Chapter 31
Eve was still puzzling over the rather strange way her afternoon tea with Mrs. Roth had ended as she pressed the button for the lift. The golden birdcage glided down through the floors to collect her and when she stepped inside, she saw that Alfie was operating the lift today.
“Afternoon, miss,” he said with a grin. He looked so friendly and normal that it was hard to reconcile the strange image of him standing silently at the windows of the restaurant, a short while ago, with that grave expression on his face. “Floor five?”
“No, floor six, please,” Eve said as the grille slid closed behind her.
Alfie raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Nothing up there but staff quarters.”
“I’d like to go to floor six,” Eve repeated.
She wondered whether Alfie might refuse.
Perhaps he’d say that the sixth floor was off-limits to guests.
But instead, he just gave a good-natured shrug and pressed the button for the top floor.
The lift clanked into life and the view of the lobby shrank as the lift ascended.
For a moment, she could still see Max talking to Tristan in front of the grandfather clock.
Then the clock, the fountain, and the rest of the lobby dropped away as they rose through the floors.
Before long, the lift stopped at the top of the hotel and the door slid back, revealing a long corridor, much like the ones Eve had seen below, with a row of identical doors stretching down its length, all with shining brass numbers fastened to them. There was no sign of any tentacles.
“Just press the button if you need me,” Alfie said.
The grille slid back, and Eve watched as the lift descended into the hotel, leaving her alone on the sixth floor.
It was oddly still and quiet up here compared to the hustle and bustle of the guest floors below.
There was no murmur of voices, no doors opening and closing, no tread of feet upon the marble tiles.
The silence reminded Eve of the hotel as it had been when she explored its deserted shell.
There were no paintings or clocks upon the walls, and no octopuses in sight.
The doors were all closed, and Eve didn’t try to gain entry.
If they were staff quarters, then they were private and unlikely to contain any of the objects she was looking for.
Her mind was a tangle of confused thoughts as she pictured her younger mother and self downstairs—the intensely strange feeling of being both glad and sad at the same time.
Glad to see her mother again, but sad at how far away she was now and the knowledge of how quickly their lives were going to unravel.
She pushed the sadness away. Held on to the anger instead.
She could still hear the tick and tock of the grandfather clock inside her head and felt a sudden strong urge to punch the wall.
What use was rewinding time by five minutes?
What possible fucking use was that to anybody here?
Why couldn’t the clock have been there in her house on her fourth birthday?
Five minutes of rewound time was all it would have taken that day.
Five minutes was all it would have taken to change everything, but she needed far more than that now.
I don’t think I’m very good at it…. Being a mother….
Jane’s words rang in her head and Eve clenched her fists.
She was no good at being a daughter. And even worse at being a sister.
Just not really very good at being a human being in general.
A gate creaked loudly inside her head, and she did it this time, she punched the wall, and her fist went right through the wallpaper and the plaster, and a huge white tentacle burst through the hole and wrapped itself all the way up her arm, squeezing tight, and she was wearing a white shirtdress instead of the black polo-neck, so the ink left stains that gleamed darkly as she breathed hard and breathed hard and breathed hard.
And, as always, she was grateful to the tentacle, grateful to the octopus that was holding her here and keeping her grounded.
But today the tentacle did more than that.
Today, the tentacle dragged her right up to the wall.
Like on the lower floors, the wallpaper was green and white stripes with a seaweed motif.
Eve found herself pressed against it, and the wall was solid until it wasn’t.
It began to waver, like water, and the tentacle tightened its grip and pulled her all the way through, to whatever waited on the other side.