Page 10 of The White Octopus Hotel
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A short while later, Eve got off the bus and walked down the road to her childhood house. She hadn’t lived there since she was six. When her parents split up, it had been assumed by everyone involved that Eve would live with her dad. She’d seen her mum, of course, for weekends and special occasions. Sometimes they went out for burgers or to the cinema. But the problem was that they never seemed to quite know what to say to each other. It was almost like they weren’t really mother and daughter at all, only actors playing their parts.
As Eve approached the house now, she wondered how her mother could bear to remain living here. To walk past the spot where it had happened every day. She reached into her pocket for the fumsup, rubbing her thumb frantically over its smooth wooden head. Even the fucking gate was the same—the gate that had changed everything. Eve paused on the pavement, wishing she didn’t have to touch it. It was a perfectly ordinary gate, with a fewflakes of blue paint still clinging to it, but if Eve had been her mother, she would have had it ripped out and sent for scrap. Even now, after twenty-four years, Eve hated that gate with a smouldering intensity that made it hard to breathe as she released the latch and swung it open….
Chapter 6
Eve—27th August 1992
“Make sure you close the gate!” her mum called from the kitchen window as Eve rushed down the garden path.
“Okay!” she shouted back.
She half skipped, half bounced along, relishing the feel of her petticoats swishing around her legs. It was too hot and sticky a day for such a dress, but Eve had picked it out herself the week before and she adored the purple polka dots and the way the skirts puffed out around her legs. Her shoes were new too, glittery with shiny buckles. Her black hair was tied up in two high pigtails and she’d never felt more like a princess.
She pulled open the gate to see the party banner her mum had attached to it. Large, looping letters spelled out:
Welcome to Eve’s 4th Birthday Party!
A single purple balloon was tied to the gatepost, bobbing in the breeze.
“This way people will know they’ve come to the right house,”Eve’s mum had told her. “We don’t want your friends accidentally going to someone else’s house, do we?”
Eve had never had a birthday party before, and as the week had gone on, her excitement had built so much that she’d started to think she might burst with it. Now, at last, the day was finally here and the only thing spoiling it was Bella. Eve hopped up and down on the spot a few times to make the lights in the soles of her shoes flash—staring at the gate, and the balloon, and the banner.
A few minutes later, she turned on her heel and ran back down the path to the house. In the living room, she found Bella toddling around. Her little sister had a new party dress too—blue gingham with a large appliquéd bunny rabbit on the skirt, delightfully fluffy and white, with a black splodge over its right eye. Bella’s black curls were held back with blue clip-on bows. She picked up a balloon with both arms, beaming in delight.
“No, Bella, put it back!” Eve said crossly. “Those are formyparty!”
It was hard not to be annoyed with Bella sometimes. It seemed as if she was forever messing up Eve’s things, or breaking her toys, or getting in the way, or throwing food on the floor, or crying, or taking up all their mother’s attention. They couldn’t even go out for picnic lunches now, like they used to, because Bella needed to be back home for her midday nap. But today wasEve’sday, not Bella’s. Her sister ran off with the balloon, disappearing out the door with a giggle.
Eve wanted to go after Bella and get the balloon back, put it where it belonged with the others, but Bella screamed if you took things from her, and then their mum would come out and start telling Eve off. It always seemed to be Eve who got into trouble, never Bella.
“She’s just a baby,” her mum would say.
There was an endless list of instructions when it came to Bella.
You have to be patient.
You have to share.
You have to wait.
Be nice, be gentle, don’t fuss.
It would be easier to go and find the balloon once Bella had inevitably tired of it and bring it back then, so Eve skipped into the kitchen, which was a whirlwind of laughter and activity, with sandwiches being cut into triangles and biscuits piled on paper plates and lemonade poured into a big jug, fizzing and sparkling. Her mum had just picked up the birthday cake—a cat with Smarties for eyes and purple frosting for fur. And then there was the blaring of a car horn, and the squealing of tires, and the sound of people shouting and running about outside.
“Oh dear,” Auntie Pam said, glancing out the window. “I think there’s been an accident….”
Eve’s mum looked out the window and suddenly froze. Then a sound escaped her lips that was somewhere between a choke and a groan, so full of dread and despair that Eve went still too. Her mum dropped the cake. The plate broke in two on the floor and the cat’s head slid off to one side. Eve started to howl because how could there be a birthday party without a birthday cake? She fully expected her mum to swoop in and comfort her, but instead she ran right out of the room without a backwards glance. Perhaps she’d run to the shops to buy another cake? Eve took a step towards the door, still crying, but her auntie Pam scooped her up. She was barely paying any attention to her, though, but staring out the window instead.
“My cake!” Eve wailed, louder than ever.
She thought her auntie Pam would surely comfort her, since her mum wasn’t here. But instead, she said, “For God’s sake, Eve,hush!”
There was something harsh and horrible about her tone, so different from the way her aunt normally spoke to her. Eve went silent, and suddenly she was afraid rather than upset. Something waswrong—something that was even worse than the cake, though she couldn’t think what. Her aunt whisked Eve into the dining room at the back of the house. There were no windows facing the front, but Eve could still hear shouting and, soon after that, the sound of a siren. Then it all went very quiet.
Eve’s uncle Ben arrived at some point and Eve could hear him answering the door and speaking in a low voice to the people who rang the bell on the other side. She knew it was her friends because she caught snatches of their voices before the door was closed and the quiet swept through the house again.
