Annabel and I drape one of the sheets over Tanya’s body.
“Why is she still here and not Poppy?” I wonder aloud when we’re done, stepping back and surveying the scene.
“Poppy was killed at night,” Annabel says. “Much easier to move a body under the cover of darkness.”
“But if Tanya is dead now too . . .”
Annabel finishes my sentence. “Then we were wrong about her. She didn’t kill Poppy after all.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Poppy makes sense. But Tanya? Why kill Tanya too?”
Chloe and Annabel shake their heads.
“Poppy, we all had our reasons. She had done terrible things to us. None of us were really sad that she had died. But Tanya was one of our oldest friends. I don’t get it.”
“She kept my cheating with Andrew a secret,” Chloe says to Annabel. “You were annoyed at her for that.”
Annabel’s eyes flash with something. Anger?
“That’s not a good reason to kill her,” she says. “What about Esther?” She turns to me. “You had gotten her fired. She was furious about that. Maybe you had another argument, you got angry.”
“You’re right, these are all trivial reasons,” I say quickly. “They don’t make sense.”
“But it must have been one of us.” Chloe moves back outside again, and this time we follow her, keen to get away from the sight of Tanya’s body under that sheet.
“Yes.”
“It was alright when it was Poppy,” Chloe says. “This is different.”
We all regard one another then as a cloud passes over the sun, darkening the landscape and creating shadows across our faces. The wind has picked up, a whistling sound between the palm trees, and the waves are starting to churn in the distance, victims of the weather before any of us. I don’t know what to think about the two women that stand before me now, women I’ve known since we were at primary school together. I’ve grown up with them, we’ve seen each other from where we began to where we are now.
And I don’t trust them at all.
“What do we do now?” Chloe says. “What the hell do we do now?”
“We need to stick together,” I say. “No one goes off on their own anymore. We stay together, down in the main lodge.”
“The main lodge?” Annabel echoes. “But the bedroom is where Poppy was killed. You can’t expect us to stay there.”
“It’s also the most central, and it has the kitchen and two bathrooms,” I explain. “We won’t go into the bedroom, of course. I doubt any of us are going to feel like sleeping anymore.”
The sky illuminates with a flash of lightning, followed by the distant roar of thunder. As if on cue, the first droplets of rain begin to fall.
“We need to move.” I close Tanya’s door, avoiding one last look inside. “It looks like there’s going to be a storm tonight.”
The three of us hurry to the main lodge, escaping inside before the rain starts to hammer down, beating the earth like a drum, relentless in its strength. We can hear it even with the door shut, like a percussion band all around us. We make coffee, aware of Poppy’s closed bedroom door, then sit around the kitchen table, mugs clasped between both hands like we’re desperate for warmth in this increasingly humid climate. Chloe can’t look at either of us, focusing on her mug as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world, and Annabel seems in shock.
Even though my stomach is tight with anxiety and my pulse jumps in my throat nonstop, I try to calm the others.
“We just have to make it until morning,” I tell them. “Robin is coming first thing. We just have to survive the night.”
“Easier said than done, apparently.” Chloe glances up from her cup, lip trembling. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“I don’t even know what to think.” Annabel takes a long sip of her coffee. “Everything has changed in the space of a day. This time yesterday we were getting drunk off that gin, everyone still alive. We thought Poppy’s revenge was the worst thing we were going to face. We had no idea.”
“I just don’t understand it,” Chloe says. “They’re dead. They’re not coming back. Ever.”
We sit like this for a while, listening to the rain outside. More thunder roars, and before long it’s clear a huge storm is passing through our tiny island.
Everyone else has always underestimated me. They look at me and don’t see a threat. Why would they, when it’s so much easier to see me as the same girl in the past? Even though, as has been proven, I am very good at keeping secrets, and not just my own.
Tanya in particular. Oh, Tanya most of all. Out of everyone, she’s the one I had to make sure never stepped off this island again. She knows why she had to die by my hand, the life leaving her eyes as she accepted her fate.
Maybe I’m starting to let my anger get the best of me. My emotions. This has certainly been a hen party to remember, even though the bride is now absent.
I’m sorry you had to die here, Poppy, but it has to happen this way. The past finally needs confronting, so that I never have to think about that day ever again.
Who knows what I’ll do next? I’m past the point of no return now. And I don’t want to go back.
Twenty-Four
Annabel
May 21, 2023
With the kettle boiling and the storm outside, it’s hard to even hear myself think. For something to do, I offer to make everyone a cup of tea, aware that one of us drinking at the table is a murderer. We sit in silence for a long time after I hand round the mugs. I haven’t washed them since the coffees, and I can taste a weird mixture of the two in my mouth. It doesn’t matter. Any kind of caffeine boost will do.
“It was the same knife that killed Poppy,” Chloe says suddenly. “I don’t understand. Didn’t you bring it back, Esther? Where did you put it?”
Esther flushes. “What are you implying?”
“I’m just asking,” Chloe says. “Don’t jump down my throat.”
“I didn’t have it with me.”
They don’t remember that I was the last one with the knife. I’m not going to help jog their memory. Those two. They went and searched all our rooms. The thought still makes me anxious, wondering what they found. With everything escalating, I haven’t had a chance to have it out with Chloe properly yet, and the idea she still went snooping to see if I was capable of being a killer, after everything she did to me, is astounding. And her room was never searched. She could be hiding anything in there. Or maybe she was the one who planted the knife in Tanya’s room in the first place, then staged her little detective game. Since when is Chloe of all people interested in stuff like that?
Anger burns inside of me. She’s been steadily avoiding my gaze, sneaking glances when she thinks I’m not looking. I try to study her, wondering what Andrew saw in her that he didn’t in me. Is it her inviting eyes? That alluring smile? Or how easy she is, always available at the drop of a hat?
She’s been my friend for over twenty years, and this is how she treats me? It’s this, not Andrew himself, that tears me apart. That she could do this to me.
Not because she’s been such a great friend. She hasn’t. She’s a selfish, stupid little girl.
But because I can’t believe I have allowed this to happen and not realised. That I haven’t been able to make her face the consequences.
“This is all Poppy’s fault,” Esther says.
Chloe, to her credit, looks as confused as me. “How is this all Poppy’s fault? She’s dead. Tanya is dead.”
Esther slams her mug on the table, spilling tea. “If she hadn’t invited us in the first place, none of this would have happened. We should have known, from the very start, that it was a mistake. You all convinced me.”
“Oh, come off it, Esther,” Chloe snaps. “We all wanted to go in the end. It was a luxury private island, all expenses paid, with first-class flights. We’d have been stupid not to.”
“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” Esther sighs. “We were stupid. To agree to it. Ten years down the line after what we did, Poppy just treats us to an incredible holiday? All we cared about was the opportunity to go on the trip of a lifetime, not to see her.”
I think back to when we first received the invitations.
“Tanya was the one who convinced us, really,” I say. “She was the one who felt guilty about the past. It wasn’t just about the free holiday.”
“And look where that got her,” Esther points out. “She’s dead.”
Chloe’s eyes widen. “Do you think that might be why? She used to be Poppy’s best friend, remember. Maybe whoever it is has it out for both of them. Maybe Tanya was on Poppy’s side.”
“I never should have come,” Esther insists.
“You could have not come,” I snap. “You could have said no yourself. You didn’t have to join us.”
“I wanted to get away,” she says quietly, almost to herself.
“Well, there you go, then.” But she seems distant, as if she’s forgotten what we’re even talking about.