Page 82 of The White Octopus Hotel
“To play the part of hotel guests, obviously. And to try to win her scavenger hunt. If even half of the stories we were told to circulate amongst ourselves are true, then there’s an object or two I would love to get my hands on.” The man’s voice was suddenly wistful, but when he saw their puzzled expressions, he looked abruptly unsure. “But aren’t you actors too? I thought all of us were.”
Eve and Max both shook their heads.
“Oh dear. I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything. I just thought, given that it’s the last night, you might know where we’re headed next….”
He trailed off awkwardly, then rapidly made his excuses and left.
Eve thought back to the gentlemen she had offended with her very presence on her first night in the Palm Bar. Had that been a genuine reaction or just a performance? She supposed she would never know. Though—actors or not—they were still just men of their time.
Nan appeared then, holding a crumpled leaf. “She said to give this to you.”
Eve didn’t need to ask who. She took it from Nan and for a flash of a moment she was back home in the garden with Bella holding a leaf out to her in chubby fingers.
Time works differently in the mountains….
“You always try to pretend you can’t see the rabbit,” Nan went on conversationally. “Why don’t you ever follow it instead?”
I did follow it,she thought.It took me to Room Seven.
She leaned down to the little girl and said, “Who’s the guest in Room Seven, Nan? Is it Bella?”
Nan let out a squeal of laughter. “No, silly!”
She scampered off, still giggling. Eve’s eyes went to the many mirrors that lined the ballroom. It suddenly looked as if there was another girl beside Nan—a much younger child wearing a blue-and-white party dress with a large appliquéd bunny on the front.
From the other side of the room came theting-ting-tingof someone tapping a fork against a crystal glass and Anna Roth was standing on the stage at the front, waiting for the room to fall silent as everyone turned towards her.
“Thank you all for coming to our party tonight,” she began.
Somewhere close by, a camera flashed.
Don’t forget to close the gate….
And Eve was back there, on the path outside her house. She was four years old, wearing her beloved purple dress and looking at her balloons. When she reached out for the gate, the metal was cold beneath her fingers, and she noticed that the blue paint was smart and neat, no longer rusting off in flakes. She closed it with aclang. And found herself once again in the ballroom of the White Octopus Hotel.
“I apologise for ending the festivities early, but as you can see, the weather would make it impossible to continue.”
The guests all began to exclaim and point up towards the ceiling and the spectacular night sky painted there. Snow was falling from the inky-blue paint in soft white flurries that landed in people’s champagne coupes, settled on silk dresses, and extinguished the candles one by one. The glass chandeliers above remained lit but could only half illuminate the vast space.
The White Octopus will close its doors for good on the day snow falls from the ceiling and other lives are glimpsed within the mirrors….
“You there.” Max signalled the barman. “Two more champagnes before we’re all thrown out in the snow.”
Eve couldn’t tear her eyes from the mirror. She could see it, that other life. There was a party going on within the glass—the one from all those years ago, the party that had never happened. Except itwashappening. Eve saw her four-year-old self running around the summer garden with her friends, while her mum and aunt and various other adults looked on, smiling, laughing, eating cake, being normal. And Bella was there, alive and happy, toddling around in those uncertain, wobbly steps until she was standing right up against the mirror, looking out at Eve. The little girl raised her hand in a wave and Eve left Max at the champagne bar to walk over to her.
She crouched down close to the glass, but it was impossible to hear anything of the party on the other side. Yet she could so veryalmosthear it, and smell it, and touch it, and taste it. Her heart raced as she met Bella’s gaze, but this wasn’t the bitter ghost of her imaginings. The little girl beamed out of the mirror, her whole face lit up with pleasure at the sight of her sister. She scooped up a leaf from the ground and pressed it against the glass.
Eve put her hand up to the cold surface, her fingertips resting against Bella’s. She couldn’t feel the warmth of her sister’s skin, but the leaf was passing through the mirror. Eve looked down and saw it resting in her hand, completely covered in a reflective coat, mirror-dipped and cold. She looked back up at Bella and there was so much that she wanted to say, but the little girl was already giving a final wave and running back to the party. Then ice crackled along the surface, and the mirrors froze in their frames, turning opaque and hiding the other world from their view.
“The sleighs have been loaded with your luggage and are waiting outside to take you across the lake,” Anna went on from the stage. “Arrangements have been made with another hotel there, who have rooms available to take you all in for the night.”
“What about the scavenger hunt?” someone called. “Who won?”
Anna lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “No one managed to findall the octopuses. Perhaps some prizes aren’t meant to be won. I hope you have enjoyed your stay.”
Eve stood up and stared at the silver leaf in her hand, the exact double of the one Anna Roth wore on a chain around her throat. The guests began to make their way out of the French doors, which had been opened to reveal a fleet of sleighs waiting for them outside. But out of the corner of her eye, Eve saw the rabbit as it hopped from the room in the other direction, heading back into the hotel.
Why don’t you ever follow it instead?
