Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 13.1

It took a couple of days before Sophie would talk to me again. At night she'd turn her back to me and pretend to be asleep. She'd be so far over the other side of the bed that I wondered how she didn't fall out. I didn't believe her theory about Death, but I pretended to, which was pretty mature of me really.

On the second night after our argument I said: "We have to tell him."

She kept on pretending to sleep.

"It's not his fault," I went on. "He just doesn't realise he's Death."

Sophie rolled over. "So you believe me?"

"Um, I guess."

She looked at me closely. "No you don't," she said. Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.

But the next day she started talking to me again, and everything went back to normal.

We kept an eye out for Mr. and Mrs. Death after that. Problem was, you never knew who was going to show up on the TV. Even if they did, it was usually someone else, like Katy and her Dad, or one of the others that I haven't told you about. So it was ages before we saw them again, like a month or something.

I was hanging out with Fred in the kitchen when I heard Sophie cry out. I raced into the lounge and she pointed at the TV. Fred came stumbling after me. He threw himself head-first into Sophie's lap.

The old table was gone. Mr. and Mrs. Death had set up one of those folding card tables in the kitchen. Mr. Death was wearing a scruffy-looking jacket with patches on the elbows. Mrs. Death was wearing a housecoat and a woollen skirt and stockings and sensible shoes. There was a suitcase near the doo, and some bulging shopping bags on the kitchen bench. The sun was setting outside. Motes of dust were whirling in the light that came in through the kitchen window.

Sophie looked at me with her eyebrows raised. I shrugged. We both got down in front of the TV and began to scream at it. Fred joined in.

'DEAAAATTTHHH!!" we screamed.

"AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!" Fred screamed.

I bashed the TV with the palm of my hand. But it was no use. Mr. and Mrs. Death couldn't hear us. They kept right on talking. They didn't even look up.

Sophie's shoulders slumped. I had to tell Fred to shut up, because he was still yelling at the TV. His yells broke down into giggles. He liked the yelling game.

"Why are you so late?" I heard Mrs. Death say on the TV.

"Had to pay a visit to one of my students."

"Oh," Mrs. Death said, getting up and starting to unpack the groceries from the bags. She spoke to the groceries. "Anything wrong?"

"Yes and no."

Mrs. Death removed a carton of eggs from a bag and held it up to the light as if she didn't know what it was. "If you don't want to talk about it -" she said to the eggs.

"It's not that I don't want to talk about it."

She opened the fridge door and put some stuff inside.

Death went on. "My youngest students are thirteen and fourteen. At the start of the year I asked them to write something for me."

"The New Method," Mrs. Death said from inside the fridge.

"Precisely. But I was nowhere near as blunt with them as I am with the older ones."

"I would hope not."

"I was mostly encouraging, in fact. Encouragingly blunt."

Mrs. Death turned to him and rolled her eyes.