“Poppy is the one who is going to set off those flares and get us home,” Tanya says. “I’m not going to be the one who gets in trouble for it. She can take the blame. She’s the one who cut the landline in the first place.”
There’s something sinister about the closed door and the silence it brings. Why hasn’t Poppy come out at the sound of our voices? Every other day she’s been up at the same time as me, a fact that surprised me to no end. Every time I went for a run she would be there, either on the decking or on the beach, watching me go.
“What’s that?” Annabel says sharply. She’s staring at the floor.
We all look down, and at first I’m not sure what she’s talking about. But then I see it, the rust-coloured marks, spilling out from under the frame. Hastily wiped away.
“Is that—” I can’t finish my sentence.
“Jesus.” Tanya steps back. “That’s blood, isn’t it?”
Annabel bends down and rubs her finger at it. “Someone has tried to clean this,” she says. “It’s just the stain left.”
“Old then?” Chloe says, eyes darting around the room to see if anywhere else is contaminated. “Not from this trip?”
Annabel stands up, brushing dust from her jeans. “What do I look like, a forensic scientist? I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it before though.”
“There was blood on the front door,” I say.
“What?” The others stare at me in shock.
“I just thought one of you got a nosebleed or something and wiped your fingers on the frame.” I walk over and demonstrate where I found it, the remainder still there but easy to miss. “Like someone had blood on their hands and touched it accidentally.”
Everyone looks at their hands, but they are clean.
“Does anyone remember much of last night?” I say.
They pause to think, then shake their heads.
“So anything could have happened,” I conclude.
“Then . . . the blood?” Annabel walks back towards the bedroom door, to that suspicious large stain on the floor that leads under the frame and could carry on further for all we know. “What caused the blood?”
“Maybe Poppy is dead,” Chloe says, and we all laugh.
“That’d be like all our wishes coming true, no?” Tanya says.
But then we look at the blood again.
“Why isn’t she coming out?” Chloe asks uncertainly.
Tanya seems to feel the same, because panic flits across her features. “We need to go in.”
I nod. We’re all at the door within moments, knocking several times.
“Poppy!” Annabel calls. “Poppy, are you in there? We’re coming in!”
Without waiting for a response, Annabel pushes the door open. It swings back violently, clattering all the way against the wall on the right.
The light is off, but it doesn’t matter. Sunlight streams through the dual-aspect windows, flooding the room with brightness. Everything comes together with horrific clarity.
Poppy’s bed has been slept in, the sheets tangled. The covers are thrown off, half hanging to the ground. A glass of milk she must have brought to bed is lying in pieces on the floor, the milk mixing with the puddle of blood. The bedsheets are covered too. Angry, violent blood stains that have transferred onto the quilt and ground, even above on the wall in a dreadful splatter. The drawers have been opened, as if someone has been searching for something, objects thrown about without care onto the ground.
The bed is empty. Poppy isn’t there.
On the wall above, she has her own gruesome painting. It looks familiar, like a re-creation of something I have seen before, but I can’t place it. A woman stands, half naked, a cracked and barren landscape behind her. The sky is dark. She wears a flowing white skirt but her top half is exposed, only thin white straps around her waist and shoulders, almost like a straitjacket. In the centre, her torso is split and a broken heart is visible. She is covered in scars, from her wrists travelling up her arms and even on her stomach. Tears stream down her cheeks.
It is a self-portrait. Poppy’s eyes stare in anguish at us from the canvas, but there is an unapologetic defiance about the pose too. This is who she is, take her or leave her. Even though she is injured in the painting, there isn’t any blood. Not like what is directly below it.
An unsettling trail leads to where we are standing. Swathes of blood in smeared solid stains. Drag marks.
“What the . . .” Annabel claps both hands to her mouth, and wobbles on her feet. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Tanya steps forward, but I pull her back. She turns to me, expression dark. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We can’t touch anything,” I say. “This is a—this is a crime scene.”
“A crime scene?” Tanya echoes. “This has to be some kind of joke.”
The windows are closed and the stench is overwhelming. Something musty hits my nostrils and now that I’ve noticed it I can’t escape. This is real.
“Where is Poppy?” Chloe whispers.
Someone needs to take control. Annabel’s face is still pale, Chloe stands frozen, and Tanya looks puzzled more than anything else.
I take a deep breath. “We need to look for her. Search the island. Just in case she’s hurt somewhere.”
Chloe nods, eagerly. “Yes, she must be somewhere. This is a tiny island. She can’t have vanished.”
“Unless someone put her in the sea,” Tanya says.
“Christ, Tanya!” I snap. “That is not helping. No one has put her in the sea. What an awful thing to say.”
Annabel’s face falls. “It would be so easy to do. She would wash away.”
“There’s only us on this island,” I say. “So that can’t have happened. Got it?”
Their silent responses give me no comfort.
“We need to look around.” My voice sounds much more confident than I’m actually feeling. Any minute now I think I’m going to faint. A headache forces itself into my forehead. “Annabel, you do the huts. Chloe, you do the general outside area like the lawn and the trees. Tanya, you do the cliff. And I’ll take the beach. She can’t have . . .” I struggle to finish. “She can’t have got far if what we see here is to be believed, but we have to check.”
We leave the lodge together, but separate immediately. I’m grateful for the break from them, allowing my breath to come out in the gasps it desperately needs. I head for the beach without hesitation, praying beyond all hope that I won’t find anything sinister.
The beach stretches out for over a mile, but even from here there are no obvious shapes in the distance, no clear indications of Poppy sunbathing or going for a walk that would ease everyone’s worries. Not that I expected that. If anything, I’m relieved her body hasn’t washed up on the shore, the tide turned against her assailant.
Calm down, Esther.
My pulse continues to race as I stride down the sand, taking care to look out in the ocean as well as in the ditches that lead to the trees and overgrowth on the opposite side.
By the time I reach the rock pools, I’m convinced there’s nothing to be found here. I happen to glance upwards and spot Tanya standing atop the cliff. She isn’t looking at me. Her hands are burying her face.
Is she crying? Has she found something?
But no. She wipes her eyes and turns to head back down. There must be nothing there either.
I’m almost at the start again when I see it.
Drifting in and out with the tide, snagged on a jagged rock that pokes out of the sand a couple metres into the sea.
The top Poppy was wearing yesterday. The sequins that made it sparkle at breakfast have gone into overdrive exposed to the sun like this, glittering more than the ocean. Taking my shoes off, I go into the water and grab it to safety.
The collar is covered in blood.
“Oh my God,” I say out loud.
For a second I’m tempted to throw it back in. What good would it do for the others to see?
But I’m too late.
“That’s Poppy’s top!” Annabel shrieks. “It’s covered in blood, oh my God!”
Chloe and Tanya aren’t far behind, coming running when they hear Annabel. They stop dead when they see what I’m holding.
“Did you find anything?” I ask them. “Any sign of Poppy?”
I already know the answer from their expressions, but disappointment hits me when they shake their heads anyway.
“Where did you find that?” Chloe asks.
“It was caught on that rock there.” I point. “Pure luck that it happened to stay. Anything else would have . . .”
“So she was in the sea?” Tanya says.
“How did her top come loose?” Annabel asks, horrified.
I study the garment, finding a large tear down the side. “There’s a rip here. Maybe from where it caught on that rock it came off. I don’t know.”
“Or someone removed it,” Tanya whispers.
“She’s dead,” Annabel says. “Poppy is dead, isn’t she? All that blood, there’s no way she survived that.”
“We need to call the police,” I say.
“How?” Tanya says. “Poppy cut the phone line, remember? And our phones have no charge, and no signal anyway.”
“Do we want to?” Chloe runs her fingers through her hair. “I mean, this could still be a joke. Right?”
“We all wanted her dead,” Annabel says.
“Jesus, Annabel,” I say. “We were speaking figuratively.”