Excerpt of The Smuggler's Daughter by Kerry Barrett

‘You’ll want to lock up when we’re gone,’ Kayla said. She looked serious, but the man – Ewan – laughed.

‘Welcome to The Moon Girl,’ he said.

He pushed open the door and a gust of wind blew in, making Liv and me shiver. Kayla and the other two men followed him out into the night and the door banged shut again.

‘What on earth was that?’ I said. Liv looked at me, her eyes wide, and then she burst out laughing. I did the same.

‘I don’t work here,’ I said, in a very bad approximation of Kayla’s west country drawl. ‘I just chuck the keys about.’

‘Welcome to The Moon Girl,’ Liv said, deepening her voice so much that she sounded like a Cornish Batman. She bent down and scooped up the keys.

‘Are you going to lock the door?’ I asked, feeling weirdly nervous. This was a strange place, with the rain beating against the windows and no customers even though it was only seven o’clock in the evening. If the weather was better, it would still be light. That picture I’d had in my mind of the beachside bar with brightly coloured umbrellas on the terrace and bleached wooden floors was fading fast.

Liv didn’t answer; she just walked to the door, checked it was properly closed, and then locked it.

‘No one else will come this evening,’ she said. ‘The rain’s obvi- ously making everyone stay away.’

‘Shall we have a look round?’ I tried to sound enthusiastic but it wasn’t easy.

Liv gave me a bright, very fake, smile. ‘Let’s go.’ We both picked up our bags.

‘Not much to see here,’ Liv said. She was right. The pub was small. I imagined that in winter, with a fire in the empty fireplace and fairy lights round the bar, it could be cosy, but now it just seemed a bit bleak. It had dark wooden floorboards with flaking varnish, and equally dark tables with red velour stools and chairs. It smelled faintly of old smoke – even though no one had smoked inside a pub for more than a decade – and stale beer. The building was fairly wide and as you came through the door, the bar was in front of you and slightly to the left. A door at the back to that side had a gold sticker, half peeling off, reading “ladies” and another underneath showing it as a fire exit. To the right of the bar, there were more tables and chairs, a large television, a dartboard, and a door with no sign. Instead, someone had scrawled “men” on the wood in black marker pen.

The one saving grace of the whole place was the view from the dirty windows at the back. It was stunning. We could see for miles across the bay, from where the pub perched on top of the cliff. Way out to sea we could see bobbing lights – presumably from fishing boats or buoys – and off to the left was a lighthouse. It wasn’t lit yet, though with the gloom drawing in, I thought it wouldn’t be long.

‘Ohhh, Liv,’ I said. ‘This is beautiful.’

‘It feels like we’re on a ship.’ She knelt on one of the stools next to the window and gazed out. ‘There’s virtually nothing between us and the water.’

I joined her on the stool and she shoved me off. ‘Get your own,’ she said.

‘Selfish.’ I tutted as I pulled another chair closer and knelt on that instead. ‘Is there a beach?’

Liv tried to see but she banged her head on the glass. ‘Ouch. Can’t tell.’

‘We can look tomorrow when it’s lighter,’ I said. ‘I bet there’s a little path down the cliff. I might go for a swim every morning. It’s an amazing location.’

Bored with the view, Liv slid off the stool and picked up the three empty pint glasses the men had left on the table – once a barmaid, always a barmaid, I thought. She put them on the bar and wandered round to the fire exit door. ‘Come on, let’s look upstairs,’ she said.

I followed her, reluctant to drag myself away from watching the swell of the sea but not wanting to be left alone. Through the door was a corridor, leading to the ladies’ loo, a fire exit straight ahead, and a flight of stairs with balding carpet.

Liv set off, taking two stairs at a time.

‘So, all I know is there was some sort of family emergency or something,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘And the people who had been managing this place had to leave in a hurry.’

‘Are they coming back?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ she said. ‘The company’s recruiting for someone to take over permanently. Shit.’

She’d gone into the first room at the top and stopped dead, and I bumped into her as I followed.

‘What?’

‘Look.’

Liv stood to one side to let me see. We were in the living room of the flat. It was a nice room with a big squishy sofa and the same amazing view out across the sea. What had stopped Liv short, though, were the pictures on the walls, the television in the corner, and a book face down on the coffee table.

‘What. The. Fuck?’ I gazed round. There was a sideboard at one end of the room, with school photos on it. A small boy with sticking-up hair grinned out at us.‘They really did leave in a hurry.’ ‘This is creepy as,’ Liv said. I nodded, taking in all the personal belongings that had been left behind.

Liv looked upset. She picked up the book, folded down the corner of the page and put it back down again, closed. ‘What on earth could have happened to make a whole family leave their home so fast?’

‘No idea. Must have been a pretty bad emergency.’

‘I can’t believe they’ve left all this stuff here.’ Liv stood in the middle of the room glancing from side to side, taking it all in. ‘I suppose we can box it up and send it on. I’ll call head office tomorrow and get a forwarding address.’

Feeling just as unsettled as Liv clearly was, I wandered into the bedrooms. The master bedroom was much the same, though the wardrobes were open and empty. The bed had linen on it and the television on the wall was on standby. A clean patch in the dust on one bedside table, though, told me the family had taken some belongings. Maybe a precious photograph or a jewellery box?

Silently, Liv and I checked out the rest of the living quarters. There were two more bedrooms. One, which had obviously been the boy’s room, had toys on the floor and pictures of footballers on the walls. Again, though, the wardrobe was empty.

I shivered. This was so strange. It was like the Marie Celeste or an episode of Doctor Who. I half expected David Tennant to leap out at us and make everything normal again. Or was that just wishful thinking?

The third bedroom was clearly a guest room. The linen on its twin beds was fresh and pristine, it had an en-suite bathroom, and there were no creepy abandoned personal belongings.

‘Dibs this room,’ Liv and I said in unison. We both looked at each other and then Liv laughed. ‘Share?’

I nodded in relief. ‘Share.’

We each dropped our bags on to a bed. I chose the one by the window so I could look out across the sea. Then Liv threw her arm round my shoulder. ‘Welcome to The Moon Girl,’ she said, using her Batman voice again. ‘Fancy a drink?’