feel loyalty to Topher, I get that, I do. We all do. But we both know…”
She trails off. She does not need to finish.
And in fact, she does not really need to make her case. The facts make it for her.
There are twelve million reasons to vote with Eva. She doesn’t need to make it twelve million and one.
“I know,” I say. It’s a whisper. “Eva I know, it’s just that Topher…”
Topher, who gave me my first-ever chance, who told me to hold out for the shares in the first place. How can I tell him I am betraying him? What will he do? For the first time, I realize; I am frightened.
“Liz, you know what you want to do, what you need to do…,” Eva says, and her voice is cajoling, like she is talking to a scared child. “Come on, haven’t I always had your back? Haven’t we always taken care of each other?”
I remember Rik’s question at dinner tonight, the question that made me push back my chair and leave the room. So, Liz, how are you going to spend your share bonus? It was so brash, so bold, so full of assumptions.
Eva is more subtle. She knows that the money terrifies me in a way. Because for someone like me, who grew up having to hoard every last penny my dad didn’t spend on the slots, it is an unimaginable sum. Ridiculous. Transformative. Life changing.
Eva knows that the thing that will persuade me is not the money—but something else. Something much more personal, between her and me; an appeal to the past we share. I was her assistant once too, back in the days when Snoop could only afford one. In a different way, I owe as much to Eva as I do to Topher. More.
But really, she knows what Rik knows, what Carl knows, what everyone apart from Topher and Elliot seems to accept: that it is not a choice at all.
There is only one sane answer to the question in front of me. My loyalty to Topher is being weighed against not just twelve million pounds, but against something else entirely—the prospect of a very different life to the one I am used to. In the end, what is at stake is my freedom. Freedom from work, from worry, from watching every step—freedom from this.
“I know, Eva,” I say. My voice is very low. “I know. It’s just… it’s hard.”
“I understand,” she says. She presses my hand again. Her fingers are cold against mine, and very insistent in the message her grip is conveying. “And I know it’s hard. I feel that loyalty to Toph too, of course I do. But I can count on you, yes?”
“Yes,” I say. My voice is almost inaudible, even to myself. “Yes, you can count on me.”
“Good.” She smiles, her wide, beautiful smile. It is a smile that once beamed out from a thousand billboards and catwalks all across Europe. It is like Thank you, Liz, I know what that means. And you can count on me too. We’ll take care of each other, won’t we?
I nod, and she gives me a perfunctory hug and leaves the room.
When she’s gone I open the window to get rid of her scent. I lean out, and I let the anxiety locked inside my chest explode into something huge and almost overwhelming. I imagine the meeting, the vote, me raising my hand in support of the buyout, and the expression on Topher’s face as he registers my betrayal… And then I imagine what will happen if I don’t, and I feel utterly sick.
Because Eva is right. There is only one choice. I know what I have to do. I just have to find the courage.
And once I have made up my mind, a strange kind of peace descends on me.
It will be okay. It will all be okay.
I shut the window. I climb back into bed and I switch off Snoop. Then I lie, quite still, listening instead to the whisper of the snow falling onto my balcony outside. Obliterating everything.
ERIN
Snoop ID: LITTLEMY
Listening to: Snooping ITSSIOUXSIE
Snoopers: 5
Snoopscribers: 7
When my alarm goes off, I struggle up out of a deep, disturbing dream—a nightmare of digging, digging, digging through hard-packed snow, my hands numb with cold, my muscles shaking, hot blood running down my neck. I know what I’m going to find—and I’m both yearning for it and dreading it. But I wake up before I reach my goal.