The Guesthouse

by Abbie Frost

  The only one she had left. Everyone else hated her almost as much as she hated herself. She ended the call and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  Her phone vibrated in her hand and for one second she thought it was Lori, calling her back to say sorry and to tell her it was all going to be all right. Or maybe it was another hate-filled message from one of Ben’s friends. But she had turned off notifications for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so it couldn’t be that. She unlocked her screen and found the tiny red notification next to the image of a house on her screen, an app she hardly ever used: Cloud BNB.

  Of course: the holiday to County Mayo in Ireland. Ben had persuaded her to book a room at The Guesthouse, a beautiful country home, and she had forgotten all about it. They were supposed to go together.

  Hannah clicked on the message from the host: Henry Laughton. His photo showed a solid-looking man wearing a Barbour jacket, standing at the foot of a green hill with a muddy dog at his side.

  Hi Hannah and Ben,

  I hope you’re looking forward to your stay at The Guesthouse. As promised the kitchen will be stocked with enough food and drink to last the whole of your stay. Fallon village has a small local store for any other essentials and there is a supermarket fifteen miles away if you need anything unusual or exotic.

  As this is self-check-in, I may not be there to meet you. Entry is by key code – a second code will let you into your own room – and you may arrive any time after 2pm. Please make yourselves at home.

  Other rooms for use by guests are the large eat-in kitchen, the drawing room and the library. So plenty of space to spread out and be solitary or sociable as you prefer.

  She finished reading and closed her eyes. Couldn’t stop herself remembering when the offer email had first arrived. Sitting at her desk with Ben beside her and her life intact.

  She had pointed at the email from Cloud BNB on her screen. He looked over her shoulder, his head close to hers. Hannah clicked through to the website and they both read the description. The Guesthouse was owned by Preserve the Past: a charity dedicated to restoring historic Irish buildings.

  They moved on to the photographs. The luxurious bedrooms with large windows facing sweeping countryside views. Roaring fires and stone floors. Wide-angled shots that made the rooms seem enormous. The building itself had classical lines and some original architectural features inside.

  Ben leaned over her shoulder and clicked back to the offer email. ‘Wow, so cool – and cheap. We should go. Can we go? It’s perfect, and a great area for walking too.’

  She laughed. ‘OK, well you’ve managed to put me off completely now.’

  ‘The offer is for the opening week. We’d be the first visitors, so they’re throwing in all sorts of extras. Food and drink in the fridge, logs for the open fires, free run of the house.’ He kissed the back of her neck and slid his hands down to her breasts, whispering in her ear. ‘We might be the only guests. Imagine cuddling up in front of a roaring fire miles from anywhere.’

  Hannah continued to look through the photos. ‘I love the building, but it’s kind of … outdoorsy. And …’ She touched the screen. ‘There are five visitor bedrooms, so it could be packed.’

  ‘We’ll just take a bottle to our room and lock ourselves in for the week.’ Ben kissed her again and again. Short sharp kisses on her neck on her face, her lips, and then everywhere and they were soon making love on the sofa.

  An hour later they booked the best bedroom on offer and organized their flights.

  Hannah bit her lip and killed the app. She was due to arrive in Ireland in two days’ time. She couldn’t go – there was no way – she should reply to the host and cancel. Pulling on a jumper and leggings, she forced herself to go downstairs.

  Her mum had gone to do some work in the study and a pot of pasta simmered on the stove. At the kitchen window Hannah poured herself a glass of water with a shaking hand. Outside in the garden, autumn had crept up without her noticing, the trees heavy with red, orange, and golden leaves, their colours glinting in the evening sun.

  There was a reason she had chosen County Mayo. It was probably why the offer email had been sent to her in the first place, after she had spent long nights trawling through Cloud BNB, zooming in on Fallon village, refreshing the page, waiting for a sign to appear there like a beacon. It was a reason she didn’t want to think about now, something that she had only ever told Ben.

  What would Ben say if he could see her now? She could remember the smell of his aftershave, the way he held her at night when she awoke screaming from a nightmare.

  The way he looked at her when he found out that she was cheating on him.

  She took a sip of water, trying to ignore her shaking hand. When Ben realized what Hannah had done, their argument had spiralled into a fight that ended their relationship. She’d tried to make him understand, promised it would never happen again, but it had been no good. He’d stormed out into the night, and that had been the last time she would ever see him.

  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 hoo
d, 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 buildin
g, 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.