One by One - Ruth Ware Page 0,120

if he’s trying to make himself believe I’m here and solid flesh.

“I never believed her,” he says at last, his deep voice coming to me as much through his chest, where my face is pressed. “I never believed her. That text—I knew something was wrong. I set out straightaway—I’ve never walked so fast in my life—but you were gone. I thought you’d died. I thought—I thought—”

But he can’t finish. He just gulps, pressing his face into the top of my hair, and I feel the wetness of his tears on my parting.

“I should never have fucking left!” he says, and his arms tighten. “I knew you wasn’t safe to be left alone. I told you, don’t do anything stupid. And what happens? Skiing off-piste with a broken ankle? You ain’t Jason effing Bourne.”

I shake my head, and tighten my grip, burying my face in his shoulder, trying to hide my shaking sobs. I love him—I love his attempts to lighten the atmosphere and make a joke of this, but I can’t even pretend to laugh. All I can do is hold him and cry, and cry, and cry, for everything.

“Fucking hell,” he is saying, his voice rough and soft in my ear, rocking me back and forth, back and forth. “You’re okay, Erin. You’re all right, pet.”

And I want to believe him. But I’m not sure if it’s true.

“You look like shit,” he says at last, pulling back to look me up and down. I feel like he wants me to laugh, and part of me wants to. You should have seen the other guy. The riposte is on the tip of my tongue. But Liz is dead, and it doesn’t feel funny. Instead, I just shrug and Danny’s lip curls into something close to a snarl.

“Fucking bitch.”

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t—you don’t know what she—”

But I’m interrupted by the clanging of the dinner bell for the second time, and Danny rolls his eyes.

“Better go down. You ready?”

“Not really. You?”

“I’m fine, mate. You’re the one who pulled off the Bear Grylls stuff.”

I laugh, but my nerves are still jangling as I make my way slowly and awkwardly down the narrow stairs from my room, crutch clamped under one arm, the other supporting my weight with the rickety banister.

When I enter the dining room, they are all there—all the people who are left, at any rate. Topher, Tiger, Rik, Inigo, Miranda, and Carl—they are all seated around the long dining table, and when I come in, unsure of my reception, there is a collective intake of breath and then, to my surprise, Topher breaks the silence with a slow round of applause that is taken up first by Inigo, and then by Rik, Miranda, and all the others.

“Bloody hell,” Carl says, jumping up from his place to help me with my crutch and my chair. “You look even worse than Inigo, and that’s saying something.”

My seat is next to Tiger, and she puts her arm around me as Carl pushes my chair in, holding me in a warm, one-sided hug.

“Erin,” she says. “Are you okay? It must have been terrifying. I’m so sorry—we never should have left you.”

“It’s okay,” I manage. My eyes are filling with tears. I can’t think what to say. My ankle, inside the Aircast, is throbbing painfully, and I can feel their eyes on me. It’s a welcome distraction when Danny pulls out the chair on my other side and slumps into it with a sigh.

“Smells like that bleeding cassoulet again,” he says morosely. “It was bad enough last time.” Somehow his irritation breaks the ice, and Inigo is smiling, a watery grin.

“Bit louder, mate,” Carl says, as the young waitress—the same girl from reception—comes into the room carefully carrying three plates of thick pale stew on a tray, breathing heavily with concentration as she navigates round the corner of the table. “We want to be sure she spits in the right plate.”

“Going by the stuff they served the other night, spit would probably improve it,” Rik says under his breath.

“Shh,” Miranda hisses severely, and Rik grins, and rubs the back of her neck with an easy intimacy that makes me think whatever their situation at home, these two will not be going back to England as just colleagues. Something has changed between them, something irrevocable, and Rik looks stronger, more determined than the person I met just a few days ago.

Topher, by contrast, looks like a pale, deflated version of the charismatic man who stepped off the