then. So Maud was invited to interview at an Oxford college in December, and while she was away things got very bad between Mrs. Westaway and your mother. I’m ashamed to say it, but I was glad to get out of the house when I left each day. I’d hear Mrs. Westaway screaming at her, though they were up in the attics, threatening her with all sorts if she didn’t give up the name of the father, and your mother crying and pleading. Once I saw her on the way to the bathroom and she had a black eye and a split lip. I wish now I’d done something but . . .” She trailed off, and Hal saw her blink and rub at the corner of her eye. “Well, Maud came back and it was like she’d seen the light or something. She told me she had an unconditional offer from wherever it was, some women’s college, I think, so that she didn’t need to study anymore, near enough. But she told me not to tell her mother, and in January she got invited back for another interview—or said she did. Afterwards, I wondered if there really was another interview, or if it was just an excuse to get away. And that was when the letters began. Maggie was here, writing to Maud—sometimes in Oxford, and sometimes in Brighton. And Maud was there, writing back, and I felt like a ruddy postman I can tell you, shipping the letters up and down. But by then I was really afraid for your ma, afraid that Mrs. Westaway would go too far, and hit her hard enough to give her a miscarriage or summat. So I was glad to do what I could to help.”

“You don’t know what any of the letters said?” Hal asked. She almost held her breath, waiting for the reply, but Lizzie shook her head.

“No, I didn’t open them. Only one I saw—and that because your ma didn’t have an envelope, and she asked me to put it in one for her. It was the last one.”

“Wh-what did it say?”

Lizzie looked down at her lap, her pink fingers fretting anxiously with the rubber gloves she held there.

“I didn’t read it,” she said at last. “I’m not that sort of person. But it was folded in a way I couldn’t help but see one line, and it stuck in my head in a way I’ve never been able to shake. It said, I’ve told him, Maud. It was worse than I ever imagined. Please, please hurry. I am afraid of what might happen now.”

There was a long silence, Lizzie reliving those memories, Hal turning the words over and over in her mind, feeling the chilly dread within her growing.

“Who—” she said at last, and then stopped.

“Who was the ‘him’ in the letter?” Lizzie asked, and Hal nodded dumbly. Lizzie shrugged, her plump, cheerful face grave and rather sad. “I don’t know. But I always assumed . . .” She bit her lip, and Hal knew what she was about to say, before the words were spoken. “I always assumed she’d told your father about her pregnancy at last, and it was him she was afraid of. I’m sorry, my darling.”

“So . . .” Hal found her lips were dry and she licked them, and took a sip of the tea Lizzie had set before her when they sat down, though it had gone cold in the cup. “So . . . what happened next? I know my mother did move to Brighton and had me. What about Maud?”

“Well, that set the cat among the pigeons,” Lizzie said. Her face broke into a smile, and she took a long draft of her own tea and set the cup down. “It was maybe late January, or early February. Maud had come back from Oxford or wherever she was supposed to be, but I knew that wasn’t the end of it. There were letters coming back and forth, and Maud whispering on the phone in the hallway, jumping like a thief when I came round the corner. Anyone else, I would have thought it was a boy, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t that.

“I wasn’t there the night they left, but I came up the next day to clean and the house was in an uproar. The girls were gone in the night, they’d taken only their clothes, seemingly, and not so much as a note left. Mrs. Westaway was tearing apart the attic room and Maud’s bedroom, saying things I hope never to hear again—foul things about both of them, her own daughter too. But they never called the police, I know that, for my brother-in-law was in the force and he said they never had no official report of the girls going. Perhaps she was afraid of what would come out, I don’t know. So in the end, I suppose, in a way, she let them go. Maud, or maybe Maggie, I was never sure, sent one letter to the house—I know, for I saw the envelope lying on the hall table and I recognized the handwriting from all those days and weeks ferrying papers back and forth—they had rather similar writing, but it was definitely one or the other. I don’t know what it said, but I saw Mrs. Westaway read it through the crack in the drawing room door. She read it, and then she tore it up and threw the scraps in the fire, and then she spat after them.”

“And that was it?” Hal said uncertainly. “You never heard from them again?”

“That was it,” Lizzie said. “Almost, at least. I got a postcard from Brighton one day in March. All it said was Thank you, Mx and no return address, but I knew who it was from.”

“And they never came back,” Hal said. She shook her head wonderingly, but Lizzie shook her head in reply.

“No, I didn’t say that. I never heard from them again, but Maggie, she came back.”