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Alice shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. Please show me to my room.’
Emily picked up a pen. ‘First, would you mind signing the guest book?’ Emily opened a leather-bound book and pushed it along the desk towards her. There was a line for each guest to put their name, address, contact phone number and arrival date.
Alice picked up the pen. Her hand hovered over the empty line beneath the name of another guest – Joss Harper. She knew it was very rude of her, but she couldn’t help it; she read his details. In the address line, he’d written,No fixed abode. There was no mobile phone number given. But it was the arrival date that surprised her the most. According to the entry, he’d been there for weeks. It was no wonder he’d putNo fixed abode, as though he was homeless. She supposed that after that length of stay, the guest house was his home for the time being.
She thought of the room rate she was paying. It certainly wasn’t cheap. Perhaps he had a discount because of the length of his stay? She hoped so. Even so, he would have been better off renting a cottage. She wondered what was keeping him there.
‘Mrs Beaumont?’
‘Oh, sorry – yes.’ She glanced at Emily and wondered if Joss was a young man, and the reason he had stayed so long was staring her in the face, quite literally – the young, pretty, blonde Emily. ‘My mind wandered there for a minute,’ Alice added.
There was something else on her mind as she made her entry in the old-fashioned ledger. What if this was how it had always been done? What if they had kept the old ledgers from past years? Alice was thinking about the contents of that shoebox and the woman who had been communicating with her husband. It seemed a stretch, on the one hand, but if she could get a look at the past ledgers, if they still had them, from when they were there last – would her name be registered?
Alice swallowed. She and Jeffrey had rarely spent a night apart, but for two occasions in the guest house, over twenty-five years earlier. She didn’t want to think about that. It wasn’t something he’d ever brought up – where she’d disappeared to for most of the night on one of those occasions. But now she was wondering why he had never mentioned it. Did he have something to hide too? And did it have something to do with a woman called Wendy?
‘Mrs Beaumont?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Alice apologised again, realising she had been standing there, pen still in her hand after filling out her details, just staring at the page.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ She handed the pen and ledger back to Emily. Nothing had been quite right since that night decades earlier, in this guest house.
‘Are you sure?’
‘This is old-fashioned.’ She pointed at the ledger. ‘Is that something you’ve always done?’
‘What – the ledger?’
Alice nodded.
‘Oh yes, for as long as I can remember.’ Emily pointed at the cabinet behind her. It had glass-fronted doors. Alice saw one shelf filled with bound books. So, theyhadkept the old ledgers. She wasn’t sure whether Emily would let her take a look, but thought it was worth asking. The problem was, what would she say?I’m looking for someone who stayed here decades earlier? Thinking about it, she couldn’t imagine they would give out the personal details of their guests.
Emily called out, ‘Dad! Can you come and help with the cases?’
Gerald appeared with a tea towel in his hand. He wiped his wet hands, flipped it over his shoulder, and walked over. Picking up a suitcase in each hand, he commented, ‘My, these are out of the ark.’
‘Dad!’
‘Oh, sorry. No offence.’
Alice smiled. ‘None taken! I found them in the loft.’ She didn’t know what else to add – that she’d thrown some old clothes in them and decided on the spur of the moment to walk out?
‘Well, I like them,’ commented Gerald. ‘Stickers and all! Ah, the golden age of travel with the dawn of the package holiday. I bet these are worth something.’
Alice nodded. Although she wasn’t that bothered, she was pleased at the thought that when she passed them on to a charity shop, some money would go to a worthwhile cause.
She followed him up the stairs, holding the key in one hand along with Hester’s lead and carrying Percy’s cage in the other.
A sudden high-pitched kitty cry stopped everyone in their tracks.
Alice winced at the sound. ‘Oh, crumbs, I forgot Marley.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll fetch him.’ Emily picked up the cat carrier. ‘Ooh, did we forget you?’ she said in a soppy voice, as she rounded the desk and headed for the stairs.
Marley cried again.
‘Now don’t you worry,’ said Emily, following behind. ‘I know this is a strange house, but you’ll soon settle in.’
