Read Chapter 3: The Guest Book of Regret

The lobby of Gull’s Rest smelled of dust and salt and the particular mustiness of a building that had been shut against the sea for too long. Imogen had tied her hair back with a rubber band from her luggage and rolled her sleeves to the elbows, but the grime had still found its way under her fingernails, into the creases of her knuckles.

She had started with the obvious—sweeping the sand and grit from the flagstone floor, wiping down the window ledges, gathering the dead flies from the sills into a paper cup. The work was mechanical, which was exactly what she needed. Every time she stopped moving, her mind drifted back to Pemberton's office, to the smug curve of his mouth as he read the clause that trapped her here for the season.

*Operate as a paying bed-and-breakfast.* As if she knew the first thing about running an inn. As if she had any interest in learning.

The guest books were stacked on a low shelf beneath the reception desk, their spines worn to soft leather, their covers faded to indistinct shades of green and blue and oxblood. There must have been twenty of them, arranged in no particular order, some lying flat, others leaning at angles. Imogen crouched to pull them out, thinking she might at least clear the shelf, give the desk a chance of looking professional.

The newest volume was bound in dark blue cloth, the gold lettering on its cover rubbed almost smooth. She opened it to the first page and found a date from eleven years ago, the summer before her grandmother had stopped keeping records in bound books and switched to a battered spiral notebook that lived in the kitchen drawer.

Imogen settled onto the bottom step of the staircase, the book balanced on her knees. The entries were mostly names. London visitors, a family from Bristol, a honeymooning couple from Glasgow. A few wrote comments, and she smiled despite herself at one that read, *Fresh crab omelette to die for. Thank you, Mrs. R!*

But then her finger stopped on an entry dated late August, eleven summers ago. The writing was cramped and hurried, pressed hard into the page. *Room 3. The mattress needs replacing.* No signature. No room number after the line.

She frowned and turned the page to find the rest of it, but the entry was followed by a blank page. Then another. And then—

Imogen's breath caught.

The page was gone. Torn out at the spine, leaving only a ragged crescent of paper, a whisper of what had been written there. She ran her thumb across the torn edge, feeling the fibres. The pages around it were intact, the binding tight. Someone had deliberately removed this page. Not years ago either, to judge by the colour of the exposed paper, bright and unyellowed compared to its neighbours.

She checked the dates. The torn page fell between an entry from mid-August and one from early September. The summer she had left Cornwall. The summer Elias Penrose had kissed her on the quay at midnight and then stood in the harbour car park the next morning, watching her drive away without a word.

On the facing page, someone had written in a different hand, a looping cursive she didn't recognise: *Don't trust the Penroses.*

The ink was fresh. No more than a few days old.

A clap of cold air made her look up. The front door had drifted open, and the wind off the sea carried the sound of gulls and the distant grind of the tide. Imogen closed the book, then opened it again to check the date on the cover's inside flap. The year of her grandmother's death.

She turned it over in her hands, considering. Her grandmother had kept a guest book for over four decades. Every summer, a new volume. The inn had never been closed, never been sold, never been anything but hers. And now this final book, with its warning, with its missing page—

The bell above the door chimed, and Imogen startled so badly she nearly dropped the book.

A woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light. She was small and weathered, her face a network of fine lines, her grey hair cut short and practical. She carried a wooden crate in her arms, and Imogen caught the gleam of jam jars packed inside.

"Oh," the woman said, stepping inside. "You gave me a fright. I thought the place was empty." Her accent was Cornwall-thick, the vowels broad and unhurried. "You're Margaret's granddaughter, then? You've got her chin."

Imogen rose, setting the guest book aside. "I'm Imogen. You knew my grandmother?"

"Everyone knew Margaret Renfrew. I'm Joan Trewithick. I run the farm up the lane—well, my son does now. I keep the hens and make the jam." She set the crate on the reception desk with a grunt of effort. "Brought you a few jars. Welcome to the neighbourhood, as they say."

"That's kind of you. I don't know how long I'll be staying."

Joan's sharp eyes took in the lobby. "Long enough, I expect. Margaret's will was the talk of the village before she was even cold. You're to run the place for the summer, isn't that right?"

Word travelled fast in small towns. Imogen had forgotten that. "That's the gist of it."

"Then you'll want these." Joan tapped the crate. "You can't run a bed-and-breakfast on charm alone. Not that you haven't got the charm, though you hide it well." She smiled, and Imogen found herself smiling back despite everything.

"Thank you. Really. I'll—" She gestured vaguely at the crate. "I'll make good use of them."

The old woman's gaze drifted to the guest book on the stairs. Something flickered in her expression, there and gone. "Found the old records, then?"

"Just this one. I was curious who'd stayed."

"Mmm." Joan was quiet for a moment. "Margaret kept every book since she opened the doors. Said they were the inn's diary. Every stranger who slept under her roof left a little piece of themselves behind." She looked at Imogen, and there was something careful in her voice. "You'll want to mind the ones from that last summer. That was when the trouble started."

The warning was almost exactly what the entry in the book had said. Imogen opened her mouth to ask more, but Joan was already moving toward the door.

"Come see me if you need anything. I'm up the lane most mornings." She paused on the threshold, looking back. "And if you're planning to open the place properly, you'll want to sort the rowboat before the tide takes it. It's been sitting in the boathouse all winter, and the wood won't thank you for the neglect."

Then she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her, and Imogen was alone with the pile of guest books and the strange sense that everyone in this village knew more than she did.

The rowboat. She remembered it—a small wooden skiff painted pale grey, with *The Gull* stencilled on the stern in faded black letters. Her grandmother had kept it in the stone boathouse below the inn, and Imogen had spent long afternoons as a girl pretending to row out to sea, though she'd never been allowed past the breakwater.

She went to the window and looked down the sloping garden toward the water. The boathouse roof was visible between the gorse bushes, sagging in the middle like a tired horse. The tide was out, exposing a glittering stretch of sand and weed.

Something in the guest book had mentioned a boat. A receipt, she remembered now—the paper that had slipped out when she'd first opened the book and fluttered to the floor. She'd picked it up and set it on the desk without thinking, too distracted by the warning written on the page.

She crossed the room and found it where she'd left it, a rectangle of paper gone soft at the edges, creased from being folded too many times. It was a hand-written invoice on letterhead that read *Penrose Boatworks, Porthneath Harbour*.

*Custom repair—Gull's Rest rowboat. Replacement of keel and two hull planks. New oarlocks and fittings. Materials: oak, copper nails, marine varnish. Labour: 5 days.*

The total was listed at the bottom, a sum that made Imogen's stomach drop.

And at the foot of the page, in the same neat hand that had filled out the invoice, a signature: *Elias Penrose. Paid on receipt.*

But there was a second line beneath it, added in different ink, darker and more hurried. *Balance outstanding. Payment arrangements to be confirmed.*

Imogen stared at the signature until the letters blurred. Eleven years, and his name still had the power to stop her cold. She wondered if he stood in his workshop now, a hammer in his hand, knowing the inn was hers. Knowing she'd have to come to him if she wanted the boat seaworthy.

The wind rattled the window frame. Somewhere beyond the garden wall, a gull cried its raw, thin complaint.

Imogen folded the receipt carefully and tucked it into her back pocket. She would need to see the boat for herself. She would need to know exactly what damage had been done, what repairs were needed, how much money she didn't have.

But first, she wanted to see who else had signed the guest book in those final weeks. She crossed back to the stairs and picked it up, flipping forward past the torn page, scanning the entries with a new intensity.

A name near the end caught her eye. A London address. A stay of three nights in October, just weeks before her grandmother's death. The comment was brief, almost curt.

*Lovely inn. Pity about the family.*

Imogen read it three times, her pulse ticking in her throat. Then she closed the book, tucked it under her arm, and started for the stairs. Her grandmother's private rooms were still untouched, the door at the end of the hall locked since the death. She had avoided them, telling herself she wasn't ready, that it was too soon.

But the guest book had said *don't trust the Penroses*. And the receipt in her pocket carried Elias's name. And twelve missed calls from Pemberton's office were stacked in her phone's notification tray like accusations.

She reached the top of the stairs and stood at the door with the brass handle, her grandmother's door. The key was cold in her palm. It had been hanging on a hook beside the reception desk, waiting for her.

Imogen turned the lock and pushed inside.