The Perfect Guests

by Emma Rous

  She jumps across a ditch and pushes through a hedgerow, and she’s back on the road, just beyond the village. It’s still a fair old walk to Raven Hall from here, and she glances over her shoulder at the sprawling yellow-brick house at the tail end of the village. It’s the local B and B, and she remembers that the owner used to spruce up old bicycles, ready for guests who wanted to explore the flat Fenland countryside, or just to cycle to the pub. She’ll save herself a lot of time if she can borrow one, and she’ll return it within a few hours—they’ll never need to know.

  She creeps up the B and B’s drive, eyeing the collection of battered bikes in the open-fronted bike shed, and she spots one that looks ideal. But as she’s easing it out from between its neighbors, she hears the creak of a door, and she swings around to see a young woman with a baby on her hip standing at the side door of the house, clutching a basket and staring at her.

  Her heart thumps as she searches her memory. This must be Stephanie Blake—she remembers her vaguely from school. She was a couple of years older, and always seemed a kind, quiet sort.

  Stephanie raises her eyebrows as if waiting for an explanation.

  “Is it okay if I borrow it?” She tries to smile. “I’ll bring it straight back. I promise.”

  Stephanie nods slowly, and then she tilts an ear to the open door.

  From indoors, a man shouts, “Steph? Bring some raspberries in too, will you?”

  “Okay, Dad.” Stephanie gives her one last, assessing look, before hurrying away around the back of the house.

  The bike squeaks a little, but it’s a lot better than nothing, and Stephanie’s kindness stays with her as she pedals away. Is it possible, she wonders, that for every bad person in the world, there’s a good person? For every cruel, greedy man like the Backstabber, there’s a thoughtful, generous woman like Stephanie? For every spoiled, careless girlfriend like Kat, there’s a warmhearted, patient man like Markus? Is there some kind of moral balance in the universe?

  She pedals harder, the rubber handlebar grips clammy under her palms. She wants to be a good person too. But frequently, she feels so furious about everything that’s been taken from her: her mother, her father, the house that was meant to be her birthright. She knows a good person would accept this fate and walk away, but here she is, sneaking back yet again to spy on her former home, wishing ill on its new owners, and knowing she’d seize any chance to get her house back, no matter what the consequences.

  She knows this makes her a bad person. But maybe when she confesses it all to Markus next weekend, he will help her to change, to improve, to become more like him.

  Meanwhile, she wants just one last look at Raven Hall. It won’t alter anything, and she’s so close now, she can feel it calling to her. Just one last look, that’s all she wants, and then she’ll try her best to put it all behind her.

  Beth

  December 1989

  It was the day before New Year’s Eve. Nina, Leonora, and I were in the dining room, eating croissants and admiring the patterns of frost on the windows, when Markus came charging up from the lake, waving his arms and shouting.

  “It’s ready!” he declared as he burst through the door. “The ice is thick enough. Come on, sleepyheads.” He beamed at the three of us, still sitting there in our dressing gowns and staring at him. “Get your skates on!”

  We scrambled upstairs to get dressed, and then Nina and I went out to the stable block to rummage through a huge box of skates. Most were of a similar design: leather lace-up boots with long metal blades underneath that jutted out front and back. As we pulled them out, searching for a good fit, I held up a pair that looked quite different: simple wooden-base sections with straps and blades attached.

  “Those are Fen runners,” Nina said. “They were my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’. They used to have big skating parties here, when it froze like this—races with prizes. And people came from not just the village, but from miles around, and they had big feasts in the evening. I wish . . .” She gazed out toward the lake. “I wish I could have seen it.”

  “It sounds amazing.” I ducked my head as an unexpected sadness washed over me. Not about the bygone era of skating parties on Avermere, but about the sensitive subjects I wasn’t supposed to ask Nina about—the mysteries and secrets at Raven Hall I’d learned not to query. I wanted to ask: Which grandparents—the Meyers or the Averells? Why are people from the village no longer invited to events here? Why aren’t you allowed to show your face at the rare parties your parents do hold? But instead, I frowned down into the box and pulled out another pair of skates.

  The rumble of a car engine made us both scramble to our feet. Jonas had recently passed his driving test, and he was roaring down the driveway in his mum’s old Volvo. I stayed where I was and watched Nina jog across the gravel to meet him, her breath rising in puffs of steam, her arms hugging her body against the cold. More and more, I felt pulled in two directions these days. Did I want Nina’s friendship, and a stable family life at Raven Hall? Or did I want Jonas? I couldn’t have both.

  Oh, snap out of it, I told myself. You’re seeing problems where there are none, as usual.

  I started forward to join them. Nina held on to Jonas’s arm, chattering excitedly about the first time he’d walked here by himself to skate on Avermere—did he remember?—and how many times they’d fallen over, and how fast they’d gone, and how much fun it all was. Jonas nodded as he listened, but his gaze slipped around her to me before his smile widened. Suddenly, I desperately wanted him to give Nina the full attention she deserved, so I turned away.

  Markus and Leonora were striding down from the house, all wrapped up and bright-eyed.

  “Have you ever skated before?” Markus asked me.

  “Yeah, a bit.” I’d been to the indoor ice rink in Peterborough a few times when I was younger, and I’d considered myself a pretty decent skater back then. But now that I was contemplating stepping out onto the surface of a real lake, I saw it had a different look entirely, and I slowed my pace as we approached the edge.

  Nina and Jonas glided out onto the frozen lake first, and Markus and Leonora quickly followed. I stepped onto it hesitantly. Under my skate blades, the ice was translucent, but when I gazed out across the expanse of frozen water, it looked like a mottled mirror, reflecting the clouds and sky above. And I knew how deep the water was under that six-inch crust.

  Nina and Jonas whooped as they shot across the ice, leaving swooping lines scored into the surface behind them. I stood still and watched. She went left, and he right, and then they looped around toward each other and picked up speed, the ice crackling and snapping around them.

  I held my breath. They were going to collide.

  Nina barreled into Jonas. He caught her, and they spun around and around, both laughing. I felt like a terrible person suddenly, inserting myself into Nina’s family and interfering with this beautiful friendship she had with Jonas. I tore my gaze away from them and scraped my skate blades against the ice, my heart still jumping.

  Seconds later, they were in front of me, Nina flushed and beaming, Jonas stretching a hand toward me.

  “Hey,” Jonas said. “Come on, we’ll help you.”

  I allowed him to take my right hand, and Nina my left, and together, the three of us slid away from the reeds and out onto the milky expanse. I lifted my chin, not wanting to look at the ice directly beneath my feet.

  “There,” Nina said. “You see? You can do it.”

  I found my balance, and we picked up a bit of speed. It felt surprisingly good, having the three of us linked together. Maybe everything would work out, after all. I lifted my face to the bright, pale sky, and I laughed, and Nina and Jonas joined in with me.

  “Okay,” Jonas said. “Now try by yourself.”

  They let go of me, and I mimicked their body posture, leaning forward and clasping my hands behind my back. We
peeled apart, heading in three different directions, and I realized with a surge of delight that I no longer felt afraid. The ice was hard under my blades, and the surface was pitted, but I pushed myself to go faster, curving to the right and then to the left. I felt weightless, as if I could carry on gliding forever, leaving all my problems behind me. With a smile, I turned and swooped closer to the others, then away again, relishing the wind in my hair and the sudden warmth of the sun on my face. It was exhilarating.

  “Okay,” Markus called out from the shore. “Now the races begin.”

  He and Leonora proceeded to roll two wooden barrels onto the ice, and they stood them upright a good distance apart. I joined Nina and Jonas by the first barrel, and our breath mingled overhead in a cloud.

  “Right,” Leonora said. “One lap, Nina and Jonas first, start on my whistle.”

  I hung back next to Markus, watching entranced as Nina positioned herself on one side of the barrel, and Jonas on the other. They were both serious-faced, poised to set off. Leonora raised her hand, then dropped it sharply while making a noise like a whistle.

  Nina set off faster, but as they raced toward the far barrel, Jonas overtook her on his side of the ice. He was first to spin around the second barrel, and first to return, flying past Leonora and Markus and me, his arms raised in jubilation. Nina came to a stop by grabbing the barrel at our end, and her eyes were shining. I felt a surge of excitement. I wanted a turn.

  “Okay, winner against Beth,” Leonora said, laughing. “No chance to get your breath back, Jonas.”

  Jonas beat me, of course. Leonora almost beat Jonas. Leonora beat Markus, and Nina and Markus were neck and neck. When I raced against Markus, I won, but only because he let me.

  It was intoxicating: the speed, the brilliant sunlight glinting on the ice, the good-natured teasing. When I wasn’t breathless from racing, my chest filled with an unfamiliar sense of no-strings-attached joy. Nothing else mattered that morning on the frozen lake. All my private worries about Nina’s isolation, my secret relationship with Jonas, that oily residue I’d seen in Nina’s mug—all were scorched away by the dazzling winter sun and the adrenaline in my blood.

  I wanted the morning to go on forever. But eventually, we staggered back up the slope to Raven Hall, our stomachs rumbling, our legs suddenly wobbly at having to lift our clumsy feet against gravity for every step. I wondered briefly whether Leonora and Markus might invite Jonas into the house for lunch, but Jonas glanced at his watch and said he’d promised to go home and eat with his mum.

  I should have said good-bye to him then. I should have followed the others into the house. But Jonas had a certain expression—raised eyebrows, eyes sparkling—that I could never resist, and I hung back and waited for the front door to close before I went to him.

  “Hey, you,” he said, pulling me even closer to him. “Am I allowed to kiss you, now?”

  For the next few seconds, I was aware only of him—but as we pulled apart, I realized belatedly that the front door had reopened. Nina stood on the top step, watching us.

  “Oh,” I said. “Nina, I—”

  Her voice was flat. “Maybe you should go and have lunch at Jonas’s house, Beth.”

  I stared at her. “I can’t—”

  “Mum!” she bellowed back into the hall. “Beth says she’s going to eat at Jonas’s house instead.”

  I tensed, waiting for Leonora to come scurrying out, to tell me this wasn’t allowed, to drag me back into Raven Hall. But instead, Leonora’s voice floated calmly down the hall.

  “Okay, that’s fine. Come inside, then, Nina, and close the door.”

  It was like the sun burning through winter cloud: the truth hung there, clear and shocking, in front of me. Why had I never realized it before? I could leave whenever I liked; I could go wherever I liked. It was Nina who was banned from the village, not me. Nina who was kept here in a little bubble. Not me.

  “But I don’t want to—” I began.

  Nina’s voice was tight. “A bit late for that, don’t you think?” She retreated into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  I turned to Jonas, my heart rattling.

  “What do I do?”

  He gave me a cautiously optimistic smile. “Come home with me?”

  I felt dazed as I walked to his car, not sure what I was committing to—not in regard to Jonas, but in terms of leaving Raven Hall, and walking away from Nina. Would the family—would Nina—definitely allow me to go back? I sat in silence on the short drive to the village, gazing sightlessly through the windscreen. Jonas cast me concerned glances, but he didn’t speak again until he’d turned onto the B and B’s driveway and parked by the bicycle shed.

  “My mum’ll be pleased to see you, you know,” he said. “Delirious, actually. I mean, I’m downplaying it, if anything. You really don’t need to worry.”

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  He studied me. “I’m worried about you, you know. That family. It’s like you hide your feelings all the time, in case they don’t approve, but—it’s not right. You shouldn’t have to pretend to be something you’re not . . .”

  I gulped, thinking of the two occasions I’d tricked Nina’s grandfather into believing I was Nina.

  “I shouldn’t have left,” I said. “I need to get back. It feels disloyal . . .”

  “Beth.” He took my icy fingers in his and tried to rub some warmth back into my hands. “Look, you’re almost sixteen. You can leave Raven Hall if you want to. Talk to your aunt Caroline. Come and live here, with me. I mean, it doesn’t have to be—Mum would happily put you up, as a friend of mine; I promise you. And then we’d be . . .” He squeezed my fingers gently. “You can be yourself, here. And we could see each other whenever we like.”

  I shook my head slowly, feeling like the worst person in the world.

  “But that’s not what I want.”

  Jonas blinked a few times. “What isn’t? Being with me—?”

  I pulled my fingers free of his, and I indicated the yellow-brick house in front of us. “It’s such a nice offer, but it’s not—”

  “Nice?” Now he sounded insulted.

  I twisted in my seat to face him, trying to find the right words. “It’s just that—I’d still be so close to Raven Hall, and—I can’t even think it all through. They’d stop paying my school fees, wouldn’t they, if I left? And for me to move just down the road would seem so . . . rude, somehow. But you’re so close to your mum, and the business, and this whole place—the village, everything. I can’t expect you to leave that behind and—”

  “What do you mean?” He searched my expression. “Move somewhere else, together, you mean?”

  I shook my head. “You can’t. You can’t leave this place; you belong here. And I can’t just leave Raven Hall but stay nearby. I’d need to make a proper break, a clean break.” I sat back in my seat, then, and turned my head to the side window. “Which I’m not ready to do. So.” I took a deep breath. “I need to go back.”

  “You’re really not making sense,” he said.

  I curled my fingers around the door handle, feeling dizzy, as though I were teetering on the edge of the dock back at Raven Hall, unsure whether to fall one way or the other. All I knew was, I couldn’t have it both ways: I couldn’t have Jonas and my life at Raven Hall. I had to decide between them. And there was no point in trying to explain that to Jonas, because there was nothing he could do about it. He’d be better off without me. I couldn’t give him the happy, carefree, normal relationship that he was looking for, or that he deserved.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, I’ll walk back. You go in. Your mum’s waiting for you.”

  The hurt in his voice was clear. “Fine. Go running back to them, then. But things won’t get any better, you know. Markus’s dad’s coming back again, and Mum says he’s determined to sell the house this time; did you kno
w that? He has an appointment with an estate agent while he’s here. He’s desperate to get Markus and Nina to the States with him, with or without Leonora, and Mum reckons he won’t accept any more stalling . . .”

  My mouth fell open, and I grabbed his sleeve. “When? When’s he coming? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Jonas looked taken aback. “I didn’t think of it. I only heard this morning. Mum said his secretary rang late last night, asking for a last-minute room. He’s arriving tomorrow, just staying the one night, apparently . . .”

  My breath scraped in my throat. What did it mean? Could this be good news for me? They’d need me back at Raven Hall now, to play the role of Nina, wouldn’t they? But an image of the hot-chocolate mug shimmered in my mind, and I felt paralyzed.

  “It’s so little notice, for New Year’s Eve,” Jonas grumbled. “Mum could do without the hassle, really, but she doesn’t like to turn people away. I don’t know if he’s trying to make it a surprise visit, but Mum’ll ring and tell Leonora, like she did before—to give her a bit of time to prepare, you know . . .”

  With a supreme effort, I found my voice again.

  “Do you think your mum’s already rung her?”

  Jonas frowned. “I’ve no idea. Mum went out first thing. And Leonora was skating with us all morning, wasn’t she? Mum could be ringing her right now, for all I know.”

  “Please, Jonas.” I gripped his fingers in mine, this time. “Please, please, will you drive me back?”

  “Why?” He stared at me with growing concern. “Beth? What is it?”

  “I can’t—” I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking of that oily residue in the hot-chocolate mug, and Nina’s sickness. The word was back, hissing in my ears, pulsing through my body: poison, poison, poison. “I need to check on Nina. Please, Jonas. Take me back to Raven Hall.”

  The B and B’s bike makes her journey so much quicker. Raven Hall soon comes into view, and she keeps her gaze fixed on it as she pedals: the welcoming gray stone frontage, the familiar chimneys, the proud turret. She feels bolder today, and she cycles down the center of the driveway with her back straight and her chin up—what’s the worst that can happen?