One by One(79)

Because here’s the thing—I am a good person. I never wanted any of this. I certainly don’t want to kill anyone if I don’t have to. If Erin didn’t look inside that case, if she hasn’t figured this out, well, I don’t want to hurt her.

I don’t need to act quickly. I have time to think about this. There is no way help can get here before morning. I can take my time to work out if she knows something, and if so, what I can do about it. It would have to be an accident, or look like an accident. Another slip on the stairs, maybe? A carbon monoxide leak with the stove? Though I am not sure how I would engineer that.

Slowly, I take off my glasses and lie down, but I don’t shut my eyes. I lie there, facing Erin, watching her. Watching her sleep.





ERIN


Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 10

Liz is watching me. I don’t dare to open my eyes more than a sliver, but under cover of tossing in my sleep I move my head a little, letting my eyelids flicker, and I can see her, lying there, staring unblinkingly into the darkness.

With her glasses off she looks quite different. The owlish, impenetrable look is gone, and she looks younger, but at the same time there is something even more unsettling about her blank, unwavering stare. When I close my eyes and settle back down with a little fake snore, I can sense her gaze boring into me.

I feel light-headed with fear. What am I going to do?

I try to force myself to breathe slowly—to think this through clearly. Am I in danger? Immediate danger? I don’t know. If I am right, Liz has killed three people—but I don’t think she is killing for fun. I still have no idea why Eva had to die, but Ani and Elliot were only killed when they had concrete information about Liz’s guilt. If I can keep my suspicions under wraps until morning, I may be okay.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and I think about Elliot’s phone, plugged back into the battery upstairs, with the text message I sent to Danny in the outbox, waiting for a thread of connection. “SOS, please send help. IT’S LIZ.” A message I composed with trembling fingers, trying to walk the fine line between a message Danny would understand, a message that would act as a clue if something happens to me before morning, and a message that I could plausibly explain away if Liz somehow stumbles upon it.

I don’t think she has access to Elliot’s phone. But I don’t know. That’s the problem, I don’t know anything. She was doing something up there when she claimed to be going to the toilet. She spent much too long in her room, and I could hear her pacing around, opening and closing doors. She walked into the loo and immediately flushed it, without even closing the door as far as I could tell, let alone sitting on the toilet.

She knows something. She suspects something. I just don’t know what. All I know is that Ani was killed in her sleep, and so I don’t dare to let myself drift off.





LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 0

Snoopscribers: 1

Erin knows.

I was not sure at first, but as the time stretches out into what feels increasingly like an endless night, I am sure of it.

Because in spite of what I first assumed, she is not asleep. She is pretending to be asleep, but she is not. She is lying there with her eyes closed, and every now and again, when she thinks I am not watching, she opens her eyes just the smallest slit, to check if I am still awake. I see the glint of moonlight between her lashes, and then she squeezes them shut again and does a little fake snore.

It’s so unfair. God it’s so unfair!

I never asked for this. I never wanted any of it. I just wanted to be left alone.

It is all I’ve ever wanted. It’s all I wanted from the girls at school, with their bitching and their teasing and their prying.

It’s all I wanted at uni, with people badgering me to join up to clubs and attend freshers’ formals.

It’s all I wanted at Snoop. And at first they did—they left me alone, and you know what? It was fine!

And then it wasn’t. It all unraveled. And that’s why I hate them so much.

I hate Topher for dragging me into this, for saddling me with these shares like a millstone around my neck.

I hate Eva for meddling and meddling and meddling when she should have left well enough alone. I hated her Are you okay? and Is there anything I can do? and We’ll make this right, Liz, I swear.

I hate Elliot for poking and prying and being too clever by half.

I hate Rik for just—for just being one of them. So entitled. So slick. Swimming with sharks and never getting hurt because he’s one of them. Because he’s a man, and a private-school boy, and so very, very charming.

And now I hate Erin too.

Lying there, with her fake little snores, and her half smile, when all the time she has been putting two and two together…

Only it is too late. What can I do? If only I had been sure of this earlier—I still have eight of Eva’s sleeping tablets in my pocket. It would have been possible—not easy, but possible—to slip them into the cassoulet. I could have swapped our plates when Erin wasn’t looking. Now it is too late. Though perhaps that has already occurred to her. Perhaps that was what she was really doing in the toilet, when she took so long and came up with that transparent food-poisoning story. Perhaps she was making herself sick.