Chapter 26
When Eve returned to the lobby, she immediately saw her three-year-old self standing next to Jane by the reception desk. The place was quiet at this time of day, so Eve heard the child suddenly whimper, “Mama? Hug?”
“In a minute.”
She tugged at her mother’s hand. “Hug, please?”
Jane was trying to listen to something the receptionist was saying and shook her off. “For God’s sake, Eve, would you just wait?”
Across the room, adult Eve winced, expecting her younger self to start shouting and tantruming again, but instead the girl turned away and walked across the foyer, her blue buckled shoes scuffing and squeaking over the floor.
When she got to the fountain, she tried to peer up into the lowest basin, but it was too tall even when she was on tiptoe.
So she sat down on the floor beside it, instead, her legs sticking straight out in front of her.
The girl looked small and sad, but Eve couldn’t find it in her to feel pity.
You’ll ruin it all…
There was the tread of feet as someone else entered the lobby and Eve saw it was Max.
He looked as if he was heading straight to the piano but as he passed the child by the fountain he paused.
To Eve’s disgust, the girl was still whimpering and snivelling, and she felt ashamed that he should see her like that, even if he didn’t realise who she was.
“Pardon me, miss,” Max said, looking down at her. “Have you seen a rabbit around here?”
Adult Eve felt that familiar recoil at the word “rabbit.” Was there to be no end to the wretched monsters? But small Eve just shook her head.
“Sometimes I find the rascal hiding in my hat.” Max swept off his fedora and reached inside. Small Eve watched with big eyes as he pulled out a handful of pennies, which he dropped in the girl’s lap with a sigh. “Leaving his pocket money lying about the place again. What a naughty rabbit.”
“Naughty rabbit!” small Eve exclaimed with a giggle.
Max knelt by her side, rummaged inside the fedora again, and this time brought out a small sugar octopus. “Now, how did this fellow get in there?” he demanded. “And what has he done with my rabbit?”
He offered the sugar octopus to the girl and adult Eve suddenly remembered the magic of this moment—of meeting a real magician by the fountain of this hotel and marvelling at the sparkle of white sugar tentacles.
The little girl leaned closer to Max then, put her hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a whisper.
“Is it real magic?”
“Well,” Max whispered back. “That depends. There are many different types of magic.”
Jane walked over to join them. “What do you say, Eve?” she asked, nodding towards the sugar octopus. A small smile softened her mother’s face and Eve felt grateful to Max for that, at least.
“Thank you,” small Eve replied.
“Anytime.” Max stood up and put his hat on his head.
“The pennies are good for wishes.” He nodded towards the fountain, then wandered over to the piano in the corner, sat down, and began to play one of his own compositions—another piece that Eve knew well.
It was, in fact, the first music of his that she’d ever heard after seeking him out at the end of that group therapy session so many years ago.
She’d loved it then, as she did now, but had had no idea that she’d heard it once before, as a child.
She wanted to leave but couldn’t tear herself away as Jane scooped Eve up and sat her on the edge of the fountain.
She helped the little girl to toss the pennies into the water, one by one.
They watched them sink to the bottom and when Eve tried to pass a penny over, Jane shook her head and gave it back.
“My wishes are all for you, my love.”
“This fountain isn’t for wishing.” Anna had entered the room and stopped beside them.
She wore the same belted mint dress as earlier, and her glossy, dark hair was still tied up in a chignon bun, but something was off, something was different.
Her eyes were red from crying. She was smiling at Jane, but it wasn’t a happy expression. It was heartbreak and it was loss.
“No?” Jane asked.
“No,” Anna said softly. “It’s a fountain for unwishing.”
“What’s that?” small Eve asked.
“We wish for the wrong thing sometimes,” Anna replied. “And an unwishing fountain is where we can…take it back.”
“How strange,” Jane said.
“Do you think so?” Anna looked at the water and the marble tentacles sprawling up the basins. “I’ve always thought that an unwish is perhaps the only thing more precious than a wish.” She looked back to Jane. “The receptionist tells me you’re checking out now, Mrs. Shaw?”
“That’s right.”
“I hope you enjoyed your stay at the White Octopus.”
“It was wonderful, thank you.” Jane smiled. “I only wish I could remember it. Once we’re home, I mean.”
Anna nodded. She stepped forwards, and Eve assumed she was going to shake Jane’s hand, but she threw her arms around the other woman instead, hugging her tightly over her bump.
Eve saw the startled expression on Jane’s face as she patted Anna on the back.
She saw how tightly Anna held on to her before letting her go.
Why was she looking at Jane like that? Like she didn’t want her to ever leave?
“Have a safe journey,” she said, before walking out of the room.
Still looking confused, Jane turned back to small Eve, wrapping her arms around her and holding her close for a moment before kissing her on the head. “Come on, then. Time to go home.”
“Would the little one like to help me wind the clock before you go?”
For the first time, Eve realised there was another person in the lobby, just out of her sight.
When she stepped further into the room, she saw a wiry man in his midthirties, tinkering with the grandfather clock.
The name badge on his jacket read Tristan: Nikolas Roth’s second son.
He smiled gently at Jane and Eve. “My children used to love helping with this old clock. Nan still does.”
“All right,” Jane agreed. “Thank you. But then we really have to go, Eve.”
I should go too, Eve thought, yet she knew that she wouldn’t. Not until her mother was out of sight. These were her last moments of seeing her this way and she wasn’t about to give them up. Her younger self skipped eagerly over to the clock and Tristan guided her hands to one of the chains inside.
“Just think how long this clock has been here,” he said. “Ticking and tocking its way through all the years. That’s it, pull the chain just like that, all the way to the top. Do you hear it? Tick—”
Tock.
The last few minutes unravelled back on themselves and Eve was suddenly in her original place in the doorway watching her younger self, who was no longer winding the clock but sat next to the fountain instead.
And then Max, who was no longer playing the piano, was stopping beside her, pulling pennies and a sugar octopus from his hat.
Then there was Anna hugging Jane like she would never let her go.
It all played out exactly as it had before, five minutes of rewound time.
Tick.
It felt to Eve as if she was an observer inside her own head. She saw things from a slightly different perspective than she had the first time but didn’t seem to be able to do anything different. The same moments were simply replaying themselves again.
Tock.
There were Jane and Eve tossing coins into the fountain as Max played the piano.
Tick.
And there was Tristan.
“Would the little one like to help me wind the clock…?”
Tock.
And then there they all were, back to the moment they had left before, when small Eve had just wound the clock.
Only time didn’t slip backwards again, but continued forwards instead.
In the corner of the room, Max’s fingers fumbled into a discordant chord, and he abruptly stopped playing. Silence descended.
“It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it?” Tristan said. “It only happens once a week, when the clock is wound. A funny glitch of its mechanisms, I suppose, that makes time rewind for five minutes.”
“Incredible,” Jane breathed, looking stunned.
“That’s some trick,” Max said from the piano.
“It’s no trick, Mr. Everly,” Tristan replied. “Everything you see at the White Octopus Hotel is real.”
“Time for us to go, Eve,” Jane said. “Say goodbye.”
“Bye-bye,” the little girl said, raising her hand in a wave before Jane led her across the foyer to the lift.
Unlike ordinary guests, they wouldn’t be leaving through the front doors.
Eve watched them go and then glanced across the room and her eyes locked with Max’s.
He looked from her to the grandfather clock and back again, a deep frown etched upon his face.
Then he stood up and walked over to Tristan, who was just closing the cabinet on the clock.
“How was that done?” he demanded. “No illusionist can rewind time.”
Tristan gave a small half smile. “But, Mr. Everly,” he said, “we don’t really have the faintest notion of what time actually is. How can we possibly? Yet we claim to measure it and count it and so on, but the truth is that time will always be as much of a mystery to us as death itself.”