The Guesthouse at Lobster Bay

by Annie Robertson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

When Emma sees The Guesthouse at Lobster Bay for sale, she knows it's the seaside haven she needs to recover from a recent trauma. But as soon as Emma collects the keys, her dream of owning a successful guesthouse unravels...Emma has a month to get the house ready before her guests arrive, a task made harder by the discovery that an enormous dog was included in the sale. Then there's the unwelcoming next-door neighbour, Aidan, who Emma must turn to for help. Over the summer, Emma must navigate unforeseen dilemmas and new friendships, and keep her business afloat. But as she falls in love with Lobster Bay, is she also falling for Aidan?

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 368

Sample

Prologue

‘Merry Christmas,’ said Emma, waving to her colleagues who were still at their desks, finishing up for the holidays.

‘Merry Christmas,’ some of them mumbled back but nobody looked up from their screen.

Emma skipped down the three flights of steps to the ground floor, glad to be out of the office, and flung open the door. The crisp, late-afternoon air rushed into her lungs and she drank it in, tightened her scarf against the cold, and put in her AirPods to call her sister.

‘Hold on,’ Jane answered.

‘Okay,’ replied Emma, heading along Carnaby Street, admiring the colourful Christmas lights that hung overhead, which never failed to make her smile after a long day. Through her earphones she heard Jane tell the kids to ‘stop drawing on the kitchen table’, to ‘pick up the Lego’ and to ‘sit down and watch telly’ so that she could ‘talk to Auntie Emma and make the dinner in peace’.

‘What’s up?’ said Jane abruptly, still in handling-the-kids mode.

‘Any idea what I should buy Chris for his Christmas?’ she asked her sister, who was like the Nigella of gift-giving, she never failed to come up with a perfect little something, whoever it was for.

‘Emma, it’s four o’clock on Christmas Eve, why have you left it so late?’

‘It’s been crazy busy at work,’ she replied, which was the truth but not the whole truth; she hadn’t bought Chris a gift because she couldn’t think of anything, which, given they’d been together for six years, wasn’t ideal.

‘You do too much for that company for not enough money,’ said Jane, which was about as close to big-sisterly concern as Jane got.

‘You’re probably right,’ said Emma, who’d had similar thoughts herself but didn’t know how to change things. She’d been with the company for 10 years, working her way up from general dogsbody to design assistant to interior designer and then design consultant, which basically meant a lot more responsibility and many more hours for very little extra pay.

‘There’s no “maybe” about it, Emma. New Year, new job. You’ve got to sort it out.’

‘I will,’ said Emma, pretty certain she wouldn’t, because what were the options? The same job in a different consultancy made no sense, even if it might be nice to work with people who enjoyed each other’s company, and a boss who didn’t frighten everyone half to death. And she wasn’t in a position to set up on her own, not while living in the shoebox of a flat she’d shared with Chris for the last five years. The way she saw it, it made more sense to stay put, even if it did sometimes feel like working in a funeral parlour. ‘More pressingly, what should I get Chris?’

‘Budget?’

‘About a hundred.’

‘Options are: music, movie, book, grooming, food, clothes, gadget or experience-voucher,’ said Jane, firing off the list without having to think.

‘He’s got all the music he wants, seen everything he wants to see, his grooming consists of shower gel and shaving foam, we haven’t space for extra stuff, and he’s not really an “off-roading, gun-toting, jump-out-of-a-plane” kind of a guy,’ said Emma, wishing Chris had a bit more vim about him – not too much, just enough to ignite a spark between them again, and to prove he did have some testosterone, that it hadn’t all been lost by sitting at his computer eight hours a day in the council planning office.

‘So then a book, something yummy and a nice winter jumper.’

‘You don’t think that’s a bit yawn?’ Emma pushed away a thought that ‘yawn’ summed up their relationship these days. It’d been ages since they’d done anything fun together. They used to go to gigs, and plays and stand-up shows, but now ‘fun’ seemed to consist of a takeaway in front of the telly followed by an early night, and not the kind of ‘early nights’ they used to enjoy. Not that it was just Chris’s fault, Emma knew she was to blame too; she hated not having the courage to let him go.

‘You could always add in a cock ring to spice things up,’ said Jane, as if she’d read Emma’s mind.

‘We’ll be opening our presents at his mum’s,’ said Emma, as if this were the only thing holding her back from such a present.

‘Mummy, what’s a cock ring?’ Emma heard Lily ask.

Emma chuckled as she listened to Jane explaining to her five-year-old daughter that she’d said ‘clock ding, to fix Uncle Chris’s grandfather clock’.

‘I swear, they miss nothing,’ whispered Jane after Lily had been sent back to the telly with a bowl of crisps to keep her occupied.

Emma laughed, glad that the interruption had distracted from talk of her sex life and the state of her relationship. ‘Thanks for the suggestions,’ she said, having arrived at the entrance to Liberty. ‘I’d better get on. Merry Christmas! See you at New Year.’

‘Merry Christmas, Em. Hope it’s a good one.’

 

The streets were quieter by the time Emma left the department store with a bag of perfectly pleasant but uninspired gifts for Chris. As she strolled onto Regent Street, she soaked up the last-minute bustle of shoppers and the relaxed Christmas cheer of office workers heading home with boxes of chocolates poking out of their bags and Christmas flowers under their arms. Overhead the lights twinkled elegantly, and Christmas music seeped from the stores, giving Emma a warm glow. Wanting to prolong the feeling, Emma made an unusual snap decision not to wait at her usual bus stop and instead to grab a drink and walk some of the way home.

Having bought a hot chocolate, Emma continued down Regent Street, watching her bus whizz by, glad of her decision to take her time. She stopped to gaze at Hamleys’s winter wonderland window display, where she caught sight of her reflection. The Santa hat she’d been wearing most of the day in the office was positioned jauntily on the top of her dark wavy bob, and her bright-green scarf jutted out from her coat like a jolly snowman’s. She laughed at herself then continued south, drinking the warm peppermint chocolate and smiling at a couple with their cherry noses pressed against the window of the diamond jewellers, their arms wrapped round each other’s backs. She was trying to figure out which Christmas scent was coming from the soap shop – cinnamon, ginger, orange, cranberry? – when a blinding white flash and deafening, violent blast threw Emma off her feet, blowing her hot chocolate and gift bag out of her hands.

 

Moments later, Emma resisted opening her eyes. The alarms and screams that replaced the Christmas carols, and smoke that wiped out the smell of the soap shop engulfed her lungs and stung her nostrils, telling her all she needed to know. And when she did at last open them she discovered a horror scene. Everything was mixed up. There was glass everywhere. People were covered in blood and dust. And all the lights had gone out, in the shops and overhead. People lay scattered on the ground and, not far from where she was, a lower half of a leg sat next to a tattered Christmas present.

‘Help!’ she heard someone cry, a gut-wrenching cry that forced Emma into action.

A short distance away she met the eyes of a woman a little older than herself, her eyes filled with terror, her skin pale. Without thinking, Emma scrambled to her feet and stumbled to her, pulling off her scarf and tying it as tight as she could above the woman’s knee to try and stem the bleeding of her severed leg. But as hard as Emma tried, the blood continued to flow, forming a stream that ran off the pavement and into the gutter.

‘I’ll get help,’ said Emma, staring into the woman’s eyes, which were dark against the paleness of her skin.

But as Emma waited to get through to emergency services she saw the woman’s breathing become shallower and shallower, until she was barely moving at all. By the time someone picked up and told her help was already on its way, Emma could see no movement at all.

‘Just hold on, help’s coming,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring, taking the woman’s hand in hers and gently pushing back her hair that had fallen over her eye. ‘They’re on their way.’

She searched the woman’s eyes, watching for a glimmer of light, then held her breath as the woman exhaled for the final time.

‘No . . .’ said Emma, bringing her cheek close to the lady’s mouth, but there was nothing to feel, and Emma knew, from the first aid course she’d taken years earlier, that she’d lost too much blood for chest compressions to help.

She closed the lady’s eyes, tucked her hair behind her ears and was about to button up her coat to protect her from the cold, when she noticed she was wearing a name-necklace, which read Dawn.

‘Sleep in peace, Dawn,’ she said, reaching once more for her hand, which was already losing heat. An unbearable sensation of numbness filled Emma’s body, as if she wasn’t really there at all.

Emma had no sense of how long she’d been with Dawn, but when she looked up she was hit by just how surreal it all was. Everywhere people were fleeing in panic and fright, the walking wounded staggered past. It was impossible to count how many emergency vehicles had arrived, the blue and red strobes replacing the elegant Christmas twinkle. It was chaos, motion and noise everywhere and yet, to Emma, it was also a frozen, silent tableau.

Just then a phone vibrated in Dawn’s pocket. Emma reached for it and found a message shining out against a backdrop of two beautiful, smiling children. It read: Mum, it’s almost Santa time!!! Hurry up and come home! Love you. Miss you. xxx

‘Shit,’ she muttered, staring at their angelic, beaming faces, her numbness rapidly turning to anger.

 

After that everything blurred into one, only the odd detail remained clear: handing Dawn’s phone to a policeman and knowing the awfulness of the call he’d have to make; a sheet being placed over Dawn; a fireman asking if she was injured; phones ringing relentlessly, and the crinkle of someone wrapping a gold foil blanket around her shoulders.

She sat on the pavement next to Dawn’s lifeless body, staring blankly at the unfathomable scene in front of her as if watching a horror movie. Even if she had had the faculty to reason what to do next, there was no way she would have moved; shock rooted her to the ground.

At some point, Emma’s own phone rang. She didn’t look at it or answer – she hadn’t the capacity to speak and, even if she did, what would she say? How could she ever explain any of it to anyone?

Eventually someone took her by the arm, pulled her to her feet and directed her to follow a gaggle of others, all draped in gold.

‘I need to wait with Dawn,’ she stammered.

‘Who?’ asked the voice.

‘Dawn,’ she indicated, but when she turned she discovered Dawn’s body had been removed, only the dark stain of blood remained where she had lain.

It was then that Emma realised she was shaking uncontrollably and freezing cold, despite the blanket.

‘Follow the others, someone will take care of you,’ said the voice.

Emma did as instructed, picking her way through the aftermath towards Piccadilly Circus, but rather than get on the bus that was being used as a makeshift shelter, she kept walking, down Haymarket, her feet carrying her without any conscious thought. Just before Trafalgar Square, Emma caught sight of her reflection again in a window, which stopped her dead in her tracks. She was still wearing her Santa hat, her skin was white as snow, and the gold of the emergency blanket gave her the appearance of an enormous Christmas cracker.

‘Bastards,’ she said, knowing that for many, including Dawn’s daughters, the innocence of Christmas had just been shattered for ever.

Chapter 1

‘Auntie Emma, what are you looking at?’

‘Huh?’ replied Emma, emerging from a trance she hadn’t realised she’d been in. Her five-year-old niece, Lily, pushed her way onto Emma’s lap, a Barbie doll in one hand, a toy comb in the other.

‘You’ve been staring at that computer for ages, love,’ said Emma’s Mum, Liz.

‘Have I?’ Emma shook away her daze, rejoining the hubbub of activity in Jane’s kitchen: their mum was preparing sandwiches at the island, a frilly apron tied around her small, curvy figure; Jane was hanging laundry on the dryer, and Emma’s seven-year-old nephew, Jake, was rolling around next to the bifold doors with their new puppy, Bear.

‘It’s a house – bo-ring,’ said Lily, peering at the screen and pushing away the laptop to make room for her doll on the kitchen table instead. Emma noticed that Lily’s silvery blonde hair was not dissimilar from her doll’s.

‘You’re not looking at that guesthouse in Scotland again, are you?’ asked Jane, unable to hide the note of disdain in her voice. Jane couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live anywhere other than Hertfordshire, even if it did mean living in a tiny box of a house that cost a small fortune. And she certainly couldn’t understand why anyone would want to run a guesthouse.

‘I can’t help it, there’s just something about it,’ replied Emma, shifting Lily further along the bench then flicking through photographs of the impressive, sandstone townhouse at Lobster Bay with its high ceilings, magnificent-sized rooms, and stunning sea views. She’d been looking at the property for a couple of months, since New Year’s Eve, trying to imagine herself living out her dream of owning a bespoke guesthouse and being part of a Scottish village community, but she hadn’t quite mustered the confidence to arrange a visit. Unlike her sister, Emma found the idea of living on a windswept Scottish peninsula far more appealing than living within shouting distance of London – she’d take sand over concrete any day of the week.

‘The only good thing about it is the price tag,’ said Jane, tightening her blonde pigtail and hoisting up her skinny jeans. Emma often wondered if the two of them really were biological sisters – they couldn’t be more contrasting in their appearance. Jane had inherited the tall, thin, straight-blonde genes from their father, Emma the shorter, curvier, wavy-brown ones from their mother. And the differences didn’t stop at the physical: Jane had always been outgoing and impulsive, unlike Emma who verged on cautious and unspontaneous.

‘It is outrageously cheap,’ mumbled Emma, still trying to figure out why it was so inexpensive; had she missed something? She couldn’t find anything on the photos that rang alarm bells, and certainly not anything that a lick of paint wouldn’t fix, which she was more than capable of doing herself. At the price the agent was asking for, Emma could barely have bought a two-bedroom flat in her sister’s town, let alone a seven-bedroom semi-detached house. As far as she could tell, it was a steal.

‘It would take years to do it up, is that really what you want?’

Emma knew in her heart of hearts that it was, but she knew Jane wouldn’t understand. Jane had always been happy living in soulless new-builds on estates where the most people knew of each other was what type of car was parked in their driveway. But Emma had always craved community and a home that was welcoming and full of soul that she could share with family, friends and neighbours, and she’d harboured a dream of a guesthouse ever since she could remember. When her friends were fantasising about becoming pop stars and actors, Emma was poring over glossy magazines of beautiful bedrooms and bathrobes. Over the last decade she’d lost sight of her dream, but all of that had changed after the events of Christmas Eve.

Within a week Emma had quit her job, left Chris, moved back in with her mum, and found her dream guesthouse – the fresh start she craved. She hadn’t told her mum or sister about what she’d witnessed, she knew they could never understand, but she was certain they knew something was amiss – after all, it was so unlike Emma to do so much on impulse. And now here she was considering buying a guesthouse in Scotland!

All that mattered to Emma now was to find a community that she could be part of and a home she could share with others. And there was something about this house that called loudly to her, something that told her this could be the home, business and community she longed for, that all the hard work required to make it perfect would be worth it. If only she could find the courage to buy it and live out her dream.

‘It wouldn’t take her that long to do up,’ said Liz, bringing the sandwiches to the table and shooing her grandchildren towards the sink to wash their hands. ‘All that experience as an interior designer, you’d have the place done up in no time.’

Emma twisted her lips, contemplating just how much work needed to be done. The bedrooms needed painting and the dining room too, but those wouldn’t take that long – she could manage a room every couple of days if she knuckled down to it. Maybe an initial couple of weeks’ work, a month tops. The more she thought about it the more it seemed like a viable option.

‘I’ve never understood your fascination with guesthouses,’ said Jane, stepping over the bench to sit down for lunch. ‘I think you’re insane to even consider it.’

‘I love the idea,’ said Emma, who’d planned to study hospitality at university and gain the necessary experience of running a small hotel for a few years after graduating, but her father had died suddenly of a heart attack in her last year of school and, with Jane already at university, her mother had needed Emma’s support. In the end it had been easier to study interior design part-time at the local college than head off to uni, but now, finally, over ten years later, there was an opportunity to do just what she wanted. ‘I think it sounds fun, having the world come to you, never quite knowing who the wind might blow in.’ Emma had always been a bit of a home bird. Unlike many of her peers she never caught the backpacking bug. She much preferred the idea of the world coming to her.

‘Right,’ said Jane scathingly. ‘Like drunk wedding guests who vomit all over your bathrooms, small children who soak the mattresses with pee and small dogs who poop on the carpets.’

‘Sounds a lot like your life,’ said Emma, gesturing to Bear, his back arched and bum curled towards the floor, about to make a deposit on Jane’s pristine limestone.

Quick as a flash Jane was up and onto him, arms outstretched in front of her, releasing him into her pocket-sized garden then rapidly sliding the doors closed behind her.

‘That’s one thing for certain,’ said Emma, watching her sister scrub her hands. ‘If I do buy this house, it will have a strict “no dogs” policy.’

‘Why don’t you like dogs, Auntie Emma?’ asked Jake, his mouth full of egg sandwich, his elbows on the table.

Emma wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s not that I don’t like them exactly, I just don’t like the smell, the hair, the slobber.’ She widened her eyes at Jake. ‘And I really, really don’t like picking up their poo!’

‘That I don’t blame you for,’ said Jane, clocking the small parcel on the lawn that Bear was now sniffing as Jake laughed his head off. ‘But seriously, doesn’t it concern you just a little, the idea of running a big house like that on your own with any old stranger walking through your door?’

‘I guess whoever ran it before must have done the same,’ said Emma, skipping through the photos once more. From the abundance of net curtains, lace tablecloths and chintz curtains, Emma surmised that it was more than likely an elderly lady who was selling the house; there was next to no evidence of anything masculine in the pictures at all.

‘It was probably a couple,’ said Jane, knowingly. ‘You know, someone to do the handiwork, someone else to do the housework. Can you really manage all that on your own? You might have a flair for design but housekeeping and DIY? Really? I’m not s. . .