How to Kill Your Best Friend

by Lexie Elliott

  “Clothing?” Georgie asks.

  “I couldn’t really say; there isn’t enough light out there. He was probably one of the staff and I’m being ridiculous. I mean, it’s been quite a day . . .” That much is certainly true. My arms have wrapped themselves across my middle, each hand hugging an elbow.

  “He probably wasn’t,” Adam says, as if musing aloud. “Something alarmed you. Surely your subconscious wouldn’t have been on the alert if he was wearing the right staff uniform.” He looks at Georgie. “Could it be the same guy?”

  She shrugs. “Possibly. But, clothing apart, Bron’s description probably fits two-thirds of the men in this area.”

  “Was it a mugging?” I ask her. “Was he after your bag?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know what he wanted.” She reaches out a hand to the wall as if to steady herself, and I suddenly realize that, like her dress, she’s only just about held together. Now that I’ve made the room brighter, it’s clear that the stains on her dress are indeed blood, and there’s more blood streaked down one leg.

  “Come and sit down,” I urge her. “Can I get you some water or something?” She lets me lead her to the sofa and sinks down into one corner of it, grimacing as she bends her knee. “Ouch. That looks really nasty.” There’s thick, partially congealed blood oozing from the livid cut, and angry purple bruising around it. “We’ll need to clean that up.”

  “Cleaning up the mess again?” she says, but it’s a very weak attempt at humor.

  “Well, that is what mothers do. Let me see if I have some Band-Aids.” I hurry off for the bedroom, for the brief respite it will offer from their birdlike gazes, picking away at the surface of me. I need to take my own counsel right now. The account numbers are not accidental. I need to be smart; I can’t just spill my thoughts because of the insistence of Georgie’s gaze. I reach the en suite bathroom and catch sight of myself in the white dressing gown, my hair still in the stupid turban—as if I’ve been spending the afternoon at a spa. I pull off the towel and twist my damp hair into a knot secured by a scrunchie; it will frizz beyond all belief without immediate application of serum and straighteners, but I’m beyond caring. The question I’ve been thinking about since my stomach contents spewed from my mouth, the question that’s been wearing a groove in my mind is: who would have access to those account numbers? The list is not long, but it’s not pinpoint specific, either. It includes my parents, because they pay a small amount into those accounts each year, and Rob, and—actually, and Georgie. Georgie, who is the godmother of my child, and who, like my parents, drip-feeds Kitty’s account on a regular basis. Would I have sent her Jack’s account number, too? It’s possible. But to be perfectly clinical about it, the list should include anyone who has visited the house and who might have felt inclined to slip off to the study to rummage through my files—it would have taken them less than three minutes, if they knew what they were after. I am nothing if not organized. Everything is well labeled; an identity thief’s delight.

  Am I really considering Georgie? Rob, or my parents—well, that’s frankly ridiculous. None of them would have the required access to Jem’s business accounts in any case . . . As I stare at myself in the stupid white dressing gown, I realize that’s the crucial factor. I’ve been looking at this wrong: it’s a Venn diagram problem. Who had access to Jem’s business accounts and also access to those account numbers? That’s a much smaller list of people.

  A smaller list indeed, and most likely all of them are on this island right now. I need to think this through. I need to be smart.

  I hear a mobile phone ring and then Adam’s voice, too faint for me to make out the words, and it spurs me into opening and shutting some cupboards, as if looking for something, though I know exactly where the Band-Aids are. Then I take a deep breath, exhale and turn for the living area. The knife on the console table glints at me as I pass. Once more unto the breach, dear friends . . .

  “Here,” I call, waving the Band-Aid box. “I think the largest one should just about be big enough.” Georgie is still sitting on the sofa, almost crumpled in on herself; I’m slightly shocked by how much the attack seems to have shaken her. It would shake anyone, of course, but Georgie isn’t just anyone. At uni, everything bounced right off her; she was invincible. But she doesn’t even straighten as I cross the room. Unless . . . unless she wasn’t attacked at all? Is this some elaborate hoax and she’s overacting? I falter and almost stumble as the thought crosses my mind: it’s so completely ridiculous, and yet, I can’t unthink it . . . Adam is still on the phone, speaking in short, clipped phrases and staring out through the glass doors to the pool, lit sky blue against the almost pitch-black surrounds. I wanted to close the drapes as soon as I got back here, but I didn’t. It’s always better to see what’s coming.

  I kneel before Georgie and size up the bandage against her cut. “Yep, this should work.” I’m half listening to Adam’s side of the phone call, too, but it’s not very enlightening: Yes. Okay.

  “A regular Girl Scout,” Georgie says, forcing a smile. We should check again in the morning. Check what?

  “I also have a spare pair of toddler underpants in my handbag, should you ever have a need for them.” I smooth the bandage carefully over the cut. Fake or not, it’s going to hurt to no end, every time she flexes her knee. Yep. Will do.

  “Good to know.” She smiles again, her head almost level with mine given she’s slumped down on the sofa. We’re trying hard, both of us; I can feel it. Too hard.

  Adam has finished his call; he turns to join us, standing at the end of the sofa and bending to briefly lay a hand on Georgie’s shoulder. She surprises me by snaking her own up to try to clasp it even as he’s withdrawing. For a second their fingers are tangled in midair. Then I blink and they’re separate, but the image still lingers for me. They’re a pair—but Georgie doesn’t do that. Not ever. But what I say is, “Who was that?”

  “Steve. He’s had the staff searching the whole property, but nothing.” He stops as if reluctant to go on, but Georgie glances up at him and he continues. “It would have been pretty easy for an intruder to get in, as it happens. Only one of the three security guards was at his post.”

  “What? Why?” I climb back to my feet.

  “Apparently there’s a rumor going round the staff that Cristina left because nobody is going to get paid. Some of the kitchen hands disappeared mid-shift this evening, too.”

  I groan. “Oh God, that’s the last thing Jem needs. Where is he now?”

  “His villa. Duncan took him back earlier, before all of this. He was pretty plastered—actually they both were. Steve’s already checked on them; he said they’re both passed out on the sofa snoring fit to wake the dead.” He shoots a glance down at Georgie as if regretting his choice of words, but she doesn’t react. “Anyway, Steve has the remaining staff running security patrols around the property, and he’s doing his level best to try to combat the rumor.”

  “If it is a rumor,” I say, without really thinking.

  Adam cocks his head at me. I have the sense, without looking, that Georgie is doing the same from her spot seated a few feet below. “Do you know something? Did you see something when you were looking at the accounts?”

  I shake my head. “No, nothing; I didn’t have time, and I wasn’t looking at the payroll system anyway.” But Adam is still waiting for more. “It’s just—well, does this place feel like a going concern right now? Maybe the best thing he can do is shut down for a while then relaunch. Or sell. Duncan can probably advise him.” I’m thinking aloud now. “Or maybe Duncan can buy him out, since he’s already an investor. Though an arm’s length trade right now would result in a rubbish price for Jem.”

  “Right,” says Georgie after a beat or two. “I hadn’t realized Duncan had invested in this place.”

  “Well, Lissa didn’t have much to contribute.”

&nbs
p; “But Graeme’s house must have been worth at least three million—”

  I shake my head. “More like four, but mortgaged to the hilt, and I don’t think his life insurance was up to much.” I look at Georgie, her surprise laid bare on her features. “She didn’t say anything to you?” How odd. I thought there was nothing Lissa wouldn’t tell Georgie. On another day I might have felt a flash of something, some small triumph that would not have reflected well on me, to have been the recipient of a confidence that wasn’t shared with Georgie, but today I’m beyond such pettiness. “Maybe she was embarrassed . . . Anyway, she felt bad that she couldn’t match Jem in terms of equity investment in this place. Duncan stepped in and made up the difference, I think.”

  “Oh.” The surprise is gone, replaced by a slight frown. I wonder if it upsets her that she didn’t know.

  We all fall silent for a moment, then Adam speaks up. “Are you going to be okay here on your own tonight? Wouldn’t you rather sleep in the same villa as us?”

  Us. They are a pair; he’s not even trying to hide it. Can they really have leapt from a random hookup over a year ago at the end of a week’s swimming holiday to this? What’s been going on in the meantime, and why didn’t Georgie tell me? “It’s okay,” I demur. “If I get freaked out, I’ll go to Jem’s; his villa has a couple of spare bedrooms.”

  Georgie’s green gaze sits on me expressionlessly, and I wonder what I’ve said to warrant such deliberate nonresponse. But what she says is, “Ring if you change your mind.” She stirs on the sofa, and Adam puts out a hand to help her lever herself upright. “You don’t mind if I use your bathroom, do you?” she says.

  “Of course not.” I flap a hand toward the bedroom, with its en suite bathroom half visible through the open door.

  “I’ll tell Steve to make sure the security patrols pass by here, too,” Adam offers, and I nod my thanks, but my attention is on Georgie, limping shoeless across the room. She’s moving like every single step hurts. What on earth would be the point of all the effort to pretend if it weren’t actually so? And then she closes the bedroom door behind her, and alarm bells ring for me once again. Closing the bathroom door makes sense, that would be natural—but the bedroom door? I gaze after her, my mind racing, only barely aware of Adam beside me on the phone again, instructing Steve to direct the patrols. What can she possibly be looking for? What can she think I have? Or am I now so steeped in paranoia that every single small action seems to me to be imbued with the deepest significance?

  “Bron?” Adam says, and I realize it’s the second time he’s said it. I turn away from the closed bedroom door, arranging my face with a suitably inquiring expression. “That’s sorted now.” He looks around. “You’re sure you want to be on your own?”

  “Yes.” I pause. “It was just an opportunist mugging, wasn’t it?”

  “Probably.” But his unease belies him, and he seems to recognize that. “I don’t know. Georgie didn’t seem to think they were after her bag. It’s a bit odd.” Then Georgie is coming out of the bedroom. She’s cleaned herself up a bit: the mascara smears are gone from her temple, and the sand has disappeared from her forehead, too, but she’s moving just as awkwardly as before. I look at Adam, and for all he’s ordinarily a closed book, it’s as if I sense him wince with every step she takes, although I couldn’t say that there’s an expression at all on his face. If this is all a hoax, then he’s the best actor I’ve ever come across.

  Or Georgie is playing him, too.

  * * *

  —

  After they’ve gone, I race to my room and survey the contents, trying to work out what Georgie was after. But nothing looks out of place, there or in the bathroom. I have the sense that my makeup bag has possibly been moved, but it was lying beside the sink, so it could easily have been knocked completely innocently when Georgie was cleaning herself up. Or maybe Georgie used some of the makeup. I could hardly begrudge her that, given the state she was in. I’m about to give up when I remember the slip of paper with the account numbers, and I quickly check the pocket of the dress I was wearing for it, but it’s still safely tucked in there—and anyway, Georgie doesn’t even know about that, so how could she be looking for it? Still, I can’t shake the feeling that there was an oddness to her closing that door.

  But standing in the doorway, gazing puzzled at the bedroom, isn’t going to give me an answer. I shake myself into activity and lock the front door of the villa, which seems too scant a security measure, but it’s all I have at my disposal. The aquamarine of the pool glows silently through the (locked) French doors. I sit down on the sofa with the branded hotel notepad and branded hotel pen to make my Venn diagram: two stark black overlapping ovals on the creamy paper. In the left oval: all those who had access to the kids’ account numbers. In the right one: those who had access to Jem’s business systems. I force myself to be blankly unemotional about it, to ignore the voice in my head that tells me I’m being paranoid, that there must be some reasonable explanation. Everyone who meets the standard makes the left oval. That’s Rob, my parents, our twice-weekly cleaner, Georgie and everyone who has stayed the night in our house—I consider that a reasonable metric for the amount of time you’d need to go sneaking off upstairs to the study; it would be too noticeable from someone who’d just dropped by for coffee or even for a dinner party—which pulls in Lissa and Jem, too, but not Duncan or Adam.

  The right oval is harder. Perhaps it should just be Jem and Cristina, but I’m not certain. I don’t have enough familiarity with how Jem has been running the business to know who else might have had the necessary access. I put them both down and add a question mark below. Then after a moment’s thought I add Lissa, too. I’ll have to check if all the payments were made before she died, but even if some happened afterward, they could have been set up in advance.

  I look at my ovals, assessing the matches. Then I take the pen and score a hard black line through the two names that appear on both sides, methodically scoring out each name twice, once left and once right, before rewriting them just the once in the space defined by the overlapping ovals. Two names. Jem and Lissa. It’s patently ludicrous, to even be considering them, but the logic is inescapable. I look at the names again, as if they might miraculously morph into something—or someone—else, but they don’t change. Jem and Lissa.

  Then after a moment I add Georgie. Because if Lissa is there, Georgie must be, too. That’s just the way it is.

  Jem. Lissa. Georgie.

  HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND

  Method 4: Electrocution

  Hair dryer dropped in a bath tub? I suppose it’s just about believable—and I could probably engineer such a situation. But I Googled it (not on my own device, of course), and it seems that it’s actually very unlikely to be fatal. Electricity is lazy; it seeks the path of least resistance. The current will almost certainly run to ground through the bathwater and the bath plug, rather than through the cardiac tissue, meaning that the only thing that gets successfully fried is the bath salts.

  How else can you engender a fatal electrocution? With difficulty, according to the Google search results. There are too many variables. AC or DC current. Wet or dry hands. The material of the shoes the person is wearing. Whether the current finds a way to breach the skin to reach the soft, vulnerable, unresistant tissues inside—and how much water and how much fat are in those tissues.

  The more I look at this, the more I realize how exceedingly difficult it is to kill a person—without immediately getting caught, I mean. Which is, ordinarily, a good thing, one supposes. Though not much help to me now.

  TEN

  GEORGIE

  The walk from Bron’s villa back to mine feels like a hundred miles, though it can’t be more than a couple of hundred meters; I’m soon regretting turning down Adam’s suggestion of calling for one of the buggies. Beyond offering to carry me, which I refuse on the grounds that it would probably be more pai
nful for my shoulder and neck, Adam doesn’t try to talk. He just offers an arm to cling on to, and I do, transferring as much of my weight to him as possible, yet still gritting my teeth with every step. I won’t cry. I didn’t cry earlier, and I won’t start now.

  Finally we reach my villa. I head straight for the bedroom and flop down on the bed, lifting my bad leg up onto it with my hands. I’m so very, very tired, with the extreme and total exhaustion of a child. Even just getting ready for bed is an impossible effort. Adam surveys me from the bedroom door.

  “You’ll stay?” I ask, then wish I hadn’t when I hear how pathetic it sounds.

  “Damn right I will. On the sofa, if need be.”

  I waggle my head as if considering it. “I’m willing to share the bed, under the circumstances.”

  His lips twitch a little. “Stay there,” he instructs, moving toward the en suite bathroom. “I’ll bring you water and a toothbrush.”

  “And a facecloth,” I call after him, trying to focus on the mundane, rather than on the flutter of panic at the edge of my mind, because he’s going to stay the night, and he can’t possibly be thinking that we’ll have sex, not with the state that I’m in. Staying without any prospect of nookie seems even more intimate than daylight sex. I force down the panic by trying to think of something else, though the other topic that crowds my mind isn’t any more reassuring. “There’s something up with Bron,” I say when Adam returns, sitting up to take the facecloth from him and wiping my face. There’s still sand in my hair; it will get all through the bed, but I don’t have the energy for a shower. “I’ve tried asking her, but there’s only so many times you can say, Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. She was really off at dinner; I asked, too, and got nothing much back.” He passes me the toothpaste and toothbrush in return for the flannel. “I thought it was from that thing in the water.” The serpent. The toothbrush momentarily halts in my mouth. The serpent: it feels like that was days—no, weeks—ago. Was it actually just today? And what had it been, really? It would be easy to dismiss it in comparison to the very recent horror of those skinny arms holding me like a vise, a hold that felt terrifyingly futile to try to break free from—but that long, dark, sinuous shape flowing beneath us in the blue waters was no invention. “Whatever it’s from, she’s definitely very rattled,” he says thoughtfully. “Spit?” He holds out a cup, and I obligingly empty my mouthful into it.