How to Kill Your Best Friend Read online

  “Did she? Did she put it down?”

  “It took a bit of persuasion. Quite a bit, in fact.” There was blood on the linoleum floor as well as the knife by the time she relinquished it. Afterward I washed the blade in the kitchen sink, watching the sticky dark rivulets thin, then disappear, under the running tap water. There was a wiry black pubic hair caught on one of the serrated teeth. The water took that, too, eventually.

  I wonder if it worked. I wonder if Scott ever tried to cheat on a girlfriend again.

  “Did he go to the police?” Jem asks.

  “Of course not. He threatened to, but I made him see it how the police might see it.” Jem shakes his head, not comprehending. I adopt an arch tone. “Lissa was one of his girlfriend’s best friends, and she was high as a kite. He took advantage, forced himself on her. She was defending herself. And of course, I saw it all.” Jem opens his mouth, then closes it again. I shrug. “Anyway. I doubt he’s told a living soul. He broke up with Bron by phone the next day; I’m not sure I ever actually saw him again.” I see him now, though, surly and defeated, his shoulders rounded as he gingerly stuffs himself back into his jeans. His mouth is working to hold himself together. She’s fucking psycho, he spits out as he passes me on his way out of the kitchen. I can hear the presence of the tears that he’s fighting. And you’re a twisted fucking bitch as well.

  Jem sits back. I’m back on the terrace, too, now; the darkened kitchen has faded away. “Jesus Christ, Georgie.” He runs both hands over his face again, ruffling his Hugh Grant–ish flop of hair as he does so. His resentment toward me has gone, at least, although I’m not sure what he’s replaced it with. His jaw is tight as he looks across at me with those strange eyes. “She was just scaring him, right? She wouldn’t actually have cut it off?”

  I almost laugh. That he could have married her—married her!—and be so oblivious. Are all marriages like this? Is it in fact a necessary attribute in order for a marriage to survive: some kind of willing suspension of critical thought, so that the person you see before you is the person you want to see? But I’m not angry at him anymore. “Of course,” I say, with a casual shrug. He looks at me uncertainly, and for a moment I think he’s grasped the equivocation: of course she would, or of course she wouldn’t? But whatever he reads in my face must be reassuring; his slight frown clears.

  * * *

  —

  We’ve planned to meet up for lunch—Duncan, Adam, Bron and I—though not at the main restaurant, where I ate breakfast; there’s apparently another, much more informal one down by Horseshoe Bay that I didn’t notice yesterday. I take an utterly illogical route there that goes past Kanu Cove and don’t bother trying to justify it to myself. The cove is empty this time: no Adam with me and no boat struggling in the water. Lissa’s email is on an endless cycle in my mind: It’s as if history is trying to repeat itself, and I won’t let it. I can’t face it all again. I should have come on the trip. I should have been here, to hear her tell me what she meant by that, to talk her out of whatever hole she was digging herself into. To save her from herself.

  I walk along one side to the stone jetty and then, on impulse, take my sandals off and sit on the edge, dangling my feet in the water. The shape of the cove, like a deep, narrow fjord, means that it’s a sun-trap with nary a breath of wind, and right now the sun is at its highest and strongest; I quickly find myself wishing I’d brought a hat. The stones beneath my bottom are uneven and gritty and uncomfortably warm; the water cooling my feet and ankles is just water, just the same seawater as at Horseshoe Bay. Why would Lissa have chosen to come here particularly? Is it perhaps a different place in the dark? I sit until I’m intolerably hot and sticky, but nothing reveals itself to me. Finally I give up and scramble back to my feet, bending double to fasten my sandals.

  When I straighten up, there’s a man only inches from my face.

  A shocked gasp escapes me as I step back involuntarily; how did I not hear him? He looks local in appearance, and small and wizened, with possibly the most rotten front teeth I’ve ever seen on display, in what I hope is meant to be a smile. He’s wearing a ripped sleeveless T-shirt of indeterminate color and incongruous basketball shorts. “Sorry,” I say weakly; though why am I the one apologizing? “You gave me a fright.”

  He nods. “Kanu,” he says. “Not safe.”

  “It’s okay. I wasn’t going to swim.”

  He shakes his head impatiently. I wonder if he’s as old as I think he is, or if the hardness of life has added extra years. “Kanu.” His English is broken, but that word is clear enough. I don’t understand his hand gesture, though: he’s wiggling one hand, almost in a wave-type gesture, but somehow not quite. “Swim, no swim, Kanu not safe.” His hand, brown and leathery and small as a child’s, moves again, in that same odd gesture. Side to side, not up and down. “Leave.”

  I look around involuntarily. “Not safe? Why?”

  “Kanu takes. You leave now. Kanu takes.” He’s shooing me now, insistently, such that I have to step back away from him, and away from the edge of the jetty.

  “Takes? Takes what?”

  “Kanu takes. Takes who wants taken.”

  “I . . .” I stare at him, appalled, but he’s actually touching my arm now, with those warm, dry, leathery hands, and pushing me with surprising strength. I give up and turn, half running, for the path.

  HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND

  Method 2: Poison

  Poison. Specifically, recreational drugs, given that I can’t think how I could possibly get hold of cyanide, strychnine or—I don’t know—nightshade or belladonna or something equally ridiculous and straight out of a nineteenth-century gothic novel. But pretty much all of the obvious twenty-first-century recreational substances are deadly in large enough quantities.

  So: recreational drugs.

  Pros:

  Believable

  Executable: I can definitely get hold of them.

  Cons:

  Traceable: I have to buy the gear off someone, and that someone would know that I had.

  Depends on her being in the right kind of mindset to actually take some; unless you can administer it in a drink or food?

  I’m not one hundred percent certain it would be effective: she could survive an overdose. Of all people, she could.

  I might have to travel with it, which gives a higher than average chance of getting banged up for possession. It’s one thing to take a chance for the actual murder, but I’m not keen on it happening before the opportunity to commit the crime presents itself.

  This is madness. But what else is there?

  FOUR

  GEORGIE

  The others are just arriving when I turn up at the restaurant in Horseshoe Bay, having only just calmed myself after my Kanu Cove encounter. Surely he was just an old man who’s probably not actually allowed to be on resort land—most guests would rather not confront the yawning chasm between their luxury holiday lifestyle and the desperate poverty of the islanders, and he wasn’t wearing a staff uniform. Just an old man with a questionable grasp of English. He couldn’t possibly have meant it how I interpreted it.

  And anyway, she didn’t want to be taken. She couldn’t have wanted that.

  This restaurant is very different to the main one; it’s styled in beach shack chic with tables set directly on the sand under a lightweight trellis for shade, and chairs made from old surfboards. We’re the only guests there for the moment, so we have our pick of the tables. Duncan chooses the most shaded one, and I sit down next to him, then immediately regret it: Bron, directly opposite, won’t meet my eye, and I’m absurdly aware of Adam sitting diagonally across the table from me. He hasn’t shaved. It suits him.

  I would have known if she wanted that. Surely I would have known. But the words from her email needle remorselessly in my mind: I can’t face it all again. />
  Duncan picks up the wine list. “Anyone for rosé? Yes? Bron, Georgie, you’ll have a glass, right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before beckoning over the waiter. We usually save any drinking until after swimming; Adam glances at him briefly, then at me. I look at Bron. Bron doesn’t look back.

  I’m overthinking it. It was just poor English. He just meant to scare me away from a cove with a dangerous riptide. I have to shake it off; I have to concentrate on my lunch companions.

  “Is Jem joining us?” Bron asks nobody in particular, without lifting her eyes from her study of the menu.

  “He’s working,” Adam says laconically. I wonder if that’s a welcome escape for Jem or a constant reminder of Lissa.

  “Oh, I managed to book the boat,” Duncan says, with a burst of enthusiasm. “Two thirty, at the jetty over there. You’re coming, right, Bron?”

  “Erm, sure. I suppose Jem will still be working, though?” She puts down her menu and crosses her arms in front of her, as if cold, though it must be over eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit today. The action particularly highlights her ample cleavage, more ample than ever before given her extra pounds, framed by a red bikini under her scoop neck sundress and dusted with almost as many freckles as her shoulders. It’s a different dress from the one she was wearing at breakfast; she must have changed specially. I think of Lissa’s email again: She lights up like a bloody light bulb around him.

  “I think so,” Duncan replies. The waiter has already returned with a bottle of rosé, sheathed in beads of water. He pours a glass for Duncan to taste. I look out over the bay, to the hazy shadow I can see across the open strait. From memory of the map, that’s the island nature reserve where we’re going to be swimming. It lies like a long, thin bullet shape parallel to the coastline, perhaps four and a half miles offshore, though it looks farther away from here.

  The waiter has moved round the table, bringing the bottle toward my glass. I put my hand over the top of the glass. “No, thank you.” Duncan turns to me, raising his straw-colored eyebrows and his pink-filled glass. “I’m not really drinking anymore.” If I were a grown-up, I wouldn’t feel defensive about it. If I were.

  The straw eyebrows shoot up even farther, almost reaching the thatch of his hair. “Yeah, sure. You’re not drinking anymore—but you’re not drinking any less, right?” He’s grinning, but the jollity doesn’t ring true, and suddenly I remember that he knew Lissa for longer than even Bron or myself; he knew her from his high school days. I force a laugh and lift my hand, letting the waiter pour. I don’t look at Adam. After a moment’s hesitation, Bron accepts a glass, too, and then Adam.

  “Isn’t this place stunning?” says Duncan, his eyes sweeping panoramically around the bay. “There’s something to be said for an island pace of life.”

  “Planning early retirement?” Adam teases.

  “Maybe.” He shrugs a little defensively. “I mean, I don’t want to work like I am right now for the rest of my life. There could be worse retirement plans than getting involved with managing a place like this.”

  “Where is everyone?” I ask, looking around at the empty tables.

  “I think most people are flying out on the Lufthansa flight this afternoon,” Duncan replies. There are only three direct long-haul flights a week from the island: one British Airways flight to London, and two Lufthansa flights to Frankfurt. For anywhere else, you have to take a tortuous route, like I did, via at least two international hubs and a local carrier. All four of us are booked on the next BA flight back to London, in two days’ time.

  “What about . . . proper guests?” Non-memorial guests. There isn’t a neat way to say it.

  Duncan grimaces. “Not all publicity is good publicity. With Lissa’s death, there were quite a lot of cancellations. Most of the clients come through luxury travel agents, and I’m guessing they’re waiting to see what impact this has on the management.” The management: Jem. “If you take out everyone who’s here for the memorial, there are only three villas booked out of the thirty-two.” The hotel is really a collection of discretely arranged villas, carefully planned so that each one feels secluded and has a sea view. Some are single bedroom; the largest—the presidential villa—sleeps ten. I look around again, noting all the staff that lie within a casual glance: four waiters, a gardener and two people manning the towel station, and those are just the ones I can see. God knows how many are working behind the scenes. If the hotel closes for a period of time, it will be a disaster for the micro economy.

  “Can he ride it out?” Adam asks Duncan.

  “I don’t know.” Duncan grimaces. “I’m going to take a look at the figures with him tonight.” For a moment he appears lost in thought, but then he visibly shakes himself and takes a large swallow of the wine before turning to Adam to start up a conversation about bikes, a topic on which Adam can hold forth all day, seeing as he runs his own bike shop. I drink from my water glass rather than my wineglass and look across at Bron, meaning to catch her eye and share a laugh at their boring preoccupation—middle-aged men in Lycra!—but her eyes are fixed on her glass.

  “Miss Ay—Ay-ers?” asks a voice hesitantly, and I glance up. It’s one of the reception staff. I’m starting to distinguish the differences in the uniform depending on the role; the reception staff have loose scarlet dresses, or shirts and trousers, whereas the waiters are in a deep blue. His eyes are flicking uncertainly between Bron and me.

  “Ayers,” I say. “That’s me. Like air, but with an s.”

  “Ayers,” he repeats, smiling. “This came for you.” He hands me an A4-sized envelope. It has some heft to it; there must be a document of tens of pages inside.

  “Oh. Thank you.” I wasn’t expecting anything, but I’ve recently been made partner of the patent company I’ve been with for years, and the step-up in workload has been noticeable. The others are looking at me curiously. “It can only be from the firm.” I grimace, pushing back my chair awkwardly against the sand the legs are buried in and taking my table knife to slice along under the flap of the envelope. Then I step away for privacy, curious to see which enterprising soul has managed to get something across to me here. The first sheet is blank except for a bold title in large font in the center:

  FOLLOW THE MONEY

  Frowning, I flick to the next page, but it says exactly the same. And the next, and the next. I look around for the man from reception, but he’s already gone. I leaf through the entire stack again. There’s nothing else, and absolutely every sheet says exactly the same thing. Follow the money. Which money? Follow it where? And who wants me to do the following?

  “Okay?” asks Adam, his voice pitched a little louder to reach me.

  “Ah—yes. Ish.” I give him a bright smile. Too bright, judging from the mild raise of his eyebrows. “It’ll be fine; I can deal with it later.” I rejoin the table and stuff the envelope in my beach bag, where it lies incongruously alongside sunscreen and my Kindle. Follow the money. To what end? Adam looks at me thoughtfully, then asks Duncan whether he still has his Chelsea season ticket. I look across at Bron. She’s staring out to sea, whether out of preoccupation or a determined effort to avoid my eye, I can’t tell. Is she sulking? But it’s not like Bron to sulk—and then I realize that her fingers are methodically shredding her own cuticles. A thin line of blood is apparent by her left thumbnail, but her left forefinger keeps working at it.

  “Did you get hold of Rob and the kids?” I ask lightly. Follow the money. Whose money?

  She looks across, blinking, as if I’ve dragged her out of a deep sleep, and her fingers still. “Oh. Yes. Well, not after breakfast; I was confused on the time difference. But I spoke to them just before I came here.” She finds a smile; it lacks wattage, but it’s definitely a smile. Preoccupation, then. Or perhaps it’s the strangeness of what we are now; I feel it, too. We’re a three-legged stool that’s lost a leg. We have to find a new way to balance. “Kitt
y sends all her love,” she says.

  “Bless. Send mine back.” I really should take a trip back to the UK soon. She is my goddaughter after all. Bron’s attention has wandered back out to sea, and her forefinger starts its merciless attack again. I can’t bear to see it: my hand shoots out to cover hers, stilling it. “Bron,” I say gently. What money? And then I think: Lissa’s money?

  She looks down at her hand, with mine on top of it, and blinks several times before she lifts her head, her hazel eyes suspiciously bright. “Yes. Right,” she says briskly, giving my hand a small squeeze before she releases it to reach for her glass of wine.

  * * *

  —

  The boat Duncan has booked is apparently more usually employed towing water-skiers, but it’s perfect for what we need, with cushioned seating running around the back and sides, and a wide platform out the back that will make it easier to climb back in afterward. The driver is a burly thirtysomething Australian called Steve, who has thick stripes of white zinc paste across his cheekbones—which seems too little and too late given the leathery look of his skin—and an easygoing can-do attitude; he’s already known to Bron, Duncan and Adam from previous swimming outings, which goes some way to settling the unease I’ve felt all through the lunch. Duncan drank perhaps two thirds of the wine himself, but he’s six foot two with plenty of frame to spread it across, and he also ate a hearty lunch. That means Bron had the rest, since Adam and I were more or less pretending to drink, and she’s only five foot three and barely picked at a salad. She immediately wedges herself in one corner of the boat and drops into an instant nap.