Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 16.6

I didn't do what she asked. I went out into the city every day looking for her. I walked right out into the suburbs, and down to the bay, and along the piers that went out into the deep water and watched the big ships coming in. I got on the trains and went round and round the City Loop, looking at all the people getting on and off the carriages. I walked up the river for miles. I just walked and walked.

Every day I went to the Chinas and Bill and asked if they'd seen her. They never had.

When it got dark I'd go back to the warm dark hotel where the lights were slowly blinking on and the cicadas were buzzing and ratcheting to life.

I didn't eat much, and because I was always walking I lost heaps of weight. I slept a lot. Sometimes sixteen hours. When I woke up I'd get anxious about all the time I'd lost sleeping. It was getting harder to leave Ambrose though. Sometimes I was too scared to leave my room. I don't know what I was scared of exactly.

I was never much good with dates to begin with, but soon I'd lost all track of time. I only realised summer was over when it started to get cold again. I didn't wonder if I might end up a hobgoblin, galloping up and down the corridors and bleeding out of my bum. It didn't seem important what happened to me. All I cared about was finding Sophie, and keeping Fred's flowers alive.

No new guests had come to the hotel for a long time. Lucio was gone, the Ape was dead, Mr. and Mrs. Death were gone, along with all the others I never told you about. The only people left were Katy and her Dad.

Katy was nine now. She didn't believe in tickly-horses anymore. She wasn't even that interested in lions. She liked horses the best – not the tickly kind, just the plain old galloping kind. Her dad made her one out of straw. It had a kind of Egyptian look about it, I thought. The straw was woven together very cleverly. It had a tail made of all the straw ends, and a saddle on its back, and black eyes. She didn't name it. She just called it My Horse. She kept it up on the hutch above her desk in her room, between a wooden jewellery box her dad had made and a picture of a horse running flat-out across a grassy plain.

One night I saw her father talking to someone on the phone in the kitchen. As he put the phone down Katy came in, as if she'd been waiting outside the door. She went to the sink and poured a glass of water and drank it slowly, looking out the window above the sink. She had her nightie on, the blue one with the pony on the front. As she drank she scratched one ankle with the toes of her other foot.

"Have you been reading?" her father said.

"Yeh."

"What are you reading?"

"Just a book." She looked around at him. "Was that Mrs. Scarlett?"

He went to the table and sat down. "Yes."

Katy sat down opposite him, putting the half-empty glass on the tabletop between them, but she didn't say anything.

"What's the book?" her father said.

"A horse book."

"You're gonna drive me crazy with these horses," he said. "Next thing you're going to want one."

Katy's eyes lit up. Then they both laughed.

"Why didn't you learn to read, Dad?"

"I just didn't."

"But didn't you try?"

"Of course I tried. My father wanted me to read and write not only in English, but in Arabic too. Every night he made me sit down for two hours and practice. Nothing worked. My grandfather – he couldn't read or write either. But he was a great storyteller. He taught me how to hear stories."