Room 214
by Hélène Vandermeer
Her hotel has no room 214. Someone has booked it every November the seventeenth for twenty-three years. This year, the booking is in her name.
Anaïs Delcourt takes over the family hotel in Autun five months after her father's death. On her first morning behind the desk she finds a booking already in the system for the seventeenth of November: room 214, one night, one person, paid in cash — in her own name. The hotel has no room 214, the staff tell her. It never has. The paper registers say otherwise: since 2003, that room has been booked every single year under a different name, and nobody has ever slept in it. Twenty-two bookings, nine names, one family. To understand what her father was counting, Anaïs will have to go back to one night in November 2002, a quotation for fourteen thousand eight hundred euros, and a decision that lasted twenty-three days.
Chapters
- 1 The Twelfth of September
- 2 The Key Board
- 3 Danièle Roussel, One Night
- 4 What an Insurance Policy Changes
- 5 The Key with No Label
- 6 The Same Name Twice
- 7 Mehdi's Notebook
- 8 Nothing Is Stored at the End
- 9 She Existed
- 10 January 2003 Premium
- 11 Four Twelve Premium
- 12 A Nine-Year-Old Name Premium
- 13 It Was Not a Woman Premium
- 14 In June He Paid Cash Premium
- 15 What My Mother Stopped Asking Premium
- 16 The Seventeenth of November 2002 Premium
- 17 Nine People Premium
- 18 At the End, Left Premium
- 19 What Was Put in Its Place Premium
- 20 Château-Chinon Premium
- 21 Fourteen Thousand Eight Hundred Euros Premium
- 22 A Hundred and Ninety Euros Premium
- 23 Sixteen Decembers Premium
- 24 Nobody Had Asked for Anything Premium
- 25 The Right Question Premium
- 26 He Knew Premium
- 27 The Stove Premium
- 28 Nineteen Minutes Premium
- 29 What My Mother Did Not See Premium
- 30 You Never Went Up Premium
- 31 I Was Paid Premium
- 32 Julien and Élodie Premium
- 33 One Night, Every Year Premium
- 34 The Main Staircase Premium
