“Who knows what happened to poor Poppy?” she whispers, as if nothing just happened. Her breath is so close it tickles my neck, filling me with nothing but dread. “Poppy Hall, that is. It wouldn’t do well to use Poppy’s real name on the booking form. I guess you must have drowned her. Her body will never be found.”
She steps back and throws the spare knife into the trees. It disappears in a second, too far for me to attempt to reach it.
“The police will find that knife. They’ll find you covered in blood.” She shrugs. “It’s hardly rocket science.”
This bitch. This bitch.
It was all her. This is all her fault. Hers, and her pathetic sister’s. I will not allow myself to go to prison. This can’t be happening.
Wendy gestures to the motorboat. “I am going to go back to the mainland on this. And then I’m going to get on a plane home, and find Ollie Turner. Goodbye, Annabel. Enjoy your life in prison. You truly deserve it.”
She doesn’t wait for a response, and I don’t give her one; she walks over to the fishing boat. Never once does she break eye contact with me, never once does she lower her knife, even placing the handle between her teeth to push the boat out onto the sea. As soon as she’s in and away, starting the engine, only then does she finally put the knife down, giving me a final smug smile and even a small wave.
I watch her go, the boat starting to move out into the wider ocean. There’s no stopping her. I have to figure out what I am going to do from here.
Thirty-Seven
Annabel
May 22, 2023
The boats start to disembark. The emergency services come rushing towards me, medical kits in hand that won’t have any use here.
I step forward, ready to greet the police, working up a few more tears.
I’ve had hardly enough time to come up with a proper plan. Robin arrived and summoned the police within moments. But I’m not going to go down without a fight.
One of the male police officers comes towards me. He’s rather tall and delicious, and he isn’t wearing a wedding ring. If I didn’t look in such a state I could probably use him to my advantage, but instead I’m going to have to play the damsel in distress card.
“What’s happened?” he says, trying to sound intimidating but failing miserably.
As if I cannot hold my own weight, I gingerly move closer to him, wobbling, keeping my hands spread wide so he can see the gashes in them, so he knows this wasn’t a simple case of a woman gone mad. This was self-defence at worst. At best I’m going to get away with it all.
He reaches out his hand and I jerk backwards, as if I’m too frightened to come near him. The alarm in his eyes pleases me immensely; I must be doing a pretty good job of this.
“Where are the others who came on this island with you?” he asks.
Ah, here we go. The other police officers have rushed by me, heading into the rest of the island. It won’t be long before they find Tanya, at least. Chloe and Esther might take a while longer.
What can I do?
There will be DNA, of course. Fingerprints. Proof that Wendy was here and that she killed Chloe and Tanya. But my DNA and fingerprints will be everywhere too. I touched Chloe. I touched Tanya. And not only that—the evidence of dozens, hundreds of people who have stayed here before. Not to mention the storm, which will have definitely interfered with Chloe’s body. Esther’s too, left out on the beach like that. And Wendy didn’t go anywhere near her.
It’s my name on the credit card. I supposedly booked this place.
Calm down. You can figure this out.
Robin saw Wendy. There’s at least one person other than myself who knows there was a fifth woman on this island. That there is another suspect in all of this.
Except . . .
A sudden chill air hits my body, sending goose bumps across my arms. I draw myself into a hunch, wrapping myself in an embrace.
It’s just like Wendy said. Robin saw Poppy. And Robin thought I was the bride. It was my hen do. And I was the one left standing.
“Sarge!”
One of the other police officers comes hurrying back down the path.
“We’ve got a body,” she says. “In one of the huts.”
The sergeant turns back to me. He takes out of his handcuffs. “Call for backup,” he says to his colleague, and then grabs me roughly by the arm and turns me around. “What is your name?” he asks.
“Annabel Dixon,” I say, because there’s no use pretending otherwise.
“Annabel Dixon, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder,” he says, locking my hands into the cuffs behind my back. “You do not have to say anything . . .”
Poppy Greer’s freckled face dances in my mind.
She had to go and kill herself, didn’t she? Over nothing. Over less than nothing.
Soon enough Poppy’s face changes into Wendy’s, that smug smile she had as she powered away in the boat, thinking she’d won.
Well, she hasn’t.
I’m not stupid. I’ll keep quiet for now. Get myself a good solicitor. I’ll think of a plan.
“Two more bodies!” I hear over the sergeant’s radio as he forces me into the speedboat. One of the paramedics from the ambulance starts to check me over, cleaning my wounds and wrapping bandages across my hands.
Game on, Wendy. I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think.
Thirty-Eight
Wendy
May 22, 2023
Well, well. That went rather successfully, didn’t it?
Talk about getting what I came for and more.
Sitting in the airport lounge, hot coffee to keep me going before I can sleep on the long flight home, I can’t help the smile that rests on my face at last. The airport is loud, hundreds of people waiting for flights for all over the world. Even in the early morning, the light is artificially bright, no doubt exposing my wind-swept hair and tired eyes. It doesn’t matter. Soon I’ll be able to wash the stink of that island off me for good and leave those bitches behind.
As people chatter around me, I can’t help but wonder. Am I sitting with good, honest people going about their day, happily leaving a pleasant holiday? Or people concealing terrible secrets?
Naturally, I’m sure it’s both. And maybe those terrible secrets are worth having.
I take a sip of my coffee, considering everything.
How do I feel? “Exhausted” is the first word that comes to mind. Drained. A part of me has forgotten what Poppy was really like before this. It takes looking at photos from when we were little kids to find the Poppy I barely remember now.
No, mostly I remember that awful night when I woke up with the sense that something was terribly wrong. I crept into Poppy’s room, the open window allowing the moon to showcase her dead body to me in all its brutality. Blood was everywhere. She had slit her wrists with a knife. Not only that, but her arms were covered in old scars. Ones she had clearly inflicted on herself months or even years before. I picked up that knife with trembling hands, and all I could think was that I had failed her. Me. Her sister, her oldest friend. I had failed her. I might as well have stabbed her with the knife myself. The others are to blame, but a part of me killed her too, because I didn’t notice what was happening. I knew those girls picked on her, I knew that sometimes things were truly awful, but I didn’t realise just how bad it was. Seeing her there, helpless and lifeless, I wanted to hide her away and pretend it wasn’t happening. But in the end, all I could do was scream.
Mum and Dad are never going to be the same. Mum tries hard. I don’t think I’ve seen her cry since those first few weeks, but I know she does in private. I found a pile of tissues stashed under a pile of magazines in the bathroom cabinet once, covered in her mascara. The strain of pretending to be fine has taken its toll on her: she’s not even sixty, but she’s wrinkled and shrunken like a woman twenty years older. She can’t even bring herself to say Poppy’s name. That’s how she gets by: pretending Poppy only exists on birthdays and Christmas, and the day she died. Dad is more obviously destroyed. I don’t think a single day has gone by where he hasn’t cried. It happens in the evenings, when he’s watching television, or it can happen during the day when he’s gardening. All of a sudden he’ll gasp, as the memory of his dead daughter hits him, and he’ll be gone.
For years afterwards, I hated Poppy. I’ll admit it. She was the one who did this to herself, and she left me to pick up the shattered pieces, too broken to ever become whole again. My teenage years, rather than being full of fun and rebellion, were a conscious effort to be the perfect daughter, to never worry my parents, and it was never enough.
It wasn’t until I read her diary that I knew I had to do something.
But it worked out better than I ever could have imagined.
I touch the tattoo on my wrist, Poppy permanently inked into my skin. In the end, I got the last piece of the puzzle I was after. My notepad balances on my lap. How satisfying it is to take my pen and draw a line through each woman. Then I turn to the newest page.
One more name.
One more target.
Does he ever still think of Poppy, the girl who was meant to have his life? Did he go to Slade that September and think about whether she was doing okay? Or did he simply arrive and begin his life anew, with no thought or care to the mess he left behind?