She was cheaper than a therapist, and more ethical than many of the psychics who posted cards through people’s doors, claiming to heal incurable disease with crystals, or offering contact with dead lovers and children—for a price, of course. . . .
Hal never made those promises. She shook her head when the clients asked her if she could contact David or Fabien or baby Cora. She was not in the business of séances, profiting off grief that was all too nakedly visible.
“The cards don’t predict the future,” she said again and again, insuring herself against the inevitability of things turning out differently, but also telling them what they needed to know—that there were no firm answers. “All they show is how things could come out, based on the energies you brought with you to the reading today. They’re a guide for you to shape your actions, not a prison cell.”
The truth was, however much she tried to tell them otherwise, people liked tarot because it gave them an illusion of control, of forces guiding their lives, a buffer against the senseless randomness of fate. But they liked Hal because she was good at what she did. She was good at weaving a story out of the images the clients turned up in front of her, good at listening to their pain and their questions and their hopes; and, most of all, she was good at reading others.
She had always been shy, tongue-tied in front of strangers, a fish out of water at her raucous secondary school; but what she hadn’t realized was that during all those years spent coolly standing back and watching others, she had been honing her detachment and learning the skills that would someday become her trade. She had been watching the versions people gave of themselves, the tells that showed when they were nervous or hopeful or trying to evade the truth. She had discovered that the most important truths often lay in what people didn’t say, and learned to read the secrets that they hid in plain sight, in their faces, and in their clothes, and in the expressions that flitted across their faces when they thought no one was watching.
Unlike most of her clients, Hal did not believe the cards in her pocket held any mystical power, beyond her own ability to reveal what people had not admitted even to themselves.
But now, as she hurried past the Palace Pier, the smell of fish and chips carried on the sea wind making her empty stomach rumble, Hal found herself wondering. If she believed . . . if she believed . . . what would the cards say about Trepassen House . . . about the woman who was not her grandmother . . . about the choice that lay ahead of her? She had no idea.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
“Morning, treacle!”
“Morning, Reg,” Hal said. She pushed a fifty-pence piece across the counter of Reg’s booth. “Cup of tea, please.”
“I should say. It’s cold enough for brass monkeys today, ain’t it? Right. Let’s see. Cuppa Rosie . . .” he muttered to himself as he dropped a tea bag into a cracked white mug. “Cup . . . of . . . Rosie for my favorite twist.”
Twist and twirl. Girl.
Reg was not from Brighton, but London, and he sprinkled his conversation with a liberal amount of Cockney rhyming slang in a way that Hal was never quite sure was genuine. Reg definitely qualified as Cockney—at least, he did on his own account, having been born within the sound of Bow Bells and grown up running the streets of the East End. But there was something a touch pantomime about his persona, and Hal suspected that it was all part of the patter that the tourists liked. Diamond Cockney geezer, with his treacle tarts and cups of Rosie Lee.
Now he was looking at the hot water urn and frowning.
“Bloody urn’s playing up again. I think the connection’s loose. You got ten minutes, Hal?”
“Not really. . . .” Hal looked at her watch. “I was supposed to be opening up at twelve.”
“Ah, don’t you worry about that. There’s no one down your side, I’d-a seen them go past. And Chalky’s not here yet, so you won’t have no bother with him. Come inside and have a sit-down.”
He opened the booth door and beckoned Hal in. Hal wavered, and then stepped over the threshold.
Chalky was Mr. White, the pier manager. Hal was self-employed and to some extent set her hours, but Mr. White liked the booths to be open in good time of a morning. Nothing more depressing, he always said, than a shuttered-up pier. The West Pier already had to work harder than its twin sister, the Palace, to lure the punters down the prom, and when takings dropped, as they always did in the winter months, Mr. White was prone to start reassessing the leases of the underperforming booths. If there was one thing Hal could not afford at the moment, it was to lose her booth.
Inside Reg’s kiosk it was warm, and smelled strongly of bacon from the grill at the back. Reg’s stock-in-trade was bacon sandwiches and cups of tea in the winter months, and Mr. Whippy ice cream and cans of Coke in the summer.
“Won’t be a minute,” Reg said. “How are you anyway, my dear old mucker?”
“I’m all right,” Hal said, though it was not really the truth. Those two typewritten sheets of paper on the coffee table at home were giving her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she was half afraid of finding another envelope when she opened up the booth this morning. If only. If only Mr. Treswick’s letter had been really meant for her.
The urn was up to temperature now, and she watched Reg as he expertly manipulated the spigot and mug with one hand, while flipping the bacon with the other. Somehow talking to the back of his head felt easier than addressing his face. She did not have to see the concern in his eyes.
“Actually . . .” she said, and then swallowed, and forced herself on. But the words, when they came, were not the ones she had been intending to say. “Actually, I might be better than all right. I got a letter last night, telling me I might be heir to a secret fortune.”
“You what?” Reg turned, mug in his hand, open astonishment in his face. “What did you say?”
“I got a letter last night. From a solicitor. Saying I might be due a substantial bequest.?”
“You winding me up?” Reg said, his eyebrows almost up to his nonexistent hairline. Hal shook her head, and seeing that she was serious, Reg echoed her shake of the head, and handed the tea across.
“You be careful, love. There’s a lot of these scammers about. My trouble got one the other day, telling her she won the Venezuelan lottery or some nonsense. Don’t you be handing over no money. Not that I need to tell you that.” He gave her a wink. “No flies on you.”
“I don’t think it’s a scam,” Hal said honestly. “More like a mistake, if anything. I think they might have got me mixed up with someone else.”
“You think it’s one of these heir-hunter things, where someone’s died and they’re trying to track down the long-lost rellies?” He was frowning again, but it was not with worry now, more as if considering a conundrum.
“Maybe,” Hal said. She gave a shrug and sipped cautiously at the scalding tea. It was hot and bitter, but good. The cold, clammy thought of the notes on the coffee table was starting to recede, and she felt a flicker of some old memory stir inside her—the sensation of what it had been like to wake in the morning and not worry about every bill, not think about where the next rent payment would come from, not worry about the knock on the door. God, what she wouldn’t give to get that security back again. . . .
She felt something harden inside her—a kind of steely resolve.
“Well,” Reg said at last, “if anyone deserves a break, it’s you, my darlin’. You take any money they offer you and run, that’s my advice. Take the money and run.”
CHAPTER 6
* * *