The Death of Mrs. Westaway(96)

Then Ezra let his hand drop and the moment was broken. He picked up his cup and took a long gulp of coffee, then made a face.

“God, I wish I could have a proper drink. I’d kill for a glass of red, right now.”

“There’s a restaurant over the other side of the food court,” Hal said, but he shook his head.

“Better not. I’m tired enough. Though of course there’s nothing stopping you, if you want one.”

“I don’t,” Hal said, rather awkwardly. “Drink, I mean.”

Ezra picked up the paper cup and sipped again, looking at her over the top with his dark eyes. They were nearly coal-black, a brown so deep that the pupil and iris merged almost into one.

“What’s the story behind that, then?”

“No story,” Hal said, automatically defensive, and then she felt bad. There was no truth to hide anymore, no point in holding her cards close to her chest. And this man had been kind, and had told her the truth where others had lied, and was going above and beyond his duty to try to get her home. She owed it to him to repay his honesty in kind. “Well, a bit of a story, to be honest. I mean, I’m not in AA or anything like that, but I just found . . . it was after my mother died. Drinking stopped being fun, somehow. It became . . . it was a way of coping, for a bit. And I don’t like crutches.”

“I can understand that,” Ezra said quietly. He looked down at the paper cup, seeming to study something in the peaty depths. “Maggie was always very independent. I don’t think she really liked living with us for that reason. It was, well, a kind of charity, I suppose, and Mother never let her forget it. There was always this unspoken feeling that she needed to earn her place by being grateful, or some kind of bullshit.”

“What—” Hal felt her breath catch in her throat. “What was she like, Ezra, when you knew her?”

Ezra smiled. He did not look up at Hal, but there was something a little sad in his expression as he stared down into his coffee cup, swirling the dregs thoughtfully.

“She was . . . she was fun. Kind. I liked her very much.”

“Ezra, do you—” She swallowed. Suddenly she wanted that glass of wine very much indeed. As much as Ezra did, perhaps. “Do you think I should . . . say something? To Edward?”

“I don’t know,” Ezra said. His face was suddenly very grave.

“Why didn’t he say anything?”

“He may not know, I guess.”

“But she knew. My mother, I mean. Why wouldn’t she have said anything?”

“Hal, I don’t know,” Ezra said, and suddenly his face was twisted with an emotion that he seemed to be trying to master, and failing. “Hal, look, I wouldn’t normally interfere, but I can’t stand by and—what I’m trying to say—” He stopped and ran his hands through his hair. “Harriet.” The use of her full name stopped her somehow, in her tracks. “Please, please, leave this.”

“Leave it? What do you mean?”

“Leave it alone. It’s in the past. Your mother clearly didn’t tell you this deliberately—and I don’t know why she chose to keep it secret, but she must have had her reasons, and maybe they were good ones.”

“But—” Hal leaned forwards in her chair. “But don’t you understand? I have to know. This is my father we’re talking about. Don’t you think I have a right to know about him?”

Ezra said nothing.

“And it’s not just my mother—it’s—it’s everything. What happened to Maud? Why did she and my mother run away together, and why did Maud disappear?”

“Hal, I don’t know,” Ezra said heavily. He stood up and paced to the tall glass wall at the front of the service station, his shape silhouetted against the falling snow and the lamps in the car park. They had dimmed the lights in the food court now, and Hal had the feeling they were getting ready to close.

“Is Maud dead?” she persisted. “Is she hiding?”

“I don’t know!” Ezra cried, and this time it was more a shout of fury. Across the food court, a boy in a uniform stopped sweeping up crumbs and looked towards them, his expression puzzled and alarmed.

For a moment Hal felt a prickle of fear, but then Ezra rested his forehead very gently on the windowpane, and his shoulders seemed to sag in a kind of despair, and she understood.

Of course. She had been so blindly focused on her own need for answers that she had forgotten—this was his past too. Maud was his twin, the person he had been closest to in all the world, and she had cut him off too, without explanation, and disappeared. He had lived with that uncertainty for longer than Hal had lived with hers.

“Oh God, Ezra.” She stood too, walked towards him, and put out her hand, but let it fall, not quite daring to touch his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—she’s your sister, you must—”

“I miss her so much,” he said. There was an anguish in his voice that Hal had never heard before, a depth of feeling she would not have believed from his dry, sarcastic everyday demeanor. “God, I miss her, like a hole in me. And I’m so fucking angry. I’m angry all the time.”

And suddenly Hal understood the source of Ezra’s lightness, his perpetual sarcasm, the dry smile that always seemed to hover around his lips. He laughed, because if he did not, something inside him would break free, a raging loss that he had been containing for twenty years.