Hannah looked around the kitchen at the immaculate surfaces. Her mother’s constant, almost oppressive worry, this house like a pristine cage. Maybe she should go to Ireland, to get away from it all. She watched a magpie hop down onto the lawn and begin to peck at something dead in the grass. Her mum and Lori would certainly be relieved to see the back of her.
Everyone would.
Because Ben was dead, and it was her fault.
Chapter Two
She regretted it as soon as her plane landed. She’d left London in sparkling sunshine and arrived at Ireland West Airport to drizzle that turned to rain. And it got worse as the taxi headed for Fallon. Water flooded down the cab windows, the frantic swish, swish of the wipers failing to drown out the driver’s annoying country music.
At least he didn’t speak to her and he held his thick red neck so stiffly it was obvious he wouldn’t welcome any chatty comments from the back seat. She tried to relax as green mile after green mile sped by, distorted by the streams of grey water. It didn’t matter what the weather was like: she wasn’t here to enjoy herself, just to get some respite, to get away from social media and from London’s clubs and bars. Ben had encouraged her to make this trip and had paid half the cost. At least this was one tiny way in which she wasn’t going to let him down.
She must have dozed off, because the cab door suddenly opened, and the driver was standing staring in at her. The rain had eased to a thin colourless veil, as if a net curtain hung in front of the fields.
The fields that stretched out for miles on both sides.
She sat up in her seat and looked around. They were parked in a layby in the middle of nowhere. ‘Sorry, excuse me, I think there’s been a mistake. I asked for The Guesthouse.’
The man nodded.
‘It’s on an app called Cloud BNB. It’s where I’m staying.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I can show you a picture.’
He said nothing. His wide, ruddy face expressionless as he gave the screen one fleeting glance.
‘It used to be called Fallon House.’
He pulled the door wider, not looking at her. ‘This is as far as I go.’
It must be a joke, probably some sort of local prank. She swallowed. ‘I want The Guesthouse.’
He turned away so that, with his accent, she struggled to make out the words. ‘Take the path over the fields. Ye can see it there.’ He pointed along a muddy track towards a low range of hills. ‘Keep going straight.’
‘But where’s the village?’
He gestured ahead. ‘Along this road. ’Bout five or six miles.’
‘The website said the house was near the village,’ she said weakly.
He ignored her and walked back, opened the boot and slung her case down onto the roadside. She had no choice. She and Ben hadn’t intended to bring a car, so neither of them had thought to check whether the place was accessible by road.
Cold rain dripped down the neck of her parka as she shrugged on her rucksack and pulled up her hood, staring at her trainers and wishing she had brought water-resistant footwear. It was only afternoon but felt like a gloomy winter evening. Bleak, nothing like the sunlit hills and glittering streams the website had promised.
The driver closed his door, impatient now. He pointed again. ‘That’s the way.’
The track led off through puddles and muddy ridges towards the hills. She looked at her stupid wheeled suitcase. How the hell was she going to drag it through all that?
She fumbled for her purse. ‘Could you carry my case for me?’
He laughed, but there was a flash of sympathy in his pale eyes. ‘Sorry, love, I’ve got another fare in the village.’
And then he was gone. She stared at the taxi as it drove into the distance, its wheels kicking up wet spray from the road.
Shivering in the cold, she walked across to the footpath. As she trudged through the mud, half-pulling, half-carrying her case, she thought about the bottle of vodka she’d bought at the airport. A nice vodka and Coke: that would be her reward when she got to the house. If she ever did.
At the end of the first field, she stopped under the shelter of a tree for a breather. It couldn’t be far from here. She dumped her case on the floor and pulled out her phone to call up a map. One bar of signal. Her finger hovered over the Facebook icon on her screen. This was exactly what she had told herself not to do on her holiday. Why she had turned off all her notifications and promised herself to stay away from social media. But after a moment, she opened the app and sat down on her case with a sigh. Just one final look.
She deleted two friend requests from random guys she vaguely remembered chatting to in a bar. Then felt the familiar stab of pain as she navigated her way to Ben’s wall. Before she could stop herself, she’d clicked on his profile pictures, scrolled through his albums. She knew them all in perfect detail.
Her favourite picture of Ben filled the screen, but when she went to reload the page, it froze. His eyes were replaced by a slowly buffering circle, then he disappeared. She sat there for a moment, watching the whirling circle, thinking back to the exact moment when she had found out that Ben had died.
It was just two days after the argument that had ended their relationship. She had been on her laptop at home, scrolling through Facebook, when a direct message had flashed up at the bottom of her screen:
Check out Ben’s wall. Hope you’re pleased with yourself. Bitch.
She had shrugged and told herself it would be pictures of Ben with another woman. Some sort of sick pay-back to make her jealous.
But it had been something far worse. A memorial wall, hundreds of posts about Ben’s death. Endless messages of grief and anger. Her boyfriend was gone and everyone was blaming her.
She had read message after message, choking on her tears. Ben had been knocked off his bike two days after he found out she’d cheated on him. Two days during which he’d stayed at his mate, Charlie’s, ignored her messages and refused to talk. Then he’d just stood up from the table, went out for a bike ride and never came back.
Hannah swallowed and wiped the rain from her phone’s screen. Couldn’t stop herself from reloading Ben’s Facebook page and trawling down through the messages. There it was, the comment Charlie had left on the day Ben died:
After what happened he was so upset. Said he needed to clear his head and went out on his bike. I never saw him again.
Seven people had liked the comment and someone had added a reply:
If it wasn’t for his so-called girlfriend he would still be alive. He wanted to die because of what she did.
The page buffered again. Hannah clenched her phone until her knuckles went white. After the accident, the car driver said he hadn’t seen Ben until he rode right out in front of him. And the police found that his bike lights were switched off. Charlie gave evidence about Ben’s mood, his drinking, the breakup, and the police believed it.
Believed that Ben had wanted to die.
Lori and Ruby – the only people still talking to Hannah – kept telling her she needed to stop looking at social media altogether. Stop torturing herself. Well, this holiday might be her opportunity.
Because the Facebook page had whirled to a halt and then died again. And at the top of the screen a red cross cut through the signal bar. Perfect – no reception. She turned the phone off and on again, stood up and waved it around above her head. Still nothing. And nothing for it, but to start trudging again.
It seemed like hours later when, soaked and exhausted and cradling her case in her arms because one of its wheels had broken, she spotted a wonky signpost stuck into the mud at the side of the path.
THE GUESTHOUSE.
At least it existed. It wasn’t all some grand joke dreamed up by the taxi driver. She put down her case and looked back the way she had come. Mist had settled on the fields and the slope above her, shrouding the road from view.
A movement, something grey, flitting across the edge of her vision. She turned a hundred and eighty degrees, her phone clutched in her hand. Nothing but mist and silent hills. She listened hard for the sound of footsteps, for any indication that she was no longer alone. There was a tiny noise from the bank of fog on the hill above her, as if someone had kicked loose a scattering of stones.
Shit. She turned on her torch app with shaking fingers and waited, totally still. Blood rushing in her ears. Could you still phone 999, even with no signal? Was it 999 in Ireland?
She shone the pathetic beam of light into the fog and walked carefully towards the noise. It was all going to be fine. This was just her overactive imagination, all the stress of the past few weeks catching up with her. There was nobody for miles, for God’s sake, nothing to worry about.
Another sound stopped her dead.
There was something. A rustle in the grass, some dark shape moving along the ridge, the same flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. This time she spun fast, phone raised, and gasped.
Chapter Three
A blur of grey flew towards her and she choked on a yell, tripped and landed heavily in the mud.
The animal stopped to look at her.
It was a cat. Just a cat. She picked herself up and tried to brush the mud off her jeans, glaring at the cat as it ran in front of her, a strip of muscle and fur heading the way she was going: along the rutted track and up the hill.
‘Great – my own guide.’ Her voice sounded thin in the silence.
She picked up her bag and started walking again, following a rutted track through the hills. A few minutes later, the mist cleared enough for her to make out a distant shape in the gloom, a dark shadow hemmed in by trees. Thank God, this had to be the place.
The first thing she was going to do when she arrived was log into the wifi and give the host a piece of her mind. What sort of website doesn’t mention that the house is miles from anywhere? Inaccessible by road? And surely it was supposed to be near the village.
Perhaps it wasn’t all bad, though. It would be peaceful, which was what she needed, and Henry Laughton’s message had mentioned a kitchen fully stocked with food and drink. So there was likely to be wine. And tomorrow she’d walk to the village, start to build a picture of the area, try to find someone who might be able to help her. Might have answers to the burning questions that had drawn her to this godforsaken area in the first place.
As she drew nearer, the building rose up from the middle of a cluster of trees, just as beautiful as its photographs online, even shrouded in fog and drizzle. She knew about architecture, used to love it, and this was a perfect example of classical Georgian, with massive wrought iron gates and a wide gravel path leading up to the huge door. She guessed this path had once carried on all the way back to the road.
She knew one thing for sure: Henry Laughton would have to improve access if he wanted to get any decent five-star reviews. He certainly wasn’t going to get one from her, no matter how good the house was inside.
Standing at the gate, she stared up at the perfectly symmetrical building, its front door flanked by tall windows set into pale walls. Lights glowed inside and she could just make out a figure looking down from one of the top windows. Someone there to greet her.
But as she walked up the drive, still clutching her broken case, she noticed that the front door was pitted with dents and marred by patches of flaking black paint. The window frames were peeling, too, and a slimy green stain ran down the wall.
The figure still loomed in the window, as if it had been standing there forever.
Hannah shivered, suddenly aware of the silence and space all around her. She squinted back along the muddy track that wound its way down the slope, overlooked by nothing but bare peaks, and felt suddenly tiny and insignificant, lost in a sea of hills. For a moment she thought about turning around, calling a taxi and driving back to the comfort of a city, crawling into her mother’s arms, but she was too cold and it would be dark soon.
She remembered her entry code and spotted the keypad on the wall beside the door. Dragged out her phone and tapped in the number. A buzz and a click. The keypad lit up, a greeting flashing in green across the screen:
Welcome to The Guesthouse. You have checked in. Enjoy your stay.
The great black door opened onto a spacious hall full of warmth and light. A marble floor stretched away towards a sweeping staircase in the middle of the room, with landings branching off to either side. A row of paintings hung along one wall. Strange dark pictures that seemed to be of shadowy figures that might have been animals or people, she couldn’t tell. Underneath sat a small leather sofa that looked fairly new.
The website had mentioned that Preserve the Past was still renovating a number of their properties, but she’d assumed work on the interior of The Guesthouse was finished. The slightly rundown exterior wouldn’t matter if the rest of the place was like this. And if the picture of her guest room wasn’t fake, then she would have no complaints about that. Just about the horrible trek from the road.
The second key code would get her into her room. And she was tempted to head straight there, but she should first meet the host, the caretaker, or whoever it was she’d seen waiting for her at the window.
‘Hello?’ Her voice sounded hollow in the cavernous hallway. She walked to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Hello, anybody there?’
The sound echoed. Silence seemed to settle into every dark corner of the house, and a cold bead of sweat trickled down her spine. The building was empty. That shape at the window must have been a curtain or just a shadow.
With another quick glance around she kicked off her white New Balance trainers. At least they had been white. Now they were covered in slimy mud, bits of grass, and soaked through with water. Ben would probably have suggested she buy hiking boots, but Ben wasn’t here any more.
She hurried upstairs, her trainers in one hand, not wanting to ruin the soft new carpet. Here were the bedroom doors, each with a brass number plate and a neat keypad, all freshly painted in gleaming white. The two rooms at the top of the stairs were numbers five and six. The website had only offered five rooms to rent, but it looked as if there were at least ten.
Her room was number one, right at the far end of what should probably be called the west wing. There was another door next to it, but it was narrow and unnumbered. A storeroom or something similar perhaps. And right at the end of the corridor a tall window. She peered out of it and saw that it faced the gates. This could be the window she imagined she’d seen the figure standing at, but there was no one here now.
Looking through the glass she could see that muddy track snaking away through the rough green grass, a pale sun low in the sky, peeking through the clouds. She had got here just in time. Wouldn’t like to navigate that in the dark.
Outside her own room she tapped in the second code, the floorboards creaking under her feet. With a final glance back along the corridor, she told herself to ignore the feeling that she was being watched. Even if there were no other guests, a week alone would do her good. Make her less jumpy. She could exercise, stay off the booze. She’d soon get used to the isolation, to the high ceilings and the long, silent corridors.
But as soon as she was inside, she locked the door behind her, trying to calm the heavy beat of her heart.
The room was spacious and light. A bed stood against one wall with the bathroom next to it. Opposite, a wardrobe and an enlarged photograph of a bay with a stormy sea. Close to the door stood a chest of drawers with a kettle and drinks on top.
Through the huge window she could look down on what once must have been a pretty rose garden at the side of the house. Now it was just a mass of bare stems and tangled undergrowth. The ground rose then dipped away into the distance towards grey-blue hills on the horizon and, beyond them, a strip of the Atlantic Ocean.
It would all have been so different if Ben was with her. She swallowed and dumped her case by the window. Threw her rucksack onto the floor, then remembered the vodka and pulled out the bottle, staring at the label. She deserved all of this: the mud, the loneliness, the miserable walk through the fog and rain. The shittier the better. Keep it coming. The thing to remember was: stop thinking about Ben. He was gone and she had to carry on with her life.
The en-suite bathroom was spacious with a row of expensive-looking toiletries and a pile of soft white towels on a shelf behind the door. She took a glass from beside the sink and poured in a slug of vodka. Topped it up with Coke, swallowed a long gulp and sighed.
Once she had changed out of her muddy clothes and spread out on the comfortable double bed, she began to relax. This wasn’t too bad. A few more gulps. She checked her phone, watched the buffering circle slowly rotate on her screen. Still no signal. Then she spotted a white card on the bedside table with the wifi code.
When WhatsApp loaded up, she sent a message to her mum and Lori.
I made it! The place is perfect. No phone reception, but that suits me. Looking forward to lots of long walks and feeling better already.
Obviously neither of them wanted to speak to her anyway, but at least they couldn’t complain that she’d left them worrying.
Her phone dinged with a message. Henry Laughton.
I hope you have arrived safely at The Guesthouse and had a good journey. A hearty welcome from all of us at Preserve the Past.
Do contact me with any problems or queries and I’ll arrange for someone to deal with them.
You should find toiletries and tea/coffee etc in your room, but there are further supplies in the kitchen. Take whatever you need.
Enjoy your stay.
She swallowed the rest of her vodka and tapped out a reply. Aimed for the right passive-aggressive tone. She had been very surprised about the lack of road access to the property and felt this should have been made clearer on the website. Her clothes and shoes were ruined. There was nothing to be done about it, of course, but she thought it might help to have some feedback for future guests. She hit send.
For the first time in ages she was hungry, so she pulled on thick socks and looked out into the corridor. Hesitated for a minute or two, listening. Not a sound, except her own breathing and the gentle ticking of a clock somewhere. Then she forced herself along to the top of the stairs and leaned over the balustrade to peer into the hall below. Next to the main door someone had left some wellies and a pair of walking boots. Other guests must have arrived, because she could hear the comforting hum of voices downstairs.
She padded down. Put a smile on her face, pulled out a stick of gum from her pocket to mask the smell of booze. She had chewed a lot of the stuff recently, whenever she was at home. The voices were coming from a big door at the back and to the right of the stairs. A dark tapestry, showing some kind of hunting scene, hung on the wall beside it. Pushing it open she found herself in a huge country kitchen.
Seated at the massive oak table, fiddling with a phone, was a guy who looked about her own age. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, his eyes gleamed as he flashed a white smile.
‘Hello. Good to see you. Come in, come in.’ He stood and held out his hand. ‘I’m Mohammad – Mo – and that’s my dad, Sandeep.’
He nodded to an elderly man standing in the corner. Hannah took Mo’s hand and tried not to think about the awkward handshake at the end of her most recent disaster of an interview.
When Sandeep also stretched out his hand she could see the likeness. But while Mo was smiling, his father looked unhappy, angry even. He was holding a cloth and seemed to be cleaning the warm Aga.
‘So, you’re not the hosts?’ Hannah asked.
Mo laughed. ‘I wish. No, my dad’s just a cleaning fanatic.’ He turned to Sandeep. ‘Come on, Dad, give it a rest. This is meant to be a holiday.’ But his father ignored him.
‘How long have you been here?’ Hannah thought of the shadow at the window when she first arrived.
‘About half an hour. And you?’
‘An hour or so I think.’ So it couldn’t have been them. ‘Had a proper nightmare walking all the way from the road.’
Hannah went to the fridge. Milk, cheese, butter. Some cold meats, lots of vegetables, orange and apple juice. But no wine. She sighed. ‘I’m surprised the host didn’t warn us about the trek across that bog. My new trainers are ruined.’
Mo looked down at her socks. ‘Me and Dad like to walk, but yeah, it was a long way.’
An old-fashioned coffee maker started to steam on the Aga. Sandeep filled two mugs with coffee and pushed them towards her without a word. His eyes were clouded. With annoyance, anger, or something else, she couldn’t guess. She sat beside Mo and passed him a coffee, all the time aware of Sandeep stooped in the corner, wiping the worktops, fussing with the Aga again.
Mo blew on the mug and took a sip. ‘For a while we thought we might be the only guests, stuck out here on our own. It’s nice to have company.’
He smiled at her across the table. It was a shy smile, but very warm. ‘So what brings you all the way out here?’
It was too direct, although he couldn’t possibly know that. She paused, not wanting to mention Ben, but struggling to think of a plausible lie. In the end the truth just seemed to come out.
‘My father …’ She swallowed. ‘He used to live in this part of Ireland. He died five years ago.’ Hannah could feel her jaw tightening. She never talked about him. What was she doing telling a complete stranger?
‘So you’ve been here before?’ Sandeep had turned to face her, his voice loud in the silence.
‘Dad?’ Mo glanced at Sandeep then leaned across the table. ‘Don’t mind him, he doesn’t want to be here.’ Mo had a strange accent that Hannah couldn’t place. London certainly, but something else too.
She glanced at Sandeep and sipped her coffee. ‘No, my parents separated when I was young and then my dad died. I never had a chance to get to know him properly.’ She turned the mug around in her hands. ‘When I saw this place on Cloud BNB, I thought it would be nice to see where he lived. I guess I wanted to find out a bit more about him.’ It was the truth as far as it went.
Sandeep turned towards her. ‘You came on your own?’ Once more that disapproving tone. And Hannah saw a flash of Ben laughing, shaking back his fair hair and leaning in to kiss her. Come on, you know you want to go. Can’t keep putting it off. We’ll have a great time.
She heard Mo mutter something under his breath. It could have been, ‘Sorry,’ but she was damned if she was going to let a moody old man get to her.
She looked at Sandeep. ‘I’m interested in the house. I studied architecture and used to work at an architectural practice.’ That was all he was going to get. ‘What about you guys? Why did you decide to come here?’
‘I didn’t. It was his idea.’ Sandeep turned away and continued to scrub the kitchen surfaces. ‘This place is filthy. It’s going to take me all evening to get it clean. And my clothes are still soaking wet from the walk.’
Hannah looked away and wondered why someone would be so unhappy about their holiday. Mo moved around the table to sit beside her and put his phone between them, pushing his glasses further up his nose with one finger. ‘I’m interested in the house too, but the history. I’ve just finished my master’s in history. Have you read about this place? There’s some cool stuff on Preserve the Past website.’
Without waiting for an answer, he tapped his phone and held it up for her to read.
