Page 74 of The White Octopus Hotel
The girl lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug.
“Matron told me that you’d gone away with your siblings and mother,” Eve said.
“We came back,” Anna replied.
The cold outside was an icy shock after the warmth of the frigidarium and Eve shivered. The darkness had deepened while she’d been in the steam baths and there was something unreal about the snow that covered everything. Eve could almost believe it wasn’t snow at all, but paint used to create a certain effect, a stage set for a scene.
The hotel itself was surreal too, sprawled before them in the moonlight. Almost all of its windows were dark except for a couple of lights upstairs and one on the ground floor that Eve recognised as the Gatsby Room. She could see the silhouettes of the servicemen walking about beyond the window, could hear the echo of their conversation and laughter. For a wild moment, she wonderedwhether any of this was real at all or only a performance for some unknown audience. She heard the creak of that gate inside her head again, heard a balloon popping somewhere close.
“Wait.” She put out a hand and touched Anna’s arm. The girl stopped at once but continued to look at the hotel rather than at Eve. “I have to know,” Eve went on, her voice shaking slightly. “Please, tell me the truth. Are youmyAnnabella?”
For a moment, the girl remained silent, and Eve began to think she might say nothing at all. But then she glanced at Eve and their eyes met just briefly. “Yes.”
The whisper fell soft as a snowflake between them, before the surroundings settled back into silence. It was the answer Eve had been expecting—the answer she knew, somehow, to be the truth—and yet it still hit her like a slap, and made it difficult to draw in breath, difficult to think. She couldn’t hear anything over the creak of the gate swinging back and forth inside her head. Anna and Eve stared at each other in the cool blue haze of the moonlight reflecting on the snow and the moment stretched impossibly on and on, as if they weren’t real women at all, but stone statues facing each other across the frozen grounds for all eternity. The arrival of new snowfall broke the spell and they continued into the hotel, the snow compacting beneath their boots and trailing across the floor of the lobby. They rode the lift in silence. To Eve’s surprise, Anna pressed the button for the third floor.
“Isn’t Nikolas Roth on the sixth floor?” she asked.
Anna shook her head. The lift stopped, the grille slid back, and a long freezing corridor lined with locked doors stretched out in front of them.
“This way.” Anna set off down the corridor, only to stop in front of Room 17.
“But that’s my room,” Eve said. Surely Nikolas Roth couldn’t be in there? She turned back to Anna. “What is this all really about? Please tell me.”
Anna shook her head and pointed to the door, so Eve took the key from her pocket. When she stepped inside, the room was just as she’d left it.
“There’s no one here,” she began, turning back towards Anna. But the girl had already slammed the door closed and she heard the click of the lock behind her. Inexplicably, the key was shoved beneath the door to her a moment later.
“What are you doing?” Eve called.
She felt a sudden chill in her blood and wondered whether Max had been right, after all. Perhaps something nefarious did happen to her at the hotel. Perhaps there was a reason that everyone lied about knowing her. Anna didn’t reply, and when Eve looked through the peephole, she saw that the girl had gone, and the corridor was empty. She picked up the key and turned back into the room and that was when she saw that it was not as she had left it, after all. While she’d been gone, someone had changed all the artwork on the walls.
From every angle, William-Adolphe Bouguereau paintings surrounded her, all depicting the same subject matter—rosy-cheeked, angelic little girls smiling sweetly from their frames, plump hands full of ripe apples. The paint seemed to morph before her eyes until it was Bella’s face peering out from every one. There hadn’t been any flowers in her room since that night she’d met Roth on the staircase, but now she saw fresh blooms on her dressing table and the card propped up beside them:
Dear Miss Shaw,
We hope you had a pleasant stay at the White Octopus. Please remember to take everything with you when you check out.
Kind regards,
N. Roth
Eve had always intended to leave today, yet now she hesitated. Perhaps she could just go and say a proper goodbye to Max first? Otherwise he’d be left with the impression that he’d done something to upset her, that she regretted what had taken place between them…. With a sudden flare of dread, she remembered what he’d said to her back in 1935.
There was a…a misunderstanding between us….
Friends hurt each other sometimes….
Behind her, Eve suddenly heard the distinctive thump of an apple hitting the floor and rolling across the room. She turned around and saw more apples swelling up out of the canvas before tumbling right out of the painting.
Thud, thud, thud.
There must have been a dozen paintings in the room and the apples were falling even faster than they had before. Already, the floor was half covered with them, and Eve had to kick them aside to reach the door. She slid the key into the lock, but it had jammed somehow and wouldn’t turn clockwise.
Thud, thud, thud.
Thud, thud, thud.
Thud, thud, thud.
