“Read out the names,” Danny says, around a mouthful of soup, only he says it more like read aht the names. His accent is pure sarf London, though I know in reality he grew up in Portsmouth. I’m never quite sure how much is all part of the act. Danny’s a performer, and the more I get to know him, the more I’m fascinated by the complicated mix of identities beneath the surface. The cheeky Cockney geezer he puts on for the guests is just one of them. On nights out in St. Antoine I’ve seen him pivot from note-perfect Guy Ritchie to a gloriously flaming RuPaul, all in the space of five minutes.

Not that I can talk. I’m putting on my own act. We all are on some level, I suppose. That’s one of the joys of coming here, to a place like this, where everyone is passing through. You get to have a fresh start.

“I need to get it right this time,” he says, breaking into my thoughts. He puts a minuscule grind of fresh black pepper onto his soup and tastes it, then looks approving. “Can’t afford another fucking Madeleine. Kate’ll have my guts for garters.”

Kate is the area rep and is in charge of coordinating all the bookings and logistics for all six of the company’s chalets. She likes us to greet the clients by their names right from day one. It’s what marks us out from the big-chain operators, she says. The personal touch. Only it’s harder than it sounds, week in, week out. Last week Danny made friends with a woman called Madeleine, only when the feedback forms came in, it turned out there was no one called Madeleine in the group. Or any woman with a name beginning with M. He’s still got no idea who he was talking to all week.

I run my finger down the list Kate sent last night.

“So it’s a corporate party this time. Tech company called Snoop. Nine people, all in separate rooms. Eva van den Berg, cofounder. Topher St. Clair-Bridges, cofounder. Rik Adeyemi, head of beans. Elliot Cross, chief nerd.”

Danny snorts out his soup through his nose, but I carry on.

“Miranda Khan, friends czar. Inigo Ryder, Topher’s ‘boss.’ Ani Cresswell, chief Eva-tamer. Tiger-Blue Esposito, head of cool. Carl Foster, lawman.”

By the time I’m finished, Danny is actually crying with laughter and his soup has gone down the wrong way.

“Is that really what it says?” he manages, between coughs. “Head of beans? Tiger—what the fuck else? I didn’t think Kate had a sense of humor. Where’s the real list?”

“That is the real list,” I say, trying not to laugh at the sight of Danny’s screwed-up face, shining with tears. “Have a napkin.”

“What? Are you shitting me?” he gasps, and then sits back, fanning himself. “Actually, I take that back. Snoop’s that sort of place.”

“You’ve heard of them?” I’m surprised. Danny isn’t normally the sort of person with his finger on the button that way. We get all types here, lots of private parties, the odd wedding or anniversary, but a surprising number of corporate retreats too—I guess the price tag is easier to swallow if your company is paying. There’s a lot of law firms, hedge funds, and Fortune 500 companies. This is the first time Danny’s heard of one of the companies and I haven’t. “What do they do?”

“Snoop?” Now it’s Danny’s turn to look surprised. “Have you been living in a fucking cave, Erin?”

“No, I’m just—I’ve never heard of them. Are they a media company?” I don’t know why I chose that. Media seems like the kind of industry that would have a Tiger-Blue Esposito.

“No, they’re an app.” Danny looks at me suspiciously. “Have you really not heard of them? You know—Snoop—the music app. It lets you—well, snoop on people. That’s kind of it.”

“I have literally no idea what you’re on about.”

“Snoop, Erin,” Danny says, more acidly this time, like if he keeps saying it, I’ll smack my forehead and go, Oh yeah, that Snoop! He pulls out his phone and scrolls down the apps to one that looks like two eyes on a hot-pink background. Or maybe two cogs, it’s hard to see on the logo. He presses it, and the screen goes bright pink, then black, blazoned with snoop. Real people, real time, real loud in fuchsia letters.

This time the two o’s of the name are the wheels of a cassette tape.

“You like hook it up to your Spotify account or whatever,” Danny explains, scrolling through menus as he does, as if lists of random celebrities will make everything clear. “And it makes your listening public.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” I say blankly.

“It’s a quid pro quo, innit?” Danny says, sounding impatient. “The whole point is no one wants to listen to you, but if you join, you get to listen to other people. Voyeurism for your ears is what Snoop calls it.”

“So… I can see what… I don’t know… Beyoncé is listening to? If she were on there.”

“Yup. And Madonna. And Jay-Z. And Justin Bieber. And whoever else. Slebs love it—it’s the new Instagram. It’s like, you can connect, yeah? But without actually giving away too much information.”

I nod slowly. I can actually kind of see the attraction of that.

“So it’s basically famous people’s playlists?”

“Not playlists,” Danny says. “Because the whole point is that it’s real time. You get what they’re listening to right now.”

“What if they’re asleep?”

“Then you don’t get anything. They don’t appear in the search bar if they’re not online and listening, and if you’re snooping on someone and they stop listening, their feed goes dead and you get the option to shunt along to someone else.”

“So if you’re snooping on someone and they pause a song to answer the phone—”

Danny nods.

“Yeah, it just cuts off.”

“That’s a really terrible idea.”

He laughs and shakes his head.

“Nah, you’re not getting it. The whole point is…” He stops, trying to formulate something unquantifiable into words. “The whole point is the connection. You’re actually listening to the same thing at the same moment as they are—beat for beat. You know that wherever she is in the world, Lady Gaga is listening to the exact same thing you are. It’s like”—inspiration strikes, and his face lights up—“it’s like, you know when you’re first going out with someone, and you’re sharing a set of headphones, one earpiece in their ear, one earpiece in yours?”

I nod.

“Well, it’s like that. You and Lady Gaga, sharing her earphones. It’s really powerful. When you’re lying there in bed, and they switch off, and you know that somewhere they’re probably doing the exact same thing as you, rolling over, falling asleep… it’s pretty intimate, you know? But it’s not just celebrities. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, say, you can snoop your bloke and listen to the same song at the same time. Assuming you know his Snoop ID of course. I keep mine locked down.”

“Okay…” I say slowly. “So… like… your feed is public, but no one knows it’s you?”

“Yeah, so I have like two followers, because I’ve not bothered to hook up any of my contact list. Mind you, some of the most popular Snoopees are totally incognito. There’s this one guy in Iran, HacT, he’s called. He’s in the top ten Snoopees pretty much every month. Well, I say in Iran, but there’s no actual way of knowing. That’s just what it says on his Snoop biog. He could be from Florida.”