Abbie Frost - The Guesthouse

‘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.