Fritz, who had been curled up in his basket, lifted his head and ears in interest as I trampled around my room – before stepping out and stretching, wagging his tail ready for a trip.
‘Not today, Fritz,’ I said, successfully locating one boot under my bed. ‘You’re going to have to stay here.’
His ears dropped and he sat forlornly.
‘Don’t be like that,’ I grumbled, kneeling down to rummage through the bottom of my wardrobe for my other boot. ‘I asked and Skylar said that dogs are not welcome at this show. Argh, where is my other boot?’
I sat back on my feet and scanned the room. I stopped when I got to Fritz’s basket.
‘Fritz,’ I said in a warning tone, ‘is that my boot in your basket?’
He blinked at me innocently. I reached forward to snatch my boot but as I grabbed it, Fritz lunged at the same time and gripped the boot in his jaws.
‘Fritz, this is not the time to be difficult!’
I stood up and lifted my boot with me so that he would let go, but his grip was strong and he refused to drop it, instead coming with the boot and dangling in the air. I quickly dropped it so he wouldn’t hurt himself and he triumphantly trotted back to his basket, plopping the boot in the centre and sitting on top of it.
My phone buzzed on the desk with a message from Skylar.
Hey, I’m waiting in the car. You on your way? Don’t want to be late for the show. Sky x
‘Fine,’ I huffed, marching into the kitchen and picking up Fritz’s dog bowl and bag of food. He plodded up curiously behind me. ‘You win. If I give you another supper, will you let me leave?’
He tilted his head in agreement.
‘There.’
I placed his bowl on the floor and he dived into it head first. I took the opportunity to rush back to my room, pull on my boot and shove my phone, keys and sunglasses into my pocket.
‘I won’t be long,’ I called to him as I closed the door. He didn’t look up once from his bowl.
According to the guests, there is one way to enter and exit Hotel Royale – through the large gold-plated revolving front door where a load of men and women wearing silly uniforms and top hats stand, greeting you and waving you off. According to the staff, there are three ways: the front door, a door that leads out from the kitchens into a back road for deliveries, and a door from the laundry rooms into a side road.
There also happens to be a fourth door. Asecretdoor.
It was Cal’s and my greatest discovery when we had been playing one of our favourite games a few years ago: ‘steal-Chef?’s-hat-and-hide-it-where-he’ll-never-find-it’. We had been racing away from Chef, laughing our heads off as he thundered after us still holding a whisk in his hand, confident in the knowledge that he’d never catch us. Cal and I could be speedy when we wanted to be. Our usual route was through the kitchens, out on to the back road and then on to the main road where we’d give it to a very pleased tourist who happened to be passing by. But one day, our route was blocked by delivery men with ginormous boxes of food.
Chef had laughed victoriously, folding his arms and going, ‘No way out this time, suckers.’
Cal was all ready to hand back the hat and admit defeat but I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I yelled at him to follow me and then darted round the kitchen, cutting Chef off from a straight path to us, and pelted into the maze of corridors underneath the hotel. We just kept running, dodging the staff rushing around on their duties, until we reached a dead end next to a random storeroom full of boxes and old broken furniture. Never even knowing it existed, we coughed our way to the back of the room through the dust.
‘What now, genius?’ Cal had laughed as we stood catching our breath against the back wall. ‘Wait,’ he said peering past me, ‘what’s that?’
He pointed at a thin slit of light in the corner of the room, which appeared to be coming through the wall. We moved closer and his eyes widened with excitement.
‘It’s a door! A secret one.’ He moved his hands around the wall. ‘It completely blends in.’
‘Well, push it, dumdum.’
‘I’m not pushing it. We don’t know where it leads,’ he replied nervously.
‘You are such a chicken,’ I huffed, elbowing him aside.
I pushed on the wall with all my strength and the door creaked open, letting sunlight pour in. It led to a tiny porch-like walled area with what looked like a wooden garden door on the other side. Cal went through and lifted the latch of the second door, poking his head out and then beaming at me. ‘It’s the back road.’ He laughed. ‘This leads to the back road!’
It was our proudest moment, and we made the most of our new secret. We spent ages tidying up the back of the storeroom so it wasn’t so dirty – Cal’s terrified of spiders so guess who had to dust the gross cobwebs up? – and then we even weeded the paving of the courtyard (which took us all of five minutes considering how small it was). Cal had done some nerdy research, of course, into the architecture of the hotel, and discovered that the exit had been used as an emergency escape by staff during the war, but it had since been forgotten. We never told anyone about it and used it all the time to sneak out or play tricks. I hadn’t been there in years.
Until now.
