“Hi,” Liz says, and she smiles, an unreadable smile behind those blank, flickering lenses. “Are you all right?”

LIZ

Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

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When I come back down, my arms full of duvets and pillows, Erin is standing stock-still in the middle of the room, one hand on the sofa-bed frame, as if a thought has just occurred to her.

“Hi,” I say. I throw the bedding into the armchair. Then, when she still doesn’t move, I add, “Are you all right?” I don’t know why I say that, except that she looks really odd. “Is the sofa bed stuck?”

“What?” She seems to shake herself. Then she gives a smile and a short laugh. “No, sorry. Just thinking. I was—I was thinking about Danny. They must be there by now. I was wondering if we’d hear from them tonight.”

I glance up at the clock on the mantelpiece. It is so dark now that the hands are almost unreadable, but I think I can make out that it’s nearly eight o’clock.

“I guess you’re right. How long did you say it would take to get there?”

“I thought about three hours. But given Miranda and Carl have never snowshoed before, it might take longer. Still, they left just after one. Even allowing for rests and stuff, they ought to be at Haut Montagne easily by now. Maybe even on their way back, though I don’t know if they’ll snowshoe in the dark.”

She gives the metal frame a tug. The sofa bed unfurls with a screech.

“I hope you’re right.” I move my pillows onto the mattress and then help Erin take the cushions off the other sofa and unfold the bed. “Losing the water feels like the last straw.”

“We’ll have to melt snow,” Erin says. Her face looks white and strained in the dim light, but it’s not surprising really. “I can’t believe it’s only been two days since the avalanche. It feels like forever.”

“Two days?” For a second I don’t believe her, and then I count up in my head, and I realize she’s right. Two days and four hours. It feels like a lifetime ago. It does feel like we’ve been trapped here forever. And now it is almost over. The strange thing is, I am not sure I’m ready to face reality again. It is just dawning on me that what felt like captivity might actually be a kind of idyllic tranquility. Perce-Neige is a crime scene. And we are suspects. When we get back to the real world, we are going to have to face the full glare of publicity. There will be a police investigation, reporters, news stories. Interviews. I can see the headlines now: CHALET OF DEATH.

All sorts of things are going to come out of the woodwork.

Now it is my turn to stand, stock-still, staring into the darkness, thinking.

“I’ll go and get my bedding,” Erin says, into the silence. “Can you put another log in the stove?”

“Sure,” I say, shaking myself back to the here and now. I watch her as she picks up a torch and passes through into the lobby, the thin beam spiraling around as she makes her way up the stairs, her hand going click, click, click on the banister as something hard, a ring perhaps, strikes against the metal.

Click. Click. Click.

I hear again my mother’s breathless, nervous Oh, Liz, you know Daddy doesn’t like that…

Tick. Tick. Tick. Disappearing into the darkness.

Perhaps it is the thought of the police, and everything that is going to come crashing down, but suddenly, I don’t know why, it sounds like a clock, ticking down to zero.

ERIN

Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

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My heart is hammering as I walk along the corridor to the staff section, and let myself into my bedroom. The room is totally dark, lit only by the narrow beam of the torch, but I don’t want to risk the batteries giving way so I switch it off, and in the darkness I sink down onto my bed. I need to think.

My fist is clenched around the key, hard against my palm, like a physical reminder of the craziness of this situation, and now as I sit there, trying desperately to make myself understand this conundrum, I find that I’m holding it so hard that it’s biting into my fingers, leaving dents I can still feel when I force my hand open.

What does it mean? What does it mean?

If Liz took that key… is she the killer? But how?

I cast my mind back, reliving the scrum in the corridor when Danny broke into Tiger’s room. Liz was there, I’m certain. But I remember that while everyone else surged forward into the room, she hung back. I thought at the time it was because of her natural reserve—it seemed so in character, compared to the way everyone else thrust themselves forward, pushing to see what was going on. But now I wonder. Was she hanging back so that she could pocket the key, unobserved?

But why, that’s what I can’t understand. Liz cannot have killed Eva. Motive aside, she’s one of the few people, along with Ani and Carl, who had no opportunity at all. She was stuck on the bubble lift going back down to the bottom of Blanche-Neige when Eva was seen skiing La Sorcière.

But the key. The key that is hard and jagged and incontrovertible in my hand, as if refusing to allow me to forget its evidence.

What about the key?

I rub my hand over my face, feeling the shiny scar tissue, the ever-present reminder of what I did, the price I paid for being too sure of myself, and I’m suddenly aware that I have been sitting here for—I’m not sure how long, but a long time. Too long. Suspiciously long. I have to get back downstairs, or Liz will know something is wrong.

I switch the torch back on and gather up an armful of duvets, and then, holding the torch in my teeth, balanced on top of the stack of pillows, I open the door with my free hand.

Liz is standing right outside, almost nose to nose with me, the torchlight reflecting off her glasses.

I scream, and the torch bounces off the pillows and falls to the floor with a thump, where it goes out.

My heart is hammering in my chest like a pneumatic drill.

“Jesus,” I manage, my voice shaking. “Liz, you scared me.”

I set the duvets down with trembling hands, and grope for the torch.

“Sorry,” she says. It sounds like she’s smiling, but I can’t be sure in the darkness. There is something so flat about her voice, so hard to read. “You took so long. I got worried.”

“I—” Oh fuck, what can I say? What excuse can I give? “I was just changing my top.”

What. Why on earth did I say this? She’ll be able to see I’m wearing the same clothes I was before. What a stupid lie.

I feel sick with nerves. I am a terrible liar. Even at school I could never do the two-faced “Oh, you look so lovely! I look like trash!” thing that the other girls did. The only time I can dissemble is when I’m in staff mode. Then I’m polite and cheerful to everyone, no matter how I really feel—not because I like them, but because they are guests, and I’m staff, and that’s my job.

The thought calms me.

It’s my job. I can do this. Liz is a guest, and it’s my job to be sympathetic to her. I just have to channel that thought.

I switch on the torch, and I make myself smile.

“Shall we head down? It’s really cold up here.”