Page 61 of The White Octopus Hotel
“Well,” Max said. “I am truly sorry. That is a very great weight for any child to bear.”
“Don’t waste pity on me,” Eve snapped. “I can’t stand it. And I don’t deserve it. Imeantto leave the gate open. Everyone assumed afterwards that I’d forgotten my mum’s warning, but I didn’t.”
There. She’d finally said it—the words that could never be unsaid. She’d spoken the truth aloud—a truth she’d never admitted to a single soul.
“I did it on purpose,” she whispered. “I looked at that gate and I thought,So what if Bella gets out? At least she won’t get in the way of my party.I remember thinking it so clearly. It wasn’t an accident.”
Max was silent for a moment. “It was an accident,” he said at last. “In every sense that matters. You could not possibly have foreseen the consequences of your actions.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Eve replied. “I am to blame. She’d still be here if it wasn’t for me.”
“That is true,” Max replied with a sigh. “And there’s no escaping the truth, not for any of us.”
Eve felt the knot in her chest loosen just slightly. She was glad Max hadn’t tried to tell her that what she’d done wasn’t monstrous or that it wasn’t her fault. Perhaps he did understand what it was like.
“But you’re mistaken if you think I pity you,” he went on. “Perhaps you can’t comprehend how many men I’ve killed. And not just men. Boys too.” He paused. “Friends. One of my fellow officers, Thomas, was injured in no-man’s-land. A fatal injury, but it would have taken a long time for him to die.” His breath caught. “Such a very long time. He stumbled over to me, through the mud, and begged me to help.”
“And?” Eve asked when he fell silent.
“And,” Max said, “I shot him in the head. I still believe it was the only thing I could have done in that moment, but there’s no forgiveness for that, no coming back from it. Our nightmares will never go away. Sometimes the world sets us up to fail, that’s all, and there’s no good way of playing the hand you were dealt. But I suppose that explains why you’re so fixated on the scavenger hunt. You’re after the writing paper.”
Eve nodded. The apples were still rolling into the other side of the door; she could hear them. “Maybe this isn’t a performance at all,” she said. “Maybe it’s a punishment. Don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence that Annabella Roth has a name very much like my sister’s?”
“But wasn’t her name just Bella—?”
“We always called her Bella. But for all I know, that was a pet name, and she was actually christened Annabella. But even if she was only ever Bella, it’s too close, too much of a coincidence. Youmust have noticed that she looks like me? And she has the same eye and hair colour as my sister, the same dimples. There’s even a rabbit. It makes me wonder…whether sheisBella. The woman she would have been if she’d grown up.”
Max paused. “Anything is possible in this place. And she certainly does look a lot like you. But Anna was alive in the world years before your sister was even born. I don’t see how they can be the same person.”
He was right, and yet Eve found it impossible to dismiss the thought. “Maybe not the same person then,” she said. “But the same soul. Maybe Annabella Roth is the person she was before she was born as Bella Shaw.”
“Reincarnation?”
Eve shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t go back there. To my old life. I can’t. I won’t.” Her gaze flicked back to Max. “If I manage to undo the past, then I’d never come to this hotel in the first place. You and I wouldn’t meet, here or in 1918. So I understand if you don’t want to help, I’d even understand if you tried to stop me. You wouldn’t be able to, by the way. But I would understand.”
Max shook his head and looked away. “I should have died in the trenches with the others. It’s ludicrous to have made it out alive in the first place. And then I ought to have died here again at the hotel in 1918. And I don’t believe in God, not anymore, but sometimes it feels as though the universe, or fate, or whatever you want to call it, made a mistake. They let me get through and survive when I wasn’t supposed to. Some higher power wasn’t paying attention, and if time needs to snap back like an elastic band in order to get everything in its rightful place, well, I would still have had more time than I’m due, so I can hardly complain.” He looked at her. “I’ll help you any way I can.”
“All right,” Eve replied. She didn’t feel good about this, sherealised, but deep down she thought—hoped—that perhaps Max was wrong. Perhaps she hadn’t saved his life at all. Perhaps he would be fine on his own.
“So what next?” Max asked.
“I’m going to look for this basement.”
Chapter 40
Within the hour they’d checked several staircases, but there were no hidden entrances leading to a lower floor. When they arrived at the final staircase, Eve recognised it from the photo of the wounded servicemen. This part of the hotel was still lit with gas lamps, and she looked up at the landing above through their flickering glow.
The feeling of déjà vu came sweeping over her once again, a crashing wave. Her gaze slid to Max, beside her in the shadows, and she felt even more strongly than before that sense that she’d known him in some other life.
“Well, this is the last staircase,” he said. “There is no basement.”
He was probably right. It was late and Eve was tired and yet, and yet…she had the strongest feeling that therewasa basement. She could sense it down there, hidden beneath the stones.
“The lift,” she said. “We haven’t checked that.”
“I looked earlier,” Max replied. “There’s no button for any basement.”
“I know, but we haven’t looked after dark,” Eve replied. “Perhaps it only appears then, like the night octopuses.”
