Chapter 51
They stepped into a guest room that was just like the others.
A single occupant sat on the bed, dressed all in black.
Black dress, black shoes, black hairband.
Eve recognised herself at once, but she wasn’t a woman as she’d been expecting.
The jolt of shock made the clutch bag fall from her hand, the contents scattering upon the floor.
She was looking at herself as she’d been at four years old.
She knew exactly how old she was and what day this was because she recognised the outfit.
The one she’d worn to Bella’s funeral. The second-worst day of her life.
The little girl watched them as they walked into the room and closed the door.
“I’m not going back,” the girl snapped. “You can’t make me.” Then her different-coloured eyes fell on Max and she said, “Oh! You’re the magician.” Her face lit up as she scrambled from the bed and came over to them. “Will you do another magic trick for me?”
How did she remember that? Could it be because she was back in the hotel?
But, no, adult Eve had remembered this even before she’d returned to the White Octopus.
She’d remembered the magician and the fountain and the peppermint creams. How was that possible if guests lost their memories upon checking out? How was any of this possible?
“How did you get here?” Max asked.
“I drew a door,” the girl replied. “And I stared at it until it turned real.”
Eve recalled only blurred, horrid fragments of that day.
Alone in her bedroom with her crayons, scribbling and scribbling, refusing to come downstairs and put her best shoes on.
Wishing with all her soul that she could be anywhere other than home and anyone other than herself.
Wishing for a door that could take her anywhere in the world she wanted to go.
“Then I used my key.” She held it up and Eve saw the loops of brass tentacles curling around the number seven.
Room Seven’s key was recently lost, I’m afraid….
Mrs. Roth’s words echoed in her mind. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.
“Nan gave it to me,” young Eve said, a little defensively. “She said it belonged to me.”
Eve remembered the day of the afternoon tea and how she’d seen Nan drop something onto her younger self’s lap. She’d thought it was a peppermint cream but perhaps, after all, it had been this key….
Max glanced around. “Is your mother with you?”
The girl’s face shut down again and she shook her head. “She’s going to the church. Everyone’s going. To say goodbye. To Bella.”
Eve swallowed hard. “You’ve got to go too,” she said. “Your mum is…She’s waiting for you to go downstairs and put your shoes on. It’ll upset her if you don’t. It’ll make things even worse.”
The little girl clenched her jaw. “I won’t.”
Eve gritted her teeth. She wanted to shake her younger self in that moment. To shake her, and shake her, and shake her.
“You’ve got to.”
“I WON’T!” the girl screamed—a screech so loud that it seemed to pierce Eve’s eardrums.
She took a step closer to the girl. The rage was too strong, she was going to hit her, she knew she was; she couldn’t help herself. The expression on her face must have frightened her younger self because the girl took a step back and quickly said, “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Eve cried. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter how sorry you are! It’s too late!”
She didn’t know what to do with this child. There was no chance that she could forgive her, none whatsoever. Not when she hated her more fiercely than she had ever hated anything.
“It was you,” she whispered harshly, letting all the hatred flow out into her voice, her face. “You did this.”
Stop it, a voice said inside her head. Stop it, stop it.
“Stop it,” Max said.
Very deliberately, he moved Eve to one side, like she didn’t matter at all, like she was nothing, and then he went to crouch in front of the little girl.
Eve was surprised to see that she wasn’t crying.
She didn’t look upset at all, only angry, furious—even more furious than adult Eve.
She was, in fact, the angriest person in the room.
Maybe even the angriest person in the world.
“I hate you!” she snarled. “I hate all of you!”
Without a word, Max put his arms around her and held her tightly.
The girl stood rigid for a moment or two before melting into him.
And now tears did sparkle in her eyes and Eve could see that she was trembling so much she could hardly stand up.
Her hands went around the back of Max’s neck and she clung to him like her life depended on it.
“Today will be very hard,” Max said. “Some days are. But you can do hard things, Eve.”
“I’m never going back,” the girl whispered. “Never. Everyone will stare at me. In the church. They’ll whisper and they’ll stare.”
“We can’t control what other people do,” Max said. “The other people don’t matter. You’re stronger than they are.”
“Bella is gone,” the girl said so quietly her words were almost lost. “She’s gone.”
Max nodded. “People go sometimes. They just go and there’s nothing at all we can do about it except let them leave. And turn up for the people who are still there. Your mum and dad are waiting for you, aren’t they? Even if you don’t want to go back for yourself, you’ve got to go back for them.”
“But—”
“If you stay here, then you’ll have to live with me,” Eve said. “And I’m even more angry than your mum is.”
The girl shrank back at that, closing her eyes briefly. Eve knew she felt trapped, that it seemed like there was nowhere in the world that she could go, but what could she do? What could anyone do?
She tried to soften her voice and said, “Hiding doesn’t help anyway.”
“How about we make a deal?” Max said. “I’ll perform one last magic trick if you’ll go back home.”
The girl hesitated for a moment but then nodded. Max smiled. “Say. What’s that hiding in your ear?”
She was about to check, but Max beat her to it. When he brought his hand down and uncurled his fingers, the fumsup doll was resting in his palm.
“This little fellow brought me a lot of luck,” he told her. “And kept me company through some very difficult times. Now he’ll do the same for you. He likes living in pockets. And every time you feel afraid or alone, just give his head a rub. It helps a little.”
The girl took the fumsup solemnly. And to Eve’s surprise and relief, she let Max lead her back to the door. But when she got there, she paused, frowning down at the objects that had fallen from Eve’s bag.
“Why have you got the clock octopus?”
Eve looked down at the white octopus sculpture.
Would the little one like to help me wind the clock…?
“The grandfather clock,” she breathed.
“What about it?” Max asked.
Tick.
Tock.
“It’s where the octopus goes.”
“You should put it back,” the little girl said. “Then it will look like the old one I saw in the photo again.”
“Yes,” Eve replied. She could feel the walls closing in on her once more. She was going to win the scavenger hunt after all. “I should.”
The girl put the key in the lock and turned it anticlockwise.
“You can’t take the key,” Eve said. “It belongs to the hotel.”
Her younger self gave her a withering look. “It belongs to me. But I know I can’t take it this time. Nan already told me.”
When she opened the door, it led back to her own bedroom at home. Eve couldn’t look at it and turned away. It was a place she never, ever wanted to go back to, not for one second. And yet here she was sending a four-year-old to face what she could not.
“Bye,” the girl whispered.
“Goodbye, Eve,” Max replied. “And good luck.”
Then the door closed behind her and she was gone. Eve reached down to pick up the octopus, feeling the cold weight of it in her hand—a burden she could never set down. Then she took the key to Room 7 and slid it into her pocket. Reunited again, after all these years.
Max caught her gaze. “You were unfair to her. You must realise that, deep down. You must.”
“She’s responsible.”
“I never said she wasn’t.”
“I can’t forgive her for what she did.” Eve’s breath shuddered through her body. “Not ever.”
“No.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose you will. To the lobby, then.”
They went downstairs and Eve heard Tristan’s words ring inside her head in a curious double echo. The words she had heard him speak when she was both three and twenty-eight years old.
But, Mr. Everly, we don’t really have the faintest notion of what time actually is.
Tick.
The truth is that time will always be as much of a mystery to us as death itself.
Tock.
When she and Max walked over to the grandfather clock, Eve saw that it had three chains. Two of these had weights attached to them, taking the form of traditional cylinders. The chain in the middle was missing its weight entirely, but there was a hook at the end for it to hang from.
Eve reached into the clock and put the octopus in its rightful place.