I thought, when I came here, that I was finding a second family, a replacement for the one I had lost. But now . . . now I’m no longer sure. Seeing Maud in Abel’s arms like that, laughing together, excluding me even without meaning to . . . well, it was a reminder of a truth I should never have forgotten: whatever else we have shared, blood is thicker than water. And if they close ranks against me, I have nowhere else to go.

CHAPTER 23

* * *

It was awkward getting out of Ezra’s car, and Hal stumbled, and as she did, she felt the tin slide from her back pocket and land with a thud on the gravel, spilling open.

“Damn!”

She bent, scrabbling up the feathered old cards before they were caught by the wind and whipped away.

Ezra slammed his door and came round her side of the car to help.

“Dropped something?” he asked, and then leaned down and picked up one of the cards, looking at it curiously. As he did, his face changed, almost as if he had seen a ghost, and then he seemed to catch hold of himself, and gave a laugh.

“Tarot!”

“It’s what I do,” Hal said shortly. There was a card slipped under the wheel of the Saab, and she tried to tease it out without ripping the edge on the gravel. “I’m a tarot reader on the pier in Brighton.”

“No way!” He was laughing properly now. “Really? You kept that quiet.”

“Not really.” She bent and peered under the chassis of the car. There were two more cards beneath, and she grabbed the first, but could not reach the second. “Could you—can you reach that card right in the middle there? Between the wheels?”

Ezra bent and looked, and then stretched a long arm beneath the body of the car, scrabbling with his fingers.

“Got it.”

But when he stood, brushing himself off, and looked at the object he was holding, Hal saw that it wasn’t a card. It was the photograph that Abel had given her.

“Huh.” He held it in his hands for a moment, brushing a fragment of gravel off the fragile folds. “Where did you get this?”

“Abel gave it to me.” Hal bit her lip. “He—he thought . . . he thought I might want it. Because I don’t have many photos of my mother.”

“I see.” Ezra said nothing more, just stared down at the photograph, and Hal saw his thumb very gently brush the face of his sister, sitting beside him, laughing at him. “You—” He swallowed painfully. “You must miss her.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Her throat hurt with the truth of it. Time healed, they said, but it wasn’t true, or not completely. The first raw wound of loss had closed and silvered over, yes, but the scar it had left would never heal. It would always be there, aching and tender.

Ezra brushed again at an imaginary speck of sand, and then, almost reluctantly, Hal thought, he handed the picture to her with a smile that held something of her own barely covered grief.

“I do too,” he said. And then he turned and headed into the house, as though there were nothing more he could bear to say.

CHAPTER 24

* * *

“So, in view of all that, it looks like we are stuck until Monday,” Harding said wearily, slumping back on the drawing room sofa. He picked a cup of tea off the tray that Mitzi had just put in front of him and took a gulp.

“You are kidding me.” Abel put his head in his hands. “I can’t stay away until Tuesday. I’ve got client meetings on Monday afternoon.”

“Well, I suggest you postpone them,” Harding said irritably. He smoothed his shirt, which was gaping across the middle, exposing soft white skin like uncooked dough. “Might I add, it’s partly your fault for not being present at the meeting in the first place. Between you and Ezra, I have the feeling that I’m the only person trying to sort out this mare’s nest.”

“I had no idea Mother had made me her bloody executor!” Abel said. “What in God’s name possessed her?”

“What in God’s name possessed her to do any of this,” Harding snapped. “Including disinheriting all of her children.”

“Spite, pure and simple,” Ezra said from the corner of the room. He rose, took a cup from the tray and a digestive biscuit from the plate. “I’ve no doubt the one thing that amused her on her deathbed was the thought of the unpleasantness she was leaving behind.”

Abel nodded bitterly.

“I could believe that. She probably thought that a protracted legal wrangle swallowing up all the estate’s resources would keep the unpleasantness going for years.”

Protracted legal wrangle. The words made Hal’s stomach seem to drop away, and she felt a spike of fear course through her. There was no way any papers she could forge would survive such a process. It would all come out—the truth about her mother, her grandmother—everything.

But there was no way back now—she had gone too far. There was no longer any possibility she could credibly pass off this deception as an honest mistake.

She imagined herself in a court of law, the prosecuting barrister saying, with false confusion, “Run this past me again, Miss Westaway. It was your honest belief that your maternal grandmother had changed her name from Marion to Hester and moved from a modest council house in Surrey to an estate in Cornwall after her own death?”

Hal felt the confession rising up inside her again. Impostor. I’m an impostor.

There was only one way out. It wouldn’t save her from Mr. Smith—but then nothing would, that was becoming clear. Even if, by some miracle, she managed to get hold of fake papers good enough to pass muster, and to bluff her way through the interviews, there would be no money in time for his deadline.

No. She would just have to cut her losses and get out, while she still could.

She stood, shoving her hands in her pockets to prevent them from shaking.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking—”

“Not now, Harriet,” Harding said. He dunked his biscuit in his tea, and then tutted as the edge crumbled.

“Yes, now!” Hal said firmly. She felt a kind of desperation choke her—the knowledge that she was blundering deeper with every day that passed, and that soon there might be no escape route at all. “I’ve been thinking—about the legacy—I don’t—”

She stopped—searching for words, searching for the right way to say this. But before she had found her tongue, Ezra cut into the silence.

“Look, Abel’s right. Very probably Mother did want us to spend the money on litigation and quarreling. I can’t see any other reason for her doing this. But let’s be honest—do any of us deserve a penny from her?” He looked at Harding, then at Abel. Abel shrugged. “Do we want a penny? I certainly don’t. Isn’t the best thing just to foil Mother’s wish and let it go?”

From the corner of the sofa, Kitty began humming the Frozen theme.

Abel laughed.

“Let it go. I like it, Kitty. There’s something rather . . . freeing about the idea. Well, for my part, I never expected anything, and I certainly don’t want Trepassen like a millstone around my neck. I’d be glad for it to go to Harriet.”

“No!” Hal said desperately. The words burst out of her, and she spoke without thinking, without holding back what she really meant. “You don’t understand—I don’t—I don’t want this.”

“I beg your pardon?” Harding turned towards her, one brow raised.

“I don’t want—this.” Hal waved her hand at the house, the grounds outside the window. “This isn’t what I thought I was signing up for when I came here. When I got Mr. Treswick’s letter, yes, I admit, I was hoping for a legacy.” The words tumbled out, spoken from the heart, too rapidly to consider whether she was doing the wise thing. “But not this—not everything. I never wanted such a huge responsibility—all I ever wanted was to pay my heating bill and some of my debts. Isn’t there any way I can—I don’t know—can’t I renounce this?”

There was a long silence, broken only by Kitty still humming “Let It Go” beneath her breath, and the subdued hiss of Freddie’s earphones.