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‘I can’t help it.’
‘Well – try. Besides, you won’t get anything out of him. As you noticed, he’s not very approachable.’
‘Or talkative,’ added Clarissa. She glanced at Emily. ‘I might try to change that.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘Oh, a sweet dog called Donut.’
‘How do you know Joss likes animals?’ In all the time he’d been there, Emily hadn’t thought to ask.
‘I’ll find out,’ Clarissa replied.
Emily sighed. ‘You never give up, do you?’ She guessed that it was a trait you needed as an aspiring investigative journalist.
‘Never! Not when there’s a cute guy involved.’
Emily frowned at her back as they continued up the stairs. She’d rather Clarissa hadn’t called Joss cute. She suddenly felt a surprising pang of jealousy that her best friend might fancy him.
Clarissa glanced over her shoulder, adding, ‘And he sounds quite mysterious. I want to find out his secret.’
‘A secret? What are you on about?’
‘He’s hiding something – can’t you tell?’
Now Emily thought about it, she did wonder why Joss was there, at a remote, out-of-the-way guest house on the sleepy Suffolk Coast.
‘If I had to hazard a guess,’ said Clarissa, pausing on the stairs, ‘I’d say that he’s running away from something.’
‘Or someone.’
Clarissa said, ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll get to the bottom of it.’
That was what Emily was afraid of. Did their guests want their pasts and their secrets unravelled by a journalist who would stop at nothing to further her career? Emily was looking at her friend in a whole new light – and it wasn’t a favourable one.
‘So, what do we know about the other guest, Alice?’
‘You mean, what doIknow?’
Clarissa grinned.
‘I shouldn’t be discussing the guests.’
‘Oh, Emily, don’t be a spoil sport. Besides, it’s just between you and me.’
Emily raised her eyebrows.
‘Cross my heart,’ said Clarissa, a bit too flippantly.
Emily sighed. What harm would it do? ‘She’s here on her own, arrived with a menagerie of pets, well, three – a cat, a dog, and a parrot.’
‘A parrot? You’re joking with me.’
‘Nope.’
They continued up the stairs while Emily talked in a hushed voice behind her. ‘She wrote a letter to her husband and asked us to post it.’
Clarissa glanced at Emily over her shoulder. ‘A letter to her husband?’
