فصل 37

CHAPTER 37

Hal was soaked and shivering by the time she got to the big wrought-iron gates. She was profoundly grateful that Abel had made her take his walking jacket, but the hood was too big to stay up. However tight she pulled the drawstring, the wind blew it back and sent the rain running down the back of her neck to soak her T-shirt.

For a mile or so she tried holding it in place with one hand, but even with her fingers scrunched as far as she could get into the cuffs of the coat, it left her hands cold and blue, and in the end she abandoned the hood, and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the coat.

When Hal pushed open the gate, the hinges shrieked, a low, mournful sound that cut through the patter of the rain, and made her shiver in a way that wasn’t just cold. There was something about the long, low note that made the skin on the back of Hal’s neck crawl. It was as though the house itself were dying in pain.

By the time she got up to the house, there was a little sleet mixed in with the rain, the tiny shards of ice stinging her cheek and making her eyes water, and in spite of her trepidation, she was glad to reach the shelter of the porch, where the wind dropped and she could shake off the worst of the water. Inside, she took off Abel’s coat, watching as the water pooled on the tiles, and feeling the sensation painfully returning to her chapped fingers, stinging as the blood began to return. From the drawing room she could hear male voices, and taking a deep breath, she put the coat on the peg and made her way across the hallway to the half-open door.

“Hal?” Abel looked around as Hal entered diffidently. “Bloody hell, you look like a drowned rat. Why didn’t you call me?” “I was enjoying the walk,” Hal said. She moved closer to the fire, trying to mask the chattering of her teeth. It was not quite a lie. She had not enjoyed the walk, not exactly, but she had not wanted a lift. She’d needed the time to clear her head, work out what she was going to say.

Across the room Ezra was sprawled on the sofa, replying to something on his phone, but he looked up as Hal passed him, and gave a snorting laugh.

“I’ve never seen anyone look quite so impressively bedraggled. I’m afraid you’ve missed lunch, but we could probably brave Mrs. Warren’s lair for a cup of tea if you need something to warm you up. Or the water in the immersion tank should be hot, if you want a bath?” “I’ll do that,” Hal said, grateful for the excuse. Part of her wanted to get this over and done with, but another, more cowardly part was clutching at any straw to postpone the cataclysm that was sure to follow. “Wh-where’s Harding?” “In his room, I think. Having a nap, is my guess. Why?”

“Oh . . . just wondered.”

• • •

THE BATHROOM WAS UPSTAIRS—JUST one for the entire house, with a huge claw-footed tub streaked green with copper rust, and a lavatory in one corner with a chain that clanked and screeched when Hal pulled it, reminding her of the metallic groan of the gates.

But the water, when she turned the brass taps, was hot, and the pressure was good, and when she at last lowered herself into the scalding heat, she felt something inside her release, a tension that she hadn’t known she was holding on to.

Uncle Harding—I’m not who you think I am.

No. Absurdly dramatic. But how could she say it? How could she bring it up?

When I went back home, I discovered something. . . .

And then the story of the diary, as though she had just come to this dawning realization.

The trouble with that was that it was a lie.

So what, then?

Harding, Ezra, Abel—I set out to defraud you.

Maybe the words would come, when she was faced with them all. Closing her eyes, she submerged herself beneath the water, so that her ears filled with the sound of her own pulse and the drip, drip of the tap, driving out all the other voices.

• • •

“HARRIET?”

Hal jumped and turned, clutching the towel to herself, as Harding’s head came out of the doorway of one of the rooms. At the sight of her, damp and pink from her bath, bare shoulders rising from a swath of towel, he looked almost as horrified as Hal felt.

“Oh! My dear, I’m so sorry.”

“I had a bath,” Hal said, unnecessarily. She felt the corner of the towel slip, and hitched it up, holding her damp clothes in front of herself like a shield. “I was just going up to get dressed.” “Of course, of course,” Harding said, waving a hand to indicate that she should feel free to go, though when Hal turned he spoke again, forcing her to turn back, shivering as she did, in the sudden draft. “Oh, Harriet, I’m so sorry—there was one thing I wanted to say, before we met with the others. I won’t keep you, but I wanted—well, your offer to perform a deed of variation was very generous, but I’m sorry to say that Abel, Ezra, and I discussed it, and Ezra is being rather difficult about it. He’s an executor, you know, and as such he has to agree to any such deed, and he feels, rather strongly, that Mother’s wishes should be honored, however perverse and disruptive. I must say it seems an extraordinary position to me, given he never showed the least interest in her wishes when she was alive, but—well—there it is. We’ll discuss it with Mr. Treswick tomorrow, anyway.” Hal shivered again, unable to prevent it, and Harding seemed belatedly to realize the cold.

“Oh dear, I am sorry, I’m keeping you dripping in the corridor. Don’t mind me, I’ll see you downstairs for a gin and tonic, perhaps?” Hal nodded, stiff with the knowledge of all that she had left unspoken; and then, unable to think what else to say that was not an addition to all the lies she had already told, she turned and made her way up the stairs to the attic room.

• • •

IT WAS PERHAPS HALF AN hour later when she pushed open the door to the drawing room and found all three brothers sitting around the coffee table, in front of a roaring log fire.

There was a bottle of whiskey on the table between them, and four tumblers—one unfilled.

“Harriet!” Harding said heartily. His face was flushed, with a mix of heat and whiskey, Hal suspected. “Come in and have a drink. I’m afraid my offer of gin and tonic turned out to be premature—there’s no tonic in the house. But I did take the precaution of buying a bottle of whiskey when I was in Penzance earlier, so we do at least have that.” “Thanks,” Hal said, “but I don’t really—”

She stopped. She didn’t drink, not anymore. There had been too many oblivious nights after her mother’s death, too many times when one glass had dissolved into many. But now she had a sudden, powerful yearning for something, however small, to nerve her for what she was about to do.

“Actually, thanks,” she said, and Harding poured her a generous, overgenerous, measure, and pushed the tumbler across the table to her.

He refilled his brothers’ glasses at the same time and then raised his own.

“A toast,” he said, meeting Harriet’s eyes. “A toast to . . .” He paused, and then gave a short laugh. “To family.” Hal’s stomach tightened, but she was saved from answering by Ezra’s derisive snort. He shook his head.

“I’m not bloody drinking to that. To freedom.”

Abel gave a chuckle and picked up his own tumbler. “Freedom seems a little harsh. I’ll drink to . . .” He raised his glass, thinking. “To closure. To seeing Mr. Treswick tomorrow and getting home to Edward ASAP. Hal?” The acrid smell of the whiskey stung her nostrils, and she swirled it, looking down into the tawny, glinting depths.

“I’ll drink to . . .” Words crowded in—unsayable words. Truth. Lies. Secrets. Her throat tightened. There was only one toast that she could find in her heart, the crowding, painful truth, waiting to be blurted out. “To my mother,” she said huskily.

There was a long pause. The whiskey in Hal’s glass trembled as she looked around the circle of faces. Harding’s mustache quivered as he raised his glass.

“To Maud,” he said, his voice harsh with suppressed emotion. The whiskey caught the light, winking solemnly.

Abel swallowed hard, and raised his own tumbler.

“To Maud,” he said, very softly, his voice so low Hal would not have been sure of the word if she had not known what it was already.

Ezra said nothing, but he raised his glass, and his dark eyes were bright with a grief Hal found almost too painful to look at.

For a moment they sat, all four of them, glasses raised in silent remembrance, and then all of a sudden, Hal could bear it no longer. In one movement, she threw back her head and gulped the whiskey down in three long swallows.

There was a short silence, and then Harding burst out with a kind of shakily relieved laughter, and Ezra clapped a slow round of applause.

“Well done, Harriet!” Abel said drily. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, you little mouse.” There it was again. Little mousy Harriet. But it was not true. It had never been true. After her mother’s death, she had made herself small and insignificant, but the façade that she showed to the world was not the truth of her.

Inside there was an iron strength—the same strength, Hal realized, that had enabled her mother to escape Trepassen, start again in a strange town, pregnant and alone, and build a life for her baby daughter. At the heart of Hal, beneath the unassuming layers and drab clothes, was a deep, resilient core that would keep fighting, and fighting, and fighting. Mice hid and scuttled. They froze in the face of danger. They allowed themselves to be made prey.

Whatever Hal was, she was not a mouse.

And she would not be anybody’s prey.

Uncle Harding, I’m not who you think I am.

When she put the glass down, it rattled against the tray, and she cleared her throat, her cheeks burning with the consciousness of what she was about to do. She remembered Mrs. Warren’s look that first night . . . the look of someone watching a flock of pigeons, who sees a cat suddenly creeping from the shadows of a nearby tree. The look of someone who stands back . . . and waits.

“Well—” Harding began, but Hal interrupted him, knowing that if she did not do this now, she might never do it.

“Wait, I—I have something to say.”

Harding blinked, slightly put out, and the corner of Ezra’s mouth quirked as if he was amused to see his brother discomfited.

“Oh, well, please.” Harding waved a hand. “Be my guest.”

“I—” Hal bit her lip. She had been turning this moment over and over in her mind ever since she left Cliff Cottages, but the right words had not come, and suddenly she knew that it was because there were no right words, there was nothing she could say that would make this okay. “I have something to tell you,” she said again, and then she stood up, not quite knowing why, but feeling unable to stay slack and safe in the corner of the sofa. She felt like she was about to fight, to defend herself from attack. The muscles in her neck and shoulders hurt with tension.

“I found out something when I was back in Brighton. I hadn’t been sure before, but I went through my mother’s papers and I found out—” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, wishing she had not drained the whiskey so fast, but had saved a sip for now. Harding was frowning; Abel was suddenly tense, leaning forwards in his chair, his expression full of a kind of apprehension. Only Ezra looked unconcerned. He had folded his arms and was regarding her with interest, like someone watching an experiment play out.

“Well?” Harding said, with a little impatience in his voice. “What did you find? Spit it out, Harriet.” “Margarida Westaway—your sister—she was not my mother,” Hal said.

She felt a great weight roll off her, but there was no relief in its passing, only an aching pain, and a kind of dread as she waited for the crash as it dropped.

There was a long silence.

“I—what?” Harding said at last. He was staring at Hal, his plump, ruddy face scarlet with the heat of the fire, or with shock at Hal’s speech, she was not sure which. “I beg your pardon?” “I’m not your niece,” Hal said. She swallowed again. There were tears coming up from somewhere deep inside, and it would have been so easy to let them out—play for their sympathy—but the knowledge made her force them back down. She would not play the victim here. She was done with dissembling.

“I should have realized before—there were . . . things . . . they didn’t add up. But it was only when I went home, I looked in my mother’s papers to try to get to the bottom of it, and I found . . . I found diaries . . . letters . . . making it clear there had been a terrible mix-up. My mother wasn’t your sister. She was Maggie.” “Oh my God.” It was Abel who spoke, his voice flat and blank with shock. He put his head in his hands, as if to try to contain thoughts that threatened to burst out. “Oh my God. Hal—but this is—this is—” He stopped, shaking his head like someone punch-drunk, trying to shrug off blows. “Why didn’t we see?” “But—but wait, this means the will is invalid,” Harding burst out.

“For God’s sake!” Ezra said. He gave a derisive laugh. “Money! Is that all you can think of? The will is hardly the most important thing.” “It’s what brought Harriet here in the first place, so I would say it’s quite important, yes!” Harding shot back. “And the money isn’t the point at all. I deeply resent what you’re implying there, Ezra. It’s about—it’s about—oh dear God, just when we were beginning to get the whole benighted situation sorted out—what in hell’s name was Mother thinking?” “A good question,” Abel said in a low voice. He was slumped in his seat, his head still in his hands.

“But—but your name was in the will,” Harding said slowly. He had the air of someone whose first shock was beginning to wear off, who was retracing his footsteps . . . trying to piece things together. “Or—wait, are you telling us—are you not Harriet Westaway at all? Who are you really?” “No!” Hal said quickly. “No, no, I am Harriet. I promise you. And my mother really is Margarida Westaway. But I think your mother must have asked Mr. Treswick to trace her daughter.” Hal’s face felt stiff, and her fingers cold, in spite of the fire. “And somehow the threads became crossed, and he found my mother instead, without realizing the mix-up. I think he must have reported back to your mother that he had found your sister and that she had died, but that she’d had a daughter. And so she put my name in the will—not realizing that I wasn’t her granddaughter at all.” “How did you not realize?” Abel said, but there was no anger in his voice, only bewilderment. He looked up at Hal, his eyes full of a puzzled pain that she didn’t fully understand. “Surely there were things that didn’t add up—things that made you think—” He stopped. Hal felt herself grow still and careful. This was it. This was the dangerous part. Because he was right.

She forced herself to stop pacing, and to sit, and her mother’s voice was in her head. When you’re tempted to answer in a hurry—slow down. Make them wait for you. Give yourself time to think. It’s when we hurry that we’re most prone to stumble.

“Well . . .” she said slowly. The sofa springs squeaked as she shifted her weight uncomfortably, and the wind howled in the chimney. “Well . . . there were things. Not at first—but later . . . but you have to understand . . . my name, it was there in the will. And Mum never spoke much about her childhood. She never mentioned any brothers, or a house in Cornwall, but then there was so much she never talked about. She didn’t talk about her parents either, or my father. I just took it for granted that this was another part of her I didn’t know. And I wanted so much . . .” Her voice faltered, no artifice here as she fought hard against the tremor in her voice, for this was the truth. “I wanted so much for it to be true. I wanted this—all of this—” She waved her hand at the room, at the fire and the house and the men sitting around her, looking at her with varying degrees of puzzled exasperation and bewilderment. “Family. Security. A home. I wanted it all so much, Mr. Treswick’s letter felt like—it felt like an answer to a prayer. I think—I think I shut my eyes to my doubts.” “I can understand that,” Abel said heavily. He stood and rubbed his hands over his face, looking suddenly very old, much older than his fortysomething years. “Dear God, what a mess. At least you’ve told us now.” “Well, I for one will be having stern words with Mr. Treswick tomorrow,” Harding said angrily. His face was a worrisome shade of purple. “This is damn close to some sort of—of professional negligence on his part! Lord knows how we’ll sort out this legal tangle. Thank God it came out before we obtained probate!” “Jesus,” Ezra said under his breath. “Can we stop banging on about the bloody will? Presumably you’ll get the bloody money now, isn’t that enough?” “I resent—” Harding began more hotly, but was interrupted by a tremendous resounding clanging that made everyone jump convulsively, and Harding slam down his whiskey glass as the noise died away.

“For God’s sake, Mrs. Warren!” he bellowed, opening the drawing room door. “We are all in here. Was there really any need for that?” She came to the door, hands on hips.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Thank you,” Harding said, rather ungraciously. He folded his arms, and then looked at Abel, seeming to ask him an unspoken question. Hal couldn’t quite read Harding’s face, but Abel evidently understood, for he shrugged and nodded, rather reluctantly.

“Mrs. Warren,” Harding said heavily. “Before we go into the dining room, there’s something we should explain, as it concerns you too. It’s come to light”—he shot a glance at Hal—“that Mr. Treswick made a rather unfortunate error in drawing up Mother’s will. Harriet is not Maud’s daughter, she is in fact Maggie’s child, something Harriet only discovered when she went through her mother’s papers. God knows how Mr. Treswick made such a regrettable error, but obviously in light of it the will is invalid. I’m not sure what will happen—I presume intestacy rules will have to be followed. But there it is.” “I never thought she was,” Mrs. Warren said. She crossed her arms, her stick beneath her elbow. Harding blinked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A-course she’s Maggie’s child. No one with any sense woulda thought otherwise.”

“What? But why didn’t you say something?”

Mrs. Warren smiled, and her eyes, in the dim light of the fire, seemed to Hal to glitter like stones.

“Well?” Harding demanded again. “Are you saying you knew this for certain and you said nothing?” “Not for certain. But it was common sense. And none of my business, anyway.”

“Well!” This time it was an explosion of disbelief, but Mrs. Warren had already turned and was stumping down the long, tiled corridor, her cane click-clicking as she went.

“Did you hear that?” Harding asked the silent group in the room, but no one answered.

At last Ezra walked out, his shoulders hunched in mutinous silence. Abel shook his head and followed. Harding turned too, and Hal was left alone.

Her hands were still trembling, and she paused for a minute, warming them in front of the fire, trying to get the feeling back into her numb fingertips.

She was just about to leave when a piece of coal in the grate suddenly flared and spat, throwing out a flaming splinter onto the rug. Hal was about to stamp on it when she realized her feet were bare—she had taken off her soaked shoes at the door. Instead she took up the poker and flicked the coal back towards the stone-flagged hearth, scratching out the last sparks with the tip.

There was a smoking hole in the rug, and a scorch in the board beneath, but nothing to be done about either, and looking down, Hal saw that it was not the first. There were three or four holes even larger, one where the fire had eaten quite a little way into the board. With a sigh, she put the fireguard in place and turned to leave, only to find Mrs. Warren standing in the doorway, barring the way.

“Excuse me,” Hal said, but Mrs. Warren didn’t move, and for a brief moment Hal had a fantastic notion that she was going to have to call for help, or escape out of the window again. But when she took a step towards the doorway, Mrs. Warren pressed herself back against the frame, and allowed Hal to pass through, though she had to edge her way, to avoid tripping on Mrs. Warren’s cane.

It was only when she was past and starting up the corridor, the tiles chill beneath her feet, that the woman spoke, her voice so low that Hal had to turn back.

“What did you say?” Hal asked, but Mrs. Warren had disappeared inside the drawing room, and the heavy door slammed shut behind her, cutting Hal’s question off short.

But Hal was sure—at least, almost sure—that she had caught the words, hissed low as they were beneath the sound of the wind in the chimney.

“Get out—if you know what’s good for you. While you still can . . .”