The Pink Hotel Read Free Page A

even knew she had a daughter. I could have snuck out in the same invisible way I came. I could have gone home and worked at the café to help pay off the credit-card debt. I could have walked away from Lily’s prostrate husband and snuck out of the party, but instead I picked up one of Lily’s red stilettos. I wanted to take them, even though they wouldn’t suit me and I’d probably never be able to walk in them. Then I figured maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of dresses, a few pairs of shoes. Lily might even have wanted me to have some of her stuff.
    I padded over to the wardrobe to look for a bag or suitcase or something, because all I had with me was my doodled-on school rucksack. Glancing at the red-haired man I got down on my knees to reach under the bed, which is where Dad and Daphne keep their suitcases at home. Sure enough, amongst old tissues, broken sunglasses and crumpled receipts I tugged out a beat-up red suitcase. It was about three feet by two and made out of material the colour of ancient red Play-Doh. It sort of smelt like Play-Doh too, chalky and dry, yet somehow comforting. Inside there were papers, postcards, and photographs in some of the little pockets. “ To My Darling Lily,” I read from the first line of one of the typewritten notes, but then the red-haired man started to stir. He groaned on the bed, and a little bit of white saliva bubbled at the corner of his lips.
    I began to put clothes quickly in the suitcase, on top of the letters, looking back to the red-haired man every two seconds to check he was still unconscious. I took a leather biker jacket, a pair of stonewash jeans, a silk fuchsia dress, a fitted black dress, a white cotton dress with black buttons down the front, four tops, some sunglasses, a little pair of silver teardrop earrings, some underwear, red lipstick, a suede tan handbag, two packs of cigarettes and a green plastic lighter. I picked up the shiny paperback novel from next to her bed and looked down on Lily’s husband. The pointed tip of one snakeskin shoe was dangling off the side of the bed, and his chest hair was all matted around the gold chain at his neck. He might have been handsome once, but he was gaunt and pulpy now. He groaned again, rasping like his mouth was full of sand, but he didn’t stir, and I went back to closing the suitcase over skirts, dresses, black boots, muddy red stilettos, and the pair of grey ballet pumps. There was a pile of twenty-dollar notes in Lily’s underwear drawer, which I guiltily stuffed in a pocket of my rucksack too.
    As I closed the suitcase clasp, the red-haired man made another noise, and this time the rasp turned into a cough that seemed to lift him out of unconsciousness and up onto his elbows, although his eyes remained closed. He coughed again, straining the buttons on his shirt and making the veins of his neck swell. As I stepped towards the bedroom door with Lily’s suitcase in my hand, the red-haired man opened his eyes and stared at me.
    “What the fuck,” he said, quite slowly.
    I didn’t put down the suitcase when he spoke, but pulled the bedroom door closed with my free hand just as the red-haired man made an uncoordinated lunge towards me off the bed. The bedroom door slammed shut, and I didn’t open it to check if he was all right, just legged it out of the apartment.

3
    I’m usually very good at being invisible. Back home in London my friend Laurence taught me that the way to be a great petty thief is to switch off your personality while still being acutely aware of the world around you. He liked to shoplift, and I came with him sometimes, although before Lily’s wake I hadn’t actually stolen anything for years. Laurence used to preach that most of the million ghosts walking mindlessly from A to B in every city in the world are inconspicuous because they aren’t noticing themselves, but an arrogant person or an anxious person is noticeable because they’re so aware of their existence.