Page 16 of The White Octopus Hotel
At once, she recalled her mother’s comment about abandoned hotels being like sunken ships. The sudden darkness, the stillness, the smothering sense of the past pressing in from every corner. The place smelled of damp, and dust, and moss. All around there were details that she hadn’t been able to make out from her mum’s photograph, such as the wrought iron banisters of the sweeping staircase at the end of the room, or how the crystals of the chandelier resembled the beaded fringe of a flapper dress, or the goldenservice bell that still sat on the dusty reception desk to the left, waiting for someone to ring it. There was a fantastically ornate birdcage lift over in one corner, long out of service. The tiles beneath Eve’s feet had probably once been a pearly white to match the pillars but were now covered in a coating of grime and grit, fallen plaster, and collections of animal droppings.
She winced at the sight of the garish graffiti on the walls and pillars, as well as the Coke cans, chocolate wrappers, and cigarette butts scattered over the floor. It seemed such a sacrilege to leave rubbish in a place that had once been so grand and lovely. The sight of modern life jarred as well, and Eve felt the pointless urge to start tidying up.
She turned away from the graffiti to examine the baby grand piano to the right of the double staircase. It was entirely mirrored but so dirty and dusty that it didn’t reflect much of anything back. It sprawled at a painful angle on the ground, one of its legs snapped in two. The instrument’s keys were coated in dirt and many of them had sunk or snapped off altogether to lie in a sorry jumble on the floor. When Eve glanced back the way she’d come, she saw that a tall grandfather clock loomed beside the door, the time forever frozen. In the White Octopus Hotel, it had been a few minutes before twelve for decades.
The jewel of the lobby was the fountain. It drew the eye even now and Eve felt that same tug towards it that she’d felt all those years ago as a child. It was bigger than she’d realised from the photo, even taller than she was. The three basins were scalloped shells, now dirty and chipped, but there was something still striking and spectacular about the marble octopus sprawled in the largest one at the bottom, its tentacles coiling up and around the other shells.
It reminded Eve of those old-world paintings of a ship going down in a kraken attack—all gigantic eyes, icy sprays of salt, and flailing lethal limbs. When she peered into the basins, she saw theywere littered with a few empty crisp packets, but also with coins—small change from dozens of different countries. Small wishes for something brighter and better. There were tiny musical notes painted on the inside of the basins too, as if the fountain had scooped up music as well as wishes.
Eve stepped back and glanced about the room again. She couldn’t escape the notion that there were eyes watching her. People in the corners, behind the pillars, manning the desk, waiting to take her luggage, confirm her dinner reservation, and show her to her room. Echoes of the lobby’s past were everywhere—in the wall of empty key cubbyholes, in the abandoned brass luggage trolley, in the golden bell gleaming on the concierge desk—so tantalising, so tempting.
Eve’s fingertips tingled as she crossed the floor, her shoes crunching over pine cones and plaster, and stopped beside the desk. Up close she saw that the bell had been nailed down, which explained why it was still there. It was an elaborate object, designed to resemble the navigational wheel of a ship. She raised her hand and tapped the button lightly with her palm. The peal of the bell rang out louder than she’d expected. A camera went off inside her head again with a bright flash and she gasped and stumbled back from the desk.
There was a magnetic magician’s smile.
The splash of a coin landing in the fountain.
The scent of peppermint.
Kind brown eyes…
Eve felt her breath catch and the sudden threat of those tears that come from someone being unexpectedly kind when you’re feeling unbearably sad. Which was odd, because Eve never cried….
Then the images faded away and she was staring into the mirror on the opposite wall. Its ornate golden frame was fashioned with seaweed and shells, and the glass was so tarnished that it was like looking at herself through fog. It was clearly extremely old, and theidea that guests and staff from the thirties—or perhaps even Nikolas Roth himself—had walked past it, their reflections appearing in the glass just as Eve’s was doing now, was enough to make her shiver. What had happened here? Why did the hotel close down so suddenly? Why did all of Nikolas Roth’s paintings vanish without a trace? And why did she feel so strongly that she’d been to the hotel once before, not as it was now, but as it wasthen?
The past pressed so close against her in this building, this moss palace for ghosts. The shadows shifted and flickered, and the barrier between past and present felt thin and fragile and almost not there at all. Still, Eve would far rather have had ghosts for company than rabbits. She glanced at the bell on the desk again. It wasn’t dusty or dirty like everything else. In fact, it gleamed a brilliant gold, as if it had been polished. Eve supposed one of the hotel’s recent visitors must have done it—perhaps a photographer hoping to capture a more striking image. It certainlywasstriking, and a little jarring, to see the bell shining so vibrant and bright, like a single pop of colour in an otherwise black-and-white photograph. Perhaps the key her mother had described finding here was placed on the desk for the same reason.
But there were no keys there today. The only other object was a large book, stamped with the crest of an octopus—a white one, with a single black tip on one tentacle. Eve stared down at it. It washeroctopus. Her mind flew back to her flat and all the dozens and dozens of sketchbooks she owned that were full of tentacles. She put her hand on the cover, but before she could open it, a white tentacle burst out of the book and wrapped itself all the way up her arm. It was slightly sticky with ink and thick with muscle, squeezing just a little too hard.
But still, Eve smiled. “Hello, old friend.”
Chapter 10
Eve—2006
Eve had always enjoyed drawing, but she first realised her art wasn’t like other people’s when she started university. She desperately craved a fresh start where nobody would know her or her story. Throughout school and college, she had always felt like there was a spotlight shining over her wherever she went. She’d started primary school just two weeks after Bella died. Everything was so strange and frightening at home and then, suddenly, Eve was at school—this alien place where she didn’t know anyone, but everyone seemed to know her. She was famous. The girl who had killed her sister. The other kids whispered about her, and the teachers spoke to her in weird overly soft tones they didn’t use for anyone else. University was a chance to finally leave her past behind. Or so she hoped.
But when she got there, she found it a struggle to make friends. It didn’t help as much as she’d thought it would that no one else knew about her past. Eve still knew. She still knew everything—even the part that she’d never breathed aloud to another living soul. She enjoyed her art course, though, and was getting good grades. It was a relief to be away from the family home. She even started dating a nice boy called Daniel and this felt like something normal, likeshe was finally getting her life back on track to where it was supposed to be. Until one day they were in a café talking about Christmas and Daniel said, “My youngest sister is nuts about Christmas trees. I guess most four-year-olds are, right?”
Eve remained silent. The year she was four, they hadn’t had a Christmas tree. She still remembered how furious her mum had been when her dad suggested they try to celebrate Christmas for Eve’s sake.
I can’t!her mum’s cry of despair still echoed down the years inside her head.I can’t bear it, I can’t, I can’t! Oh, please, just leave me alone!
Eve hadn’t told Daniel about Bella. There had never been the right moment to reveal that she had killed her sister. She supposed he must have assumed she was an only child. And she wondered whether he would ever know her—therealher. After all, how could he when there was a wall between them? It was still there, it had never gone away—that wall that stood between her and the rest of the world. She broke up with Daniel before Christmas arrived. In the days and weeks that followed, she found herself thinking more and more about her sister. For years after the accident, Eve still hadn’t properly understood what had happened or her role in it. But now that she was so far away from home, it seemed that she could look back with more clarity. She saw with new eyes what she had done. And if life wasn’t easier here, then perhaps it never wouldbe?
She couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard she tried. She started skipping lectures. She stopped going out and trying to make friends. The exhaustion and the guilt hollowed her out until it felt like she wasn’t actually a person at all. She was only a shell. Then one drizzly December afternoon she found herself standing on the edge of a motorway leading out of the city. There were massive lorries thundering past and she thought how easy it would be, to just step out in front of one. She was soaking wet from the spray and herface was streaked with grit and she trembled and trembled as she gripped the fumsup in her pocket and tried to remain rooted to a world that was spinning away from her.
Eventually, a police car pulled up and then she was being bundled into the back seat and a calm, gentle voice was speaking to her and asking if she was all right. It was a relief to have someone finally ask. To ask and actually listen to the answer.
“No,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I’m not.”
She wondered whether this would be an appropriate moment to cry—whether the act of doing so might bring some relief and make her feel better. She tried to summon tears, but there weren’t any. There never were. Her studies were put on hold, and she moved back home with her dad and Suzy. Yet another failure. There were doctors’ visits and therapy and antidepressants. Her stepmum took care of her every day, bringing soup and magazines and cheerful chatter. Her mum came just once. It was weird seeing Suzy usher her into Eve’s bedroom. Her mum was clutching a bag tight enough to make her knuckles turn white, so tense and uncertain.
“Would you like some tea or anything?” Suzy asked.
Eve shook her head and her mum declined, too.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it then.”
