Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 4.1

That first day we just mooched about, exploring, lounging on the armchairs, getting under each other's skin. I was tired from walking all over the city, and I guess Sophie was too.

Eventually it started to get dark. The baby had been sleeping for ages, but then it woke up and started crying. I smelled something gross.

"He's taken a crap," I said, handing him to Sophie.

She gave me a poisonous look but she didn't say anything – just took the baby to the bathroom. I followed her and watched from the door. The baby was crying like anything. Sophie was trying to get its nappy off, which was just a big piece of cloth with pins in it. She got it off and the baby's cried went up a notch. Its shit looked like curry. Jesus. I went and found the plastic shopping bag from when we'd bought the milk and chips in the city and held it open while Sophie put the nappy inside. I tied up the bag and went off to find a bin. There wasn't one.

In the kitchen I found a little iron door in the wall. There was an echoing brick chimney inside, going straight down into the depths of the hotel. A little breeze wafted out of it. I thought about it for a moment, then chucked the bag in with the nappy inside. I didn't hear it land. We ended up using it for all our rubbish, but we never found out where it went.

One day when I was bored I dropped a ball of string down the chimney, holding onto the end as the ball unravelled away into the darkness like a line down to the sea-bottom. I don't know if it landed on the bottom or got stuck - the packet said One Hundred Yards, so I doubt the string could have run out. And because I wasn't paying attention, the string was suddenly tugged out of my hand. It vanished down the chute. I wondered what could have tugged the string like that. Perhaps some kind of rubbish-eater, I thought to myself. I had no idea what a rubbish-eater was. I could have asked Sophie, but I thought she'd laugh at me, so I didn't. All this happened a lot later by the way – like a year after we moved in – so for a whole year I didn't know there was a rubbish-eater living under the hotel.

Anyway, when I got back from dropping the bag down the chute, I went to the bathroom. The baby had a clean arse now and it was giggling. Sophie was running the bath. She stripped down and got in and I passed the baby to her, then I stripped down and got in too. The water wasn't hot enough.

"The water's not hot enough," I said.

"It's for the baby," she said. "They have soft skin. You'll burn him."

"Bullshit," I said. "Babies are tough as leather." I didn't put any more hot water in though. I figured if I burned the baby I'd never hear the end of it.

Sophie soaped the baby into a good lather then rinsed it off. She handed it to me while she got out of the bath, then I gave it back to her and lay down in the bath and put some more hot water in until it was nice. I watched Sophie drying the baby on the edge of the sink. I'd never seen her with no clothes on. She didn't look much different to me really, except she had that old clam instead of the willie like mine.

She went away with the baby and put it somewhere then came back and got in the bath again. I put some more hot water in and we had a water fight, but I got her in the eye with the soap, and she lost enthusiasm after that. As she tried to flush the soap out of her eye I looked up at the bathroom window and saw that it was almost dark.

That was when we first heard the sound.

"What was that?" I said.

"What was what?" Sophie was still trying to get the soap out of her eye.

There was the sound  again. It was coming from the floor above us. It was like someone was running along the hall. A door banged shut, then there was silence. Me and Sophie looked at each other.