Chapter 52
A bright flash exploded for the final time, and Eve saw the sparkle of pennies landing inside the fountain, felt a burst of childish delight at a sugar rabbit, and then there was the echoing clip-clop of the trench horse wandering the steam baths, and the air was filled with the most beautiful music in the world, played by a band of tin mice.
For a moment the lobby wavered back and forth between splendour and decay, and she couldn’t work out whether the Max before her was twenty, or thirty-six, or eighty as his voice rang inside her head.
Come back to the hotel.
Are you real?
My music is for you. It’s all for you, every note and bar….
“The clock needs winding,” a man said.
Eve looked up, blinking away the last of those firework flashes. She saw that Tristan had entered the lobby, with his brother and sister behind him.
“Congratulations,” Anna said. “You won. I believe it’s the last sheet of writing paper you wish to claim?”
She was holding it out, offering it. Eve walked across the room and 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. I would. 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 the hour 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 the name 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 was almost 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.”
Anna shook her head. “No. That’s not true. She’s just…She’s in so many broken bits and doesn’t know how to fix herself. But she doesn’t blame you.”
“She does.”
“She doesn’t. She’ll come and live here with you at the hotel if you ask her to.
I know because it’s already happened.” Anna smiled.
“You met her here a few days ago. She was so looking forward to having afternoon tea with you one last time. That’s what she was holding on to, I think.
We all knew she would die later that same day, because you told us that as well. But she was determined to see you.”
“Afternoon tea?” Eve faltered. “Are you saying that…Mrs. Roth…?”
Anna nodded. “She assumed the name of Roth when you did. But she always kept Jane.”
My own daughter died recently.
If I could see my daughter one last time, I would be honoured to tell her that she was the single greatest joy of my life….
Eve realised she was shaking as she took a step closer to Anna. “Can any of what you’re saying be true?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” Anna said. “But we have to go now.”
The word Mum rang and rang in her ears.
“Go where?” she asked. “If the White Octopus Hotel has been your home all this time, then what will you do next?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Anna smiled.
“We’ve known this moment was coming for a long time and have been planning our future for years.
I love the White Octopus with all my heart, but the hotel belongs to the two of you.
” Her eyes flicked towards Max. “Or rather, the two of you belong to the hotel. That’s what you always used to say.
That you were caretakers for this place.
That it chose you. That’s why it allowed you to take your memories with you—because it knew you were coming back.
You aren’t guests here. You never were. The hotel is your home.
Ours too, for a while. I loved my time here, but now I’d like to do something on my own—perhaps even create a different kind of hotel with a different kind of magic.
” Her eyes glittered. “I have such plans, Mama. I know you’ll never get to see them, but I promise you they will be every bit as spectacular as what you did here. ”
Harry set the framed sketch of the map down beside the piano. “The hotel won’t look quite the same in 1895. And you’ll see that it reinvents itself throughout the years, moulding itself to the era. But you’ll find plenty that’s familiar.”
“All that remains,” Tristan said, “is to wind the clock once the three of us have gone.” He looked at Eve. “Do you remember how to do it?”
She nodded. “Yes. But I won’t. I already told you. It’s not what I signed up for. Happily ever after isn’t why I’m here.”
Max had his hands in his pockets, leaning against the piano. “That goes for both of us.”