As she began to pick up the glass, sweeping the splinters carefully with the sleeve of her coat, Reg’s voice sounded in her head, his comforting Cockney croak. 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.

If only she could. She slipped the glass into the bin, the torn scraps of photograph fluttering after.

You have two roads ahead of you, but they twist and turn. . . . You want to know which you should take. . . .

Hal’s phone was in her pocket, and, almost without being aware of what she was doing, she pulled it out and opened up the Trainline website.

December 1.

7 a.m.

Brighton to Penzance, return.

She clicked.

If anyone can pull this off, it’s you. . . .

When the ticket prices came up on-screen, she couldn’t suppress a wince. The money in her pocket wasn’t enough to cover the fare. Not even a single. And her overdraft was already maxed out. But maybe . . . maybe if the website didn’t check in with her bank . . . She pulled out her bank card, tapped in the number, and held her breath. . . .

Miraculously, the payment went through.

Even so, Hal didn’t quite believe it until her phone vibrated with an e-mail. Here’s everything you need for your Penzance trip, it read, and below that, a ticket collection number confirming her purchase.

Her stomach clenched and turned, as if she were riding a ship in rough seas and a wave had dropped away beneath the hull. Was she really going to do this? But what was the alternative? Wait here for Mr. Smith’s minions to pay her a return visit?

I might be heir to a secret fortune.

The words she had spoken to Reg echoed in her ear, half taunt, half promise. Hal stood, feeling the stiffness in her limbs, the tiredness of her muscles now that the adrenalized fear had abated.

It might be true. And if it wasn’t, perhaps she could make it true. All she had to do was make herself believe it.

• • •

WHEN SHE HEADED TO HER bedroom, she told herself it was to go straight to bed. But instead, she pulled her mother’s battered suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, and began to pack. Shampoo, deodorant. That was straightforward. What to wear was more difficult. Black was not a problem—more than half Hal’s wardrobe was black or gray. But she couldn’t turn up to a stranger’s funeral in ripped jeans and a T-shirt; people would expect a dress, and she had only one.

She pulled it out of the bottom drawer where she had shoved it after her mother’s funeral three years ago, held on a blazing May day. It was respectable, but far too summery for December, made of cheap, flimsy cotton, with short sleeves. She could wear it with tights, though her only pair of tights was laddered at the top of the thigh. Hal unrolled them, examining the damage. She had carefully stopped the run with a blob of nail varnish, and now she would just have to hope that the fix held.

Next, a couple of T-shirts, a hoodie, and her least-threadbare jeans. A spare bra. A handful of knickers. And finally her precious laptop, and a couple of paperbacks.

The last thing was the most difficult. ID. They would expect ID, and the letter had asked her to bring it. The problem was, Hal had no idea what information they already had. Her full birth certificate was out of the question, but she could take her passport, or her short-form birth certificate, neither of which made any mention of parents. Those simply confirmed something they already knew—Hal’s name. The problem was, both documents also gave her date of birth.

If they were expecting someone aged thirty-five, it would all be over as soon as they saw her—they wouldn’t even need to get to the passport. But Hal thought she could pass for anything from fifteen to twenty-five, maybe even thirty at a pinch. Unless Hester Westaway had married and had children very young, there was a good chance that the woman they were looking for was within that range; but if the solicitor’s documents showed a baby born in December 1991 and Hal produced a passport showing she was born in May 1995 . . .

Hal pulled out the letter again, scanning for acceptable forms. The second column, proving her address, was no problem. A utility bill, said the letter. Well, she had plenty of those. And the utility company couldn’t possibly tell the solicitors anything they didn’t already know, apart from the state of her overdraft.

But the first column was more of a problem. Passport, driving license, or birth certificate. She didn’t have a driving license, and a passport would be too hard to alter without access to serious cash. Which left . . . the birth certificate.

Hal rummaged in the box under the bed again, looking for the envelope she had cast aside earlier. When she found it, she flipped past her mother’s certificate to her own, beneath. There was the full one . . . and yes, there beneath it was the short form. Name: Harriet Margarida Westaway, it read. Born: 15th May 1995. Sex: Female. District: Brighton, East Sussex.

If they didn’t have a date of birth already, it would be easy—a simple question of handing over her real papers.

If they did . . . Hal peered at it, holding it up to the light, looking at the paper. It was not a very sophisticated document—the paper was watermarked, but that wasn’t obvious from the surface, and the ink looked nothing special. With a bit of time and a scanner, she could probably use the real document to forge something fairly convincing.

The crease lines were old and soft, and Hal folded it up carefully and put it in an inside pocket of the case, along with the utility bill.

She was zipping up the case when she stopped . . . and reached into her bedside drawer where a small tin box rested, battered and losing its paint. It had once held Golden Virginia, though it had long since lost the scent of tobacco.

Opening it up, Hal let her fingers rest on the cards inside, feeling their frayed edges, the soft pliability of the aging cardboard, watching the familiar images flicker past as she riffled through them, their faces watching her, judging her.

On an impulse, she tipped the pack into her palm and, without shuffling, made a single cut, her eyes closed, only one question in her mind.

She opened her eyes.

The card in her palm was a young man standing in a storm-swept landscape, at his back a sky full of scudding clouds, at his feet a tumultuous sea. In his hands was a sword, upraised, as if about to strike. The page of swords. Action. Intellect. Decision.

In that instant Hal knew, if she were reading for a client, what she would have said: The swords are the suit of the mind, of thought and analysis, and the page is a card full of energy and decision. There are stormy waters all around—but he is striding out with his sword upraised. Whatever the challenge he faces, the page is ready to meet it, and he is someone to be reckoned with.

There is no such thing as a clear green light in tarot, she would have said. But this card—this might be the closest thing to it.

But beneath the practiced spiel she could hear her mother’s voice, words she had told Hal again and again. Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own patter. The actor who loses his grip on reality, the writer who believes her own lies—they’re lost. This is a fantasy—never lose sight of that, however much you want to believe.

And there was the slippery truth of it—the confirmation bias known so well to scientists and skeptics. She wanted to believe the page’s message. She wanted to believe in his green light, even as she clapped the two halves of the deck together, and slid them back into the tin, and closed the lid.

As she brushed her teeth in the tiny bathroom, gazing at her own reflection, soft-focus and unfamiliar without her glasses, Hal told herself, I don’t have to decide. I can sleep on it. Nothing is final. But she took her toothbrush with her when she went back into the bedroom. She stood uncertainly by her bed for a moment, shivering in the cold breeze from the drafty window, and then, almost defiantly, she shoved the toothbrush inside the open case and, with a rasping scratch, zipped it up, and climbed into bed.

It was a long time before she put her book down and turned out the light, and longer still before she slept. And when she slept, she dreamed—of a young man standing over her, his sword upraised.

CHAPTER 8

* * *

Hal’s mother had taught her tarot, and she’d been familiar with the images on the cards almost before she could walk—the smiling High Priestess, the stern Hierophant, the scary Tower with the lost souls falling away. And she had accompanied her mother to the booth on West Pier often enough as a little girl, when school was off and her mother couldn’t find anyone to babysit. She’d sat quietly behind the curtain in the corner reading a book, listening to her mother’s skillful back-and-forth, and she grew to understand the tactics almost without realizing—the leading questions, the graceful forks: “A brother . . .”—a slight frown from the client—“no, wait, someone like a brother. A friend? A male relative?”