Chapter 2 Kate 
LONDON, ENGLAND | NOVEMBER 2010
Kate Mercer sits cross-legged on her bed, the light of her laptop screen reflecting off her large glasses. Her dog, Ozzie, is curled up beside her. No, not curled up—sprawled. His brown and white mottled legs are spread in a most undignified manner, as though his mission in life is to take up as much space as possible. His head rests on Kate’s hip, floppy ears splayed out. The tip of his wet nose nudges the laptop every so often. She scratches his head and the diamond in her engagement ring glints in the soft light of her bedside lamp. She isn’t entirely sure why she’s still wearing it.
She adjusts her glasses and gently moves Ozzie off her. He keeps sleeping as she walks into the kitchen. She glances out the window that overlooks a quiet side street in Islington, then refills her coffee and heads back into the dim light of the bedroom. Moving boxes line the walls like Tetris pieces, ready for her to move out as soon as she finds her own flat. Meticulously labelled with the full contents, concealing the chaos of Kate’s life within.
She rubs her eyes. She hardly slept last night, but that’s par for the course these days. And as exhausted as she often feels, it’s a double-edged sword anyway. The nightmares are bad enough that sometimes Kate doesn’t want to sleep.
She picks up the small 4 x 6 photo album she’s been flipping through. It’s from her parents’ honeymoon, a road trip up to Scotland. When Kate packed up the contents of her closet the night before, she came across the blue binder in a box of her parents’ mementos that had been shoved unceremoniously into the back corner. She hasn’t looked at this album since they died, nearly a year ago now, when she pawed through their family photos with numb fingers, disbelief gnawing at her insides like a diseased rat as she pulled a selection for the funeral service.
She’s been going through the photos all morning, googling the locations, retracing her parents’ steps through their road trip, one landmark and restaurant at a time. A handful of them still exist; she’s looked at the menus and guest photos online, wondered how much the offerings have changed since her parents patronized them over forty years ago.
She takes a sip of coffee and turns the page. The clear plastic pockets are empty, but there’s a couple of loose photos stuffed between them. Kate holds one up. It’s a rare picture of both her parents together—her dad was always behind the camera. They’re smiling, standing on either side of an embossed wooden sign tacked on to a low grey stone wall with a set of gates.
THE OAKWOOD INN
“Oakwood,” Kate mutters, shifting her computer back onto her lap. She types it into the search bar as Ozzie flips over, brushing against her legs.
It’s a bed-and-breakfast in Alnwick. Kate’s never been that far north, up near the Scottish border. An old picturesque market town, by the looks of it. She navigates back to the website for the guesthouse. It looks like it was designed in 1995 and loads just about as quickly. Kate lets out a little chuckle. Leave it to her parents to stay somewhere so quaint. Her dad was such a history buff, and he loved old things. Used books and antique furniture.
They have character, Kate, he’d said, secrets and lessons to share, if you take the time to listen.
He never would have booked a modern hotel with high-pressure showerheads and gleaming tile floors, the kind that Kate’s soon-to-be-ex-husband Adam would have preferred. The Oakwood looks exactly like the type of place Kate’s dad would have stayed at, especially in a medieval castle town: full of creaky floorboards and tricky locks and maybe even a ghost story, if he got really lucky.
Kate takes a deep breath to loosen the tightness in her chest, then navigates to the About page of the inn and reads about its history. Sure enough, it’s been around since the thirties, but the building itself is far older. As Kate scrolls to the bottom, she spots an awkwardly placed text box:
HELP WANTED
She stares at it for a moment, then clicks it.
WANTED: The Oakwood Inn seeks an industrious and patient Assistant Administrator. Role to be filled immediately. Hospitality experience an asset, but not required. Position is live-in. Pets welcome. Ask for Sue.
Kate takes another few sips of coffee. She had to leave her role at the insurance company after the accident to recover from her injuries, and has been living off the modest inheritance from her parents’ deaths. But without a job—or any occupation, really—her mind keeps returning to tormenting memories. She’s been scrolling job sites since she and Adam decided to formally separate a month ago. She needs something to do.
Getting a job somewhere on the outskirts of the city is one thing, but Alnwick? That far north? She rereads the brief posting. Live-in, pets welcome. It at least sounds better than some corporate admin job in the City that she would loathe for the next three years before moving on out of sheer boredom in a fucked-up game of existential kick-the-can. A contact phone number is listed, but no email address, which Kate finds unsurprising, given the state of the website. She looks at the photo of her parents again. A moment later, she picks up her mobile and dials the number. There will be some benefit to being busy again. Or at least, as busy as one can be in the winter at an inn up near the North Sea…
“Er, hi. Could I speak to Sue, please?”
Two hours later, Kate’s on the treadmill, watching The Great British Bake Off on the television in front of her. She’s been going to the gym nearly every day since her physiotherapist cleared her for running. It gets her out of the postage stamp of a flat so she doesn’t go mad there.
The gym is a soothing place for her, somewhere people pretty much keep to themselves, and there’s no pressure to talk to anyone. Just the welcome distraction of muscle burn and vapid TV. Except today, the woman on the treadmill beside her keeps glancing at the web of scars along Kate’s cheek, left arm, and shoulder. She’ll be making up her own story about what happened. Kate usually covers the scars with a layer of makeup, but not when she goes to the gym. She wants to hate this woman and her smooth arms, pumping at her sides like an Olympian as she runs faster than Kate ever could. She’s thinner too. Doesn’t seem to sweat as much. Her eyes don’t have dark circles under them like Kate’s do.
Twenty minutes later, the other woman’s treadmill beeps and she slows her pace to a cool-down. Kate has already hit her calorie burn target, but she keeps running. A minute later the other woman stops, mops her forehead with a small white towel. She flashes Kate a pitying sort of smile, but Kate just increases the pace of her own run, even though she’s starting to feel lightheaded. As the woman heads toward the locker room, Kate’s mobile starts vibrating where it’s resting on the control panel.
OAKWOOD INN flashes up on the caller ID.
She hits the emergency stop button and the treadmill jerks to a halt.
Before she came to the gym, she spoke briefly with Sue, who requested she email her CV for review before hustling her off the phone. Given Kate’s recent experience with her job search, her expectations for a follow-up were low. The labour market had been so miserable of late; she’d sent out dozens of applications over the past month and had only been granted one interview, which had gone poorly, probably because she hadn’t really wanted the job. But since sending her CV to Sue, she started to picture herself at the Oakwood, the need to connect with her parents’ past drawing her to the place. And, she thought, there was certainly some appeal in Alnwick being as far away from London as she could get without leaving the country. A true fresh start.
Breath heaving, she answers the phone. “Kate Mercer.”
“Hi, Kate, Sue again from the Oakwood. Oh, can you hold on just a mo’?”
“Yeah,” Kate says, pushing her red fringe up off her sweaty forehead, grateful for the moment to try to catch her breath. There’s much scuffling on the other end of the line, and Kate hears a door shut.
“Sorry, had to pop in somewhere quiet,” Sue says in a Scottish accent thicker than fog. “I had a look at yer CV. Lots of admin experience, I see. No hospitality.”
“That’s right. But I’m a fast learner. I—”
“Not a problem, just confirming. But you can manage things? Scheduling and ordering and the like? I see some of that here on your resume.”
“Yes, of course,” Kate lies, smooth as poured wax. She hadn’t done much as a basic phone receptionist at the insurance company, but she’s sure she could figure it out. And besides, who doesn’t polish up their CV nowadays? Enhance and exaggerate here and there to appear more experienced, more knowledgeable, more educated, more more more of whatever more they think an employer wants to see?
“And you’ve volunteered at an animal shelter?”
One hundred percent true. “Yes, quite regularly,” Kate says. “My dog Ozzie is a rescue and it’s a cause close to my heart.”
“So he’d be coming with you, then?”
“Yes, if that’s all right? I saw in the advert—”
“Yes, pets welcome and encouraged. We’ve got a wee terrier here. Yours is friendly with other dogs?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good.”
Kate half-expects Sue to ask to interview Ozzie.
“Now this is a live-in position, you’re aware.”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“Without putting too fine a point on it, it’s likely not the best environment for children. Do you—”
“No,” Kate says, an edge to her voice that she tries to file down as she continues. “Just me and my dog.”
“Jolly good then. Have you ever been up to this part of the country? A bit different here in the North than down in London.”
“I haven’t, no. But I’m looking to get away from London, actually. Time for a change.”
“Can be as good as a rest, can’t it?” Sue says. “Well, Kate, I reckon we should give it a go.”
Relief courses through Kate like warm water. “Brilliant, thank you!” She smiles with something that feels like a vestige emotion from a past life. Optimism, maybe.
“We’ll start with a probationary period and if all goes well, we’ll formalize the role. How soon can you be here?”
Kate thinks of all the boxes lined up against her bedroom wall, as ready as they’ll ever be. “I can be there tomorrow,” she says.
As her breath steadies, she leans against the treadmill and watches the contestants on the television show craft cakes that are truly a work of art. The judges dig in, excitement glowing on their faces like children at a birthday party as they taste-test the results of the competition. She looks at the layers of icing and reckons it would take at least two hours of running to burn off one piece of that extravagant cake.
It’s hard to outrun your bad decisions. But you can certainly try.