“She killed herself,” she says simply, “in the summer after the exams. She never recovered from it. From everything you did.”
I can picture her—Poppy, as a teenager. Her braces. Her mousy hair. Her smile even when we were vicious.
“We would have known,” I say, determined not to accept this. “We would have found out about her suicide. Someone would have told us.”
“It was kept quiet,” Poppy’s impersonator says. “Poppy’s parents didn’t want people finding out. It was a very small funeral. Family only. After all, she had no friends.”
“But surely it still would have come out. People would have known.”
“Of course. If someone had bothered to actually ask after Poppy, find out what happened to her. But none of you did. You didn’t care to know.” Her words are further daggers.
She stops for a moment, gathering herself.
“That’s why you burgled Chloe,” I say. “You were looking for the video of us ruining her exam.”
The woman nods, closing her eyes. I don’t dare; closing my eyes would take me back to it all.
“And I found it,” she says. “I forced myself to watch it, the entire thing. What struck me most was the sheer joy you all got out of it.”
“We didn’t think it would be a big deal,” I say. “It was just . . . a bit of fun.”
Poppy’s impersonator laughs, a hollow sound. “A bit of fun! None of you knew just how much hope Poppy was hanging on that Slade place. On getting out and escaping from you all.”
“We’re sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
She turns on me, the laughter dying on her lips. “I’ve already told you, it’s too late for apologies.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“You haven’t figured that out?” she snaps. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”
“I am . . . I . . .”
“You need to tell me their name,” she says, folding her arms.
“Whose name?”
“The person who helped you get in that room,” she snaps, viciously. “The one who enabled you to destroy her artwork. Your accomplice.”
I’m about to blurt it out, just get it over and done with, when something stops me. “If I tell you his name, what are you going to do to me?”
“His name,” she repeats, and I want to curse my mistake. “It was a boy. You really are something, Annabel, you know that?”
I need to get out of here. While I still have his name, she can’t do anything to me.
But she’s not done with me yet.
“Let me tell you why this isn’t going to end well for you, no matter what stunt you try and pull,” she says. “You killed her. There’s nothing you can do now. I killed Tanya first because Poppy begged her for help, right at the end, the day before she killed herself. She told her she was going to commit suicide, and Tanya told her she was attention-seeking, and to get on with it.”
Tanya had learned from me so well.
“Poppy left a diary which explained everything. Every tiny, horrific detail.”
“How do you even know about all this? How did you read Poppy’s diary?” I ask. “Who are you?”
Poppy—who I thought was Poppy—nods at me. “Take a good look, Annabel. Who could I possibly be?”
I consider her, staring her up and down. She was able to get access to Poppy’s diary. She knows personal details that someone who wasn’t there couldn’t just pretend.
I stare at her sad, angry eyes and at last the final detail clicks into place.
“You’re Wendy,” I say. “You’re Poppy’s sister.”
Thirty-Six
Annabel
May 22, 2023
Wendy. Of course.
My mind strains to remember Poppy’s sister, and sure enough, images return to me: dark hair, dark eyes, completely different from the woman standing in front of us now. A mixture of triumph and fury rests in her expression. I don’t want to believe any of what she’s said. I want her to be Poppy more than anything.
“You look nothing like her,” I say. “I remember Wendy. You’re totally different. You’re . . .” Like Poppy, I want to say. A new and improved version of her.
My head is a mess.
“Poppy killed herself the day after Tanya told her she deserved to die.” I open my mouth to speak, but Wendy lifts a finger to silence me and carries on. “She had stored the antidepressants she was on somewhere, and took them all after we had gone to bed. I don’t know if she doubted they would work—but she also had a knife.” Her voice becomes strained as she struggles to continue. “By the time I found her, she had been dead for hours. There was blood everywhere. The funeral was weeks later, after the autopsy.”
She takes a breath, steadies herself. I wait.
“Her room stayed as it was for so long. None of us could bear to go in there. It took a whole year before Mum and Dad decided we needed to move. It was like we had her grave in the middle of our house. When we were packing everything up, I found her diary. But I didn’t read it for so long. I was so angry at her, for what she had done to our family.”
What the hell do I do?
“It wasn’t until my own A Level Results Day, almost two years since she’d died, that I decided to look at it. And I found out . . . everything. But I tried to forget about it, to focus on my own life. To make Mum and Dad proud, because they were so broken. Still are, really, though they pretend they’re fine. I went to university, I became a doctor.”
“The hen party?” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “Wishful thinking. It wasn’t fair that Poppy never got to have a wedding of her own, a life of her own.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t fair.” I’m burbling now, buying time whilst the sun continues to rise. What time is Robin coming? She said the morning, but what does that mean?
“None of you even considered what it might be like from her perspective. So I had to make you see.”
“The artwork in the huts,” I whisper, remembering their unsettling imagery. “We thought Poppy had painted them.”
“I hired someone,” Wendy explains. “A talented artist. Not as emotional as Poppy’s work. But I showed her what was left of Poppy’s art and had her reproduce classic pieces in her style, as close as possible. It wasn’t quite the same, a bit too polished. But it had the effect I wanted.” Her tone becomes wistful. “I wish I could have seen how Poppy’s paintings would have developed. She was going to be so great. But you cut that short. Just like her life.”
“You want to know who helped us into that room,” I say.
“Oh, Annabel, clever as always,” she says. But her face grows serious. “Yes. I want you to tell me the name of your accomplice.”
It’s all I have. My only bargaining chip.
“And if I do?”
“The better question is what if you don’t,” Wendy says. “Do you really want to try me? Really?”
The cold strength in her voice makes my mouth dry and my hands tremble. I believe her completely.
“Okay,” I say. “His name was Ollie Turner.”
Ollie Turner.
It was the Monday after our prom, a gloriously sunny afternoon the four of us were spending sunbathing on the field behind the back of the music rooms. We hadn’t really interacted with Ollie much before this; he was in my biology class and we’d worked on a project together, which had involved me going to his house a couple of times a week for a month or so, but that was about it. The others barely knew him at all. He was quite good looking in a gawky artist kind of way and Chloe had secretly fancied him for ages, but then she fancied anyone with a pulse and a crooked smile.
“Did you see the way Poppy was eyeing up Aidan?” I said. I was still furious. Aidan and I had actually argued about it when everyone else had left and we were walking home. He’d even offered to walk Poppy! There was no chance I was letting that happen, so I splashed a bit of water on my dress and pretended I’d been sick in one of Esther’s bathrooms so he had to stay.
It was meant to be a joke, inviting Poppy to the party. I had even slipped an ecstasy pill in her drink in the hopes she’d make a total idiot of herself, but if anything it just made her lose her inhibitions and become the friendly, confident person she clearly could have been if we’d left her alone. Every guy at that party was staring at her, enchanted.
“What about Elliott as well?” Chloe said. “Esther, you were lucky to catch them when you did. Cheap slut.”
Esther nodded. “I couldn’t believe it when I went out there and saw them both, practically hanging off each other. They denied it but I knew.”
“It’s all her fault.” Chloe scowled. “What was Elliott meant to do if a girl was throwing herself at him? She was definitely trying to make him cheat.”
“She tried talking to me about my acting,” Tanya put in, looking annoyed. “Clearly she was showing off about her stupid art school place and wanting to make me feel bad.”
“She needs to get what’s coming to her,” Esther muttered. “Trying it on with your boyfriends like that. Acting like she’s somebody all of a sudden.”
“Are you talking about Poppy Greer?”
We turned, startled, and found Ollie had crept up behind us without our realising it.