The Guesthouse

by Abbie Frost

  Another shake of the torch. ‘Yes!’ she whispered, as the light came on and she felt a rush of relief.

  But then she heard a sound behind her, like a sharp intake of breath, and something hit her hard in the back.

  She dropped the torch and stumbled to her knees. Thought about how close she was to the water, how green it had looked, how many dark shapes floated in it.

  Something slamming into the back of her head, harder this time, and she fell forward. Her mind registered for a split second the sensation of spiralling through darkness, and then she hit the water. Ice-cold water. And she was sinking – slowly and peacefully – down to the bottom.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Her eyes opened wide and her head throbbed with pain. The torch must still be on, lying where she had dropped it, because there was enough light for her to see the water above her, clouded with bits of algae and leaves. And above that the dark ceiling. Her lungs were still, shocked into stillness. A thought – a thought that seemed like a revelation – came to her. If she didn’t breathe, she would be fine down here, lying peacefully at the bottom of the pool.

  But the need for oxygen gradually became unbearable and she began to choke and struggle. Kicking herself off the floor she reached up towards the light. And broke the surface, mouth wide, spitting water. Gulping air. A moment of blessed relief. Thank you, thank you.

  But she sank again.

  She couldn’t swim.

  Ben’s words came to her: It’s easy, Hannah, nothing to be afraid of. Just relax and kick your legs. She tried to stay calm, to move her limbs, and she came up to the surface again. Sucked in another breath. Maybe Ben was here with her now – at the end – maybe that’s why she felt so peaceful, like she could float down and lie there on the bottom forever.

  But as she went down again she remembered how she came to be here. The smash into her back, someone throwing her in.

  Her calm acceptance disappeared and in its place she felt cold terror. She thrashed the water, trying to keep above the surface. And heard something else above the splashes. Something that sounded like a laugh, a low cruel laugh.

  Then a muffled splash from the other side of the pool and a wave of water hit her. She was no longer alone in the water. Someone else was in here with her, moving fast along the bottom. And she had a sudden flash of memory, of Lucy crouching in the cell telling her story. Mummy showed me how to open the bolts from the inside.

  It was Lucy.

  Hannah could feel her close by, a dark shape gliding towards her, and it was just like all those years ago with her father. She kicked out, her foot connecting with something soft. Then her hand struck what she hoped was a face and she gouged and scratched at it blindly.

  As Lucy kicked off for the surface, Hannah clung to a piece of clothing and felt herself rise with her. Before Lucy could recover, Hannah lashed out again, hit her in the stomach and sent her back down under the water.

  Grabbing the side of the pool she pulled herself along to the metal ladder. Reached out for it and hauled her body up, hand over hand, until she lay panting on the edge. The torch had gone out, shrouding the room in darkness, the only sound the frantic splashing of Lucy clawing her way to the side.

  Water sloshed across the floor as Hannah staggered to her feet and ran. Slipped on the slimy tiles, smashed into the ground again and felt her arm shriek in pain.

  Running again, along the edge of the pool and into the tunnel, the echo of her footsteps thundering after her in the dark. The stomach-churning smell of chlorine and mould followed her too, all the way along the tunnel. In the pitch-black she missed a bend and collided with the wall, her head throbbing, her wet clothes weighing her down.

  Back through the cellar, up the stone steps and past the sterile room, her footsteps pounding against the floor. A few times she thought she caught the sound of panting behind her, of Lucy in pursuit, of another set of feet thumping into floorboards. Never far away, closing the distance fast. She smashed through the padlocked door and into the green corridor and then she stopped. Gasped for breath, leaned against the wall. What was that smell?

  It was smoke. The smell of burning plastic and stone, bits of the house crumbling to ash. She carried on, her pace slower now, and when she entered the hallway she saw smoke billowing out of the corridors upstairs. Hot air hit her like a wall, despite her sodden clothes, and she felt her lungs begin to contract. With her top pulled over her mouth as a shield, she looked into the drawing room, just as the ceiling splintered and began to collapse in flames. The curtains had gone up, spreading heat and fire across the room and onto the floor above. Her eyes streamed and she coughed in great heaves. Chloe wasn’t here, but on the floor lay an empty can of petrol – one of the cans she had seen in the storeroom.

  Lucy had said she needed to get rid of the evidence, but why do it in the house rather than the cellar?

  Unless she wanted to kill everyone left inside.

  ‘Chloe!’ She coughed again. ‘Chloe!’ She bent double and went to the kitchen, but was met by another even fiercer wave of heat. Her eyes stung and her vision began to cloud. She needed oxygen. ‘Chloe! You have to get out!’ Down the green corridor, something shifted. A shadow moved, someone walking towards her, and she turned to run. Then:

  Hannah’s trainers skidded on the marble floor of the hall and she almost fell. Grabbed at the wooden rail that ran along the wall to steady herself. Had to keep on her feet, had to get out.

  Running on again, she strained to see through drifts of smoke. Sweat trickled down her neck in the heat. Smashed paintings and blackened fragments of chandelier littered the floor. And the huge front door loomed at the end of the hall, smoke coiling around it in the gloom. She fumbled back the bolts, wrenched it open and took in a lungful of fresh air. Paused to listen for any sounds in the hallway behind her, any signs of life inside the house. Flames crackled and the building groaned as it began to crumble and fall apart in the heat.

  Stepping outside, she pulled the door closed behind her. Leaned against it and took another gasp of clearer air. The storm had calmed, but rain was still beating down onto the empty hillside that sloped away before her into the night.

  She went to the heavy garden bench beside the door, gripped the cold metal of an armrest and dragged it forward. Her muscles burned, the iron legs of the bench screeched against paving stones. Hands shaking, she turned to the electronic security pad beside the door and tried to key in the code to lock it. Hurry up. Hurry up. The sound of her heartbeat was loud in her ears.

  Then she heard something else, a noise that cut through the howling wind. Footsteps inside the house. Hard shoes beating against marble floor, coming towards the door.

  She turned and started to run.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Five minutes later, Hannah was lying face down in the mud with her leg trapped in a trench of icy water. Dawn would be breaking soon and the worst of the storm was over. She had almost made it, but not quite. Because further up the hill, just below the burning house – coming ever closer – was someone walking towards her. Coming to kill her, she knew that now. She wanted only to lie in the mud and cry, but she had to keep trying.

  She twisted her leg and pulled, but the mud only clutched tighter. Sobbing gently to herself she tried again, exhausted now, barely able to move. And then she stopped and stared back up the hill, to watch the walking figure, to meet her fate with at least a measure of calm. Lucy must be closer now, poor damaged Lucy – a girl with whom Hannah could have shared a lifetime, a sister she could have grown to love – reduced to a killer with only one victim left on her list: Hannah.

  Looking up at the house she saw the flames were no higher than earlier. Perhaps the rain had dampened them down, perhaps Lucy’s plan was going to fail and some of the house would survive. That freezer and its contents might still be there when the police arrived. And she had to hope that, whatever she had done, Lucy would survive too.

  But …

  That walki
ng shadow was too tall to be Lucy, too broad and heavily built.

  It was a man and with a huge surge of relief she realized it must be Mo. Not dead but here with the police to carry her home.

  But the man wasn’t wearing Mo’s clothes; he was dressed all in black, wrapped in threadbare winter clothes. As he reached the nearest cluster of trees, he stopped and Hannah finally saw his face. It was Rob.

  He had survived somehow, crawled back to his cottage and then come to help them. Maybe Lucy hadn’t hit him hard enough because deep down she loved him, and here he was. The police would be here soon and they might be able to find Chloe.

  He reached the top of the trench and peered down at her, his grey hair moving in the wind. ‘Stay put!’ he called. ‘I’ll come down.’

  He shuffled across the muddy slope, his back hunched, and dropped down beside Hannah. He sat there panting, one hand on his chest, the other resting on his knee.

  ‘Thank God, you’re alive. What happened?’ Hannah asked. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I survived.’ His voice quiet.

  ‘Well you need to help. My leg, it’s trapped. Here, take my hand.’ Hannah held it up to him.

  But Rob didn’t take it.

  ‘Pull me out!’ She was shouting at him now. ‘We need to get help.’

  ‘But I want to talk to you, Hannah.’ It was less his words than the way he spoke that made her pause. No longer the monosyllabic communication she was used to with Rob. And he had never before used her name.

  Her stomach jolted. Her vision fixed on one point, and the whole world shrank until that was all she could see:

  Rob’s hand. The hand that rested on his knee; the hand that was stretched out as strong and undamaged as the other one.

  This wasn’t Rob.

  ‘Who are you?’

  The man didn’t respond. He got up and stretched with a yawn, as if suddenly very bored. He stood tall, the hunch no longer visible. Then he smiled down at her, a twisted smile that was at once strange but familiar, like meeting a distant relative for the first time and seeing some version of yourself reflected in them. It was her father – Jack Roper.

  ‘So you’ve finally realized. Well hello, Hannah.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Hello, princess.’

  She struggled to crawl away from him, to free her leg.

  He came closer. ‘You can’t leave yet, princess. The fun’s just getting started.’

  Chapter Sixty

  A searing pain in her skull, a throbbing just above her temple. When she moved her head a fraction the throb became unbearable. She tried to shout, but the only sound was a muffled mghhhhhh. She tasted rough cloth against her lips, her mouth was gagged, her hands bound to a bench behind her back.

  She was in Lucy’s cell. The light from the bare bulb above her head illuminated Rob – or the man she’d thought was Rob – standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. He had knocked her unconscious, then carried her back to the cellar. Back to this nightmare.

  He looked down at her. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said.

  After a moment he knelt and pulled down her gag. She gasped for air, spitting out foul-tasting saliva, and he smiled.

  ‘What do you want?’ Hannah eventually said. ‘Why are you doing this?’ His bright eyes stared down at her, full of intelligence.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ he said. His hand reached to touch a lock of her hair.

  She flinched away. ‘Get off me! Get the fuck off me!’ But when he stood up again and went to the door, Hannah called out. ‘Wait! Where’s Maddie?’

  ‘Maddie?’ He looked back at her. ‘What a disappointment she was after you. So weak, so pathetic, just like her mother. Look around you, I mean this was her fucking bedroom. It’s disgusting. In fact I was never sure she actually was my child. She was like the runt of a litter, you know. Not worth keeping but hardly worth killing either.’

  Hannah could smell smoke, but it was only faint. How long had she been unconscious? She needed to keep him talking.

  ‘You’re so wrong about her. Maddie managed to get away from here – when she was only fifteen – and you couldn’t even find her. She made a career for herself, out of nothing. Or didn’t you know?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve been watching her for years. But, my darling, you wouldn’t have made the mistakes she did. You wouldn’t have trusted poor old Rob here for a start.’ He patted his chest and laughed again, an awful sound that echoed off the walls. ‘Can you believe she used to write to Rob from Dublin?’

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  He walked back into the room and leaned against the wall in front of her. ‘They were both fucking useless. She couldn’t kill me, could barely even knock me out. When I woke up she was gone and Rob was trying to decide what to do with my body.’ His eyes glittered under the light of the bulb. ‘He must have had a nasty surprise. I used the same hammer she’d used on me, but a lot more effectively. I made sure he was dead.’

  Hannah looked away and thought about poor Rob, a man who had done so much for Maddie.

  ‘Maddie thought Rob would tidy everything up for her – bury me – and that would be the end of it. But I needed her to come back home eventually, so I came up with a plan. I wrote to her and told her I’d cut up the body and stored it in the freezer.’ He grinned at Hannah. ‘Of course I didn’t say which body.

  ‘There was no way I was going to bury it. That body was my way of getting her back, having her all to myself again – I knew she couldn’t let it get discovered. It was a kind of insurance policy, you know, because as far as she was concerned it was proof she murdered her dad. But I missed her, that’s the truth, I missed Maddie and I was angry with her for running away.’

  The soft way that he spoke – so warm and comforting – brought Hannah back to those long-ago days in her bedroom. She shivered.

  ‘That’s why I brought her back,’ he said. ‘But aren’t you dying to know why you’re here too?’

  She swallowed but didn’t respond. ‘Of course you are,’ he grinned. ‘Well, apart from wanting to see my little princess again, I thought you just had to be part of this little gathering. You see, you all have something very special in common.’

  ‘What? What do we have in common?’

  ‘You pissed me off.’ He laughed again. ‘That fucking policeman, hanging around all the time, trying to make people suspicious of me.’

  ‘His name was Sandeep and he was just doing his job.’

  He cocked his head at her. ‘Took to the old bastard, did you? Well I sorted him out. Got him off my back and out of the job without much trouble, but there always seemed to be some other do-gooder popping up.’

  Hannah flinched as he touched her face, running his finger down her cheek and cupping her chin. ‘You all tried to ruin things for me. Although you, Hannah my darling, you have the unique distinction of being the only one who managed to do so.’

  There was not a trace of Rob left now and the voice was the one she remembered only too well.

  ‘And you’ve met your sister. I have to say it was great fun watching the two of you just now. You really thought she killed all the others?’

  He straightened and pointed at the photo of Maddie on the wall. ‘You thought she tried to drown you in the pool?’ A chuckle. ‘She tried to save you. It’s a good thing she’s a strong swimmer, or you might have finished each other off. And that would have been a great shame.’

  Hannah began to shake with a chill that reached all the way into her bones. She tried to move, to work her hands free from the bench, but the rope had been tied too tight by too practised a hand. He talked continually, his words spilling out of him as if the days as Rob had built up a torrent of language.

  He touched the picture that showed The Guesthouse in the background. ‘I’ve always hated this house. I thought about setting fire to it for years. Then I had a better idea, the perfect way to do it: a group of Cloud BNB guests ignoring all the warnings and throwing petrol on the
fire when the generator failed.’

  Hannah watched him walk back and forth across the cell. How could she have been so stupid? There was no possible reason for Lucy to do any of this, to kill those who had tried to help her. But she needed to keep him talking, give herself enough time to plan her escape.

  ‘But why Liam? How did he piss you off? I thought he helped cover up what you did to Rob?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked that one out? I have to admit he helped with the Rob incident. Just needed a quiet word with the right person to get him to back down on that one. Sadly for poor old Liam, he was also the doctor who saw Maddie at the hospital and that was a bit too much for his tender, sentimental heart. He had the nerve to alert the child protection people. Just a nuisance, but it annoyed me. So I decided to ruin his precious career, get him struck off the medical register.’

  ‘But how? How did you do it?’

  ‘The gradual drip, drip of anonymous complaints and allegations. More words in the right ears. In the end they had no choice but to fire him. Then I watched his life collapse more disastrously than I could ever have hoped.’

  He laughed. ‘You know, watching was the best bit. Watching you the whole time in this house. It was my own personal experiment. I made sure you weren’t getting enough sleep, made sure you couldn’t escape.’ His voice grew louder. ‘And then I left a trail for you to follow that turned you all against each other.’

  ‘But why go to all that trouble? Why not just light a fire on the first night and get rid of us?’

  He stopped pacing and smiled down at her. ‘Now where would be the fun in that? No, I didn’t just want to kill you, I wanted to own you. And, I wanted you to know I was doing it.’

  Hannah tried to swallow but her throat was too dry. ‘What about the others? The ones who didn’t even know you?’

  ‘The families? Call that guilt by association. Or a bonus for me. And they didn’t have to come. I sent the offer to the policeman, not his son. Hardly my fault if the lad couldn’t resist a cheap holiday.’