What stopped her from sleeping was that every time she shut her eyes, she was back—between the pages of the diary, in the claustrophobia of that little room. The picture was so vivid: the narrow attic, the barred windows, the two metal bolts, top and bottom . . . when she shut her eyes, they rose up in front of her mind’s eye, as if she were back there herself, and she felt a kind of sick dread. Not just for her mother—who, after all, had escaped, and made her way here, to Brighton, and made a life for herself and her child away from Trepassen. But for those other children—for Abel and Ezra, locked in that room as children, as punishment for whatever childish misdeeds they’d committed. And most of all for Maud.
The first few times Hal had read the entries, she had been looking for her mother—trying to picture the person behind the words, and compare them to her own memories. Then she had read it again, scouring it for mentions of the boy who might be her father. Ed. Edward? She found herself remembering that cool, handsome face, the appraising blue eyes, trying to pick out any features that might have belonged to her.
Come on, Ed. The words rang inside her head as though her mother had shouted them aloud in the little room.
Ed. It was a common enough name. There must be dozens of Edwards, Edgars, and Edwins scattered around Cornwall. And yet . . .
All evening she had gone round and round, combing for other mentions that might give evidence either way, arguing for and against, back and forth. But her mother had kept her word, and apart from that small slip, every reference to her father’s name had been ripped out, or scored through.
Now, though, in the stillness of the night, as Hal went back again and again over words she had committed to memory, she found herself looking for mentions not of Ed, but of Maud.
Her own mother was oddly shadowy—perhaps it was because she spent so many of the entries describing others, but it was hard to match the uncertain, romantic girl writing this diary with the strong, practical woman she had become, after years of single motherhood. Without the evidence of her own eyes, Hal could never have imagined her mother writing with such heat and yearning about a man. Perhaps this was the first, and last, time.
But Maud—Maud was different, somehow. Though she only flitted through the pages, she felt like a constant presence in the diary; and as the clock ticked past midnight, and the rain spattered at the window, Hal found herself scouring her memory for references to Maud.
It was not just the fact that it was Maud’s legacy that she, Hal, had been handed on a plate. It was that there was something about her that spoke directly to Hal. Perhaps it was her fierce determination, her refusal to be quashed, her desire to break free. Perhaps it was her wry humor, or her generosity. For Maud’s love and concern for her cousin ran like a thread of gold in the dark throughout the diary, and even across the gap of twenty years, Hal found herself smiling at her remarks. What was it she had said about the tarot cards? Load of wafty BS, that was it. It was so close to what Hal sometimes found herself thinking when she met the more earnest practitioners that she had almost laughed aloud when she read it.
But what had happened to her? To Maud—to the real Margarida? Where was she now? And why did no one talk about her? Was she dead? Or had she made good her vow to escape?
Perhaps she had disappeared abroad, changed her name, made a new life for herself. Hal hoped so. For Maud’s own sake, but also because she knew the truth of what had happened in those torn-out pages. She knew the truth about Hal’s mother, and her father.
Abel, Ezra, Harding, Mr. Treswick—thanks to Hal, they all believed that Maud had died in a car crash, three hot summers ago. Only Hal knew the truth—that it was not Maud who had died, but Maggie, her cousin.
It was possible, even probable, that Maud was still alive, still out there, still holding on to the truth of what had happened to her cousin, and the secret of Hal’s own identity.
But to find her, Hal was going to have to go back. Back to Trepassen, where she could start again, pick up the threads of Maud’s life from the beginning. And there was only one way that Hal could think of doing that.
CHAPTER 31
* * *
The next day was Sunday. It was eight when Hal dragged her duvet to the living room and curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee in one hand, and a pile of letters in her lap.
On top of them was Harding’s business card.
She waited until nine thirty before she dialed the number, but it went through to voice mail, and she could not stop a small spurt of relief when she heard the smooth female voice of the automated message.
“This is the voice mailbox of—”
And then in Harding’s own voice, slightly pompous and half a tone deeper than his natural register: “Harding Westaway.”
“Please leave a message after the tone,” continued the woman, and there was a bleep.
Hal coughed.
“Um . . . Uncle Harding, it—it’s Hal. Harriet. I am so sorry for running out yesterday, but the fact is—”
She swallowed again. She had spent the time since getting up trying to decide what to say, and in the end she had decided there was only one thing she could say, only one thing that made sense of her actions. The truth.
“The fact is, I—I’ve been pretty freaked out by all of this. Whatever I was expecting when I came down to Cornwall, it wasn’t what Mr. Treswick read out, and I’ve found it very hard to come to terms with my grandmother’s will. On Friday night I couldn’t sleep, and I’m afraid I—I just—”
Beeep. And the message cut out, indicating that she had taken too long to explain herself.
“To send the message, press one. To rerecord the message, press two,” said the female voice.
Hal swore quietly, pressed one, and then hung up and redialed. This time it went through to voice mail almost immediately.
“Sorry, I took too long and the message cut out. Look, the long and the short of it is, I’m very sorry I left without talking to you first, but I’ve had some time to think and—and I’d like to come back. Not just because I appreciate you probably need me present for the interview with Mr. Treswick, but also—well—I have a lot of questions about my mother and about why my grandmother chose to do this and—well, that’s it, really. I hope you’ll forgive me. Please call me back on this number and let me know. Bye. And sorry again.”
When she put down the phone, she felt her stomach turn with a feeling halfway between nervousness and sickness. Was she mad—to go back?
Perhaps. But she could not stay here—not with Mr. Smith’s men waiting for her, and not without knowing the truth of her own past. If she burned these bridges now, then she might never be able to find out what had happened at Trepassen. Who her father really was.
Why had her mother lied about her father’s identity?
Last night she had been too busy searching in the diary for answers—answers she had not found. But now the question was beginning to press upon her like a guilty secret, demanding her attention. For some reason, her mother had chosen not just to keep Hal in the dark about the identity of her own father, but to go further: to spin a whole tale of falsehoods. The Spanish student—the one-night stand. None of it had existed. But why? Why go to such lengths to keep Hal in the dark about something she had every right to know?
Before she could unpack the conundrum any further, her phone buzzed against her leg, the shrill sound of the ringer following with a millisecond delay. She looked at the screen, and her stomach flipped. Harding.
“He-hello?”
“Harriet!” Harding’s voice was full of a kind of hectoring relief. “I’ve just listened to your messages. Young lady, you gave everyone here a severe fright.”
“I know,” Hal said. “I’m sorry.” She was sorry, genuinely sorry. “I just—it’s like I said in my message, I was overwhelmed by it all. It’s hard to go from having no one and being answerable to no one to—well.”
“You could at least have left a note,” Harding said. “Mitzi got the shock of her life when she went up to wake you and found your bed empty and your belongings gone. We had no idea what had happened.”
“I saw Mrs. Warren as I was leaving. Didn’t she tell you?” The memory of that strange, disjointed encounter was dreamlike. Had it really happened? Had Mrs. Warren really said the things Hal remembered? Good riddance to you, and your trash mother before you. It seemed impossible.
There was a disconcerted silence.