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‘Can I leave you to it, then?’
‘Of course, Mum. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, sweetheart. Oh, before I forget, are you cancelling Clarissa’s week and refunding her?’
Emily shook her head and smiled. ‘Nope, she’s staying on. You were out when she arrived back from Cambridge.’
‘Cambridge? What was she doing there?’
Emily pursed her lips. She knew that Clarissa had decided to catch a train to Cambridge to talk to the museum staff. She had wanted to see what she could find out about the eminent professor from the staff at the museum before she asked him for an interview, in case he declined. She had also thought it wouldn’t hurt to see the new exhibition for herself, so that she had a starting point for the interview, even though that wasn’t the reason she wanted to speak with him.
Emily hadn’t told her mum that Clarissa was after an interview with one of the guests. She thought perhaps it was best not to mention that, especially as Clarissa was after finding out what exactly he was doing there instead of at that press conference in London. She was convinced it had something to do with their other guest, Alice.
‘So, are we full?’
‘Yes, the lady who just phoned had booked the last room.’
‘The single?’
‘I know we don’t normally rent out that room because it’s quite small. I did warn her it was just a single, but she said she was fine with that. Perhaps she didn’t realise we are only a small guest house with five guest bedrooms, and obviously the four doubles are already booked.'
‘Well, night night.’
‘Night night, Mum.’
Emily watched her mum make her way along the hall and downstairs to the basement level where their family suite was, comprising their lounge, two bedrooms, the house kitchen, and their own private bathroom. Although all the rooms had windows to let in natural light, Emily preferred sleeping upstairs on the top floor in Clarissa’s room; it was lovely having views. Now she was back in the servant’s quarters, as she called them, downstairs in the bowels of the house.
Emily didn’t see the point of waiting at the reception desk for the next hour. She had a rough idea of when their next guest would be arriving. She decided to check that the lights were turned off in the reception rooms. No one was around – or so she thought. She was about to switch off the lights in the lounge when she spotted Alice and Omar. She’d made them coffee and biscuits a couple of hours earlier, but didn’t expect them to still be sitting together talking. ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you had retired for the evening.’
Alice glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘I’d better turn in.’
‘Me too,’ said Omar.
Emily stood to one side as they left the lounge. She went in to collect their coffee cups and came back out just in time to see them reach the top of the stairs. She knew Alice’s room was on one side of the landing, Omar’s on the other. Feeling terribly nosy, she lingered a moment to see which way they were headed. They seemed to hesitate. ‘Well, I’m this way,’ she heard Alice say.
‘And I’m that way.’
She watched them part ways. Each evening for the past week, she’d seen and overheard the same shenanigans; Omar inviting her to his room for a nightcap and Alice declining. They’d been spending a lot of time in one another’s company. She thought it was inevitable that one evening, Alice would accept his invitation. She raised her eyebrows. Alice must have changed her mind because she walked back past the head of the stairs in Omar’s direction.
Emily grinned. ‘How romantic,’ she commented under her breath. She shook her head at the incredible timing, at the fact that they should both find themselves back here at the same time – a chance to rekindle lost love, perhaps?
Emily’s smile faded. Perhaps it wasn’t fate or serendipity that had brought Alice and Omar back here after all. Perhaps they had planned it.
Emily shrugged.Who knows? she thought. She took the cups down to the kitchen, popped them in the dishwasher, put the kettle on and took a seat at the kitchen table. She scrolled through her phone; she wanted to find out whether the vacant shop in Cobblers Yard was listed on a property website, and how much it might be.
Sometime later, after getting side-tracked in a fruitless search for a profile of Joss Harper,lawyer, on places like LinkedIn, Emily logged on to her account at AncestryDNA. She’d only posted her details a few days earlier. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she was rather hoping to find her cousins in America and her aunt.
Emily heard a ping. Something appeared in her inbox and she scrolled down to look. She stared at her phone for a long moment as the enormity sunk in. ‘Oh. My. God. I’ve got a hit on the Ancestry site!’
She felt slightly afraid of what it might mean. Her mum was estranged from her sister, for reasons she wouldn’t talk about. Now, someone’s DNA had matched Emily’s. It wasn’t her half-brother or sister, because they hadn’t used the site. She’d texted them and checked before she signed up. Her dad was an only child. That meant it had to be from her mum’s side of the family.
Emily clutched her phone. She still couldn’t believe it. She wanted to run upstairs and tell Clarissa. She was about to click on the contact information of the DNA match when she heard a car draw up on the driveway outside. She slipped her phone in her back pocket and made her way upstairs, just in time to hear a knock at the door.
She opened it to find, to her dismay, a young, good-looking couple walking in, wheeling a suitcase each. Had there been some miscommunication? The young lady she’d spoken to had said she only needed a single room.
‘Hi, I’m Freya, and this is Tarek. We’ve got two rooms booked for tonight.’
Emily offered them a weak smile and walked over to the reception desk. Perhaps it was she who had made the mistake. She sat down and in front of the computer.
