Page 86 of The White Octopus Hotel
She was holding it out, offering it. Eve walked across the roomand took the paper, which crinkled between her fingers. A single blank sheet, with the White Octopus crest at the top.
“Will this really work?” she asked. “Will it send a letter to my younger self?”
Anna nodded. “Shall I fetch you a pen?”
Eve stared at the paper. She could feel Max on one side of her and Bella on the other and she knew that she couldn’t win now that she had a prize. She would lose, whatever she did. Let someone down again, whatever she did. Rip herself in half, whatever she did.Close the goddamned gate. That was all she had to say to change everything, rewrite everything. She would do it. She would. She had to. For her parents, for Bella, for herself, for that lost little four-year-old they’d just met in Room 7.
And yet…
The point—the entire point of all of this—had been to make things right. And how could swapping one life for another be making things right? Here it was, at last, the line Eve could not, would not, cross. She shook her head and handed the paper back to Anna.
“I can’t.”
“Eve—” Anna began.
“No,” she said. “Please, listen. Please try to understand. I would swap places with you. Iwould. But I won’t swap someone else’s life for yours. I won’t kill Max so that you can live. I’m not killing another person, and I would say that even if it was someone other than Max, someone I didn’t love.”
“It would be eight people, actually,” Anna said.
Eve blinked. “What?”
“It would be eight people you’d have to kill.” Anna took a key from her pocket and set it down on the grand piano. “To bring Bella back.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eve asked.
“It’s the clock,” Tristan said. “A grandfather clock has three chains.” He indicated the two on each side. “This one controls thehour chimes, the other the quarter-hour chimes. But the one in the middle is for time. Now that the weight is back in place, it will rewind time by more than five minutes. It will rewind it by forty years and take you back to the day the White Octopus first appeared in the mountains.”
They say the hotel came with the fog.
To Eve’s astonishment, Anna reached out for both her hands, holding them tight, so tight, as if she never wanted to let them go. The mirrored leaf flashed and sparkled at her throat as she swallowed hard. “Haven’t you worked it out yet?” she asked quietly. “I am your Annabella, but not in the way you think. I’m not your sister.” She took a deep breath that ended in a bit of a gulp, and a bit of a sob, and a bit of a smile. “I’m your daughter. And I still miss you so much. Both of you.” She glanced at Max. “You and Father.”
Max had turned completely white as he stared at Anna, Harry, and Tristan. “Are you saying that the three of you…that you’re our children?”
“That isn’t true,” Eve said at once, removing her hands. “I know it isn’t because I would never have children.” She shuddered at the notion. “Never.”
Anna gave a shrug, and her smile was almost a smirk. “Well, that’s a matter for you and Father to discuss, I’m sure.”
“You’d have to be an absolute lunatic to bring children into this world,” Max said. “And what about Nikolas Roth? He’s your father, isn’t he?”
“He’s both of you,” Harry said. For the first time, Eve noticed that he had a framed picture under his arm. He turned this around so that they could see the painting, although it was really more of a sketch. A map. Eve recognised the pencil drawings of golden palms and fan mirrors, clocks and octopuses, fountains and war horses. It was the map she’d drawn herself in the Reading Room.
“You were an artist in 1895,” Harry went on. “But women couldn’t show paintings or have exhibitions, so you took on thename of Nikolas Roth. If you ever needed to make a public appearance, then Papa would go in your place.”
Tristan addressed Max. “You carry on composing too, of course. Your best work. It all goes into the music boxes—until you carry it forwards in time.” The suitcase at Stanley’s, Eve realised with a start. It had been Max who left that. “That’s why Anna had to burn them.”
“You can’t see or hear the thing you’re trying to create before you’ve created it,” Anna said. “Or else you wouldn’t be creating it at all—only copying. You were both very clear on that point. So, yes. I burned the music boxes and paintings, like you asked me to, like I should have done to begin with. But I know you will make it all again.”
“That’s why we took some of the photographs down from the walls too,” Harry said. “Because you’re in them.”
“Well,” Eve said, stepping back from Anna. “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but you’ve got it wrong. Completely wrong. I’m not staying here at the hotel. And I’m not going back in time again either. I mean, what about my parents? I wouldn’t let them believe I’d just disappeared. If I had the strength and decency to go back when I was four, then I’ll damn well do it again now.”
“You know about the time-travelling keys,” Anna replied. “They’ll take you wherever and whenever you want.” She looked at Max. “So, yes, you can later take your collection of sheet music into the future for it to live on there. And, you,” Anna said, turning back to Eve. “You can tell your parents where you’ve gone and that you’re all right.”
Eve thought about it. She could take herself back to 2016 and pick up where she’d left off, moments before Friede arrived to collect her in the boat. She could put her affairs in order back home and then leave that life forever to come back here to the hotel. After all, what was keeping her in that old life? Her job? Her flat? It wasalmost hard to remember it now or any part of it that had ever really made her happy.
“And you can bring your mother with you,” Anna went on. “To live here.”
Eve let out a harsh laugh. “She’d never come. Our relationship is in ruins. Mum can hardly bear to look at me most of the time.”
