‘Well, I need to talk to you,’ I replied, pushing past him and striding into the room.
It was large and spacious with a cream couch and matching armchairs, a low polished wooden coffee table, a wide-screen TV and a dressing table. Another door led to the bedroom and en suite bathroom. I threw my bag down on the couch and then turned to face him as Stephomi resignedly closed the door.
‘Why aren’t you dressed?’ I asked, only just realising that Stephomi was wearing a Hilton bathrobe.
‘I only just got up. The receptionist’s phone call woke me.’
‘But it’s almost eleven o’clock!’
‘Yes, I know. I had a late night.’
And that was when I noticed some of the odd things about his room. There was a great crack down the centre of the large mirror over the dressing table, and strange, jagged grooves, almost like claw marks, in the wooden edges of the couch and coffee table as well as ripped tears running down the fabric of the curtains. A broken wine glass lay on the floor with a red wine stain on the carpet beneath it, and the room had a strangely chilled air. There were signs of black fur on one of the cream armchairs, as if a large, black dog had been allowed into the suite, and a slightly acrid scent hung about the room. And there.. on the floor against the wall, lay the broken pieces of what had once been a rather beautiful violin.
‘What happened?’ I asked, staring at the instrument. It looked as if someone had taken the violin by its neck and shattered it forcefully against the wall. Even with my distaste for violins in general, I found the sight of the broken instrument upsetting.
Stephomi sighed and ran a hand through his tousled dark hair. ‘Visit from an old friend,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He’s not too happy with me either, it seems. I lost something of his, that’s all. And,’ he gestured towards his broken Amatis, ‘as you can see, he shared your dislike for my instrument of choice.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, gazing at him anxiously, remembering what he had said of his love for the instrument and the monumental level of its financial value.
Stephomi shrugged, but I noticed that he couldn’t bring himself to look directly at the shattered violin. ‘Really my fingers are too long for violins anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d be better suited to a viola. So what can I do for you today, Gabriel?’
My gaze fell on the coffee table once again and I saw that there was an expensive bottle of red wine standing on it, one glass placed alongside. The wine inside the glass was frozen. Frozen solid. I leaned down, picked up the glass and tipped it over. The frozen liquid inside remained glued to the glass.
‘What the hell is-’ I began, but Stephomi walked over and took the glass from my hand, picked up the bottle and moved them both to the nearby dresser.
‘Look, I hate to sound impatient, Gabriel, but what is it exactly that you want? Like I said, this isn’t the best time and I-’
‘How did that wine get like that?’
Stephomi sighed. ‘The wine cellars of the hotel are kept under ground and apparently the generator malfunctioned last night and the temperature in there dropped to well below freezing. Hence…’ He waved a hand at the frozen wine. ‘The steward who brought it up last night didn’t notice. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Well, I… I just came to tell you that I know everything.’
Stephomi smiled wryly as he dropped down into one of the cream armchairs, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in it, somehow managing to look elegant even when wearing only a bathrobe.
‘Everything, Gabriel? Well done. You’ve achieved what mankind have been trying to do for centuries. Will you let me in on these secrets of the universe?’
‘I meant that I know what happened in my past and why you tried to keep it from me,’ I said. ‘Look I’m sorry about everything I said to you before. I understand now that you really were just trying to be my friend.’
He continued to regard me in silence and I could tell that he didn’t completely believe me. Perhaps he thought I was trying to trick him into telling me about my past.
‘I know about Nicky and Luke,’ I said, to prove that I was telling the truth. I threw my bag over to him. ‘It’s all in there. I know that I inherited the money from my last surviving relative. I know about my wife and son. It was a car crash. There’s no one here because there’s no one left. All the people I cared about are dead.’
I sat down on the couch while Stephomi flicked through the papers in my bag.
‘I’m sorry,’ Stephomi said at last. ‘How did you find out?’
I explained about the safety deposit key. Apart from the birth, marriage and death certificates there had also been an envelope full of rejection letters from agents and publishers for the book I had found in my desk as well as others. I really was a writer, or at least a would-be writer.
‘Well, I’m sorry you had to find out that way,’ Stephomi said again with a sigh.
‘I’m sad that no one else is coming,’ I said. ‘But at least I won’t be waiting for nothing now. At least I know for certain. I can
… I can throw away the fish food. I can start to make some new life for myself here now. Maybe one day I’ll marry again. But I can’t grieve for strangers. I need you to make them real for me, Stephomi.’
He looked uncomfortable at once. ‘I’m not sure that I can.’
‘Please. Give me something. I can’t say goodbye to people I don’t know.’
‘I’m a traveller, Gabriel. You were only married a few years. The truth is, I never saw all that much of your family. All I know is what you told me in your letters.’
‘Just tell me anything you can remember,’ I pleaded. ‘Just one or two personal things about them are all I need.’
‘Well… Nicky was a teacher of religious studies. You met at a religious lecture. One of my lectures, actually. She had dark blonde hair and so did your son, Luke. You told me once that she liked walking outside when it was raining and her favourite drink was an apple martini. What else…? Well, she was Christian, of course. I think you said she could play the piano… I’m sorry, Gabriel, I can’t think of much more, I only met her a few times. As for Luke, I saw even less of him, but I remember you being very indignant when he was cast as the goat at his nativity play last year. You thought he should have been starring as Joseph. And he wouldn’t eat spaghetti unless it was Postman Pat spaghetti, as I remember. Is that enough, Gabriel?’
‘I suppose it’ll have to be. Thank you.’
‘That’s the trouble with constant travelling — you don’t always get to be in the lives of your friends as much as you’d wish.’
‘How did the car crash happen?’ I asked.
‘That I can’t tell you,’ Stephomi said. ‘You couldn’t talk to me about it at the time.’
‘But you must know something about it,’ I pressed. ‘Was it an accident?’
‘Of course it was an accident!’ Stephomi said sharply.
‘Was I driving?’ I asked.
Stephomi hesitated.
‘Oh God, I was, wasn’t I?’
‘Look, it’s not what you think. It wasn’t your fault. Someone drove straight into you. They were speeding. There was nothing anyone could have done about it. The roads were icy.’
‘Well, you seem to know a lot about it, given that I wouldn’t talk about it,’ I challenged. ‘You’re just making it up to make me feel better, aren’t you?’
‘No! I’ve told you the truth.’
‘But how do you know if I didn’t tell you?’
Stephomi sighed. ‘I was with you when the police came a few weeks later and I learned about it from them.’
‘Why were the police there? I thought you said it was an accident? ’
‘It was,’ Stephomi said. ‘But the police still have to investigate these things, Gabriel.’
‘What did I do about this other driver?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did I kill him? Did I make him pay for it?’
‘No,’ Stephomi said patiently. ‘You’d hardly be sat here like this if you had, would you? Although I admit that for a while I was worried that you might be moved to try and do something like that. There will always be pain, Gabriel. There’s no way of avoiding it unless you become a monk or a hermit.’