The Guesthouse - Abbie Frost

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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,

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