Page 63 of The White Octopus Hotel
She felt the first, faintest flicker of doubt.Couldit be possible that not all people would be horrified, after all? The idea was inconceivable. The tentacles whipped back into the drawing so fast that they stirred up the loose pages again, and one of them practically fluttered into Max’s hand.
To her dismay it was one of the drawings she’d done of Max himself, using a photo she’d found online. It was a sketch she’d taken great care over and now that she saw it in his hands, she felt compelled to offer an explanation.
“It wasn’t about you,” she hurried to say. It would be more humiliation than she could stand if he ever found out about the crush she’d had on him, that strange tug shestillhad towards him, that yearning to pull him close and never let him go. “It was your music. It…It lifted me up from such blackness.”
He gave her a sharp look before fixing his eyes back on the drawing. “Well,” he said. “You lifted me up first.”
Eve’s face was burning. “I’m going to check the other trunks.”
There had to besomethinguseful down here, or else why would the octopus have helped her find the basement? She turned to another big steamer trunk on the floor, but when she examined it, she saw that the name on the luggage label wasn’t hers. It readLieutenant Max Everly.
Chapter 41
Max looked at the trunk dubiously. “There’s not a chance I’m opening that.”
Eve supposed he preferred his unwanted baggage to stay locked away, but she was still smarting from his remarks about her cowardice, and it was impossible to resist the spiteful urge to poke her fingers into whatever old wounds Max was trying to keep hidden.
“Don’t!” he cried as she reached out, but it was too late.
Her fingers snapped open the latches and she threw back the lid. When she peered inside it was filled with paper, just like in her trunks, only these weren’t drawings, they were letters. Hundreds of them…
“Here, shift that out of the way, can’t you?” a voice grumbled. “I’m trying to practise this card trick.”
Eve turned around, but the luggage room was different. There were sandbags pressed up against the walls and mud scattered over the floor in wet lumps. And she and Max were no longer alone. There was a redheaded boy of about seventeen sprawled on the floor beside one of the armchairs, dressed in a dirt-splattered army uniform, using a trunk as a table to shuffle a deck of cards. Abedraggled-looking duck sat by his side. At the bar was a lanky man in his twenties wearing glasses and writing a letter. And crouching on the ground nearby was a dark-haired teenager shuffling through a trunk full of records.
“There you are,” the dark-haired boy said, glancing up. “We were about to send out a search party. Have you seen my gramophone anywhere?”
He was looking straight at Max. Eve felt him stiffen beside her and saw his face drain of colour.
“I…” His voice was a croak. “I…No. I haven’t seen it.”
“Never mind about that,” the redhead said. “Come and have some trench cake. It arrived from Betty this morning.”
“I’ll get some tea on,” the man in the glasses said, standing up. Then he glanced at Max and went still. “Something wrong, old man?” he said quietly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Max remained silent.
The redheaded boy sighed. “Out with it then. Who’s dead now?”
When he took a step back, Max’s heel hit the trunk behind him. He turned to look down at the contents—casualty reports and letters to bereaved loved ones.
Dear Miss Thornton…regret to inform…your fiancé, Rupert Lawson…
Dear Mrs. Waugh…with deepest regrets…your son John…
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones…regret to tell you…your son, Thomas…
Died of his wounds…
Behaved most gallantly…
Killed in action…
“I say,” a voice said. “That’s not quite true, is it?”
The dark-haired boy was beside them, both hands pressed to his stomach, blood running through his fingers and splattering onto the papers. The side of his head was completely missing—just a mess of brain and bone.
“If you’re going to write to Mother and Father, then you could at least have the decency to tell the truth and say that you shot me.”
