The Hotel

Chapter Three

We drove for days, Mama, me and Tom's corpse. She didn't sleep. Mama propped herself up with coffee and energy drinks to keep herself awake. She was desperate to find a place for us for our perfect holiday.

She'd chat happily with Tom while I listened to the radio on tenterhooks to see if the news mentioned us.

On the fifth day, she said she needed time to herself to think. Mama dropped me off at McDonald's and then drove away. I was terrified she wouldn't come, petrified she would hurt someone or herself.

I waited outside. Ashamed of the way I smelt, I didn't dare go inside to get something to eat or drink with the money Mama had given me. For hours I waited until she eventually came back.

When she did, Mama looked like a mess. Hair wet and shirt stained with dye. She'd dyed her light brown hair red. The boxes of dye sat on her lap. "I know where we are going on holiday," Mama excitedly told me as I climbed into the van. 

Mama had found a leaflet when she was shopping for hair dye. It was advertising a small hotel in the countryside, miles from anywhere.

While I worried about how we would pay for the hotel, Tom's rotting corpse, and the police finding us, Mama spoke happily about things we would do on our holiday.

I didn't want to burst her bubble of happiness or disturb her fantasy world with reality. But I couldn't let her stroll into a hotel with Tom's body either. In her fragile state, I feared she'd do it.

"Mama, you killed Tom. You have to leave his body, Mama. We have to get rid of the van. Sooner or later, the police will start looking for it," for the first time since it happened, I spoke the words out loud.

But Mama ignored my words and spun them to make her new reality work. "Tom's going to sleep in the van. You know how he doesn't like people that much. Now stop trying to spoil things, Lucy."

I wanted to cry. I wasn't sure if it was because I resented Mama twisting things to make out I was ruining things or because I hated I wasn't enough for her.

Tom was dead. And I still wasn't enough for her. I couldn't make her happy or keep her sane. When her mind was in chaos, she clung to the man who beat her to the man she killed.

The further we drove and the closer we got to the hotel, the more I began to resent not being enough. But I kept it bottled up inside. Instead, I mimicked Mama's behaviour.

When she laughed, so did I. When Mama was silent, I didn't say a word. I didn't correct her when she started calling me Ruby instead of Lucy.

One or twice, when she'd pull over to sleep when the coffee and energy were no longer enough to keep her awake, I'd pretend to sleep. Terrified that if we both slept, Tom would come back to life and kill us.

Sixteen days after Tom's death and nine days after we left his house. We arrived at the hotel. Mama was no longer Kelly Hazel, the woman who lost her job and home. The woman who picked loser after loser for a boyfriend. She'd reinvented herself.

She was Dawn Jones, successful in everything she did, who decided on a whim to go on holiday.

I was no longer Lucy Hazel. I was Ruby Jones, and none of the bad things that haunted Lucy could touch Ruby.

Mama believed we were Dawn and Ruby. I knew we weren't, but as she parked the van outside the tall, silver gate of the hotel, I was desperate to become Ruby.

"We are finally here," Mama giggled as we walked through the gate. The happiness radiated off her.

I looked at the hotel, and as strange as it seemed, I felt it was looking back at us. "Mama, can we afford to stay here?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

The hotel looked like the type of place wealthy people came to escape the stress of their lives. A hybrid between a mansion and a castle, taking all the best features of both to become something beautiful. Like someone had plucked it from my dreams.