Chapter 3
It’s the ghost who saves me.
I mean, it’s probably not an actual ghost, obviously.
As I hand Dante the slip of paper bearing a name that isn’t mine, though, a flicker of movement from the gallery landing above me catches my eye, and I glance up just in time to see a small, shadowy figure go darting away, as if it’s afraid to be seen.
Or, at least, I think it was a small, shadowy figure. It is pretty dark up there.
‘Is this place haunted?’ I blurt out, gazing around the vast space, which is opulent if not just a little gloomy, thanks to all the dark wood panelling that covers the walls, and the flickering light from the fire.
‘Haunted?’ says Hunter from behind me. ‘Well, not really. Just the usual kind of thing. Strange noises in the night, ghostly figures in the halls, cold spots . . . just your average eighteenth-century castle, you know?’
I look over my shoulder at him, trying to figure out if he’s for real, but it’s impossible to tell whether the hint of a smile on his face is sarcasm or sincerity.
‘There are no ghosts at the Chrysalis,’ Dante assures me, his perfect brow creasing with annoyance at the very suggestion that there could be something wrong with his hotel.
I get the distinct feeling that if there were ghosts here, they’d be afraid of him, rather than the other way around.
‘Unless we’re counting Sabrina Bates,’ he adds under his breath.
‘And she’s more of a vampire than a ghost.’
All the same, as he takes the booking confirmation from me and quickly scans it, the frown doesn’t leave his face, and his eyes keep flicking up towards the landing where the ‘ghost’ – or whatever it was – had appeared.
He’s so distracted by it that he doesn’t bother asking me for any ID, or even a credit card (although maybe they don’t do that for these influencer retreats?
I wouldn’t know . . .), and although my heart feels like it’s beating so loudly it could easily be the star of an Edgar Allan Poe story, no one seems to hear it but me, so that’s a relief, too.
‘Right, that’s you all checked in,’ Dante says, still with one eye on the upstairs landing. ‘Room Six. I’ll have your bags taken up for you and unpacked. Perhaps you’d like to try out the spa while you wait?’
‘Oh. I . . . uh, yes, I . . . I guess so. That would be lovely,’ I stutter, amazed to find that not only is no one going to challenge my presence here, I’ve somehow managed to find myself in the kind of hotel where you don’t even have to unpack your own suitcase.
‘If it’s not too much trouble, that is? I’m happy to just sit here and wait, if it is? ’
‘It’s no trouble,’ says Dante. ‘Agnes will show you the way.’
He presses a button on his desk, which makes a young woman with long red hair and big brown eyes appear from a door behind him, as if by magic.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ says Hunter, looking relieved to be able to hand me over to someone else. ‘Have a nice stay, Rosie.’
‘Thanks,’ I reply, surprised by the way my heart sinks at the thought of him leaving so quickly. He might not like influencers much, but now that he’s going, I feel suddenly quite defenceless in this (possibly haunted) castle.
Luckily for me, however, Agnes turns out to be refreshingly normal, and chatters away in her charming Highland accent as she leads me down a maze of corridors on the ground floor of the castle, all of them long and seemingly identical, with tall, arched windows which look out on a landscape that’s gradually turning golden as the sun starts to go down at last. It’s evening now, but it’s still light this far north, and the castle grounds look soft and hazy in the dusk; the distant mountains a silvery blue-green which makes me think of wizards and fairies, and all of the stories this land must hold.
‘Where is everyone?’ I ask Agnes, as we turn down yet another echoing corridor. ‘The place is so empty. Where are all the other guests? I mean, I know the hotel isn’t properly open yet, but the invitation said something about other influencers, and so far I’ve only seen two of them?’
One of whom wasn’t even supposed to be here; a bit like me, in fact.
‘There are no other guests,’ says Agnes solemnly, her eyes wide in the dim light of the hallway. ‘It’s just you and the ghosts.’
I stop in my tracks, my heart beating a tattoo in my chest, which only slows down when Agnes starts giggling uncontrollably.
‘Sorry,’ she says with a mischievous grin. ‘I couldn’t resist. Your face! You were so freaked out!’
‘Agnes!’ I splutter. ‘Don’t do that to me! You almost gave me a heart attack.’
‘Sorry,’ she says sheepishly as we start walking again.
‘It’s OK, though; there aren’t any ghosts.
Well, not as far as I know, and I’ve lived in the village since I was a wee girl.
They only invited five influencers this week, though.
You’re kind of like the test crew. I think the idea is that, as well as getting the chance to take photos and stuff without other folk in the background, you also get to try everything first, so if there’s any problems, we find out before the real guests arrive.
A bit like Danger Night at the funfair, when you get to test out all the rides for free, because there’s a risk you might die on them? ’
I swallow nervously, but there’s no time to reply because, as Agnes speaks, we emerge into a courtyard with a giant chess set in the middle, which we cross, before re-entering the building through a large door leading into what I guess is the modern extension.
‘This was finished just a few weeks ago,’ says Agnes, producing a set of keys which she slides into yet another door. ‘Caused a right stir in the village; you’d think it was a skyscraper they were building, not a swimming pool, the way some of them carried on. I think it’s lovely, though. Look.’
She pushes open the door and I find myself facing a large pool, set in the middle of a building made almost entirely of glass.
There’s a Jacuzzi bubbling away at one end, and a sauna at the other, and I can feel the tension that’s been building up all day slowly start to seep out of my body at the sight of it all.
‘You’re the first person to try it,’ says Agnes, looking as proud as if she’d built it with her own hands. ‘I’m really jealous, actually.’
‘Oh!’ I say, remembering something. ‘I don’t have my swimsuit with me. It’s still in my suitcase.’
‘Och, it’s no bother,’ says Agnes reassuringly. ‘We have gift bags for everyone; they have bikinis in them and everything.’
She goes over to a low bench by one of the windows and collects a posh-looking cardboard gift bag with the name ‘Rosie Summers’ on the front, along with a thick, fluffy robe and a matching pair of slippers.
‘You should find everything you need in there,’ she says cheerfully, handing me the bag, which I take, feeling like I’m stealing it. ‘Now you go and enjoy the sauna. You look like you could be doing with a bit of relaxation.’
I return her smile, guilt gnawing at my stomach at the thought of deceiving her – and everyone else, for that matter.
I really should have thought this through before I decided to go ahead with it. I’m just not sure I’m cut out for the impostor life. If nothing else, it’s surely going to give me a stomach ulcer.
Guilt aside, though, the sauna does look rather inviting with its clean, woody smell and pristine surfaces. So, once Agnes is gone, I head into the changing room and reach into the gift bag, which contains an entire set of luxury toiletries, plus a small, red garment which turns out to be a bikini.
At least, I think it’s a bikini. It’s so tiny it looks like it was made for a doll rather than a human, and it’s all the confirmation I need that Rosie Summers and I definitely aren’t the same size, because my breasts are barely contained by the top, and I have a horrible feeling they’re about to break free at any second, which .
. . surely it’s not supposed to look like that?
Is it?
Getting the thing on is a workout in itself, and once it’s done, I’m tempted to take it right back off again and just accept that I am not Rosie Summers, and never will be.
Quite apart from that, though, it’s also kind of weird having the entire pool building totally to myself.
Nice . . . but still weird. The blank windows that surround the pool reflect my own, unflattering image back at me, and I turn away, spooked by the knowledge that anyone who happens to be out there will be able to see me standing here, lit up as if I’m on a stage.
The thought makes me feel suddenly self-conscious, so I step quickly into the sauna and close the door firmly (but not too firmly; I haven’t forgotten what happened on the train .
. .) behind me before I shrug off the robe, tugging the too-small bikini bottoms out of my butt cheeks as I go.
I place the towelling robe on the seat before lowering myself onto it, my eyes fixed on the door that leads to the pool, ready to leap into action if it so much as budges.
But the door remains closed. And, after a few minutes, my eyes start to close too, lulled by the heat and soothed by the steam until the next thing I know, I’m back out in the courtyard, playing a game of chess against Hunter Stuart, while Sabrina Bates and Dante, the handsome hotel manager, look on, holding up score cards.
I’m just about to pick up my queen to deliver a devastating checkmate when I’m interrupted by a loud bang, and my eyes snap open just in time for me to see the sauna door fly open and Hunter Stuart’s reddish-blond head appear around it.
For a split second, I think I’m still dreaming, then the strap holding my bikini top up abruptly gives way, releasing the girls into the world, and I realise this is no dream; this is a literal nightmare – one in which I’m caught half-naked in a hotel sauna by a tall, handsome near-stranger, and it doesn’t work out anything like all of those romcoms I’ve read would have you believe.
I let out a small, involuntary squawk of horror as I attempt to stuff my runaway breasts back into the bikini top, but it’s no use: the thing’s well and truly broken – not that it was covering much of me to start with – so I leap up and throw the robe around me instead.
‘Why did you barge in like that?’ I demand, turning to Hunter with my cheeks flaming and sweat dripping off the end of my nose. ‘You could have at least knocked!’
‘I did knock,’ protests Hunter, whose voice is also a little shaky, as if he’s had a very big shock.
‘I was knocking for at least five minutes. And shouting. But you didn’t reply, so I had to come in to check on you.
You’ve been in there for almost an hour.
We were worried. You could’ve been dead for all we knew. ’
‘I wish I was now,’ I wail, close to tears. ‘Wait. We? What do you mean “we”?’
By way of answer, Hunter clears his throat awkwardly, then steps aside, giving me a clear view of the pool area behind him.
There, lined up almost exactly as they were in the dream that was so rudely interrupted, are Sabrina Bates, Dante and lovely Agnes, the housekeeper. Even Stevie the dog has turned up to witness me emerging topless from the steam.
I tighten the belt of my robe self-consciously, my head swimming from the heat of the sauna.
Have I really been in there for as long as Hunter says I have?
‘Er, Agnes came to get you when she realised how long you’d been in there, but she couldn’t get the door open,’ says Hunter, looking at his feet. ‘So Dante sent for me, to help get you out.’
‘But . . . that can’t be right,’ I protest, refusing to believe this whole ‘stuck door’ thing could’ve happened to me twice in one day. ‘I checked the door when I got in and it was fine. So how could it possibly have been stuck?’
‘That’s beside the point,’ says Sabrina Bates, her voice cutting across the room like a knife. ‘What I’d like to know is what you think you’re doing here?’
‘I . . . um . . . having a sauna?’ I reply, like a contestant on a quiz show who’s blatantly just guessing the answer.
Sabrina shakes her head and folds her arms across her chest, one high-heeled shoe tapping impatiently at the tiled floor.
‘No, I mean, what are you doing here, at the hotel?’ she demands frostily. ‘Because one thing’s for sure: you certainly weren’t invited, were you?’