My senses are dialled up to ten. Everything is on edge—heart rate, breathing, pulse, even movements. My fingers twitch but my legs are frozen. My mouth hangs open, desperate to offer an explanation but finding none that will make this okay.
Chloe stands from her seat, pushing her chair back until it clashes with the wall. “That’s Esther’s necklace. Didn’t you lose that days ago?”
“After the first day,” Esther says, remarkably calm, which makes me more nervous. “I always wear it. I couldn’t believe it was gone.”
“But then how?” Chloe turns and directs her torch on me, making me feel hot under its bright light. “I don’t understand. What are you doing with it, Annabel?”
“That,” Esther says, “is what I was going to ask.”
I want the ground to swallow me whole. Part of me debates running, escaping out into the storm and not coming back.
“I thought Poppy had taken it,” Esther murmurs. “I was so sure. But it was you.”
“Esther,” I appeal. “I’ll explain.”
“I should hope so,” Esther says. “Because you need to start right now.”
Twenty-Five
Chloe
May 21, 2023
Why has Annabel got Esther’s necklace? It doesn’t make any sense.
Being able to see only via torchlight is obscuring the situation further. I can switch my view to just one of them at a time, flicking my torch to and fro. The wind is getting even stronger outside now, howling and thrashing against the window, making us have to raise our voices even in here.
“Really? Me as well, Annabel?” Esther asks, full of venom. Her controlled calmness from before has vanished in an instant, making me question her true feelings if that’s how easily she can change them. “Surely you wouldn’t be so stupid to steal something from me, not when I know about you. Or maybe that is why you stole it? Did you plant the knife in Tanya’s room too?”
“What?” Annabel exclaims. It comes out like a little squeak. “That’s not it. You’ve got this all wrong.”
“You’re trying to make me look guilty.” Esther turns to me then too, furious. “I heard both of you out there. Conspiring to make me the one who took the blame. Saying I looked suspicious. I thought explaining about the bruises would be enough, but this shows premeditation. Planning. Were you in on it too, Chloe?”
“No!” I protest. “I had no idea about any of this!”
Annabel raises her hands, tries to silence us. “Please, if you’ll listen, I’ll explain. It was after our argument, Esther.”
“What argument?” I frown.
But Esther seems to know what she’s talking about. “You mean about your . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“Will someone please tell me what is going on?” I interject impatiently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Esther presses her lips into a thin line. “You need to tell her.”
“Fine.” Annabel sighs and sits down, beckoning us to join her. Once we’re all seated, the necklace placed in the centre of the table, she continues, keeping her eyes on it instead of us. “Esther already knows about this, Chloe, but I’ll explain it from the beginning so that you understand. I . . . I steal things.”
“You steal things?” I repeat.
She looks pained. “Andrew isn’t—well, you know him quite well, as we have discovered. I’m sure you’d agree he isn’t the most generous man in the world.”
Is she really trying to blame Andrew for her being a thief? I can’t tell her Andrew bought me an expensive gold necklace when I complained all I had was silver jewellery, as tempting as it is, so I simply nod instead.
“Even though it was at his insistence that I stopped working, he didn’t give me anything to do. I was stuck at home so often, bored out of my mind. So I started going shopping, just for something to keep me entertained.”
There’s a long pause now. I think about all of her expensive clothes, the ones I was so puzzled by. It’s starting to come together.
I have to admit, I’m impressed. I didn’t think Annabel had it in her.
“At first, I’d steal a couple of things,” Annabel says. “Nothing major. A bracelet here, a scarf there. Things that if I was challenged I could easily claim I forgot about and apologise for. But then I started wanting bigger things.”
Naturally. No one wants to walk around looking like a bargain bin.
“I’d ask the staff to let me try things on. And then when they got distracted with someone else—I’d walk out without looking back. I’ve nearly been caught so many times, but I can’t stop. It’s like a rush.”
“Just how much are we talking here?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Andrew doesn’t even question it when I show up wearing something entirely new, even though it costs far more than he’d ever give me. I have credit cards too, loads of them, so even when I’m stealing something I’m buying something else on those. I don’t even check them.”
“How did you let it get so bad?”
“I couldn’t stop.” Even just from the light of the torch, I can see the tears welling up in her eyes, making them glisten. “It became so addictive. I was so sure that was what Poppy was going to expose when she started talking about secrets. But I guess I hid it well.”
“And Esther knew about this?” I confirm.
“She started questioning my outfits. I had to tell her.”
Amazing, the life-altering secrets we kept from one another. Annabel the little thief. My affair with her husband. Esther’s abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. Tanya’s drug addiction. And we’re supposed to be friends.
“So you stole the necklace as well?” I say. I can’t help but smirk, despite everything. “That was a bit stupid, wasn’t it? When Esther knows about you? Surely she was going to suspect you had something to do with it.”
Annabel finally looks ashamed. “Esther always goes on about that necklace. And whilst we were on the trip, she lost patience with me. Said I was on my own with this. It was my problem from now on.”
“You showed up to this hen party in an outfit that costs at least five thousand pounds!” Esther snaps. “Of course I was mad. So what, you stole my necklace in revenge?”
“Yes.”
Esther reels back as if Annabel has slapped her. “You really are incredible.”
“I’m sorry. I was angry at you.”
“After I kept your problems quiet!”
“It was a moment of madness. We had argued. I stormed off. I came back to talk to you again, only you were on your run. The necklace was just there on your pillow . . . I’m sorry. I would have returned it, after everything that’s happened here.”
“But you didn’t, did you? It was still in there, tucked away for when you returned home.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.”
The expression Esther has is one of true disgust. I’ve never seen her this angry before; it almost frightens me. But then she slumps down in her chair, the fight gone out of her.
“Whatever,” she says. “What’s done is done. We have bigger problems now.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
“Because you probably would have encouraged me,” Annabel says. “And besides, you were clearly too occupied with my husband to notice anything wrong.”
Yeah, I reckon I deserved that one.
The two of them have turned away from one another, arms folded. We are all against each other now. Annabel despises me and Esther despises her. And me? I don’t trust either of them.
How long is it until morning? How long must we sit trapped in this room, escaping the raging storm outside but facing a worse one inside? I don’t think we’re going to make it to dawn at this rate. The atmosphere is so thick, so wrought with tension that the knife used to kill Poppy and Tanya would be put to good use in here, cutting the air and releasing some of the pressure that is building up.
I might as well play the role of peacemaker, if it keeps me from getting stabbed to death. That would be nice.
“We all kept things from each other,” I say. “And I know better than most that we can all do terrible things.”
This isn’t met with the reception I hoped.
Esther scowls and mutters something under her breath.
Annabel curls her lip at me. “Some worse than others.”
God. I can’t bear another second in here.
“I remembered something else about last night,” Esther says suddenly.
The two of us turn to her.
“It’s odd,” she says. “It was late, could have even been the early hours of the morning, really.” She frowns in concentration. “The four of us had gone to our huts—what we thought were our huts—and then I remember thinking all my stuff looked very unusual. I acted crazy, tearing out the drawers and trying to find my clothes. Turns out I was in Annabel’s room.”
Annabel’s room. The image of it comes back to me from my search, everything chaotic.
“You were the one who trashed my room?” Annabel says. “I figured I’d done it in my drunken state and just hadn’t remembered. I was so shocked when I woke up to it.”
“I came to my hut,” Esther says. “And it’s funny, but I could have sworn someone was following me on the way there.”