Free The Mercer's House (Northern Gothic Book 1) by Antonia Frost

might have gone anywhere. They might still be living in Britain under assumed names.’
    ‘They might, yes,’ said Zanna. ‘If they are then there’s not much I can do. I can’t afford a private detective—which reminds me, Alexander was supposed to give me the correspondence from the private investigation agency they used at the time. He must have forgotten.’
    ‘Well, you still haven’t texted him about the other thing. Helen’s letter. You can add it to the list.’
    ‘Oh, I haven’t, have I?’ said Zanna. ‘I got distracted by the email that never was.’
    She sent the message, then put her phone away. They ordered food and watched as the bar began to fill up. Over in the corner, Ewan was setting up a microphone.
    ‘Have you got a band on?’ said Zanna to Joe as he came to take their plates.
    ‘Karaoke night,’ he said gloomily. ‘Not my idea,’ he added as they laughed at his woebegone face, ‘but as you can see it’s popular, for some strange reason.’
    He went off to stand behind the bar like a grim sentinel.
    ‘You. Me. Sonny and Cher,’ said Garrett, pointing at Zanna and then himself.
    ‘Over my dead body,’ said Zanna. She had just seen Will Devereux come in. He glanced at her and then with curiosity at Garrett, then went to the bar and began talking to Joe.
    ‘You know you want to,’ said Garrett. ‘And even if you don’t, have another couple of drinks and soon it will seem like a perfectly sensible thing to do.’
    The bar was quite full now. Ewan, for whose benefit the karaoke had clearly been put on, stood up and did a passable impersonation of Frank Sinatra, to great applause. That broke the ice, and one after another people began to get up and sing. The rest of the evening was something of a blur. The bar was crowded and Zanna had more to drink than she had intended. She was vaguely aware of sitting among a crowd of people, and was fairly sure that at some point Will came to join them, and that she introduced him to Garrett, but she had no memory of what had been said, if anything—the noise was too loud for much conversation anyway. At last the final song was sung and the last stragglers ejected, and Zanna and Garrett staggered upstairs, giggling. Garrett showed signs of wanting to come into her room, but she shook her head and wagged her finger.
    ‘No. No. No. That one’s yours,’ she said, pointing down the corridor.
    ‘But I was going to give you a fireman’s lift across the threshold,’ he said.
    ‘Not in your state,’ she said. ‘You’ll drop me on my head.’
    He stuck out his chin petulantly, then blew her a kiss and went off unsteadily to his own room. Zanna went inside and began undressing with difficulty, then had a sudden worry that she had left her purse downstairs, so went to fish in her bag. The purse was there, but she saw that her phone was flashing with a missed call. She dialled the voicemail number and listened. For a moment she thought someone must have called her by mistake, as all she could hear was the sound of the sea and the murmur of voices in the background. Then a voice spoke, and the sound of it sobered her up almost immediately. It was a woman’s voice.
    ‘Helen . . . it’s Helen . . . it’s Helen,’ it said. Then there was a beep and the message ended.

I T WAS nearly ten o’clock when Zanna awoke. She lay very still, hoping that the thumping in her head would subside long enough to allow her to go and dig out some painkillers and fetch a glass of water to quench her raging thirst. After another half an hour she made a cautious foray into the bathroom, took the tablets and lay down again, listening to the sounds of the busy Thursday morning traffic in the street outside. That was two nights in a row she’d had too much to drink, which wasn’t a good idea with the antidepressants, even though she was only on a low dose now. Still, she consoled herself with the thought that she was on holiday—kind of, anyway—so she could be