Georgie knew, though. I never did work out how she knew, but she did. She promised never to tell anyone. I can’t imagine her breaking that, not even to tell Lissa. I can’t believe she would have done that.
Duncan is still thinking. “Unless she thought she had a reason,” he ruminates. He glances at me. “Jem does flirt with you, you know.”
“He flirts with everybody.”
“Not with Georgie.”
“But you say he doesn’t like Georgie.”
“True. He doesn’t. Bad example.” He thinks for a moment. “He does flirt with everyone. But he flirts with certain women more. You. Cristina.” I almost cringe. Cristina was half in love with Jem; that was obvious to me. I’m sure Jem knew it, too, and I’m equally sure he took advantage of that. Was it just as obvious that I find him attractive? Has he been taking advantage of me, too, in ways I haven’t even noticed? “It must have been Lissa,” he says. “It can’t have been anyone else. You’re right; she must have thought she had a reason.”
“And a pretty big one, to do something like that.” Flirting wouldn’t be enough. Duncan is right: she really must have thought Jem was sleeping with me. I’m not outraged; I’m not hypocritical enough for that. When did Lissa think Jem and I were having this affair? When would we have had an opportunity? I find myself replaying on fast-forward reels of memory of time spent with Lissa and Jem. There hadn’t been many occasions, though they did both stay with me whenever they were in the UK. And there was that night when Lissa was off visiting a friend and Rob didn’t get back till late, so it was just Jem and me together for the evening. I remember the awkwardness of it: almost like a date, in my own home, with my own kids asleep upstairs. Drinking red wine and talking, feeling too aware of him to properly relax. I suppose Lissa could have imagined something happened then. “I suppose that must have been it. A stupid misunderstanding. And she wasn’t always reasonable—I mean, she always seemed a bit more, I don’t know, fragile after Graeme died.”
“Yeah.” He’s quiet for a moment, then he says, with an air of finality, “Yes, she could easily have gone down a rabbit hole in her head. And I do believe she was capable of something like this, if she was put under enough strain. I never did believe the acid, or the car rumor, even, but that thing with the knife . . .”
“Acid? Car? What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head quickly. “Later; we don’t have much time.” He hesitates awkwardly. “You know, you can tell me if there has been anything. Between you and Jem, I mean.”
We’re at my villa now. I turn to him and look him straight in the eye, one hand on his arm. “Duncan, believe me. There has never been anything between me and Jem. Truly.”
He bobs his head awkwardly. “I believe you. I just—I just want you to know that you could tell me that kind of stuff.”
“I know. I know I could.” He’s so uncomfortably earnest; it’s rather sweet. I’m half smiling, even though it’s not true: I can’t tell him that kind of stuff. He has limits he doesn’t even know he possesses. If I told him about Graeme he’d be horrified—and probably hurt that Graeme hadn’t told him himself. All that time we’ve spent together, all of us, and particularly the way we’ve spent it—training and swimming together, where you really get the measure of a person, of the amount of fight that’s within them and where their limits are, where you see them laid bare—gives us the impression we’re transparent to one another, but it’s a fallacy. We all have hidden spaces within us. Secrets have to be kept, for everyone’s sake. “But there’s nothing to tell.”
“Okay.” He ducks his head again awkwardly.
“Come on.” I unlock the door, and we go in; I really do need sunscreen, as it happens. “And actually, there’s more.” I explain about the writing on the mirror; I even show him the photo on my mobile.
“Oh my God. That’s awful.” He takes the phone off me to peer at the screen, while pulling me against him for a quick, one-armed hug. There’s a thickening in my throat at his physical demonstration of support, which is entirely uncharacteristic. Except when very drunk, he’s really terribly British about public displays of affection. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
I shrug. “I didn’t know who left it. I didn’t know who to trust. I still don’t, except for you. Sunscreen, sunscreen . . .” Duncan stands just inside the door as I hunt for it. “I’ve been thinking I should make some excuse and get the first flight out of here,” I call over my shoulder. “Isn’t there another Lufthansa flight before ours?”
“It’s been canceled.”
“Canceled?” It’s almost a wail. I hadn’t exactly been pinning my hopes on getting a seat on it, but still . . . Then I wonder how he knows that. “You were looking at going back earlier yourself?” I finally spot the bottle of sunscreen lurking under a book; I grab it and shove it in my bag.
“No, it was Ruby. It’s just that the twins are teething and she’s having a rough time with them at night.” He sounds slightly embarrassed; I remember that Duncan has always been sensitive to any suggestions that he might be “under the thumb.” The male ego is such a fragile thing. “She always says you don’t so much have twins as get ambushed by them. Look.” He pulls out his phone and shows me a photo of the babies looking tearful and woebegone, their usually gorgeous milk chocolate skin sallow. “But as I said, that flight’s no longer an option. So instead, she’s getting the same night nanny we had for the first few months to come back for a bit, which at least means she’ll get some respite. And to be honest, the nanny is a much better help than I could be.” I grit my teeth a little at that. Kitty and Jack are well past teething issues, and both are generally very good sleepers, but it’s hard not to feel a little affronted at the casual ease with which Duncan throws money at problems, and even more affronted that it actually works.
“Anyway,” says Duncan, switching gears. “You’re stuck here.” He’s tapping his teeth again with that same thumbnail. “You know, that message may not have been meant for you. Don’t you remember, when we checked in? We all just grabbed keys. I’m not one hundred percent sure any of us are in the rooms allocated to our names.” Tap. Tap, tap, tap. Not meant for me? I hadn’t even considered that. I stare at him. That simple possibility takes pounds off the weight dragging at my internal organs. “Though surely it must have been meant for either you or Georgie, given the word bitch.” True. Some of those pounds drop back in place. Though . . . I think of Jem’s antipathy toward Georgie. I don’t really think he has any reason to blame her for Lissa’s death—at least, no reasonable reason—but still . . . Tap, tap, tap. “I think we need to speak to the chief of police. You’re implicated in fraud: the best thing you can do is be open and honest. Probably best not to tell anyone else just yet; let’s make sure we aren’t muddying the waters accidentally for any police investigation. You’ve done nothing wrong, so you’ve nothing to fear.” I stare at him. He said wrong in a way that had me expecting it to be followed by a but . . . “There will probably need to be a police report to get the money transferred back from the kids’ accounts. And the police ought to know about that charming mirror message.” He frowns. “I’m not too comfortable about you in this villa by yourself, you know.”
“Well, let’s figure that out later. Come on, we’d better get to lunch before we’re missed.” I almost say, Before we start rumors; it’s something I might have jokingly said before. But the way he said wrong has put paid to that. He thinks of me differently now, even though nothing happened, even though he knows that it didn’t, even though he would state categorically that he believes me. The thing is, he’s considered that it might have happened—Tell me you didn’t sleep with Jem—and he can’t unthink that. It’s there, in his mind, nudging his opinion of me askew and casting a shadow. I expect he thinks of himself differently, too, now: he’s the generous, forgiving, understanding friend, willing to be supportive in the face of unforgivable behavior—even though
the unforgivable behavior didn’t happen. Or, in fact, did, but with a different husband, only he doesn’t know anything about that. I’m being hung for a crime I didn’t commit, but getting off scot-free with one I did. It’s difficult to know how to react to that.
I usher him out the door and lock it, then we amble toward the restaurant. A welcome breeze has built up through the afternoon, taking the edge off a brutally hot day. I couldn’t live here, for all it’s supposed to be paradise; I would melt into a puddle of sunburn and headaches and lethargy. A bright spring day in Surrey is my kind of paradise.
“It’s odd, though,” Duncan says suddenly.
“What?”
“What was Lissa’s plan? She must have meant for you to find the payments in the account at some point. And then what? If she hadn’t had the accident, what was supposed to happen next?”
“I suppose . . .” I stop, trying to think it through slowly. “Yes, you’re right, I would have found out, at some point. I’d have had to contact the bank to get the money returned. I suppose I would have found out where it came from, then, and Jem would have found out about it, too. He would have to have figured out that Lissa was to blame; it would make no sense for it to be Cristina. So . . .”
We’ve both stopped walking. Duncan is nodding. “So she was planning to leave Jem. She must have been planning that anyway. This was to be a fuck-you to the both of you. She must have been relying on him wanting to avoid any publicity that might come if he went after her for prosecution.”
I want to say, Poor Jem, but I don’t. Because then I’d have to suffer the sidelong glance that Duncan would give me, as he quietly added that comment to the ledgers in his mind, balancing the debits and credits of what there might or might not have been between Jem and me, based on absolutely no information whatsoever. Instead we walk on. I’m trying to find a way to venture the tiny tendril of suspicion that has occasionally inveigled its way into my thoughts when my defenses are low. “I suppose . . . I suppose she is dead, right?”
He glances at me sharply, assessingly, and this time I have no idea what that quick brain of his is thinking. “There was the fisherman who almost retrieved her body. The probability that there were two blond corpses”—I flinch at the word; how can he deliver it so calmly?—“in the sea wearing red TYR swimsuits has got to be vanishingly small.”
“Yes.” He’s right, of course. And that’s both a good thing and a bad thing; like most things in life, it has to be weighed and measured. Of course I want Lissa not to have died, but on the other hand, an alive Lissa hell-bent on vengeance doesn’t bear thinking about . . . I think of the story of Lissa with a knife in hand, terrorizing Scott Mayhew. I’d heard other stories, of course, that I’d always taken with a pinch of salt—but nothing so extreme as that, and Georgie doesn’t lie. If I’d known about that, would I have been more cautious with Graeme? Surely I would have been; though even acknowledging that feels like somehow legitimizing her behavior.
We’re nearing the restaurant now. The others have picked a table at the center; Jem lifts a hand in a desultory acknowledgment. “Bron,” Duncan says, putting a hand on my shoulder to halt me before we climb the two steps up to the raised restaurant floor. “It seems to me Georgie doesn’t want to believe Lissa is dead; she would give anything for some kind of miraculous alternative universe in which Lissa is still alive. But you’re smart enough to realize that her judgment is clouded right now.” I look up at him. The sun is on his back, and his face is in the shade. He flips up his sunglasses to catch me in his earnest, naked gaze. Small beads of sweat are sitting proud on his sunburned nose. “Lissa is dead,” he says gently. “And whatever she had planned has died with her. Don’t let Georgie put you in a spin.” I nod and manage an approximation of a smile, and he smiles back. “Come on, then, let’s have some lunch.”
The others are involved in a conversation that doesn’t break for our arrival. “Nobody knows where she’s gone, and the police will want to interview her, for sure,” Jem is saying gloomily, nodding to us as we settle into chairs. “I asked all her closest friends, and either they’re not telling or they really don’t know.” They’re talking about Cristina, I realize. “I think most of my local staff are blaming that thing you saw in the water. The village elders have invited me to a ceremony this evening to appease Kanu.”
“Appease? Appease how?” asks Georgie, visibly unsettled.
“No idea. I’ll tell you after tonight. I’d be hugely fascinated if it weren’t for the fact that right now I’m hugely fucked. Without Cristina . . .” Jem drains his glass of water and bangs it carelessly down on the table, his frustration evident.
“Well, if she is to blame, no doubt she’s hightailed it off to somewhere like, I don’t know, Switzerland or something,” replies Adam.
“Switzerland,” Jem snorts. “It’s landlocked; there’s literally no beach. Why would anyone want to go there?”
“Well,” says Georgie seriously. “The flag’s a big plus.”
I’m looking at Adam as she says it. He turns to her with the most open and uncomplicated look of amusement that I’ve ever seen on his face, half a second before everyone else catches up. Her lips curve in a sly half smile as the laughter erupts around her. What she’s said is funny enough that the tears in my eyes can be dismissed as tears of laughter, but really, they’re from relief. It’s finally sinking in that I don’t have to doubt Georgie, my clever, loyal friend. I don’t have to doubt Adam. I don’t even have to doubt Jem, and I never did doubt Duncan—thank God I told him about all of this; thank God that I’m now armed with the benefit of his objectiveness. I don’t have to doubt anyone. Lissa is to blame, and Lissa is dead and these people here are my friends. Steve was wrong when he said swimming was the connection between us all. It might have been the reason we met, but there were plenty more people on the swim team than Duncan, Lissa, Georgie and me, and I don’t go on holidays and keep up with all of those. These people here are my friends.
And I won’t think about that message on the mirror. It surely wasn’t meant for me anyway.
TWELVE
GEORGIE
The chief of police arrives when we are finishing lunch—a pleasant lunch, or at least it would have been before . . . well, before. I’ve been trying to map the undercurrents since I got here. On the surface, all currents, deep and otherwise, appear to have stilled, but that’s only on the surface. Jem is simply going through the motions; there’s a mechanical feel about all that he says and does. Duncan is preoccupied, his eyes unintentionally roving over each member of the group as his mind ticks away. Adam seats himself beside me, briefly catching my hand in his to squeeze it, then letting go. He apologized this morning in such a general way—I’m sorry about last night—that I had wanted to ask: What for? For being angry at me for contemplating killing my best friend? For being angry at me for not answering his question about Graeme? But I was too stiff and sore and raw, so instead I said: Me too. Platitudes, both his words and mine, and we both know it—the reckoning is yet to come. But in the meantime we’re operating on a surface level of civility that’s nothing short of excruciating. Only Bron is a very good approximation of her usual self. Up until now she’s been drawn so taut, like an overtightened string apt to snap at any little disturbance, but now her smile comes quick and easy and tension-free.
But the arrival of the chief of police puts an end to this short reprieve. He introduces himself in a long jumble of soft sibilants that I’m not quick enough to catch, but Jem calls him Jimi when he offers him a drink, and I’m positive that wasn’t anywhere in the jumble. He’s a small man of stocky build, with an open, friendly face. I wonder how much the chief of police, on a small island such as this, has to do. I should think the ability to charm and appease a major source of employment, such as a hotel owner, is high on the required skills list; he and Jem are joshing with each other like old fishing buddies. Are dogged investigative skills somewh
ere on that list? I can’t tell. I watch them talk as a bead of water snakes down the outside of the chief’s cold glass of Coca-Cola to catch on his thick fingers. There’s an odd incongruity to his casual stance, drink in hand, with the gun sitting on his hip. Even after years of living in New York, I haven’t got used to the sight of armed policemen. I wonder how it changes you, to have that kind of firepower at your disposal. Would I have been a different person last night if I’d had a firearm strapped to my body?
A second policeman, obviously of lower rank than the chief, joins them. Except for an additional six inches in height, he looks so similar that they could be father and son, but again, I don’t catch the name. Jem doesn’t appear to know him, though; that, or he’s not worth joshing with. They stand together at the end of the table, too far for me to be able to catch what they’re saying, but nevertheless I see the point at which Jimi switches into business mode. Then Duncan, who is closer than I, suddenly looks up and says, “What’s that about Cristina?”
“Jimi thinks they’re going to have to treat her as a missing person case,” Jem tells him wearily. He has all of our attention now.
“What?” says Duncan. “Why? Surely she’s just gotten on a plane?”
“One of her friends called it in,” says Jimi. He’s now projecting his voice for the whole table and has his face arranged into an expression of serious concern. Mini-Jimi’s is an exact copy. “She hadn’t packed anything, and her passport is still in her room.”
“Maybe she’s off on a bender,” argues Bron. “Or she got lucky.”
Jimi shrugs. “It’s possible. But I understand that would be out of character. It’s not been twenty-four hours yet”—he reflexively looks at his watch—“but it will be soon, and if she doesn’t turn up before then, we’ll have to start an official search.” He sets his shoulders to signal a change of subject and looks at me. “Shall we move somewhere more private?”
How to Kill Your Best Friend Page 16
