فصل 27

CHAPTER 27

The stairs creaked painfully as Hal made her way downwards, holding her breath at every sound, at the screech of an owl hunting in the garden, at the drip, drip of a far-off tap.

At last she reached the passageway on the ground floor, and, holding her suitcase rather than risk the rattling wheels, she tiptoed as quietly as she could towards the entrance hall, where the glass panes above the door cast moon-bright crescents on the panels opposite.

The door was bolted, top and bottom, and Hal struggled with the stiff fastenings, but after what seemed like a silent, trembling age, she worked them out of the shafts and turned the door handle.

It was locked. And there was no key. Hal looked around the entrance hall—beneath the silver salver that held letters and bills. Behind the dusty vase of dried leaves. On the lintel of the door. No key. No key.

Her heart was beating fast now. Leaving had become, instead of a longing, an imperative. If she was found here now, stealing out of the house like a thief in the night, it was quite likely someone would call the police. But it no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting away.

Hal scanned the hallway, and then picked up the case and retreated into the drawing room. The tall windows in there were closed and shuttered, but on the inside, and after a long moment of struggling with the bar, it gave with a sudden thump, and the shutter swung open. Behind it, the window itself was fastened with just a simple latch, and Hal lifted it, her heart racing with a mix of relief and anticipation. The panes opened into the room, letting in a gust of frosty air, and she peered out into the night, making sure that she was not about to step out into a six-foot drop.

There was a drop—but only a couple of feet, to the veranda below, and she carefully lowered her case out, then dropped to her knees to clamber out herself.

She was halfway there, one leg over the sill, when a voice spoke from the darkness of the other end of the room.

“That’s right. Sneak away in the night. Coward.”

Hal’s head shot up, her blood suddenly racing with fear.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, the fright making her voice more aggressive than she had meant, but the speaker at the other end of the room only laughed, and walked into the shaft of moonlight.

In truth, Hal hadn’t really needed to ask. She had known who it was—who else would be prowling so silently through the darkened rooms in the middle of the night?

Mrs. Warren.

“You can’t stop me,” Hal said. She put her chin up defiantly. “I’m going.”

“Who said I’m stopping you?” Mrs. Warren said. Her lip was curled, and there was a kind of scornful laugh in her voice. “I told you to leave once, and I’ll say it again. Good riddance. Good riddance to you, and your trash mother before you.” “How dare you.” Hal found her voice was shaking—not with fear, but with anger. “What do you know about my mother?” “More than you,” Mrs. Warren said. She leaned towards Hal, her voice full of a venom that made Hal shrink back. “Little milk-and-water coward. She was a conniving little gold digger, just like you.” Hal scrambled backwards out of the window, and staggered to her knees on the paving. She was so angry, she felt a ringing in her ears, a kind of hissing fury. It was a mixture of fury . . . and shock.

“Don’t you dare talk about my mother that way. You don’t know what she went through to bring me up—” “Don’t talk to me about what you don’t know anything about,” Mrs. Warren spat. “Get out. You should never have come back here.” With that, she swung the window shut, so that Hal had to snatch her fingers out of the way, just before the heavy frame banged to.

She caught a glimpse of a face, filled with a poisonous hate, and then the shutter slammed closed too, and she heard the bang and scrape of the bar being pulled across.

Hal stood for a moment, her heart beating hard in her chest. She found that her arms were wrapped around herself, as if trying to shield herself from something—though from what, she didn’t know. As her heart slowed, she let her arms drop to her sides, and forced herself to breathe slowly and more deeply.

Thank God. Thank God she was out of that horrible house, and away from that horrible woman. Let them write. Let them come after her, for all she cared. They couldn’t make her return. They couldn’t make her show them anything. She could move—change addresses—change her name, if that was what it took.

About one thing, Mrs. Warren was right, she thought, as she picked up the case and began the long walk down the drive to the main road, to try to hitch a lift to Penzance. She should never have come.

• • •

IT WAS ONLY LATER, MUCH later, after a lift on a lorry on its way to St. Ives and a lecture from the driver about personal safety, when she was huddled in the doorway of Penzance station, her coat around her, waiting for the doors to open and the first train to London to arrive, that she had time to reflect on Mrs. Warren’s words, to unpick the realization beneath the hissed invective.

Conniving little gold digger.

Good riddance to you, and your trash mother before you.

Those words could mean only one thing: Mrs. Warren knew. She knew the truth.

She knew that Hal’s mother was not Mrs. Westaway’s daughter, but the dark-eyed cuckoo cousin, taken in as an orphan.

And she knew, therefore, that Hal herself was an impostor.

But she had said nothing. Why?

The puzzle had been in the back of Hal’s mind since last night, twisting and turning in her imagination, shaping and morphing into a dozen different possibilities. But it was only when the doors of the station opened and Hal rose stiffly, stretching out her chilled, cramped limbs and trying to smile at the station attendant, that Mrs. Warren’s last words spoke again inside her head, like a bitter echo.

She should never have come. That was right. But it wasn’t quite what Mrs. Warren had said.

What she had said was, You should never have come back.