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No, it isn’t like her, thought Jeffrey. In all the years they’d been married, she’d never done something like this, apart from that time at the guest house on the Suffolk Coast, before they had Freya. They’d stayed there for their second wedding anniversary, but they’d had a row, and then she’d stalked off and hadn’t come back until the early hours. He’d had no idea where she’d been. They had never talked about it. Or more to the point,shehad never talked about it. She’d reappeared very early the next morning, creeping into bed next to him, perhaps under the illusion he wouldn’t notice she’d been gone practically the entire night. They had never spoken a word about it, either at the time or in the years since.
Of course there was that other time they’d stayed there, and they’d had an almighty falling-out and she’d left altogether and returned home without him. Jeffrey didn’t want to think about that. If Alice ever found out what had happened that night at the guest house when she was gone …
Jeffrey inwardly groaned. He had no idea if everything was all right, not after what Alice had found. But then Freya would know nothing about that. He smiled. ‘Of course everything is all right, sweetheart.’
Freya threw him a dubious look.
‘Look, everything’s fine. Now please let me do some work.’ He motioned at the door for her to leave.
Freya paused at the door. ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if … well, if you guys were not okay?’
Jeffrey nodded, crossed his fingers behind his back, and said, ‘Of course.’
As soon as Freya had closed the door to his study, and he’d heard the front door bang shut, he walked behind his desk, sat down in the faux leather swivel chair and pulled the box towards him. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. He did so anyway, just to remind himself of what a fool he’d been by keeping it.
He listened for the sound of footsteps outside his study. Satisfied that no one was going to come in, he took off the lid and peered inside. There were letters, birthday cards, and Christmas cards going back years. He sat back in his chair and wiped his sweaty forehead. ‘God, I bet she has looked through these. Why else would she have dumped them on my desk?’
‘God!’ he exclaimed again, putting the lid back on the box.
Chapter 9
‘Here, let me help you with those,’ said the taxi driver.
The taxi had arrived on the cobbled driveway outside the guest house. Alice didn’t recall there having been a cobbled driveway when she was last there. It looked new, as though it had been laid recently. She was standing outside the car, holding on to Hester’s lead as the taxi driver lifted her cases out of the boot. She cast her gaze up Shingle Street. The street itself hadn’t changed. The neat red-brick terraced cottages looked the same, although Alice imagined some must have changed hands over the years.
Apart from at the guest house, there was only street parking. All the cottages had little front gardens. The taxi had weaved down the centre of the narrow road between the parked cars. The street sloped gently down to the last house – the guest house – before the tarmacadam road ended in a cul de sac. From there, a path led to the sheltered cove where a planked walkway stretched out on to the shingle beach.
There were no facilities, cafés or public toilets, just a very picturesque Suffolk cove that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Devon or Cornwall – except Alice knew that if it had been in Cornwall, it wouldn’t have remained undiscovered for long.
Her last visit, years and years earlier, had been in the school summer holidays, but even in the height of the summer season, she had been pleasantly surprised to find that it was almost deserted. It was as though Shingle Street had its own private beach. Facilities and activities for children could be found further up the coast in the large resorts like Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, with their big attractions such as amusement arcades and fairground rides.
Then there were the quieter, smaller and more sedate old Victorian seaside resorts of Southwold and Aldeburgh, which Alice had visited in the past, with their teashops, their fish and chip shops, and even their independent cinemas so that visitors could catch a movie if the weather was inclement. And then there were places like this. She imagined that, apart from the residents of Shingle Street, few ventured to this secluded cove.
Alice turned to the guest house. She recalled when she had first set eyes on the place. If her and her husband’s jobs and lives hadn’t been in Cambridge, where they’d already settled into their new house, she would have loved to live here instead – although back then she hadn’t envied the young woman who had taken on the rundown property. It had needed a lot of work. She smiled at the double-fronted detached red-brick Victorian house, with old-fashioned leaded windows, a gabled roof, and ivy creeping up the outside walls. The property had clearly been updated and modernised over the years.
The taxi driver left her cases in the porch. Alice thanked him and gave him cash, and a tip for being so helpful. They’d made a brief stop at a petrol service station on the way so Alice could withdraw enough cash to pay for the journey and the tip. He’d even put the cat carrier with its hissy occupant on top of the suitcases. He offered her his card in case she wanted to call him for her return journey. Alice took the card. Even though she’d booked in for three nights, now she was there, she felt like staying for a week.
The taxi driver looked at the guest house. ‘Do you want me to hang around in case?’
Alice frowned. ‘In case …?’ She caught his eyes roving to Hester, and then Percy.
Alice followed his gaze. He’d overheard her conversation with the receptionist. She knew what he was thinking; would there be a problem with her pets?
Alice hoped there wasn’t. But if there was, she’d just have to do the unthinkable and book them into a local kennel and cattery. Percy would have to stay, though. He would be no trouble, as long as they didn’t mind him being left in her room.
Alice shook her head, hoping there wasn’t a problem. ‘They said they accepted pets.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll be going then.’
The taxi driver reversed out of the driveway as Alice walked up to the front door. She looked at Hester, then glanced at Marley, wondering if she should have asked the taxi driver to hang around. But it was too late now. She took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, thinking about the young couple who owned the guest house when she was last there. Would she recognise them, over twenty-five years later, if they were still running the guest house? Would they recognise her? Thinking about what had happened when she was last there, Alice hoped not. It made her wonder, considering her history with this place, whether she should have returned.
Alice was looking at the taxi driver’s card, thinking that maybe it was a mistake. If she rang him now, it wasn’t too late for him to turn around and come back and pick her up – he was probably just turning into the main road. She wished she’d never been up in the loft and set eyes on that sketch of the guest house – although it wasn’t the sketch itself but the box of letters she’d discovered that was on her mind. She hadn’t spent an awful lot of time going through them. She wished she had. Perhaps there would have been a letter amongst the old birthday and Christmas cards that may have shed some light on who this woman was and how she knew Alice’s husband.
Her first thought on discovering the letters had been that Jeffrey had had an affair, or was still having one. But what if it was just a friend, a work colleague? Alice frowned. Then why had she never seen those cards and letters, and why were they hidden in the one place in the house she rarely ever ventured? What she had gleaned was that the correspondence dated back years, to around the time they were last in Suffolk. Was that just a coincidence? Alice stood at the front door of the guest house, wondering if the answer lay inside.
Chapter 10
The front door opened. ‘Can I help you?’
