How to Kill Your Best Friend

by Lexie Elliott

  I need to get out of the water. Swim to shore? Climb the walls of the arch? Though I’m not sure I could get enough purchase on the rock. Even as I try to make a plan, my mind racing at breakneck speed, I become aware of an engine coming closer; it’ll have to be the arch, as there’s no time to get to shore. I start to swim back toward one of the sides, water polo–style with my head up, looking round for the craft. It sounds like it’s behind me; could it have circled round that quickly? But before I can reach the rocky wall, I hear the engine cut back and a familiar voice call: “Bron. Over here! Quick!”

  Duncan. It’s Steve’s gleaming white boat, not the shabby blue craft—and he already has the others on board. I swim toward them, dimly aware that I’m sobbing as I chop through the water. Duncan and Adam are hanging over the side, grim faced, with arms extended: as soon as I’m close enough to touch, they haul me unceremoniously into the boat, without a care for the skin I’m scraping. Georgie has a towel and wraps me in it without letting go so that I’m wrapped up in her arms, too.

  “We thought it had got you,” Georgie says into my hair, her arms tightening around me.

  “It nearly did.” The horror of it—the looming shadow with the deadly propeller behind it, getting closer and closer—makes me shudder. “It nearly ran me over. I thought I was going to lose an ankle.”

  “What?” asks Adam. His tone is oddly puzzled. “Ran you over? What did?”

  “The boat. The blue-hulled boat.” I become aware that all four of them are looking at me, with varying expression of confusion. “I had to duck under; I thought I was going to get sucked into the prop. I swear they saw me, too, I swear . . .” I trail off. “Why, what were you talking about?”

  “The creature,” says Georgie simply. “There was something in the water.”

  * * *

  —

  Despite the fact that we’ve swum for barely a third of the intended time, there is no question that we’re done for the day. Steve takes the boat round the island to a secluded cove with exceptionally shallow, clear water, where nothing could lurk without us seeing it, and cracks open the post-swim snacks of melon and cookies, washed down with hot chocolate from a large flask. We eat mechanically and listen as Steve informs the coast guard of what the others saw; not that they seem at all sure of what they saw. Adam calls it a creature, and Georgie is using that word, too, but sometimes she calls it a serpent instead. Steve has been wondering if it was some kind of harmless basking shark, but I see the doubt in his own eyes as he says it, and the others all agree it was far too long—Adam estimates almost twenty meters—and much too thin for that; they got enough of an eyeful of it streaming under them to at least agree on that. I think of the cold brush of my leg in the cave; I think of the shadow that passed beneath me. For all my much-lauded practicality, it may be some time before I can get either out of my head.

  Steve is radioing in to the hotel now. “It must have been in the cave,” I say to the others. “That must have been what I felt.”

  “Maybe,” says Adam. “Or maybe that was just me bumping you.”

  “No, I think it was in the cave. Perhaps it followed me out and then circled back. You saw it on your way out of the cave, right?”

  “Yes, but we were a ways out from the cave.”

  Steve is signing off on the radio. “They’re going to warn the nature reserve about the boat that nearly ran you down,” he says to me. “It was well within the exclusion zone.” As was he, when they scooped me up, but under the circumstances I don’t think anyone will make a complaint. “Sometimes you get idiot tourists tearing round here looking for an Instagram shot under the arch; I bet it was one of those. Too busy dicking around to even see you.”

  But I’m certain they saw me: I picture the driver once again, his head turned back, laughing. “Wouldn’t they have a nicer boat?” I argue.

  Steve shrugs and pours some more hot chocolate into my cup. “Anyway. Feeling better yet?”

  No, I think, but he’s a kind man, so I smile back at him and say, “A bit.” And in truth my pounding headache has receded, at least, and the endless loop of questions has been supplanted by the events of the afternoon. “Though for once I can say I’m actually not glad I swam.” He smiles ruefully at my attempt at humor, and then the boat lapses into silence, with everyone settling for a snooze. Like toddlers, I think, with a pang for Jack, who at three shows no sign of wanting to drop his afternoon nap and is at his most delicious when he pulls himself out of his bed, his hair askew and his mouth still slack with drowsiness. Duncan stretches himself out across the seats on one side of the boat. Adam is sitting sideways along the back seats, parallel to Georgie, who is lying on her back on the platform at the rear, sunglasses in place. One leg is hitched up and the other trails into the water. I want to tell her to pull her leg in; I want to tell her to sit in the boat proper, not on that ludicrously open platform, but I don’t want to betray my unease—or sound like a scolding schoolteacher. Instead I reach for the sunscreen, conscious I’ve already had more sun than intended today. Suddenly music bursts out loudly: Steve has connected his iPhone to the boat speaker system.

  “Sorry,” he says, dialing down the volume and scrolling for a different song. The unmistakable first chords of Suspicious Minds blare out. Before Elvis gets through the first phrase, Duncan has pulled himself upright, chopping sharply with his hand. “Not that.” Steve looks across, surprised. “It has connotations for us all,” he explains awkwardly. “Graeme—Lissa’s first husband—used to sing it. He had a great voice . . .” He trails off as Steve turns off the music altogether.

  “I don’t think I ever heard how he died,” says Steve.

  “Nut allergy,” Duncan says succinctly. He runs a hand over his face and then elaborates. “He had a severe nut allergy, and he ate a cookie that had hazelnuts in it; they never figured out where it came from. Probably a local café or something, but they couldn’t trace it from the paper bag it came in. The chains have got much better at labeling their food now, but even those weren’t so great a few years ago. Anyway, he always carried an EpiPen, but on this one occasion it wasn’t in his jacket. Maybe it had fallen out somewhere . . .” He trails off, then shrugs self-consciously. “I don’t know. But he was alone in their house—Lissa’s and his—and he couldn’t get help in time.” He looks away, into the clear, blue water. Graeme was one of his closest friends; they’d known each other since high school. Something in my chest is swelling so abundantly that surely I will burst, and all my secrets will erupt into the light. I look at the sunscreen bottle in my hand, gripping it tightly.

  “He dialed 999, but the emergency services couldn’t get there in time,” I hear Adam say.

  “Christ. How awful.” This is Steve. I stare at the sunscreen bottle, resolutely not thinking of Graeme, not imagining what it must have been like for Lissa, getting the call at her work . . . “Poor Lissa,” Steve murmurs.

  I force myself to take the cap off the sunscreen. The small movement reminds my body that I can move. I glance across at Georgie, still prone on the platform. She could be a statue. She might be asleep, I suppose, but her stillness seems more deliberate than that.

  “Maybe no music today,” I suggest to Steve, trying to soften it with a rueful smile. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The boat lapses back into silence. Duncan resumes his stretched-out position. The snippet of Suspicious Minds has dredged up a memory of Lissa on her wedding day—her first wedding day. We overheard that very song emanating from a convertible passing the church as the three of us climbed out of our limousine. That’s also when I heard Lissa’s agitated whisper to Georgie—He hasn’t seen the dress yet—and I hadn’t understood at all, because of course Graeme hadn’t see the dress; grooms don’t, in advance. But then I saw the look on her face—half proud, half defensive—as we joined her father in the vestibule of the church, and I
realized that I’d ascribed the wrong person to he, though I still didn’t understand.

  Duncan’s leg twitches abruptly, as if he’s nodding off. Georgie still hasn’t moved. Then: “Do you think it was the Kanu serpent? That we saw?” she asks suddenly, without moving anything but her lips. Adam, half sitting, half lying across the back seats, flips up his sunglasses and shoots her a glance that she probably doesn’t see; I don’t think her eyes are open underneath her sunglasses.

  “That’s a load of nonsense,” says Duncan sleepily. “Just a tale that parents tell to stop their children from swimming in a dangerous place.”

  “Is it? We all saw—something.”

  “We were nowhere near the cove, though.”

  She pushes herself up on one elbow. “And you think that thing couldn’t make the journey? You saw how fast it moved.” She watches her own hand moving sinuously from side to side, in a snakelike motion, as if oddly fascinated by it. Duncan and Adam keep silent. How is it that she could be completely immobile during the Graeme conversation and yet so animated by this sea creature? “It changes the playing field, doesn’t it? Nobody has been saying it—”

  “Georgie—” Adam says quietly, but it’s not enough to throw a wall in front of her words.

  “—but surely we’ve all been operating under the assumption that there are only two reasons why someone would be in the water at Kanu Cove.” She pushes her sunglasses up on her forehead and appeals directly to Steve, who’s already shaking his head in his pilot’s chair. “Right, Steve?”

  “Uh-uh. Leave me out of it.”

  “Jeez, Georgie,” says Duncan, though there’s not much frustration in his words. I realize he’s turned his head and is looking at me. They’re all looking at me.

  I shrug, concentrating on rubbing the sunscreen in. There’s no point trying to hold back the tide. “Say it, then.” It doesn’t change anything. That’s my whole argument: it doesn’t change anything, so what’s the point of going over everything? But I’ve realized I can’t derail Georgie. She’s on a mission.

  Still, my head is already running ahead of Georgie: Accident or suicide, that’s what she’s about to say. And she of all people must know that Lissa was about as likely to kill herself as Georgie would be, or me. And anyway, we went over all of this with the police before. But Georgie is arranging herself cross-legged with a businesslike air, her elbows on her knees, with apparently no care for the shallow blue behind and beneath her. I find I’m searching it for shadows and force myself instead to focus purely on her.

  “Okay then,” Georgie says. Now that I’m directing my attention straight at her, it’s hard not to look at her crotch, given her cross-legged position. Her black bikini briefs are perfectly in place, without a hair, or even a follicle, to be seen. I wonder if she waxes everywhere? Or if she’s had electrolysis? I’ve heard that’s the norm for singletons in the US—the Tinder generation. A doctor friend told me that even in the UK, everybody he sees under the age of thirty is entirely devoid of pubic hair these days. “Okay then,” she repeats. “Two reasons: murder or suicide.”

  My gaze jumps straight up to Georgie’s face. Murder? What is she talking about? But before I can speak, Duncan is objecting. “Wrong,” he says mildly. “You’ve missed out fatal hubris: a miscalculation leading to a tragic accident. Which is what happened.”

  “I’d buy that—maybe—in daytime. Not at night,” Georgie says decisively, as if her word is the last word. As if any word could make a difference. Which, again, is my point. But: Murder? Where did that come from? “But we should start at the beginning. How do we know for sure it was actually Kanu Cove where she got in the water?”

  Duncan sighs and sits up, adjusting his sunglasses on his nose. “Your shoulders are going red,” I say, but he ignores me.

  “There were flip-flops left on the jetty. Jem thought they were hers, but she had like a hundred pairs, so . . .” He shrugs. I can see Georgie about to speak, presumably to argue that that’s hardly conclusive, but Duncan holds up a hand to forestall her. “And she was seen in the water there.”

  “She was seen?” Georgie sucks in a breath. Apparently she didn’t know that. “By who?”

  “By Arif.” This is Steve. He sighs, evidently reluctant to go on, but Georgie makes a gesture and he continues. “One of the gardeners; he’s a good lad. He’d only been on the job a few days at that point. Most of the staff quarters are out that way, and he was on his way there. He’s not from round here; he didn’t know that swimming there was so dangerous.”

  “He could tell it was her? He could see that in the dark?”

  “He could tell it was a woman, swimming crawl. He’d heard the boss’s wife was a big swimmer, so he didn’t think anything of it until the next day.”

  “The boss’s wife?” Georgie says mildly, but there’s an archness to her tone, and Steve flaps a hand in a semi-apology. “I know they owned it together,” he says, his ears reddening, “but most of the staff thought of Jem as the boss. Lissa wasn’t so involved in the day-to-day personnel management; she concentrated more on reservations and accounts.”

  “Mmm,” says Georgie, flipping her sunglasses back down and somehow conveying in that one sound that she’ll forgive him—but just this once. Poor Steve. I don’t suppose the “woke” work environment of Manhattan has quite caught up to him yet.

  Steve hurries on. “Arif said she looked fast and strong, she was kicking hard.” I’ve heard this before, though not the fast and strong part. But Lissa was fast, and she was strong; we all are, compared to the average person. Compared to the average swimmer, even. Even if she was setting a leisurely pace by her standards, Arif would have been impressed.

  “Which direction?” asks Georgie. Steve shakes his head, not understanding. “Which direction was she swimming in?”

  “Oh. Toward the mouth of the cove.”

  “I doubt that was her intention; she was likely aiming for the other side, but at night, and with the current, she probably got disoriented,” observes Duncan.

  “Maybe,” says Georgie. “Or maybe she didn’t care what direction she was swimming in. Maybe she was trying to get away from the creature. Maybe—” She stops. Her bottom jaw moves from side to side as she tries to work something through. “Where was her dress?”

  “Her dress?” Duncan sounds confused, but I can see where Georgie is going with this.

  “Her dress,” Georgie repeats impatiently. “It’s hardly likely she walked through the resort at night in just her swimsuit.”

  “I don’t . . .” Duncan looks at Steve, who shakes his head. “I don’t think they found a dress.”

  Georgie is absorbed in what might have been. “So she could have taken off her flip-flops to sit on the pier and dangle her feet in the water, and then . . . well, then either she falls in, is pushed in . . . or is dragged in.”

  “But then she’d be wearing a dress,” Duncan objects. “She wasn’t when the fisherman found her.”

  “She wasn’t wearing a swim cap or goggles, either, was she?”

  Duncan shakes his head. “No. I don’t believe so. Though they could have been torn off.”

  “So could the dress,” argues Georgie. Torn off? By what? The fishing net, or waves, or rocks? Or is she thinking of that sinister shape in the water again?

  I’ve been silent thus far; both Duncan and Adam are doing very well without me, but they’re both missing the point. “But Georgie, why are you so reluctant to believe that she climbed in of her own accord? That it was an accident?”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense. Because none of us would have done it.” Georgie unwinds her legs and climbs to her feet in what seems to be an entirely liquid motion. The sun is behind her; when I look at her, she is simply a dark shape hovering over me. “Because I like to think that if the tables were turned, she’d be standing here looking for answers.”

  �
��Looking for someone to blame, you mean.” I glance at Duncan in surprise at his words. There’s an unfamiliar hardness to the set of his mouth. Then I look at Georgie, but she’s still simply a dark silhouette. She doesn’t speak, but her hand moves up to her face and drops back down clasping her sunglasses, which she tosses into the boat. Then she throws herself backward into the water.

  “Shit, Georgie!” I scramble to standing, leaning out over the edge of the boat, looking into the water around us for the merest hint of a moving shadow. Adam has moved even quicker than I and is on the back platform, calling her name, but she’s still underwater. Then she surfaces.

  “Get back in the boat, Georgie,” says Adam. I’ve never heard him so clipped. Steve, Duncan and I are calling out variations on the same theme, but Adam’s are the words that carry.