raised, and gasped.
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
