They can’t find you here. You’re safe here.
The words slowed her heart, and she repeated them like a mantra until her shaking fingers were steady enough to unzip her case.
You’re safe. Just get through today. One step at a time.
One step at a time. Okay. The little room was unbelievably cold, her breath huffing white as she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. At the bottom of her case was her jumper. It was bundled up with a wad of other clothes, and Hal dragged it out hastily, not noticing the tin that was caught in its folds. It fell with a thud at her feet, the lid flew off, and the tarot cards scattered across the floor, like brightly colored autumn leaves.
On top was the card she had cut before the journey—the page of swords—his head cocked, staring defiantly out of the frame with a little half smile that could have been anything from a challenge to resignation. It was a card Hal had seen a million times, and she knew every detail, from the bird at his feet to the tiny tear in the top right-hand corner. But as she gathered it up along with the others, she paused for a moment, held by something in his face, trying to analyze what that could be.
Whatever it was that had stopped her, it eluded her, and she dropped the cards on the bed and, with a shiver, unfolded the jumper and pulled it over her head.
The familiar warmth wrapped her like a hug, and when she had put on her socks and pulled on her knee-high biker boots, she felt in a strange way armored, more ready to face the rest of the family as herself, rather than the impostor she had somehow become yesterday.
Finally she raked her fingers through her hair, picked up her mobile phone from the bedside table, and looked around to see if there was anything she had forgotten.
In the stark morning light the room looked somehow different, less spooky, perhaps, but sharper, bleaker, even less forgiving. All the details she had noticed yesterday were picked out in sharp relief—the metal bars across the window black-painted, like the metal bedstead; the tiny grate, no bigger than a shoe box; the damp-speckled paint on the ceiling. In daylight, she could see that what she had taken for a shadow at the top of the sash window was in fact a sizable gap where it hadn’t been properly closed. As she got closer, she could feel the draft from the cold air whistling through—no wonder the room was so cold.
Hal put a hand through the bars and shoved at the frame, trying to close the sash properly, but it seemed to be stuck, and the position of the bars prevented her from pushing with any effective force.
Nevertheless, she wriggled both hands through the bars and tried again, crouching to try to get a better angle, and as she did, something glinting on the glass caught her eye. It was a scratch on the glass—in fact, more than one. It was writing.
Hal straightened, trying to make out the letters. They were tucked behind one of the bars and hard to see, but as she tilted her head to one side, suddenly the low morning sunlight caught the marks at just the right angle, illuminating them so that they glowed as if written in white fire.
HELP ME, it said, in tiny crabbed capitals.
Hal’s heart quickened. For a long moment she just stood there, staring at the writing, trying to understand what it meant.
Who had written this? A maid? A child? And how long ago?
It wasn’t a cry for help. There was no hope of the message being seen from outside—or even from the inside, angled as the letters were. If anything they were hidden, deliberately, behind the bars. Hal herself would never have seen them if she hadn’t stood in this exact spot.
No, this was something . . . something else. Not so much a desire to be heard, but more the expression of a thought too terrifying to keep inside.
She thought of her mother—telling her to speak aloud, to dispel the nightmares inside her head; remembered her own whispered STOP IT, a mantra to chase away demons. Was this the same thing? Were these scratches the marks of someone trying to anchor themselves to reality, chase away the whispering voices of fear inside?
HELP ME.
In spite of the jumper, Hal was suddenly cold—very cold, with the kind of chill that comes from within, and inside her head was a voice she could hear, repeating the words again and again.
HELP ME.
In her mind’s eye Hal could see a girl, just like herself, alone in this room. There were bars on the window, and a locked door.
Except . . . the door was not locked. Not for her, at any rate. And whatever had happened up here, this was not her concern. This was not her family, and not her secret, and she had better things to worry about than some long-gone girl with a penchant for dramatic gestures.
Whatever had happened in this room, whatever the past of this house, it didn’t matter. What mattered now was getting through today without giving herself away, and finding as much information as she could about Maud. Once she had that—a birth date, perhaps, even a middle name, if she could somehow come up with a plausible way of finding the information—she could escape back to Brighton and forge a birth certificate that would convince Mr. Treswick. Touch wood.
Touch wood. She knew what her mother would have said to that. In fact, she could picture her so exactly, the wry shake of her head, the smile quirking at the corner of her mouth. Suddenly Hal longed for her so much that it was like a physical pain around her heart.
Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies.
Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt.
That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back.
The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.
Well, if there was one thing Hal had learned, it was that she would not be caught in that trap. She would shape her own life. She would change her own fortune. She would make her own luck.
CHAPTER 17
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