One by One - Ruth Ware Page 0,8
her way through the snow.
“Eva van den Berg,” Topher says as she comes level with us, “my partner in crime.”
“Hi, Eva,” I say. “We’re delighted to welcome your group to Chalet Perce-Neige. Do you want to leave your bags here and head inside to warm up?”
“Thanks, that would be great,” Eva says. When she speaks there’s a tinge of something not quite English in her inflection.
Behind her one of the men slips in the snow and launches into a grumbling rant under his breath, and she says, quite carelessly over her shoulder, “Do shut the fuck up, Carl.”
I blink, but Carl doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary and simply rolls his eyes, picks himself up, and follows his colleagues into the warmth.
Inside the lobby a fire is roaring in the big enameled wood burner. The guests shake the snow off their coats and rub their hands in front of the fire. I set down the tray of glasses within easy reach and unfurl the list of guests and room numbers. I glance around the room, mentally trying to match people to names.
Eva and Topher I’ve got already. Carl Foster, the guy who slipped in the snow, is a stocky white man in his forties with a buzz cut and a pugnacious expression, but he’s cheerfully downing champagne in a way that suggests he’s not brooding on the moment outside the door. Judging by her surname, Miranda Khan is probably the very elegant Asian woman over by the stairs. She’s wearing six-inch heels and she’s talking to the guy with the Krug, who’s swapped the empty bottle for a full glass along the way.
“Oh, Rik,” I hear her say, a touch of flirtation in her voice. “You would say that.”
Rik Adeyemi. I put another mental tick on my list of names. Okay, so that’s five of them. The four remaining guests are more of a puzzle. There’s a slim woman in her midtwenties with ombré tips to her short hair, holding, for some reason, a rolled-up yoga mat under her arm. There’s a boy in his early twenties with a strong resemblance to a young Jude Law. He seems to be American from what I heard of his accent when he took a glass of champagne. Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff. She is wearing huge round spectacles and looking wonderingly around the lobby, and combined with her hair, the impression is of a particularly adorable baby chick. She must be either Ani or Tiger. She’s about the furthest thing from a tiger I could possibly imagine, so I put her down as a probable Ani.
The ninth and last guest is a tall, awkward-looking man, staring out the window with his hands in his pockets. His standoffishness compares strangely with the other guests, who are all chatting companionably with the easy back-and-forth that you get only from people who’ve worked or socialized together for a long time.
No, wait. There is one other guest who’s standing alone. A woman, in her late twenties, standing hunched in an inconspicuous corner by the fire, as if hoping no one will speak to her. She’s wearing dark clothes, and she blended into the shadows so well that I didn’t notice her at first. She’s almost… the word that comes to mind is cowering, and although it feels too strong, it’s the only one that really fits. Her uneasiness is in sharp contrast to the rest of the group, who are already laughing and refilling their glasses, in defiance of the advice about acclimating to altitude. But it’s not just her body language that sets her apart—it’s everything. She’s the only one wearing clothes that look more H&M than D&G, and though she’s not the only one wearing glasses, the others look like they’re wearing props provided by a Hollywood studio. Hers look like National Health Service castoffs. She reminds me of a bird too, but not a fluffy little chick. There is nothing cute about her. This woman looks more like an owl—a hunted, panicked owl caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
I’m about to go over to her, offer her a glass of champagne, when I realize there are none left on the tray. Did I put out the wrong number?
I look around again, counting. There are ten people in the lobby, not nine.
“Um… excuse me,” I say quietly