One by One(76)

LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 0

Snoopscribers: 1

There is something wrong. Erin has not come back from her trip to the toilet. She has been gone a long time, but more than that, I can’t hear anything at all. No doors opening. No footsteps on the stairs. No sound of water flushing. Has something happened? Has she fallen asleep?

I lie there chewing my lip, trying to work out what to do. I went after her last time. I was worried when she took so long over changing her top, but now I am not sure if that was a good idea. The panic on her face when she opened the bedroom door and saw me standing there, just about to knock, made me think I had made a mistake. And now I wonder, is that when her manner changed? Maybe she is frightened of me. Perhaps she thinks I’m a stalker.

People have a habit of pulling away from me. It is something I have noticed over the years. It started with the girls at school—they would be friendly at first, and I’d try to make overtures back—and then they would start to cool, for reasons I could never put my finger on. So I would try harder. Make more effort. But the more I tried, the more they seemed to grow cold, until at last everything I did just seemed to make them hate me more.

At primary school, the other girls weren’t subtle about it. Go away, Liz, you’re so weird. I heard it again and again. As we got older, the girls in my class pretended to be kinder, but underneath they were thinking the same things, beneath their Oh, so sorry, we’re saving this seat or My mum says I can only have three girls to the sleepover, really sorry, Liz.

The girls were bad. The boys were worse. The worst of all was Kevin.

Even his name makes me shudder.

I liked Kevin. I thought that he might like me too. He had acne and his breath was a little stale, and he wasn’t particularly handsome. He didn’t seem as unattainable as some of the other boys. I got a book out of the library on how to make boys like you, but it was confusing and contradictory. Laugh at his jokes, it read. So I did. But then Kevin would look at me as if I were crazy and say, “What are you laughing at?”

Give him something to remind him of you. I gave him a pair of mittens I had knitted. I left them in his locker, but he never wore them. Later I found them in lost property.

Engineer chance meetings. I followed him around. I made sure that I was there, leaning against the lockers when he came out of the boys’ toilets. I waited by his bus stop. One day I followed him home.

It was November and almost dusk. I didn’t think he had noticed me, but he had. We had walked nearly two miles when he turned on me. “What do you want, you fucking weirdo?” he said, his voice cracking and breaking on the last word. Only he didn’t say it. He came right up into my face and screamed it. I could smell his stale breath and feel his spit hitting me as he shouted.

It was dark. Rain had begun to fall. We were in a lonely part of the park. A small part of me wanted to kill him. But I didn’t. Instead, I cowered away from him, cringing from his anger and then, when he pushed me and yelled, “Are you fucking desperate or what?” I ran. I was crying and shaking.

By the time I was hired at Snoop, I had learned my lesson. I kept myself to myself. I didn’t try to make friends. I didn’t trust anyone.

But Erin… somehow Erin seemed different. She was so friendly when we first arrived. I remember her sympathy when I asked her advice about the dress code, her kindness as she towed me to the ski lift that first day. She really seemed to like me. Now I am not so sure. What if she was pretending all along?

I want to go up there and ask her what she thinks of me, whether she is scared of me, what she is doing up there in the dark. But I don’t know how she would feel about that. Maybe I could say I was worried about her. After all, three people have died. It’s what a good friend would do. Look out for her. Check she was okay.

But would she see it that way? Would she know I was just being a good friend? Or would she give me that look again—that panicked, terrified look I saw in Kevin’s eyes when he turned on me. The one I saw in Erin’s eyes when she opened the door last time. The look that says, You weirdo. The look that says, I’m scared.

I am still dithering ten minutes later. At last I can’t take the silence anymore. I have to know what she is doing.

I swing my legs out of bed and stand up. I’m still wearing my ski suit, so I’m not that cold. My knee still hurts, but I can put my weight on it now. Really I am very glad not to be snowshoeing to the other chalet. I mean, I would never have fallen down the stairs deliberately, that would be a really stupid idea. I could have been killed. But it worked out well.

Still, I go carefully on the stairs, holding the handrail. The wood is slippery beneath my socks, the treads themselves are hard to see in the darkness, and I definitely don’t want another fall.

At the top of the stairs I pause, holding my breath, trying to listen. Where is she? In the staff quarters? I’m just about to turn left, to see if she’s down that end of the corridor, when I hear a noise. It’s a very slight one, but it is coming from the opposite direction—from the direction of the corridor that holds Miranda’s, Elliot’s, and my rooms. What would she be doing down there?

But before I can find out, I hear another noise from the same direction—this time unmistakable. It’s the sound of a toilet flushing. The door to Miranda’s room opens, and Erin comes out. She doesn’t look that surprised to see me, this time, instead she just smiles.