Topher is the reason I’m here today. I still do not know whether I should be grateful to him for that, or blame him. Both, maybe.

That girl—Erin—told us that the funicular stops at eleven. So if he caught it, he should be here soon. But that is the question. Did he catch it?

I move restlessly to look out the window, at the snowflakes still whirling down. The forecast was predicting lows of minus twenty tonight. People die in cold like that.

The knock at the door makes me jump. I tighten the belt on my dressing gown and walk over. My heart is thumping as I turn the lock.

It is Eva.

“Liz,” she says. “May I come in?” She has changed out of the white woolen dress she wore at dinner. Now she is wearing stretchy yoga pants that make her legs look extremely long. Her scent trails after her like an oil slick. It is strong and a little sickly. I think it might be Poison.

“Um… okay,” I say. I feel a little ambushed and resentful. I do not really want her in my room, but I am not sure how I can say that without sounding strange.

She pushes past me and goes over to the window, where she stands looking out across the valley with her back to me. I notice that my closet door is ajar, showing a rail full of dowdy, unironed clothes and my two cases. The biggest suitcase is sticking out slightly, preventing the door from shutting. I nudge it with my foot and close the gap.

Eva turns, just as the door clicks shut.

“Are you okay?” she asks abruptly.

I am taken aback by the question, unsure what to reply. It is probably just a figure of speech, but still, I am not used to people, least of all Eva, caring what I think. It makes me feel strangely exposed. I cannot think what to say, but it doesn’t matter, Eva is speaking.

“I wanted to apologize for springing that presentation on everyone, but I was afraid that if I put it on the agenda, Topher would find a way to get his side in first—”

Oh. She has come to try to persuade me again.

“Eva, please.” My headache, which had subsided after dinner, starts up again. It throbs in time with my heartbeat. “Please, I don’t want to do this now.”

“Don’t worry.” She takes my hands in hers. They are cold and strong. “I totally understand. I’d be torn in your shoes too. You feel loyalty to Topher, I get that, I do. We all do. But we both know…”

She trails off. She does not need to finish.

And in fact, she does not really need to make her case. The facts make it for her.

There are twelve million reasons to vote with Eva. She doesn’t need to make it twelve million and one.

“I know,” I say. It’s a whisper. “Eva I know, it’s just that Topher…”

Topher, who gave me my first-ever chance, who told me to hold out for the shares in the first place. How can I tell him I am betraying him? What will he do? For the first time, I realize; I am frightened.

“Liz, you know what you want to do, what you need to do…,” Eva says, and her voice is cajoling, like she is talking to a scared child. “Come on, haven’t I always had your back? Haven’t we always taken care of each other?”

I remember Rik’s question at dinner tonight, the question that made me push back my chair and leave the room. So, Liz, how are you going to spend your share bonus? It was so brash, so bold, so full of assumptions.

Eva is more subtle. She knows that the money terrifies me in a way. Because for someone like me, who grew up having to hoard every last penny my dad didn’t spend on the slots, it is an unimaginable sum. Ridiculous. Transformative. Life changing.

Eva knows that the thing that will persuade me is not the money—but something else. Something much more personal, between her and me; an appeal to the past we share. I was her assistant once too, back in the days when Snoop could only afford one. In a different way, I owe as much to Eva as I do to Topher. More.

But really, she knows what Rik knows, what Carl knows, what everyone apart from Topher and Elliot seems to accept: that it is not a choice at all.

There is only one sane answer to the question in front of me. My loyalty to Topher is being weighed against not just twelve million pounds, but against something else entirely—the prospect of a very different life to the one I am used to. In the end, what is at stake is my freedom. Freedom from work, from worry, from watching every step—freedom from this.

“I know, Eva,” I say. My voice is very low. “I know. It’s just… it’s hard.”

“I understand,” she says. She presses my hand again. Her fingers are cold against mine, and very insistent in the message her grip is conveying. “And I know it’s hard. I feel that loyalty to Toph too, of course I do. But I can count on you, yes?”

“Yes,” I say. My voice is almost inaudible, even to myself. “Yes, you can count on me.”

“Good.” She smiles, her wide, beautiful smile. It is a smile that once beamed out from a thousand billboards and catwalks all across Europe. It is like Thank you, Liz, I know what that means. And you can count on me too. We’ll take care of each other, won’t we?

I nod, and she gives me a perfunctory hug and leaves the room.

When she’s gone I open the window to get rid of her scent. I lean out, and I let the anxiety locked inside my chest explode into something huge and almost overwhelming. I imagine the meeting, the vote, me raising my hand in support of the buyout, and the expression on Topher’s face as he registers my betrayal… And then I imagine what will happen if I don’t, and I feel utterly sick.

Because Eva is right. There is only one choice. I know what I have to do. I just have to find the courage.

And once I have made up my mind, a strange kind of peace descends on me.

It will be okay. It will all be okay.

I shut the window. I climb back into bed and I switch off Snoop. Then I lie, quite still, listening instead to the whisper of the snow falling onto my balcony outside. Obliterating everything.

ERIN

Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Snooping ITSSIOUXSIE

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 7

When my alarm goes off, I struggle up out of a deep, disturbing dream—a nightmare of digging, digging, digging through hard-packed snow, my hands numb with cold, my muscles shaking, hot blood running down my neck. I know what I’m going to find—and I’m both yearning for it and dreading it. But I wake up before I reach my goal.

It’s a relief to open my eyes and find myself in my own little room, my phone alarm screeching into the silence, until I grope my way to the snooze button and shut it off. The clock reads 6:01, and I lie there for a minute, blinking, still half asleep, and trying to throw off the uneasy feeling the dream has left.

Just because it’s a weekend doesn’t mean it’s not an early start. Danny and I swap, so that one of us gets up at six to fire up the coffee machine, get breakfast started, and clear up from the night before, while the other has what passes for a lie-in. Today it’s my turn for the early shift, and I can’t stop yawning as I stumble out of bed and pull on my clothes. Some people find they get insomnia at altitude. Not me. If anything it’s the reverse.

As I pass Topher’s door I pause, trying to hear if he’s inside. Did he get home okay? I didn’t hear him come in, but I left the front door unlocked, and when I came down at midnight to check, there were wet footprints in the foyer.