She Started It
Sian Gilbert
Dedication
For my granny, Marie Blackmore.
Your love of books inspired my own.
Prologue
Robin
May 22, 2023
There’s only the bride waiting for me, and she’s covered in blood.
Normally at the end of a holiday on this island the whole party is ready with their suitcases, sunburned but cheerful. As I power across to them in my deck boat, they’re often not looking at me but taking final glances around the island: its white sandy beaches, clear water, palm trees.
It’s a perfect day to be on the sea this morning. The sun is warm on my back and the tide is on my side.
But the bride waiting for me has changed everything.
I wouldn’t call myself an easily shaken person. When you run a private island, you prepare for every possibility. Just thirty minutes by speedboat from the mainland, I’m always there if something does go wrong. The guests have the island to themselves, but I’ve not left them stranded. There’s an emergency phone, flares, and a fully stocked first aid kit.
Crises have happened before, of course they have.
Someone thought they’d climb the edge of the cliffside and ended up breaking their leg. Another woman insisted her pregnancy wouldn’t be a bother and went into labour on the first night. I guess I thought I’d seen it all.
I haven’t seen this.
The boat reaches the pier and I’m able to cut the engine and secure it before the bride hurries over.
“What’s happened?” I ask, amazed by how forceful my voice sounds. “Is everyone okay? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
Now that she’s reached me, the bride seems to be in a state of shock. There are deep gashes in her hands, but I’m not sure they’re enough to cause the devastation on her thin white dress. All across the front are huge blood stains, grown dark with time. Scratches cover one side of her face. A slight bruise is forming underneath her left eye.
I reach out a tentative hand and she jerks backwards.
“Sorry!” I look around, trying to find signs of the others.
It’s too quiet here. I think back to only days ago, the happy loud group of women I took to this island, leaving them ready for the hen party of a lifetime. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“Where are the others?” I ask.
The bride’s eyes finally focus on me, wide and fearful.
“Your bridesmaids?” I persist. “Where are they?”
“It all went wrong,” she says.
I’m about to speak, but the bride isn’t finished. She draws herself into a hunch, grabbing both arms, wrapping herself in an embrace despite the scorching weather.
Her next words leave me cold.
“She started it.”
One
Annabel
May 18, 2023
I take out the invitation again, its creamy thick card with embossed lettering somehow more impressive than the first-class plane ticket to the Bahamas. There are a few minutes before my taxi arrives for the airport, so I sit on the velvet armchair by the window and study everything once more.
Dear Annabel, it reads. I hope this invitation comes as a pleasant surprise. I am getting married in the summer next year, and would love it if you could be a bridesmaid. I have organised the hen party to take place on a completely private island in the Bahamas, and you don’t need to spend a penny. Further details will follow about the wedding when you all arrive! Please write back to me to let me know you can make it. Full instructions are underneath and I have included your plane tickets. Love, Poppy Greer
Poppy Greer, of all people. The invitation was a surprise, that was for sure. I haven’t seen her in almost ten years, haven’t even spoken to her. Not since the end of our A levels. Nor was she my favourite person. It’s safe to say the four of us—that is, me, Chloe, Esther, and Tanya—didn’t like Poppy that much and teased her for it. Harmless teasing, nothing serious. But still, it’s a shock that she’s invited us, let alone asked us to be her bridesmaids.
“I’m not going to turn down a free first-class flight and stay on a private island,” Chloe said, when we all discovered we’d had the same letter. “Especially if it’s all four of us.”
There’s a brochure in the envelope with the invitation and plane tickets. The island is called Deadman’s Bay, an ominous first impression but easily forgotten at the sight of the clear ocean water. There’s a small wooden whitewashed pier that peeks out into the waves, showcasing a strip of the faraway mainland and the blue skies above. Inside the brochure, there are a couple of photographs of the island itself. Through lush thick greenery is a tended lawn; palm trees are dotted about like streetlamps, some curving and others rod-straight, bound together by hammocks, and a fire pit sits in the middle surrounded by deck chairs. In the background there’s a glimpse of the white beach, sun loungers and a small red-and-white-striped open gazebo. The beachfront home, the biggest accommodation ahead of four tiny huts at the rear of the island, is hidden behind four large palm trees that fight for space, a small single-storey white building with pink windows and a pink front door. Next to it, almost out of sight, a decking area complete with barbecue.
It wasn’t hard to say yes. I didn’t even have to change any of my plans; I had none, and I don’t work. Andrew, my husband, didn’t have a problem with me being away for four days either.
The other three all have jobs. Esther Driscoll is an investment banker at a top firm and had to beg, borrow, and steal to get the time off. She’s much more serious than the rest of us. Even when out of work she’s constantly on her phone, responding to emails. It’s a far cry from the wild spirit she was at school and university, always the last to leave a party. But I know her mother got her the interview for her current job and she feels under a lot of pressure to perform, although she’d never admit that to us.
The last one to leave a party these days is Tanya Evesham, but that’s because she’s the one who organises them. She’s an events planner, from arranging celebrity features to high-class birthday parties. When she first started, she used to invite us along to whatever bash she’d put together that night, guaranteeing us free cocktails and the ability to rub shoulders with the social elite. There’s a certain charm to Tanya. She can capture a room’s attention and thrives on it, always leaving people wanting more. Tanya’s events were the social occasions everyone put on their calendar.
Until they suddenly weren’t, a few months ago. Tanya stopped inviting us to parties, and we stopped hearing about them, though that hasn’t stopped her throwing them and she seems busier than ever. She and her boyfriend, Harry—a professional bodyguard to a politician—bought a place last year on the outskirts of London and she’s been busy redecorating, so the three of us have barely seen her, nor has she invited us for a housewarming.
For Chloe, this trip counts as work. She’s the most delighted of us all. Chloe Devine (real name Chloe Smith, a hopelessly ordinary surname she never could have done well with, she tells us) is an Instagram sensation: just fifty thousand followers away from one million. Inundated with various sponsorship deals she advertises in different posts, Chloe loves nothing more than an opportunity to flaunt her wealth to her followers. But a first-class flight to a private island is a whole new level, and she’s bought seven different bikinis for the occasion. Something as simple as a photo of her sipping coffee in a café gets hundreds of thousands of likes.
If I’d known all it took to get rich and famous was a nose job, I’d have done it before her. But I’m not jealous. Chloe is still single, despite the numerous relationships she’s had. If you can call them relationships.
I’m happily married. I’m the lucky one.
As if he’s read my mind, Andrew comes into the living room and finds me curled up by the window, slotting everything safely back into the envelope and then my Prada handbag. Chloe isn’t the only one who has nice designer gear.
“Have you seen my keys?” Andrew asks, picking up the sofa cushions and flinging them back down. “I swear you always move them.”
I sigh. Andrew loses his keys every single time he is about to go out, and every single time it’s my fault. “Have you checked your coat pocket?”
“My coat pocket?” he echoes, as if I’ve gone mad. “Why on earth would it—” The rest of his sentence disappears along with him through the door, and I hear a jangle of keys. He comes back in with a frown on his face. “Did you put them in here? I could have sworn I took them out after work yesterday.”
“Why would I move your keys?” I try to laugh and make light of it, but Andrew’s expression darkens.
“You’re always moving my things.” He stands in front of the fireplace, adjusting his tie in the mirror that hangs above.
“Have you got something on at work today?”