Esther doesn’t look pleased, but she can see I’m not in the mood to argue. “Fine.”
It doesn’t take long. The path opens out very quickly, and the beach is a small clone of the main one. Driftwood has washed up on the shore from the storm, as well as a lot of seaweed. Up ahead, the green hut is perched on the end, along with a small motorboat.
The sight of it sends my heart to my mouth.
“Esther, there’s a boat,” I whisper, nudging her.
She’s noticed it too, eyes wide. “Has that been here this whole time?”
Was it here during the scavenger hunt? I try and remember, but my mind draws a blank.
“We would have heard it, right?” I say, even though Esther is hardly an expert. “If someone had come here on that, we’d have heard the motor? Maybe it’s always here for fishing or something.”
Could someone have come to the island after all?
We head to the boat and find tarpaulin wrapped over it, protecting it from the storm.
Why would someone come here?
“It must be used for fishing,” Esther says, but she looks stricken too. “Look, it clearly hasn’t been moved in a while. There’s no one else here but us.”
“Robin was odd, wasn’t she,” I murmur. “Why is she all the way out here, thousands of miles from home? She’s hiding something. What if she came back and it’s been her all along?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Esther snaps, although her face pales at my words.
Something catches the corner of my eye and I let out a shriek. “What’s that?”
The tide pushes in, masking it for a few seconds.
Esther frowns. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait.”
The tide eases back out again, the water turned black and shiny from the night sky. Finally, amidst the seaweed and debris, she appears.
Chloe.
“There!” I shout, taking off in a run down the sand. “It’s Chloe!”
Esther follows me, and we pull her out to safety, away from the increasing tide.
She’s drenched and pale. Her hair is stuck across her face, masking her features.
“Chloe, can you hear me?” I scream. I try shaking her. “Shit, she might have drowned. Maybe she fell in the water and got too tired to swim? Chloe—”
The words die in my mouth when I peel back her hair, ready to begin compressions in a desperate attempt to save her. My fingers come away red, the blood still wet, dripping down my hands and onto my dress. At first I’m confused. Her face shows no sign of injury. But then I turn her, and see the blow to the back of her head.
“Oh my God.” In my shock, I drop her, and her head thuds onto the sand. I stumble backwards, falling onto my behind, scrambling to get up.
Chloe’s body is already turning grey, mottled and affected by being out in the open like this. The blow is deliberate, not the result of an accident. She has been killed too.
My heart starts pounding.
“You,” Esther hisses. “You did this. It was you all along.”
“What?”
I lift my head, and to my astonishment, Esther brandishes a knife in front of her, aiming it directly at me. Where did she get that? When? Has she always had it on her?
My vision turns blurry for a second, and there are two Esthers, two knives, both gleaming at me.
Esther. I can’t believe it.
“What are you talking about?” I say. “What are you doing, Esther? Calm down.”
“I knew from the beginning,” she says. “I really did. You’ve been spiralling out of control for months. All your shoplifting, your pretending to live a lifestyle that wasn’t yours, even clearly ignoring the fact Andrew has been cheating on you your entire marriage. You had to have known. And you’ve been compensating for it ever since. We can’t have Annabel Hannigan be the one suffering, after all. Not the leader of our gang.”
My own knife presses in my back, the blade no longer cold but warm and moist with sweat.
Here we go. The truth is finally coming out.
“You’ve always resented me, haven’t you, Esther?” I say. “You’re the smart one, the one from a well-off family. But no one really liked you for you. They only gave you the time of day because I was your friend.”
Her eyes flash with anger, and I know I’ve hit a raw nerve. “Is that what this has all really been about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“You can’t even admit it to yourself, can you? You pretend everything is okay, and when your secrets begin to spill out—you have to stop it. You have to control everyone again. You’re lying to yourself.”
Lying to myself? That’s rich, coming from her. She’s been lying and keeping everyone’s secrets for months.
I open my mouth to protest, but she carries on, clearly enjoying herself.
“Except this time, Poppy was the one in control, wasn’t she? Your secrets were coming out, and you had to put a stop to it.”
I want to tell her she’s wrong, but I would be lying if I said one of my first feelings after the initial discovery of the blood in Poppy’s room wasn’t relief.
“And then Tanya? Planting the knife in her room like that?” Esther shakes her head. “You made us believe it was her. And then—what? Did she stumble on you getting rid of the body or something? Did she find something out? Was that why you had to do it?”
I realise what she’s getting at. What she’s trying to do.
“As for Chloe . . .” Her body still lies between us, a barrier. “Was she just too unpredictable? Too unreliable? Did you think she was going to panic and blame it all on you in front of the police? Or was it simply because she fucked Andrew and he enjoyed her more than he ever did you?”
“You bitch,” I say quietly.
She steps back, and has the grace to actually look afraid.
“You killed them,” she says. “It was you, Annabel. Trying to throw me off by mentioning that boat. Trying to insinuate it could be anyone but yourself.”
I could almost laugh. It’s come to this, has it?
What a clever, clever game.
I remove the knife from behind me. She startles at this; she hadn’t expected me to come prepared. Which is stupid of her. She should know me better by now.
If this is how she wants to play, I’m ready for her.
Twenty-Nine
Esther
May 22, 2023
Annabel has a knife too, pointing it at me with both hands, trying to keep herself steady.
This, if anything, is added confirmation to my words. Let her have one. It will make it far easier to explain to the police why I had to do it.
“I knew it,” I say. “I knew it was you. I should have known. You killed them, didn’t you?”
I am not going to die here, not like them. I have been through too much for that.
“I know what you’re doing,” Annabel shouts. “Stop pretending. There’s just the two of us left.”
“Why did you do it?” I ask. “You still haven’t answered me.”
Annabel laughs. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“This is why you were sneaking around last night, isn’t it?” I shout. “I saw you, heading out in that storm. What other reason would there be to do that? You went and found Chloe and killed her!”
She looks bewildered, clearly puzzled how I saw her.
“You’re not pinning this on me.” Annabel drops one hand from the knife, the other becoming steady on its own now, her grip strong. “I trusted you. I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends.” I’m trying to sound as soothing as possible, but my voice comes out in a nervous tremor. “All of your issues with shoplifting, stealing off your friends. The credit card debt. I kept it all a secret, didn’t I? For years. Even my necklace. I forgive you. It’s alright. You don’t have to do anything. Put the knife down.”
“You put the knife down,” she says. “You’re the one who should be explaining things to me. Why did you do it? Was it really jealousy, is that it? Something as basic as always being jealous of me?”
I’m lost for words. Jealousy? She really thinks that I would kill everyone on this island because I’m jealous of her?
“If that were the case, why are you still alive?” I snap.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she says. “It won’t work with me. It’s me and you now, Esther. We don’t have Chloe pulling her silly stunts for attention or mopey Tanya who only really became our friend because we were bored and took pity on her. It was always going to be me and you left, wasn’t it? You wanted this.”
“Annabel, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it needs to stop now.”
She looks baffled for a moment, and I genuinely think she’s lost it, but then a gleam appears in her eyes. A knowing look.
She is messing with me. I knew it.
“Esther,” she says. “Put the knife down.”
I hold it closer to my chest instead and step backwards. “Annabel, you need to calm down.”
“Stop bleating my name like that,” she snaps. “I know what you’re doing. It’s a common tactic, using the person’s name to make them feel like you’re someone they can trust. I’m not an idiot, remember. I did two degrees in Psychology.”