Page 14 of The White Octopus Hotel
As soon as she was back at work, Eve set up electronic searches on auction sale finders for all the key words she could think of.White Octopus, writing paper, hotel, hotel writing paper, magical object…The list went on and on. If anything from the White Octopus Hotel turned up in any auction house in the UK, she would receive an email alert about it. She set up searches for eBay too. She even pinned the octopus badge Victor had given her onto her jacket, just in case she came across someone else who knew what it meant.
But the days and weeks passed by with no result and Eve could feel the frustration building inside her. She could keep tabs on the auction houses easily enough, but only for items listed for sale. What if they received objects from the hotel and thought they had no value? Or what if their owner took them to a flea market instead, as with the tea set? She couldn’t physically search every bric-a-brac stand in the world….
The more she thought about it, the more she came to accept that a sheet of writing paper wasn’t going to turn up in a public listing for an auction house because, as far as most of the world was aware, such a thing was worthless. She wasn’t going to find it thatway. She would have to take a more proactive approach. So she opened up her emails and sent a message to her manager, saying that she was going to need to take some time off. There was, after all, nothing keeping her here and no one to miss her if she went away.
—
The next day, Eve was on a plane to Zurich. She’d informed her parents and Suzy that she was taking a break from work and going travelling for a while. Suzy was delighted.
“It’s about time you did something nice for yourself.”
Eve didn’t correct the impression that this was an ordinary holiday. It was a much simpler explanation than the truth. And she felt a guilty stir of unease about her stepmother. If Bella had never died and her parents had stayed together, then Suzy wouldn’t be in their lives at all. Eve loved Suzy and couldn’t say that she had loved Bella. Not really. After all, she hadn’t really known her and the bits she did remember were vague and fuzzy around the edges—an argument over a cherished toy, a forest picnic sticky with jam, a sunny afternoon in the garden at home, where Bella kept bringing her the apples and leaves that she found on the lawn.
Eve didn’t know how to reconcile what she wished to achieve with the writing paper with the reality of unravelling Suzy’s life. But surely Suzy would marry someone else and be happy in a different way. Some people would always find happiness. And Eve would give anything to undo the mistake she’d made. She’d always tried not to think about whether Bella had been scared in those final moments, whether she’d suffered, but even if it had been over quickly for her sister, her mum and dad’s suffering was a different story—an agony that had already lasted for years and would continue for decades to come. If Eve had the chance to undo all that, then she had to take it.
She arrived in the city on a sunny morning in November. Shecould practically feel the hotel up there in the mountains, calling to her, drawing her in like a magnet. A short while later, she was in a rented car, driving along unfamiliar roads as she left the city behind. It was past lunchtime when she finally pulled into the valley car park nestled at the base of the narrow-gauge train station.
When she got out of the car she was immediately struck by the peaceful quiet and the perfect purity of the air. It made her lungs feel clean. The mountains rose up around her, majestic, serene, silent. Eve thought it was no wonder that they used to build sanitoriums here for the ill to recuperate in. There was something cleansing about the landscape, but something lonely and ancient too. Lugging her suitcase after her, she purchased a ticket to the highest village, right at the end of the line.
The journey that followed was unlike anything Eve had experienced before. She’d never been on a narrow-gauge track, and it felt odd for the train to ascend so steeply, and it was hard not to wince at times when it passed perilously close to the edge of a sheer drop. Sometimes the window looked out on vast valleys, with villages nestled between the slopes, and at others there was nothing to see but rocks and pine trees and occasional traces of snow. And always, in the background was the extraordinary spectacle of the mountain peaks—like something from a painting or a dream, something beautiful but not quite real.
Finally, the train stopped climbing the mountain and levelled out onto a valley floor. But the journey wasn’t over yet. Eve emerged from the tiny train station and was relieved to see the cable car directly opposite. It was bitterly cold and the guidebooks had warned that it might be best to break the journey up if you weren’t used to the altitude, but Eve couldn’t bear to wait. She purchased a ticket and stepped onto the cable car. The windows inside were scratched from dozens of skis in winter.
The train had been bad enough, but it was an even more unnerving sensation to watch the ground rapidly fall away as the cable carfollowed the wire up into the sky, passing over forests of tall pines. It took about twenty minutes to reach the top and from there it was a short walk to the village itself, which was tiny and seemed to consist mostly of picturesque chalets. Eve had read that there were just over a hundred people living here and the village itself was very small. She made her way through the square, past a bakery, a cheese shop, and a newsagent. The ice cream place and the souvenir shop had both been boarded up for the winter. She noticed a small B&B that must have been the one she had stayed at with her parents, perched upon the edge of the lake.
The water sparkled and pine trees lined the shore, so thick and dense that they looked almost black, climbing up the steep sides of the mountains as far as they could before finally giving way to bare rock. The air was frozen crystal, and the closest peaks were a slatey grey, contrasting with the cool bluish tinge of the ranges in the distance. Some of the taller mountains went right up into the clouds. Even the sky seemed bigger here. The top of the world.
And there it was, straight ahead on the other side of the lake—the White Octopus Hotel. Eve would have recognised its distinctive spires and turrets anywhere. From this distance it looked just as it had a hundred years ago when it was a grande dame. You couldn’t tell that the windows were boarded up or that the grounds were unkempt or that the private pier was rotting. It looked as if it still stood ready to receive guests. And it really seemed to Eve that there were people inside the hotel at that very moment, perhaps enjoying an afternoon tea on the veranda. She could taste those peppermint creams once again—small discs of icy perfection laid out on shining silver plates. There was a pier on this side of the lake too, where a couple of small fishing boats were moored. Eve gazed around but couldn’t see any sign of the owners, so she turned back towards the bed-and-breakfast.
It was immaculate inside. There was no one behind the polished wooden reception desk, so she rang the bell. A man in his fiftiesappeared from the back a moment later and gave her an apologetic smile. “You’ve just missed our lunch service, I’m afraid, but there’s a coffee shop around the corner that does cakes and sandwiches.”
“I’m not here for lunch,” Eve said, although she realised that shewashungry, having not eaten anything since breakfast. “I was hoping to speak to someone who owns one of those boats. I want to go across the lake to the hotel on the other side. I’m happy to pay, obviously.”
“Ah.” The man gave her an appraising look. “Yes, people come to see the old place from time to time. Not as many visitors as she used to get, of course. Are you a ghost hunter?”
“No,” Eve replied. “Just curious. Is it haunted then?”
He shrugged. “It’s a strange place. Always has been. Nikolas Roth used to live there. They say the hotel came with the fog. It can cover the lake thick as cotton during the winter and sometimes you hardly see the water for weeks. One day, the hotel was there when the fog lifted. Perhaps it’ll disappear just as quickly—if it doesn’t fall down first.”
The thought of either possibility made Eve flinch, but before she could say anything, the man went on.
“I’m Aurel. I own this place, and the boats belong to us too. My wife could probably take you across, but not until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I was really hoping there might be time to get there today.”
Aurel shook his head. “Time works differently in the mountains; you’ll find out if you stay here long enough. We can’t fit it in today but will happily take you over in the morning.”
“All right,” Eve said. “Well, thank you. Do you have any rooms available?”
He nodded. “You can have your pick of the place.”
Eve asked for a room with a view of the lake so that she could see the White Octopus. The sunset, when it arrived, painted the lake gold, and the water glowed like a jewel before the sun vanishedbehind the mountains and the landscape was lost from view. Eve went downstairs for a quick dinner of Käseschnitte, the melted cheese and pickled gherkins helping to restore her energy from the long day travelling.
She spent the rest of the evening drawing in her room. Tentacles spilled out onto the page, curled tight around golden keys and painted music boxes, double clefs and musical notes. Eve found herself wondering what the most beautiful music in the world might possibly sound like.
The moonlight shone silver upon the calm surface of the lake and Eve looked up every now and then at the silhouette of the White Octopus, just visible on the opposite shore. Finally, she decided to turn in for the night. She glanced out the window one final time and for a moment could have sworn that there was a light on in one of the rooms of the hotel. A bright yellow glow shining from the window, that immediately faded into the innocent silver of the moon flashing upon frozen glass.
Chapter 9
