One by One - Ruth Ware Page 0,118

that they were on their way, that I just had to hang on, not to give up. But when the rescue party finally arrived and pried the phone from my frozen mitten, slicked over with a sheen of bloody ice, he couldn’t tell them what had happened either.

It wasn’t until two days later that I was finally able to piece it together for them—explain the abandoned chalet, the cryptic texts, and headlong flight down the treacherous couloir. But even I couldn’t explain everything. Because, how do you explain someone like Liz?

To explain is to assign a reason for something, to make sense of behavior, to justify it, in a way.

And I cannot, will not justify what Liz did.

I am discharged from hospital after a few days, but I can’t go home. Partly because I don’t want to—I am twenty-two. I don’t want to go back to my childhood bedroom, with its posters of long-forgotten bands, and its photographs, Will and Alex permanent ghosts hovering just out of the corner of my eye.

But partly because I literally can’t. The police haven’t finished processing the crime scene that Perce-Neige has become, and they’ve asked everyone concerned to remain in the area, at least until their preliminary investigations are complete. We aren’t suspects—at least, I don’t think we are, so there’s nothing legally preventing us from returning to the UK. But it would look very bad to be impeding the investigation, and everyone knows that.

It’s clearly impossible to go back to the chalet as long as it’s a crime scene, so I accept with some relief the police’s offer of accommodation at a hotel in St. Antoine le Lac. It is only when I arrive, plastic bag of belongings in my hand, that I realize what this offer means.

It’s where they have put everyone. Topher. Rik. Miranda. Danny. Carl. Tiger. Even Inigo.

In fact it’s Inigo that I see first when I step through the door into the reception area, and my mouth falls open.

“Inigo!”

I pull out my earbuds, and he turns from where he is inexpertly attempting to sort out internet access with the French-speaking receptionist. When he sees me, he flushes a deep unflattering red, so dark it’s almost purple. The flush doesn’t suit him, and it tones down his extraordinary good looks into something approaching normality.

“Um, excusez-moi, please,” he says, awkwardly to the girl behind the counter. “Un moment. Je—I mean—I need to—God, Erin, what must you—let me take your bag.”

He gestures at the crutch I’m using, at my ankle in its surgical boot, and grabs for the plastic bag I’m holding in my free hand.

“It’s okay,” I say, laughing, though the situation isn’t really funny. “My ankle’s fine. I mean—it’s not fine, it’s broken, but I can walk again now that I’ve got a cast.”

“No but still,” he says wretchedly. He ushers me over to the 1970s woolen couch in the corner of reception and we sit down, facing each other, like awkward guests on a talk show. For the first time I see that he has a surgical dressing on his forehead, and two black eyes. Has he been in a fight? “Erin, you must have thought—you must think—I mean, God, I was a total idiot. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” I say, taken aback.

“For going off and leaving you all like that! I had no idea that Liz—that she—”

“Inigo, it wasn’t your fault!”

“But it was. I mean not Liz—but if I hadn’t been such an idiot with the phone call Ani might still, she might still—”

He stops, and I realize that he’s very close to crying, and is trying desperately to master himself. I also realize that I have no idea what he’s talking about. In fact I have no idea what the story is with Inigo at all. What did happen with the phone call? Why did he run off?

“Inigo, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say more gently. “What happened? Did you fake that phone call, after all? Why?”

“What?” It’s his turn to look taken aback. “No! God no! How could you think such a thing?”

“Then why did you run away?”

“I told you! I left a note—because I made such a stupid mistake.”

I suppress a sigh of irritation and wonder, not for the first time, whether Inigo was ever actually that good as a PA. How did Topher put up with him?

“Yes, but you never said what the mistake was,” I spell out. “We all thought—” And then I