One by One(31)

“I’ll go,” Topher says immediately.

“Do you speak French?”

I know the answer before I ask the question, and his face changes to chagrin as he shakes his head.

“I totally get why you want to help,” I say, trying to be gentle, “but I think it would be better for someone who speaks French to go. If she’s not used her pass, that’s probably the point where we need to report her missing to the police, and we’ll definitely need a fluent speaker for that. You should all change into dry clothes and get some food into you, and I’ll be back really soon. Meantime, keep trying her number.”

They all nod, soberly.

“I’d better tell Elliot,” Topher mutters, and I remember with a shock of surprise that Elliot was the only member of the group not skiing. He is still holed up in his room, presumably working on his coding update, or whatever he’s doing up there alone.

They all disperse, talking quietly under their breaths to one another, and I grab my coat from the locker and hurry back to Danny to explain the plan.

“So you’ll have to serve up alone, is that okay?”

He nods.

“Yeah, of course.”

He disappears into the kitchen to begin plating up.

I put on my coat and open the front door.





LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 0

Snoopscribers: 0

I am upstairs in my room changing out of my skiing clothes when it happens. At first it is just a noise, and then I feel the ground begin to shake, like an earthquake.

I turn to look out the window. I see what looks like a wall of snow coming down the valley towards us. But not a wall—that implies something solid. This is something else. A boiling mass that is air and ice and earth all rolled together.

I scream. I do the only thing I can, even though it is stupid. I fall to my knees with my arms over my head, as if that pathetic gesture might protect me.

I stay there shaking for a long time, before I dare to get up, my legs trembling. Did it miss us? Did it stop?

From far away I can hear other voices, shouts, screams, cries.

Somehow, I force my legs to work, and I stumble out into the corridor.

“Jesus Christ!” Topher is shouting. He is running towards the stairs. “What the hell just happened?”

“Erin!” I hear from below. It is a bellow of fear from a voice I don’t recognize, and then I realize—it is the chef, Danny, calling for his friend. “Erin!”

The corridor is full of terrified people. There is a smoke alarm going off, shouts of panic.

Down in the lobby the chef is struggling with the front door, which has cracked and bowed beneath the weight of packed snow pressed up against it.

“Don’t open the bloody door!” Topher yells. “You’ll let all the snow in!”

Danny turns on him. His face is full of fury.

“My fucking friend is out there,” he spits over the scream of the alarm. “So if you want to stop me, mate, come and try.”

He shoves again. The door gives with a shriek of protest, and a mass of snow and ice comes skittering into the lobby. The doorway is still blocked four feet deep, but Danny clambers up the bank and over the top, sinking into the debris. The last I see of him is his legs as he staggers off into the storm.

“Oh my God,” Miranda is saying. She is holding on to Rik like she is drowning. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What if Eva’s still out there?”

There is no answer. I don’t think anyone can bring themselves to say what they are thinking—which is that if Eva is still out there, she is dead. She must be.

And maybe Erin too.

“Is the building safe?” Rik says, with sudden practicality. “We don’t want to stay here if it’s about to collapse.”

“I’ll go and turn off that alarm,” Tiger says, and she disappears into the kitchen. I hear her dragging a chair across tiles, and then the alarm stops. There is a sudden, shocking silence.

“Okay,” Topher says. His voice is shaking, but it is so natural for him to take charge that he slips into the role. “Um, we should—we should check. We should check the building.”

“The kitchen side isn’t too bad,” Tiger says as she comes back into the lobby. “I looked out the window. There’s a couple of windows broken in the den but the snow isn’t particularly high. It’ll be the living room side that’s suffered, and the pool extension.”

“We should go upstairs,” Topher says. “Get an overview.”

Tiger nods, and we all troop upstairs to look out one of the upper windows. What we see makes my knees go weak. We have been extremely lucky.

The long single-story building to the rear of the chalet, which housed the swimming pool, has been crushed and obliterated. The roof has caved in like an empty eggshell. Beams and planks are sticking out of the huge snowdrift that has engulfed the extension. But the chalet itself is still standing. There is a mass of snow, sticks, and rubble piled up against the north side, but the structure has held firm. Just a few meters more, and Perce-Neige would have been matchsticks, like the swimming pool building. I can’t see any of the other chalets. The path to the funicular is covered with fallen trees and rumpled snow. The funicular itself is out of sight in the gusting snow. Erin is nowhere to be seen.