𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐞 - 𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐢 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐡

Twenty-Four

There were a few moments of muffled shrieking as the train pulled off and started to gain speed. It jerked and jogged River's pen, scribbling a line down the page from her essay introduction. She sighed, ripped the piece of
paper from the pad and screwed it into a ball. It was no good anyway. She shoved the paper ball into the top of her rucksack and readied her pen again.

She was on the train to Little Chalfont. Ravi was meeting her there, straight from work, so she thought she could put the eleven minutes there to good use, get a chunk of her Margaret Atwood essay drafted. But reading her own words back, nothing felt right. She knew what she wanted to say, each idea perfectly formed and moulded but the words got muddled and lost on the way from brain to fingers. Her mind stuck in Andie Bell sidetracks.

The recorded voice on the tannoy announced that Chalfont was the next stop and River gratefully looked away from the thinning A4 pad and shoved it back in her rucksack. The train slackened and came to a stop with a sharp mechanical sigh. She skipped down on to the platform and fed her ticket into the barriers.

Ravi was waiting for her outside.
‘Lieutenant,’ he said, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes. ‘I was just coming up with our crime-fighting theme tune. So far, I’ve got chilled strings and a pan flute when it’s me, and then you come on with some heavy, Darth Vaderish trumpets.’

‘Why am I the trumpets?’ she said.

‘Because you stomp when you walk; sorry to be the one to tell you.’

River pulled out her phone and typed the Ivy House Hotel address into her maps app. The line appeared on screen and they followed the three-minute long
walking directions, River's blue circle avatar sliding along the route in her hands.

She looked up when her blue circle collided with the red destination pin.

There was a small wooden sign just before the drive that read Ivy House Hotel in fading carved letters. The drive was sloped and pebbled, leading to a red-brick house almost wholly covered in creeping ivy. It was so thick with
the green leaves that the house itself seemed to shiver in the gentle wind.

Their footsteps crunched up the drive as they headed for the front door.

River clocked the parked car, meaning someone must be in. Hopefully it was the owners and not a guest.

She jabbed her finger on to the cold metal doorbell and let it ring out for one long note.

They heard a small voice inside, some slow shuffled steps and then the door swung inward, sending a tremor through the ivy around the frame. An old woman with fluffy grey hair, thick glasses and a very premature Christmas-patterned jumper stood before them and smiled.

‘Hello, dears,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize we were expecting someone. What name did you make the booking under?’ she said, ushering River and Ravi inside and closing the door.

They stepped into a dimly lit squared hallway, with a sofa and coffee table on the left and a white staircase running along the far wall.

‘Oh, sorry,’ River said, turning back to face the woman, ‘we haven’t actually got a booking.’

‘I see, well, lucky for you two we aren’t booked up so –’

‘– Sorry,’ River cut in, looking awkwardly at Ravi, ‘I mean, we’re not looking to stay here. We’re looking for . . . we have some questions for the owners of the hotel. Are you . . .?’

‘Yes, I own the hotel,’ the woman smiled, looking unnervingly at a point just left of River's face. ‘Ran it for twenty years with my David; he was in charge of most things, though. It’s been hard since my David passed a couple of years ago. But my grandsons are always here, helping me get by, driving me around. My grandson Henry is just upstairs cleaning the rooms.’