One by One(18)

The memory of our conversation on the sofa downstairs is still with me, like a hangover. I know what Topher was trying to do. He was trying to guilt-trip me. Trying to remind me of everything I owe him.

The thought should make me feel angry, and it does, in a way. He is an arrogant public school boy who got lucky with a great idea and, more crucially, a mummy and daddy who were prepared to bankroll him—at least for the first few years. He is everything I’m not. Rich. Entitled. Confident.

But underneath my anger there are some uncomfortable facts. The fact that he took a chance on a gawky, awkward twentysomething, who no one ever looked at twice. The girl from Crawley, smelling of charity shops and hand-me-downs and desperation—he looked past all that and saw the person inside—the real me, dogged, determined, prepared to give 110 percent.

Most important, when I offered to put my grandmother’s money into Snoop, he was the one who told me to stick out for shares, not repayment interest. Rik, Eva, they both tried to persuade me against it. They talked about the uncertainty of the returns—the possibility that Snoop might fold without ever making a profit. But Topher told me that shares would be in my own best interests. And he was right.

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.