فصل 15

CHAPTER 15

Your house now.

Your house now.

The words turned sickly in Hal’s gut as she lay in the darkness of the attic room, listening to the wind in the trees outside, the crackle of the fire in the grate, and the far-off crash of the sea, trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

She had not had the courage to face Harding, and fortunately Abel and Mitzi had fallen in with her plea for an early bedtime. Abel had helped her up the stairs, lit the fire, and then tactfully withdrawn while she got into her nightclothes, her limbs trembling with a mix of tiredness and fever. Then, after Hal was sitting up in bed, Mitzi had appeared with a bowl of soup on a tray.

“It’s only Heinz, I’m afraid,” she said as she placed the tray on Hal’s bedside table and straightened the contents. “Oh, bother. It’s cold already. It was boiling when I left the kitchen, I swear!” “It’s fine, really,” Hal said. Her voice was croaky, and her face felt hot from the fire, in spite of the damp chill of the bedclothes. “I’m not that hungry.” “Well, you must eat something, heaven knows you’ve got little enough to spare. Edward will be here in a few minutes, and he’s going to pop up to see you before we sit down to dinner.” “Thank you,” Hal said humbly. She felt her cheeks burn, not only with fever and the heat from the grate, but with the thought of what she was doing to this family, and how nice Mitzi and Abel were being over it. Back in Brighton, it had seemed so different—so completely different. Risking everything to snatch a few hundred pounds from a bunch of wealthy strangers—it had seemed somehow rather gallant, a touch of Robin Hood about the whole thing.

But now she was here, in their family home, and the legacy was not a few hundred, nor even the few thousand she had been half daring to hope for, but something terrifyingly huge—and what she was doing seemed anything but gallant.

There was no way she was going to get away with this. The fury in Harding’s eye spoke of lawsuits and contested wills and private detectives. But it was too late to turn tail and run away now. She was stuck here—quite literally.

Hal felt her stomach turn and shift and, under Mitzi’s watchful eye, she took a spoonful of the soup and forced it down.

There was a knock at the door as she lifted the second spoonful to her lips, and Mitzi stood and opened it. Outside was Abel, his honey-dark hair windswept and tousled—and a handsome, blue-eyed man wearing a rain-spattered overcoat. He had a thick blond mustache that was new, but in spite of that, Hal recognized him from Facebook even before Abel spoke.

“Harriet, this is my partner, Edward.”

“Edward!” Mitzi kissed him on both cheeks, before ushering him into the little room. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he seemed to fill the little space. “Come in and meet Harriet.” “Harriet,” Edward said. “Delighted.” His voice was clipped, as if from an expensive education, and his overcoat looked well-cut and brand-new, but he pulled it off and draped it carelessly over one arm, before sitting on the end of Hal’s bed. “Well, it’s a strange way to be meeting a new niece-in-law, but pleased to meet you. Edward Ashby.” He held out a hand, and Hal took it hesitantly, feeling the cold of his skin compared to her own hot hand.

“I won’t keep you up, because I’d imagine you’re probably longing to get to sleep, but Abel said you had a bit of an episode, is that right?” “I passed out,” Hal said. “But it’s nothing serious, I promise.” She tried to keep her voice from croaking. “I’d forgotten to eat, you know what it’s like.” “I don’t, actually,” Edward said, with a grin. “My stomach is sacred and I start planning lunch around nine thirty a.m., but I’ll take your word for it. Well, you do seem to have a bit of a temperature. Any headaches?” “Just a bruise where I hit my head,” Hal lied. The truth was her head was aching badly, though the paracetamol had helped a little.

“Any nausea?”

“No, none.” That at least was the truth.

“And you’re eating—that’s a good sign. Well, I think you’re probably all right, but if you start to feel sick, come and tell someone, okay?” “Okay,” Hal said. She coughed, trying to smother it in her hand.

“Have you taken anything for the temperature?” Edward asked.

“Paracetamol.”

“You could take an ibuprofen as well, if you want—I think I’ve got some.” He stood, and patted first his suit pockets, then his overcoat, and finally came out with some pills. They were in an unbranded dispensary bottle, the only label a handwritten pharmacist’s scribble that Hal could not make out, but he twisted off the cap and shook two out onto the table.

“Thanks,” Hal said. She was longing for them to leave, but she tried to smile.

“Swallow them down,” Edward said, rather heartily. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

Hal looked at the pills. They were white, and completely unmarked. Didn’t pills usually have something on them saying the dosage? It came to her, a fleeting, paranoid thought, that these could be anything, from Viagra to sleeping pills. But that was ridiculous, surely.

“Take the pills, Harriet,” Abel said. “We don’t want your temperature spiking in the night.” Rather reluctantly, Hal put them in her mouth, took a sip of water, and swallowed them down. Edward smiled as she did.

“Well done. And with that, I’ll leave you to your soup. Sorry we’re meeting under these circs, Harriet,” Edward said as he gathered up his overcoat. Hal wasn’t sure whether he meant the funeral, her head, or all of it. “But, well—sleep well.” “Good night, Harriet,” Abel said. He gave Hal’s shoulder a little squeeze that made her flinch, just a touch. She smiled, trying to hide her discomfort.

“Good night, Harriet,” Edward echoed. And with that, he winked, and followed Abel out of the room.

“Would you tell Freddie and Kitty it’s time to go to bed?” Mitzi called after them both, and Abel nodded, and said something Hal didn’t catch in reply.

“Dear Abel,” Mitzi said, as their shapes were swallowed by the narrow, dark stairwell down to the main landing. “Such a sweet man. It’s such a shame he never had children, he throws it all into his work instead.” “What does he do?” Hal croaked.

“He’s a lobbyist on behalf of various children’s charities. Rather a well-known one, apparently, if you’re in that particular world. But he’s also simply one of the nicest people I’ve ever met—I can’t think where he got it from, or how he survived his mother’s treatment intact, but there you go. I’m sure it would have reduced anyone else to a bitter shell! But listen to me rabbiting on, distracting you.” She touched the soup tray with one finger. “You should be finishing your soup. You’ve hardly eaten.” “I think I’m too tired to eat much, I’m sorry, M-Mitzi.” Hal stumbled over the name, unsure what to call her. Mrs. Westaway? Aunt Mitzi? It seemed more and more wrong, laying claim to a relationship she didn’t have. Fortunately Mitzi did not seem to notice, and only sighed and stood up.

“Well, manage what you can, but a good night’s sleep is probably what you really need. Sleep well, my dear.” “Thank you,” Hal said, or tried to—but she found her throat was stiff, and the words stifled and lost in the noise of Mitzi’s feet as she turned and made her way back down the stairs to the others.

After she had gone, Hal pushed away the bowl of cold, congealing soup, switched out the light, and put her hot cheek against the pillow. The fire had died down, leaving only a red glow of coals in the little grate, but there was a gap in the curtains, and the moon shone fitfully in through the bare tree branches, making abstract patterns against the white walls.

My walls, Hal thought dazedly. My trees.

They are not yours.

The words whirled in her head, mingling with the yammering voices of the brothers, the thousand questions she needed to find answers for before tomorrow, the hundred whys and what-ifs and hows. . . .

If only, if only the legacy had been what she had been hoping for—a couple of thousand pounds, as befitted a long-lost granddaughter. That, she could have claimed with few if any questions, before slipping back into the shadows to resume her old life.

The reality felt like a terrifying millstone, weighing her down as she struggled to free herself from what she had done. There would be no quick claims here—no slipping back to Brighton to strategically “lose touch” with her supposed relatives. Whatever she did, whether she succeeded in fooling Mr. Treswick long-term or not, she was chained to this place now.

But why had Mrs. Westaway chosen to cut out her sons and leave everything to a girl she had never met, daughter of a woman she had not seen for years?

And why had she chosen to do it this way—springing the act upon her family after her own death? Was it cowardice? It didn’t seem to fit with the portrait her children were painting—the image Hal was piecing together was of a woman who was indomitable, unyielding, and quite unafraid.

She felt suddenly impossibly tired, her eyes heavy with an exhaustion that seemed to have washed over her all at once.

Closing her eyes, she lay still in the little cot, feeling the cool of the pillow against her cheek, and listening to the sound of the house settling down for the night, feeling the suffocating presence of the Westaways all around. There was a sudden spatter of fresh rain against the glass, and she thought she heard—though perhaps it was her fancy—the far-off sound of waves against a shore.

An image came into Hal’s mind—of rising waters, closing above all of their heads, while Mrs. Westaway laughed from beyond the grave—and she opened her eyes, a sudden flood of fear making her skin prickle and shiver.

“Stop it,” she whispered aloud. It was a trick her mother had taught her when she was a little girl—when the nightmares became too real, sometimes saying the thing out loud was enough to break the spell, silence the voices inside your own head, in favor of a real-life voice.

The image receded—back to whatever paranoid fantasy it had come from. But the flavor of it lingered . . . an old, bitter woman, gone beyond harm herself, and abandoning the living to their fate.

What had Hal got herself mixed up in? And what had she started?