Read Chapter 4: A Debt to the Boatbuilder

The boatbuilder’s yard smelled of creosote and salt, and the air was thick with the rasp of a plane over wet oak. Imogen stood at the gate, her hand on the rusted latch, watching a broad-shouldered man shape a timber plank on a low trestle table. He hadn’t noticed her yet, and she used the moment to steel herself. Elias Penrose. His name had been on the offer letter she’d nearly signed, and now it was attached to her grandmother’s unpaid debts.

“Mr. Penrose?” she called, stepping through the gate.

He looked up, brush-cut hair gone grey at the temples, eyes the same pale blue as his son’s. He studied her a moment, then set down the plane and wiped his hands on a rag. “You’ll be the Renfrew girl. Though you’re not much a girl anymore.”

“No,” she said, stopping a few feet short. “Imogen. I inherited Gull’s Rest.”

“Aye, I heard.” He gave a short, hollow laugh. “Heard you’re selling up. Nearly sold, anyway, until the will put its foot down.”

Word travelled fast in a village this size. She’d been in Cornwall barely forty-eight hours, and already her business was pub gossip. “Actually, that’s why I’m here,” she said. “I found a receipt in the guest books. For a commissioned repair job on a rowboat called *The Gull*. The invoice is dated two weeks before my grandmother died, and it says ‘payment pending.’ I wanted to check the bill was settled.”

Elias crossed his arms, the rag dangling from his fingers. The plane on the trestle table caught the light, its blade edge silver and sharp. “It’s not.”

Imogen’s stomach gave a small, sickening drop. She’d hoped—she’d rather childishly assumed—that the receipt was a mistake, that her grandmother had paid cash and never updated the paperwork. But of course not. Nothing about this inheritance was going to be clean.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

He named a figure. It wasn’t a fortune by London standards, but it was more than she had in her account after the stamp duty on her flat had gutted her savings. She did the sums in her head: that plus the materials list from the hardware store, plus the surveyor’s estimate for the roof, the damp, the rewiring. She’d need to take out a loan. Against an inn she wasn’t even allowed to sell until September.

“Right,” she said, her voice thinner than she wanted. “And the work was done? The boat’s finished?”

“Finished,” he said. “She’s in the shed, covered up. Your gran wanted her restored proper. New planking, fresh tar, recaulked seams. Said she was going to row out to the point one last time, scatter some ashes.” He paused, jaw tightening. “She never got the chance.”

Imogen looked away, at the grey water beyond the yard, into a guilt she wasn’t ready to examine. Four years since she’d last visited. Four years, and her grandmother had been planning her own memorial, commissioning a boat to carry her remains out to sea. And Imogen had been too busy in London, too angry about the past, to pick up the phone.

“She paid others in advance,” Elias went on. “I found out later. Pale young fellow from the electricians, he said she’d settled his invoice the week before she went. The roofers, same. But me, she left owing. I figured maybe she meant it that way.” He looked at her, unblinking. “To make sure you’d have to come see me.”

Imogen frowned. “Why would she want that?”

“Perhaps she thought you owed a debt of your own.” His voice was quiet, not unkind, but there was steel in it. “To this village. To her. To the boy you left.”

She felt heat rise to her throat. “I didn’t—that was years ago. And it wasn’t one-sided.”

“Wasn’t it?” He didn’t push further, just turned back to his trestle and ran a hand along the plank. “I’m not asking for the money today, Miss Renfrew. I’m not a hard man. But I’ll need it by the end of summer, and I’d rather not take you to court over it. Bad for local business, and worse for the name on the inn.”

Imogen’s shoulders tightened. “You’ll get it,” she said, the lie forming before she could stop it. “I’m running the inn all season. I’ll have the revenue.”

Elias nodded slowly, then reached into the pocket of his canvas apron and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He held it out. “I had this in my file. When I heard your gran had gone, I thought you might have no one else to tell you.”

She took it, unfolded it. It was a letterhead—Penrose Boatbuilding, established 1952—with a handwritten note in a hand she recognised with a sudden ache. Her grandmother’s script, thin and slanting, the way it had been in the last card she’d sent to London.

*Elias, if Imogen comes to you about the money and the boat, tell her this: I’m sorry for the condition I put on the inn. I’m not sorry for the chance. She thinks I’ve trapped her, but I’m setting her free. She’s been living in a story she wrote when she was seventeen. The truth is different. When she’s ready, she’ll ask the right questions. And when she does, I hope you’ll tell her the truth about the summer she left.* The note ended there, unsigned, as if her grandmother had been interrupted.

Imogen read it twice. The words blurred slightly. “What truth?” she said, her voice hoarse. “What does she mean, the summer I left? I know what happened. I was there.”

Elias didn’t answer, just picked up the plane again and set it against the plank. “I told her I’d keep it until you asked the right question. You’ll have to figure out what that is for yourself. I’m just a boatbuilder.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Your gran wasn’t interested in fair.” He ran the plane down the oak, a long curl of pale wood peeling away. “She was interested in right. Took me twenty years to understand the difference. You’ve got a summer. Best get started.”

Imogen stood there, the letter clutched in her hand, the weight of it dragging at her arm. She’d come here to settle a bill and leave. Instead, she’d walked into a maze with no exit. Her grandmother had not only trapped her in the inn—she’d built deliberate puzzles around her, leaving breadcrumbs that led to people Imogen had hoped never to see again.

“Wait,” she said, as something clicked. “You said you had the offer on the inn. The one I was going to accept. But you’re not interested anymore. Why?”

Elias paused, the plane still mid-stroke. He looked at her over his shoulder. “Because the offer was never about the inn.”

The sentence hung in the salt air, incomplete. Imogen waited for him to expand, but he only shook his head.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ve got a hull to finish before the tide. And you’ve got a guesthouse to open. The locals heard you’re running it. A few might even book in, out of curiosity, or pity, or spite.” He almost smiled. “That’s Cornwall for you. We’ll lend you a hammer but we’ll also keep score.”

She folded the letter carefully, slid it into her jacket pocket, then turned and walked back toward the gate. But at the threshold, she stopped, looking back.

“Mr. Penrose—is your son a good cook?”

Elias’s brow furrowed. “Toby? Runs the kitchen at the Old Coastguard. Why?”

“No reason,” she said, and continued walking, because she didn’t have a plan yet, only the flicker of one, and she wasn’t about to share it with the father of her enemy.

Back at Gull’s Rest, the lobby smelled of dust and salted damp. Imogen stood in the centre of the room with her phone in her hand, the surveyor’s estimate open in another tab, the unpaid bill at the boatbuilder burning a hole in her mental arithmetic. She had a hundred and four days of summer, an inn that needed work she couldn’t afford, and a letter in her pocket telling her everything she thought she knew was only half the story.

She looked up at the staircase, at the landing above, where her grandmother’s private rooms waited, still untouched and sealed. The solicitor had given her keys, but she hadn’t had the courage to go inside yet. Too many ghosts, she’d told herself.

But the ghosts were patient. And by the feel of it, they were already asking for company.

She needed money. She needed answers. She needed to open the doors of Gull’s Rest in six days and pray someone—anyone—would come in and pay to stay.

Imogen took a breath, walked to the front desk, and pulled out the guest log. She opened a fresh page and wrote at the top, in crisp, deliberate lettering: *Gull’s Rest B&B — Summer Season.* Then she stared at the blank lines below, waiting for the guests who hadn’t arrived yet to fill them.

One way or another, they would. She’d make sure of it.