“Were we?” She walks around us, pacing. “I don’t know. We were all so angry. And so drunk. I don’t remember last night.”
“This is insane,” Tanya says. “You can’t seriously think that one of us . . .”
“It has to be a sick game,” I say. “She’s playing with us somehow. She’s messing with our heads.”
Chloe nods. “Poppy pretty much told us she was going to do something to us. What if this is it?”
Annabel is still staring at the bloodstained top in my hands. “But if this is a game, how do you explain all the blood? This shirt? The fact it was in the sea?”
All too aware of what I’m holding, I try to bundle the top into a ball to hide the blood. “I don’t know. Maybe she cut herself?”
“Cut herself?” Tanya rubs her temples with both hands. “Impossible. It was like a bloodbath in that bedroom. There’s no way you could cut yourself that much and not bleed out and die. And we’ve searched the island! She can’t have gotten far with that many injuries.”
“Then it’s someone else’s blood?” Chloe says, almost hopefully.
“We’re all here. And none of us are injured. How can it be anyone else? There’s no one else on this island.”
“Do we know that for sure?” Annabel whispers.
The thought terrifies us. We gaze round at each other, faces pale.
“That’s impossible,” Tanya says firmly. “The pier is so close to our huts. We would have heard the engine of a boat if it came by. We can hear the sea from our bedrooms for goodness’ sake.”
Chloe isn’t comforted by this. “They could have had a rowboat or something! We never would have heard that.”
“A rowboat all the way out here?” Tanya shakes her head. “Impossible. We’re talking about crossing the ocean, not the River Thames.”
“We were so out of it, maybe there was a boat and we just didn’t hear it,” Chloe persists.
Could that be possible? We all look half dead, a mixture of stress and exhaustion. There’s a nervous energy around the four of us, which isn’t helped by Chloe looking to check that no one is around.
There can’t be anyone else.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why would someone come to the island just to harm Poppy? What about the rest of us?”
This makes them pause.
“Esther’s right,” Annabel agrees. “There’s no reason why a stranger would come and just hurt Poppy.”
Chloe frowns. “But then, if it’s not a stranger, and Poppy is still missing . . .”
“The flares!” I remember. “We can use the flares. They’re under the kitchen sink. This is an emergency now. We need help.”
“Of course!” Tanya starts to hurry towards the main lodge.
“Wait—” Chloe starts, but I’m in no mood to listen, following after Tanya and hearing the others coming too.
The flares are our last beacon of hope, quite literally. The moment we fire one of those into the sky, someone will come and get us.
But when I open the kitchen cupboard I’m met with an empty cardboard box.
They’re gone.
“What the fuck?” I shout. “Where are they?”
“They were here!” Annabel says. “Robin told us.”
“Poppy must have moved them when she cut the phone line,” Tanya mutters. “That stupid bitch.”
“No.” Chloe looks as if she might cry. “She said at the time she didn’t touch them, remember? Said if there was a real emergency we still had them to use.”
“But then what?” Annabel says in disbelief. “How can they be gone? Are you saying one of us moved them? Because we’ve just established that there can’t be anyone else on this island, right?”
I don’t know what to think. My head is spinning. “If one of you moved the flares, now is the time to say.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t!”
“How can you even say that, Esther?”
“You don’t trust us!”
“Shut up!” I shout. “Just shut up, all of you. What the hell are we going to do?”
“I’m not sure what we can do,” Tanya says. “Everyone’s phones have no charge. The main landline is cut. The flares are gone. Robin doesn’t come here until tomorrow morning. I think we’re going to have to wait.”
“But Poppy is missing,” Annabel says. “We can’t just wait.”
Missing is a kind way of putting it. All that blood. I’m sure she’s dead.
“Unless you’re thinking of swimming across to the mainland,” Tanya says. “But I wouldn’t try it.”
“So we’re just stranded, until tomorrow?” Annabel says. “No help, no nothing?”
Tanya nods. “That’s what it looks like.”
“But the flares.” Annabel shakes her head. “That’s deliberate. Someone moved them so that we couldn’t get any help. So that we couldn’t get off this island. What does that mean?”
We all regard one another in silence.
It means that someone on this island doesn’t want us to leave.
Someone on this island is a killer.
Question is, which one of us?
It is quiet in here. Dark. Not yet near morning, the moonlight through the window illuminates the scene in front of me. My heart pounds, my mouth is dry. I want to deny the blood, the still corpse lying on the bed, but I know I can’t. This was always going to happen.
Poppy is dead. Her face is still energetic, eyes and mouth open as if screaming, tears still stained on her cheeks. Her hair fans out behind her head like the halo of snow angels we used to make together as children.
My hand clasps around the handle of the knife even further, as if it might become one with my palm. The blade is steeped in Poppy’s blood, as are my own clothes, covered in sweeping red stains that scream the truth.
I’m embarrassed and angry when my own tears come. This isn’t about me. This is about her.
I want to scream.
What have I done?
It’s all my fault. I’ve killed her, and this is the result.
What do I do? One quick glance at the window tells me morning is creeping closer. I have to act fast. I have to hide her, so no one else can ever see her like this.
Hide her, and hide the knife.
Nineteen
Poppy
November 22, 2012
Dear Diary,
I just applied for my absolute dream. A place at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
We were talking about universities during an art lesson a few days ago. We have all of Monday and Wednesday afternoons in the art rooms, working on our portfolios. The sixth form group is quite small, only eleven of us, so we’re able to chat as long as we get on with the work.
“I’m going to study Biology,” Sally, a girl who is obsessed with drawing in this animated style that is definitely copied from the various manga she reads, said.
“Biology!” another girl (our art class is hopelessly populated with girls—there are only three boys) called Jayla said in horror. She’s actually quite good; she does these small sculptures made out of wire that look like different things depending on the angle you’re looking at them. “Absolutely not. I’m going to do Art for sure. I’m applying for Oxford, Slade, Goldsmiths, and Newcastle.”
Ollie sighed at that. “Imagine getting into Slade! That’s my total dream.” He looked at me. “Where are you applying, Poppy? You’re doing Art in the future, right? I’ve already applied to Slade.”
It felt like I was copying him if I said Slade was my dream too.
“Oh, I don’t know, I think so,” I mumbled instead.
“As long as you don’t try to be too out there like you did in your GCSE,” Sally said. “Even if you still got an A*, which I think was totally unfair.”
Miss Wersham cut in at this point. “Poppy and I had a long conversation about her Art GCSE, and thankfully things were able to be sorted out in time. But Poppy, you absolutely should pursue Art at university. You’re incredibly talented.” And then, probably because she felt she had to, she added, “You all are.”
I almost got in trouble with my Art GCSE. Our portfolios had to incorporate at least two different mediums of art, and at first I wanted to argue against that. I had been painting and drawing my whole life up to that point—it was what I was good at. I had this whole plan for a series of self-portraits that got increasingly more abstract and it would have been so great just as a series of paintings, but Miss Wersham told me I had to do what the curriculum asked.
“But isn’t this really good art?” I asked at the time when she pulled me in to have a conversation about it. “Why can’t I just do this when you know it’s good enough?”
“It’s about what the exam board wants,” she replied, as if that settled it.
Look, I’m not pretending I know everything. I definitely don’t. But when it comes to art—I know what’s good and what’s not. And it felt so silly to add some sculptures into my portfolio (I wasn’t going to add photography, for God’s sake) when it worked as it was.
I did my best to argue against it. It was only when Miss Wersham invited not only me but my parents in for a chat and said I’d fail my whole portfolio if I didn’t get my act together that I finally gave in.
When I started the A Level Miss Wersham had a quiet word with me again.
“We’re going to follow precisely what the exam board wants, aren’t we?” she said.