Abel had tried to take her aside after the tea and talk to her, but she had broken away, unable to take his well-meaning concern. The pats on the arm, the platitudes, the overaffectionate hugs, they were all making her feel stifled, and she had made an excuse about feeling tired and wanting to go up to her room, and he had let her go.
When she had got up there, though, the feeling of suffocation had only increased, and she lay in the narrow metal cot, with the bars looming over her like a prison cell. She could not stop thinking about the bolts on the door, and the tiny, crabbed HELP ME on the glass of the window. What had happened here? Why had her mother never mentioned this part of her life? Had something so terrible happened that she could not bear to talk about it?
In the end, she had got up and tiptoed quietly down the stairs, past the drawing room, where Mitzi was holding forth to her children about homework and revision, and out into the twilit garden.
Dew was falling, turning the grass silver in the light from the drawing room windows, and when she looked back up the hill she could see the trail she had left, and feel the wetness of her jeans, the damp seeping through her boots.
She walked without purpose or aim, until she found herself back at the copse of trees she had seen the first day, the one she had noticed before Abel pointed out the maze.
This time, she could see clearly through the trees the glimmer of water, and she made her way along the overgrown path, weaving past nettles and brambles, to the shore of a small lake. Once, she thought, it might have been a lovely spot. But now, with night falling and the winter coming, there was something terribly sad about it, the lake choked and peat-colored with rotting leaves, the shores impassable banks of black mud. In the center was a little island with a scraggle of trees and bushes, and across the other side was a dark shape, some kind of building, Hal thought, though her eyes struggled to make it out in the dim light.
She took off her glasses, polishing them to try to make out the shape better in the gloaming, when she heard a crack behind her and whipped around to see a tall figure silhouetted against the lights of the house.
“Who—” she managed, her heart thudding in her chest, and she heard a laugh, deep and amused.
“Sorry.” It was a man’s voice, and as the figure came closer, she scrabbled her glasses back on with shaking hands, and recognized the face. It was Edward. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s dinner—didn’t you hear the gong?”
“How—” Hal found she was trembling, her shock out of all proportion to Edward’s looming presence on the dark path. “How did you kn-know I was here?”
“I followed your footsteps in the dew. What on earth possessed you to come here? It’s a pretty depressing spot.”
“I don’t know,” Hal said. Her heart in her chest was still thumping, but it was slowing. “I—I wanted a walk. I needed to get out.”
“I’m not surprised,” Edward said. He put his hands in his pockets, digging for something, and for a minute Hal wondered what it was, but then he pulled out a cigarette, tapped his forefinger to his nose, and lit up. “Don’t tell Abel. He doesn’t like it.”
The smoke drifted up, pale against the darkening sky, and Hal found herself wondering about this man. She had barely seen him since his appearance last night. What had he been doing?
“Shall we head up?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Slowly, though, I need to finish this.” He took another drag, and Hal began to pick her way back towards the lawn. It had grown much darker since she came down this way, and it was hard to see the path now. She felt a nettle swipe at her arm and winced, drawing in her breath with a hiss of pain.
“Bramble?” said Edward from behind her.
“Nettle,” Hal said briefly. She sucked at the side of her hand, feeling the bumps of the sting with her tongue. It was going to hurt.
“Ouch,” Edward said laconically, and Hal heard the crackle and flare of his cigarette as he inhaled.
“Tell me,” she said, more as a way of distracting herself from her stinging hand than from real curiosity, “what’s the building on the other side of the lake?”
“Oh . . . it used to be a boathouse,” Edward said. “Back in the day. I doubt you could get a boat across the lake now, too weed-choked.” He threw his cigarette butt behind him, and Hal heard it sizzle as it made contact with the water, sinking into the murky depths. “It needs to be dredged. It stinks in the summer.”
“I thought you never came here?” Hal asked in surprise. The words were out before she could think better of them, but Edward didn’t seem to have taken offense at her questioning. She heard him laugh, softly, behind her in the darkness.
“Bit of poetic license on Abel’s part. His mother did cut him off, you know. I think that for several years at least the whole ‘darken my doorstep’ stuff was quite real. But they had a bit of a rapprochement in recent years.”
“People often mellow as they get older, don’t they,” Hal said carefully. They came out of the trees, and Edward fell into step beside her.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t think that was it. The impression I got was that Hester had become, if anything, more unpleasant. But Abel . . . well, he’s an odd soul. Rather too forgiving for his own good. He can’t bear to feel there’s bad blood between himself and other people. He’d do almost anything—swallow any amount of insults, walk over hot coals, generally abase himself—rather than feel there’s animosity. It’s not his most attractive trait, but it does make for an easy life in some ways. The last few years he came down here quite a bit.”
Hal was not sure what to say to that. The thought crossed her mind that Edward didn’t seem to like his partner very much. But perhaps it was just the effect of a long-term relationship.
As they crossed the lawn, Hal could see that the dining room was still shuttered and dark, and she was rather relieved when they reached the graveled path and Edward turned left, leading them along the fa?ade to the conservatory she had seen earlier that day, and in through it to the room where they had eaten breakfast.
The others were waiting, Harding seated in the wing chair at the head of the table, Freddie slouched low in his seat, playing on his DS, and the other two children surreptitiously checking their phones under cover of the tablecloth. Mitzi was seated between Abel and a chair that had Edward’s jacket slung over the back of it, discussing her plans for the journey home. Only Ezra was not yet there.
Hal sat quietly in a spare place next to Richard and tried to disappear into the background, but she had scarcely pulled in her chair when the door to the conservatory opened and Mrs. Warren limped in holding a huge crock of stew.
“Oh, Mrs. Warren!” Mitzi said. She jumped up. “Let me help you.”
“?‘Let me help you,’ she says.” Mrs. Warren put on a mincing version of Mitzi’s cut-glass vowels. She banged the pot down on the table, thin gravy slopping onto the cloth. “Didn’t hear none of that when I spent all afternoon chopping.”
“Mrs. Warren,” Harding said stiffly, “that was rather uncalled for. My wife was out attempting to sort out the business of my mother’s will, along with the rest of us. And if you feel the work of catering is too much for you, you have only to say and we’ll be glad to help you out.”
“I’m not having strangers messing about in my kitchen,” Mrs. Warren retorted.
“Really, Mrs. Warren, we’re hardly strangers!” Harding snapped, but Mrs. Warren had turned and left the room. “For heaven’s sake, she’s becoming impossible!”
The door banged shut.
“She’s very old, darling,” Mitzi said placatingly. “And she looked after your mother fairly devotedly. I think we can cut her a little slack on those grounds, don’t you?”
“I agree, Mit, but we must begin to get our heads around the problem of what we do with—”
He broke off as Mrs. Warren came back in with a plate of baked potatoes, which she thumped down, and then turned to leave without a word.
Mitzi sighed, and beckoned to Freddie for his plate.
“Come on then, let’s get this served up before it goes cold.”