Page 23 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

Sophie strode into the kitchen, and Daisy heard the chink of the leads, the patter of paws on tile. She took her bag into the living room, wondered briefly where her brother was and decided he was out buying overpriced food for his pampered goat, chasing the goat because it had escaped, or was shut up in his study doing something complicated with figures for one of the companies he did consulting work for.

She sank onto the sofa and took the package out of her handbag. There was no fire in the grate, and the large room was chilly, the wind moaning down the chimney in an eerily familiar way. Harry might have modernized it, but a large, old building was always going to have its weird tics and noises.

Daisy worked at the knot in the string, which was tight and fiddly, her impatience growing. Who had sent her a parcel – and to the hotel, rather than the manor? Everyone who knew she was here knew where she was staying. Or, she thought, as the knot finally came loose, most people did. She slid her finger under the edge of the paper, felt the satisfying crinkle of resistance as she pushed it back, and discovered, underneath, a beautiful, slim hardback book.

She took it out of the paper, her mind tripping back to her teenage years, to memories of going to find Dad in the bookshop, trailing her fingers along the hotchpotch of books on the shelves, some sections organized by genre, some by author name, some by a system that nobody understood but him. This book, unlike a lot of the books that found their way into her dad’s shop, was immaculate.

The cloth cover was black, with the title and author picked out in gold: The Hound of the Baskervilles ~ Arthur Conan Doyle. Alongside this, there was a gold foil illustration of a hound in the bottom corner, its head tipped back as if it was howling at the moon. It was a stylish edition, unlike anything Daisy could remember seeing, but she wasn’t a big reader any more, and seldom spent time in bookshops.

‘Who gave it to me?’ She turned it over, but there were no clues about where it came from. She returned to the paper, saw her name, Daisy Anderly, c/o The Mistingham Hotel, Village Green Road, Mistingham, on the front. Mo and Pete knew she was here, but she never discussed books with them. They talked about their families, nights out, favourite films sometimes, but not books. She thought of, then immediately dismissed, Stefan. They hadn’t been in contact since the divorce had been finalized, and without children, there was no reason for them to ever speak to each other again. She tried to ignore the sharp pang of sadness that came with that realization, but the pain he’d caused her had been a whole lot worse, and she knew she was better off.

‘Why me?’ she said to the empty room. ‘Why Sherlock Holmes?’

She opened the cover and found a postcard nestled inside. She took it out, the image on the front a photograph of Mistingham’s rugged cliffs. The tide was in, and waves frothed over the pebbled beach in front of a pearly dawn sky. She thought of her meeting earlier that week, and the answer popped into her head. ‘Lars.’

He knew she was here, but he didn’t know exactly where she was staying, and the hotel seemed an obvious place to send something, if you wanted it to find the right person in a place as small as Mistingham. It felt old-fashioned, though, like something out of a book – even a Sherlock Holmes story, full of telegrams and beautifully written letters.

She had experienced Lars’s chivalry at their meeting, and got the sense he might be interested in her beyond her interior design skills – a couple of the things he’d said had been particularly flirtatious – and she didn’t know how she felt about that. If that was the case, this was a strange way of showing his affection. She turned the postcard over, expecting to see a message from him, but what was written just compounded her confusion.

Dear Daisy,

It is a joy to have you back in Mistingham after all this time. I hope you’ll realize that old, unhappy memories can be replaced with better ones, and that things aren’t always as terrifying as they may first appear. This story is treasured by many, and I hope it will be by you, too.

From,

The Secret Bookshop.

‘The Secret Bookshop?’ Daisy said aloud. There wasn’t even a dog to hear her, because Sophie had taken them out. ‘What on earth is that? Why would I want to read an old detective novel?’ There were a lot of bookshelves in Harry’s study, and if she wanted to read something before bed instead of scrolling on her phone, she could pick something more suitable from his library.

She riffled the pages, but nothing else fell out. Would Lars write something so strangely cryptic, and call himself The Secret Bookshop? Why would he send her a detective story about a big scary dog chasing people across the moors? Why would anyone think she needed to have that? Then she noticed that, attached to the brown string that had tied the parcel up, there was a cardboard tag. She turned it over, saw The Secret Bookshop written in silver pen, but nothing else. It gave her no more clues about what it meant, where it had come from, so she set it aside and knelt in front of the huge hearth, found a fire lighter and got a fire going.

She would wait until Sophie was back to make hot chocolate, and perhaps they could work in here together? Daisy was used to working alone, but she liked the idea of doing her research while Sophie updated the accounts for her shop or planned more notebooks. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the manor, but it was big, and the noises it made, especially in winter, were on the creepy side.

She got up and strode to Harry’s study, knocking and then opening the door before she got a response. He wasn’t there. Everything was still, his desk piled with paperwork because, unlike her, he had always found it hard to keep things organized. It meant that, until Sophie returned, Daisy was all alone.

Abandoning the fire she’d just started, she went into the kitchen to prepare the ingredients for hot chocolate. This room was modern and airy, bright even on dull days because of the amount of light that flooded in. As she assembled milk and cocoa powder, mini marshmallows on the countertop, her gaze strayed to the window. Under a heavy grey sky, the manor grounds looked ominous, the sea in the distance a wavering line of slate, the trees shimmying in the wind.

Was the book a threat? Wasn’t it the family in the big hall who were terrified to death by the huge, supernatural dog? What did it mean? Daisy didn’t get ruffled easily. She liked to think there wasn’t a lot that scared her, but she also wasn’t used to the size and age of the manor, or how it felt being in it alone, in November, after decades away.

She poured milk into a saucepan and set it simmering on the hob, and when she heard the front door open, and was greeted by three cold dogs – Darkness and Terror nuzzling their damp noses into her hands, Clifton rubbing his curly fur against her leg – she felt weak with relief.

‘OK?’ Sophie asked brightly, her cheeks pink from the wind.

‘Great,’ Daisy said perkily. ‘I’ll start on the hot chocolate.’

‘Amazing. We can do more ball plotting if you fancy?’

‘I’d love to,’ Daisy said, and decided then and there that she wasn’t going to tell anyone about her strange gift. Not until she’d worked out who was behind the Secret Bookshop and why they wanted to send her, only a temporary visitor to the village, such a sinister, and frankly terrifying, story.

Chapter Eight

‘You’ve turned out well.’

Winnie wasn’t looking at Daisy, because they were standing next to each other, looking at the house. Winnie had her arms folded, her grey curls a halo around her face, so Daisy couldn’t see her expression. It was Saturday, the day after she’d received the book, and as promised she’d returned to the hotel to talk about the beautiful house that would, when it was finished, belong to the sisters.

‘The village gossip can’t have reached you, then,’ she said lightly.

‘Oh, it reached me all right. You think I miss out on gossip? I’m not talking about the blows life has dealt you; I’m talking about you.’