“I’m not asking you.” Annabel’s voice is poison. “I’m asking Tanya.”
Behind her, Chloe watches me triumphantly. This little bitch. She’s planned all of this.
“Look . . .” I try to buy some time. “It wasn’t easy. I wanted to tell you. But Annabel, I was just trying to protect you. I was messed up with my own stuff, as you’ve found out the past few days. I was in my own chaos. I kept telling Chloe to come clean.”
“I can’t believe this!” she shouts. “You as well? It’s one thing Andrew fucking any random blonde he happens across, it’s another for that bimbo to be one of my so-called best friends, and then another thing again for my other best friend to know about it the whole time as well! This is unbelievable.”
“I’m sorry—” I try to reach for her, but she shrugs me off.
“I can’t stand the lot of you,” Annabel says. “Stay the fuck away from me.”
“Annabel!”
She’s striding away down the beach and rewards Esther’s call with her middle finger.
“Annabel, don’t you dare do that to me!” Esther yells. “Or there are things I’ve been keeping quiet that could come out as well. Annabel! Come back!”
Despite Esther’s threat, she keeps walking. Soon enough she’s a figure in the distance, not once looking back at us.
“What secrets are you keeping, Esther?” Chloe says. “Deadly ones, perhaps?”
“Shut up, Chloe,” I say. “She’s never going to forgive me.”
“Join the club,” she mutters.
Esther steps between us. “Enough. We have more important things to worry about than Chloe’s stupid affair with Andrew! We have the knife! It’s covered in Poppy’s blood!”
“Oh for God’s sake!”
“You need to go to your hut and stay there,” Esther snaps.
Even though her tone is serious, the line still comes out sounding comical, ill-fitting for the situation. “You’re not my mother.”
“Let me put it another way,” Esther says quietly, in a voice I’ve never heard from her before. “Either you go there and stay there of your own free will or I’ll make sure that you do.”
I want to argue further, but there’s a wildness to her eyes that I don’t trust. Even Chloe looks at her, surely afraid herself of this new Esther that has emerged from nowhere.
Or has she always been hidden underneath?
She was the one who came up with the Julian plan, after all. I remember being surprised at the time, that that level of calculation was somewhere within her.
There’s a bruise forming around her left eye, and more around her neck.
Are those marks from someone attempting to strangle her?
Who would do such a thing, except someone trying to escape? Using whatever force they can muster?
Chloe and Esther walk me back to my hut like they’re my bodyguards, one on either side of me. I can still feel Chloe’s seething anger, but it’s not her I’m worried about. Esther’s coldness radiates from her, and when they leave me in my room alone I find I’m breathing a sigh of relief at just being away from her.
They think they’ve solved this, but they haven’t solved a thing.
If anything, they’ve made it worse.
Because we’re all against each other now. I’m the one that wanted us all to come, to finally face the past. I didn’t want things to happen like this. But if that’s how we’re going to behave, so be it. Let them all fall apart. It’s what they deserve.
An hour or so passes, and there is a knock on my door.
“Come in,” I call from my bed. I’m not getting up for them. If they’ve come to apologise, or to accuse me further—let them. They’re all going to hell in the end.
Whoever it is enters silently, closing the door behind them.
“Tanya,” she says.
I turn around—and see the knife.
Twenty-Three
Esther
May 21, 2023
Poppy sits up in her bed, hair wild, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
She’s not afraid, but she should be. She wears a flimsy nightie, the spaghetti straps falling off her shoulders. The curtains are drawn, revealing a sliver of night sky that illuminates her on the bed in a spotlight. When I step forward, she sees the knife in my hands. The moonlight from the window catches the blade, making it gleam.
Her eyes are wide, and she raises her arms to protect herself. “Don’t hurt me.”
But I’m not in a forgiving mood. “You should have thought about that before you got me fired. Before you ruined my life.”
“I’ll say it was me,” Poppy says, pleading. The desperation in her tone brings me further satisfaction. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Too late.” I’m stumbling forward, still under the influence of that gin, but I throw myself onto the bed and push the knife deep into her torso.
“Esther!” she screams, panicking, trembling, trying to get away.
I take the knife out and plunge it in again, watching her bleed out all over the sheets.
“That’s what you get,” I tell her.
“Please!” she begs, her voice now a high-pitched squeal. When she realises I’ll do nothing to save her, she raises it higher, appealing for anyone else. “Someone! Help me!”
And then I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh, as the light vanishes from her eyes and she turns cold and still.
Jesus Christ.
I wake up, my body jumping forward as I gasp for breath.
What the fuck was that? A dream? A nightmare? A memory coming back to me of that night?
For a second everything is just a white blur around me, and then things come into focus. I’m sitting up on my bed in my hut, on top of the covers, which are now drenched in sweat alongside my clothes. My mouth is dry and my throat feels like it’s on fire. Mercifully, there’s a bottle of water on the side table, and I glug it down, barely pausing to take a breath before the whole thing is gone.
I went for a nap. It comes back to me now. After we put Tanya in her room, I went to my own, determined to rest, still feeling hungover.
That was all just a horrible dream.
That’s what I’m going to tell myself anyway.
I stand up and go to wash my face, changing into a simple sundress. The sun is still high in the sky, but no longer surrounded by a never-ending expanse of blue. Instead, storm clouds are beginning to gather, dark and threatening, turning blue into grey. Soon enough, it will rain. Perhaps worse.
Has anyone seen to Tanya in the past few hours? As I exit my hut, I think I can see Chloe in the distance, sunbathing on the lawn. Did Annabel come back from when she walked away? Is she in her hut now?
Tanya’s is quiet and dark when I get to it. I knock on the door loudly, then call her name.
Nothing.
“I’m coming in,” I say, loud enough for Annabel to hear in the hut next over if she’s in there.
It’s worse than Poppy.
Tanya is lying on the bed, eyes glazed at the ceiling. There’s no life in them. Blood has spattered on the wall above the headboard, but most is pooled around her, seeping into the sheets. The knife—the same knife, I realise wildly, its telltale chip in the handle visible for all to see—is sticking out of her chest.
She’s dead.
I scream.
I’ve never screamed like it in my life, pure agony and terror escaping my body in one long howl. Even at home, when I’m scared beyond my wits, the pit of nerves that eat away at my insides every day when I walk through the door, even when those nerves are confirmed with the real thing—it’s never like this.
Did I kill Tanya? The thought comes to me of its own accord, a horrific shock to my system. Was my dream actually real, supplanting Tanya for Poppy in my subconscious as a way to deal with what I did?
Annabel and Chloe are behind me before I even finish screaming. I don’t know how long I scream for. Perhaps a minute. Maybe longer. My throat is hoarse, all previous efforts of easing its dryness vanquished.
Chloe lets out a shriek, both hands clapped to her mouth.
Annabel, surprisingly, is the one to take action, marching forwards and switching on the light so the full devastation is clear. She hurries to Tanya, pressing a hand to her throat, even though we know it’s futile. And then with a trembling hand she takes the knife out of her chest and sends it clattering to the floor.
“She’s dead,” she says, as if this wasn’t already obvious.
“Cover her up. Please.” Chloe turns from us and walks back outside, grabbing at her hair. “I can’t look at her like that.”
Annabel takes a second, peering at Tanya’s body. “She’s been stabbed twice.”
“Twice?” Mustering up some courage, I come and see what she’s talking about.
Sure enough, there are two puncture wounds. The one that the knife had settled in, the centre of her chest. But also one at her shoulder. The sheets are tangled, and the bedside table has been knocked onto the side.
“There was a struggle,” I say. “She fought back. Wouldn’t you have heard that in your hut next door?”
Annabel shakes her head. “I wasn’t in there. I came back from the beach ten minutes ago. I was trying to eat. God. I can’t believe this. She’s really . . .”
“Have you covered her?” Chloe shouts. “I can’t go in there.”