One by One Page 2

  “Kate was really clear,” I say, cajoling. “One lactose intolerant, one gluten-free, three veggies. No vegans. That’s it.”

  “It won’t be,” Danny says, still enjoying his martyrdom. “One of them will be low-carbing or something. Or a fruitarian. Or a breatharian.”

  “Well, if they’re a breatharian, they won’t be bothering you, will they?” I say reasonably. “They’ve got all the air they could want up here.”

  I wave an arm at the huge window that dominates the south side of the room. It overlooks the peaks and ridges of the Alps, a panorama so breathtaking that even though I live here now, I still find myself stopping mid-stride on certain days, almost winded by its beauty. Today the visibility is poor, the clouds are low, and there’s too much snow in the air. But on a good day you can see almost to Lake Geneva. Behind us, to the northeast of the chalet, rises the Dame Blanche, the mountain that forms the highest peak of the St. Antoine valley, overshadowing everything.

  “Read out the names,” Danny says, around a mouthful of soup, only he says it more like read aht the names. His accent is pure sarf London, though I know in reality he grew up in Portsmouth. I’m never quite sure how much is all part of the act. Danny’s a performer, and the more I get to know him, the more I’m fascinated by the complicated mix of identities beneath the surface. The cheeky Cockney geezer he puts on for the guests is just one of them. On nights out in St. Antoine I’ve seen him pivot from note-perfect Guy Ritchie to a gloriously flaming RuPaul, all in the space of five minutes.

  Not that I can talk. I’m putting on my own act. We all are on some level, I suppose. That’s one of the joys of coming here, to a place like this, where everyone is passing through. You get to have a fresh start.

  “I need to get it right this time,” he says, breaking into my thoughts. He puts a minuscule grind of fresh black pepper onto his soup and tastes it, then looks approving. “Can’t afford another fucking Madeleine. Kate’ll have my guts for garters.”

  Kate is the area rep and is in charge of coordinating all the bookings and logistics for all six of the company’s chalets. She likes us to greet the clients by their names right from day one. It’s what marks us out from the big-chain operators, she says. The personal touch. Only it’s harder than it sounds, week in, week out. Last week Danny made friends with a woman called Madeleine, only when the feedback forms came in, it turned out there was no one called Madeleine in the group. Or any woman with a name beginning with M. He’s still got no idea who he was talking to all week.

  I run my finger down the list Kate sent last night.

  “So it’s a corporate party this time. Tech company called Snoop. Nine people, all in separate rooms. Eva van den Berg, cofounder. Topher St. Clair-Bridges, cofounder. Rik Adeyemi, head of beans. Elliot Cross, chief nerd.”

  Danny snorts out his soup through his nose, but I carry on.

  “Miranda Khan, friends czar. Inigo Ryder, Topher’s ‘boss.’ Ani Cresswell, chief Eva-tamer. Tiger-Blue Esposito, head of cool. Carl Foster, lawman.”

  By the time I’m finished, Danny is actually crying with laughter and his soup has gone down the wrong way.

  “Is that really what it says?” he manages, between coughs. “Head of beans? Tiger—what the fuck else? I didn’t think Kate had a sense of humor. Where’s the real list?”

  “That is the real list,” I say, trying not to laugh at the sight of Danny’s screwed-up face, shining with tears. “Have a napkin.”

  “What? Are you shitting me?” he gasps, and then sits back, fanning himself. “Actually, I take that back. Snoop’s that sort of place.”

  “You’ve heard of them?” I’m surprised. Danny isn’t normally the sort of person with his finger on the button that way. We get all types here, lots of private parties, the odd wedding or anniversary, but a surprising number of corporate retreats too—I guess the price tag is easier to swallow if your company is paying. There’s a lot of law firms, hedge funds, and Fortune 500 companies. This is the first time Danny’s heard of one of the companies and I haven’t. “What do they do?”

  “Snoop?” Now it’s Danny’s turn to look surprised. “Have you been living in a fucking cave, Erin?”

  “No, I’m just—I’ve never heard of them. Are they a media company?” I don’t know why I chose that. Media seems like the kind of industry that would have a Tiger-Blue Esposito.

  “No, they’re an app.” Danny looks at me suspiciously. “Have you really not heard of them? You know—Snoop—the music app. It lets you—well, snoop on people. That’s kind of it.”

  “I have literally no idea what you’re on about.”

  “Snoop, Erin,” Danny says, more acidly this time, like if he keeps saying it, I’ll smack my forehead and go, Oh yeah, that Snoop! He pulls out his phone and scrolls down the apps to one that looks like two eyes on a hot-pink background. Or maybe two cogs, it’s hard to see on the logo. He presses it, and the screen goes bright pink, then black, blazoned with snoop. Real people, real time, real loud in fuchsia letters.

  This time the two o’s of the name are the wheels of a cassette tape.

  “You like hook it up to your Spotify account or whatever,” Danny explains, scrolling through menus as he does, as if lists of random celebrities will make everything clear. “And it makes your listening public.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?” I say blankly.

  “It’s a quid pro quo, innit?” Danny says, sounding impatient. “The whole point is no one wants to listen to you, but if you join, you get to listen to other people. Voyeurism for your ears is what Snoop calls it.”

  “So… I can see what… I don’t know… Beyoncé is listening to? If she were on there.”

  “Yup. And Madonna. And Jay-Z. And Justin Bieber. And whoever else. Slebs love it—it’s the new Instagram. It’s like, you can connect, yeah? But without actually giving away too much information.”

  I nod slowly. I can actually kind of see the attraction of that.

  “So it’s basically famous people’s playlists?”

  “Not playlists,” Danny says. “Because the whole point is that it’s real time. You get what they’re listening to right now.”

  “What if they’re asleep?”

  “Then you don’t get anything. They don’t appear in the search bar if they’re not online and listening, and if you’re snooping on someone and they stop listening, their feed goes dead and you get the option to shunt along to someone else.”

  “So if you’re snooping on someone and they pause a song to answer the phone—”

  Danny nods.

  “Yeah, it just cuts off.”

  “That’s a really terrible idea.”

  He laughs and shakes his head.

  “Nah, you’re not getting it. The whole point is…” He stops, trying to formulate something unquantifiable into words. “The whole point is the connection. You’re actually listening to the same thing at the same moment as they are—beat for beat. You know that wherever she is in the world, Lady Gaga is listening to the exact same thing you are. It’s like”—inspiration strikes, and his face lights up—“it’s like, you know when you’re first going out with someone, and you’re sharing a set of headphones, one earpiece in their ear, one earpiece in yours?”

  I nod.

  “Well, it’s like that. You and Lady Gaga, sharing her earphones. It’s really powerful. When you’re lying there in bed, and they switch off, and you know that somewhere they’re probably doing the exact same thing as you, rolling over, falling asleep… it’s pretty intimate, you know? But it’s not just celebrities. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, say, you can snoop your bloke and listen to the same song at the same time. Assuming you know his Snoop ID of course. I keep mine locked down.”

  “Okay…” I say slowly. “So… like… your feed is public, but no one knows it’s you?”

  “Yeah, so I have like two followers, because I’ve not bothered to hook up any of my contact list. Mind you, some of the mo
st popular Snoopees are totally incognito. There’s this one guy in Iran, HacT, he’s called. He’s in the top ten Snoopees pretty much every month. Well, I say in Iran, but there’s no actual way of knowing. That’s just what it says on his Snoop biog. He could be from Florida.”

  An alert pings on his phone, and he brings it up.

  “Ah, yeah, see? This is someone I’m subscribed to, Msaggronistic. She’s this French Canadian chick in Montreal, she listens to some really cool punk stuff. That alert was telling me she’s come online and she’s playing…” He scrolls down the notification. “The Slits, apparently. Not sure that’s my cup of tea, but that’s the thing, it might be. I just don’t know.”

  “Right.” I’m not sure I’m any the wiser really, but it’s sort of making sense.

  “Anyway,” Danny says. He gets up and starts clearing our plates. “That’s what I meant, these tech start-ups, you could actually imagine them calling their head of finance ‘chief bean counter’ or whatever the fuck he was called. They’d think it was edgy or something. Coffee?”

  I look at my watch—2:17.

  “I can’t. I’ve got a couple of rooms still to do, then the pool.”

  “I’ll bring you one up.”

  I stand and stretch, working the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. It’s physical work, cleaning. I never realized how much before I started this job. Heaving Hoovers up and down stairs, scrubbing toilets and tiles. Doing nine rooms on the trot is a workout.

  * * *

  I’m finishing the pool when Danny comes in with a cup of coffee. He’s wearing his usual trunks—the smallest, tightest ones I’ve ever seen in real life. They are banana yellow, and when he turns around to put my coffee down on the lounger, you can see that he has BAD BOI written across his butt in scarlet letters.

  “Don’t make any splashes,” I warn him, as he stands poised at the edge of the pool, his arms outstretched. “I’m not mopping again.”

  He says nothing, just sticks out his tongue, and then does a perfect, splash-free dive into the shallow end of the pool. It’s not really deep enough for diving, but he skims the bottom and comes up safely at the far end.

  “Come on, the bloody place is clean enough. Get in.”

  I waver. I haven’t Hoovered the dining room, but I don’t know if anyone would be able to tell.

  I look at my watch—3:15. The guests are supposed to arrive at 4:00 p.m. I’m cutting it fine.

  “Oh, all right, then.”

  It’s our weekly ritual. A ten-minute dip after all the chores are done, like a way of reclaiming our territory, reminding ourselves who’s actually in charge in this place.

  My bikini is on under my clothes, and I pull off my sweaty T-shirt and stained cleaning jeans, and ready myself to dive. I’m just about to push off when I feel a hand grab my ankle and yank me forward, and with a shriek, I pitch into the pool.

  I surface, spluttering, raking hair out of my eyes. There is water everywhere.

  “You fucking imbecile! I said no splashes!”

  “Chill.” Danny is laughing uproariously, the water like jewels on his dark skin. “I’ll mop it, I swear.”

  “I’ll bloody kill you if you don’t.”

  “I’ll do it! I said so, didn’t I? I’ll do it while you dry your hair.” He points to his buzz-cut scalp, reminding me that he’s got a head start on me in that department.

  I punch him on the shoulder, but I can’t stay mad at him, and for the next few minutes we swim and wrestle, and fight like puppies, until at last we’re both drenched and gasping for air and have to stop to catch our breath.

  Danny pulls himself out of the water, grinning and panting, and pads off to the changing room to get dressed and greet the guests.

  I should follow him, I know it. There is plenty still left to do, jobs to complete, tasks to finish. But for a moment, just a moment, I let myself float, spread-eagled on the clear blue water. I touch my fingers to the scar that runs across my cheek, tracing the dented line where the skin is thin and still tender, and I gaze up at the gray sky through the glass roof above, watching as the snowflakes come spiraling down.

  The sky is the exact color of Will’s eyes.

  The clock is ticking down to the arrival of our guests, and I can hear Danny beginning to mop the changing rooms. I should get out, but I can’t. I can’t look away. I just lie there, my dark hair fanning out around me, floating, gazing up. Remembering.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Snooping EDSHEERAN

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 0

  We are quite high in the mountains now. The minibus makes its way up through little Alpine villages that would look like picture postcards, except the sky is a threatening slate color, not blue. The slushy rain down in the valley has turned into huge white flakes, and the driver has the windscreen wipers on full, swishing them aside as fast as they fall. Beneath us the wet black tarmac has turned into frozen gray ridges, and the tires are making a strange rattling sound as they pass over them. Either side of the road, huge mud-spattered drifts have been thrown up by the snow plow. It feels like we are driving through a tunnel. It gives me a strange hemmed-in feeling, and I look down at my phone, flicking through the apps to try to distract myself before coming back to Snoop.

  After I left the company, I deleted the app. I wanted everything about Snoop behind me, and I didn’t like the idea of Topher, Eva, and the others keeping tabs on me through the software. But a few weeks later, I found myself downloading it again. There is a reason it has just tipped a hundred million users: it’s addictive. But this time my profile is locked down as tight as it will go, and there is a junk email address attached to the account so that even Elliot, who has access to all the behind-the-scenes information, can’t know it’s me. It’s not that I’m paranoid. I don’t imagine he sits there searching the user records for Liz Owens every few days. I’m just quite a private person. That’s normal, isn’t it?

  Topher says something over his shoulder to me. I pull my earbuds out.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Drink?’ ” He holds out an open bottle of champagne.

  I shake my head.

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” He takes a swig directly from the bottle, and I try not to shudder. He swallows, wipes his mouth, then says, “I hope the weather clears up. We won’t get much skiing in at this rate.”

  “Can’t you ski in the snow then?” I ask.

  He laughs, like he thinks I’m an idiot.

  “Well, you can, but it’s not much fun. It’s like running in the rain. Have you never been skiing?”

  “No.” I realize I’m chewing the dead skin at the side of my nail, and I make myself drop my hand. I have a sharp flash of my mother’s worried voice. Liz, please don’t do that, you know Daddy doesn’t like it. I raise my own voice, shutting it out. “I mean, not really. I did dry-slope skiing once at school, but I don’t think it’s really the same.”

  “You’ll love it,” Topher says, with that infuriating confidence. The truth is, of course, that he has no way of knowing whether I will love skiing. But somehow when he makes these pronouncements, you believe him. When he says, Your money will be completely safe, or It’s an amazing investment, or You’ll never get these terms again, you trust him. You sign that check. You make that deposit. You put everything into his hands.

  It is why he is who he is, I suppose. That million-dollar confidence. Ugh.

  I don’t say anything in response. But he’s not waiting for an answer. He gives me a big, flashing grin and takes another gulp of Krug, then turns back to the driver.

  “We must be almost there, is that right?”

  “Comment?” the driver says in French.

  Topher smiles with exaggerated patience and repeats himself, more slowly this time.

  “Almost. There?”

  “Presque,” the driver says brusquely.

  “Nearly,” I
translate under my breath, and then wish I had not.

  “I didn’t know you spoke French, Liz,” Eva says. She turns around to look at me. She is smiling. She says the words like she is handing out gold stars.

  There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Eva, I think.

  “GCSE,” I mutter instead. “Not very good.”

  “You are such a dark horse,” Eva says admiringly. I know she is trying to flatter me, but her words have a patronizing edge considering English is her second language, after Dutch, and she is fluent in German and Italian as well.

  Before I am expected to reply, the minibus comes to a halt, the tires squeaking in the snow. I look around. Instead of the chalet I was expecting, there is a dark opening into the snowy hill and a sign reading Le funiculaire de St. Antoine. A ski lift? Already?

  I am not the only one who’s puzzled. Carl, the thickset lawyer, is looking alarmed too. The driver gets down from the front and starts heaving out cases.

  “Are we walking from here or what?” Carl says. “Didn’t bloody pack my snowshoes!”

  “We’re staying in St. Antoine 2000,” Topher’s assistant says. His name, I discovered on the plane, is Inigo. He is American, blond, and extremely good-looking. He is speaking to Carl, but also to the rest of us. “This is St. Antoine le Lac, but there are a lot of little hamlets scattered around, some of them just a couple of chalets. The one we’re staying in is at nearly seven thousand feet—I mean, two thousand meters,” he says hurriedly, as Eva raises an eyebrow. “It’s got no road access, so we have to travel the last part of the journey in this funicular railway.” He nods at the dark opening, and as my eyes adjust, I can see a turnstile inside, and a bored-looking man in uniform playing with his phone in a little booth.

  “I’ve got your tickets,” Inigo adds, holding up a sheaf of paper.

  He hands them out as we climb down from the minibus onto the soft snow, and we stand, holding them, looking up. I flex my fingers nervously inside my pockets, feeling, rather than hearing, the joints click. It is 4:07 p.m., but the clouds are so thick with snow that the entire sky is dark. We each take a case, with the driver bringing up the rear, and then there is an uncomfortable wait for the funicular. It is invisible, somewhere far up the tunnel, though we can hear the thrum of the huge steel cable as it approaches.