The Wild Girls

by Phoebe Morgan

  The woman nods, her face sympathetic. I wonder whether she feels sorry for me – the spurned girlfriend, standing in for the one he really wanted. The police found a folder on his computer – images upon images of Grace. He’d taken some from outside her flat in Peckham, zooming in on the upstairs windows. He even had one of her at home with her parents, and a few from the night in the Red Lion, too, of her sitting at the pub table out in the courtyard. He must have taken them from the doorway of the pub. None of us noticed, of course.

  I hope they burn them along with his body, but I know that they won’t. They’ll be filed away as evidence. The Botswana case.

  Underneath the table, I pull at the skin around my fingernails, ripping off tiny white shreds, leaving little tracks, red and raw. Minuscule jabs of pain, but it is nothing compared to when I think of him lying there in the front seat of the car, blood dripping down his neck. His beautiful neck.

  She shouldn’t have done that.

  ‘Yes,’ the policewoman says, and she notes something down on the pad in front of her. I can’t see what it is, and I can’t strain forwards to look – they’d think it was strange, a sign that I am worried.

  ‘Did it upset you, his fascination with your friend?’ Her question surprises me, I hadn’t thought they’d go down that track. Perhaps she doesn’t feel sorry for me after all.

  ‘I mean…’ I trail off, allowing her question to linger in the air between us. ‘I think it was about control,’ I say slowly. ‘He wanted control over all of us. That’s why he did what he did, that night – he tried to cause a rift between the four of us, it was a game to him. Controlling women.’

  ‘The night you’re referring to is the night at The Upper Vault in Richmond, correct?’

  I nod, then realise she wants me to speak for the tape.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It’s the night he came on to Alice. The night Grace told me about the rape.’

  I don’t tell her about the photograph I took, that awful image of Alice kissing him, his hands in her hair. They might think it strange. They might think it was a motive.

  ‘You didn’t believe Grace when she told you about the alleged rape, did you?’

  The policewoman has folded her arms, now, crossed them tightly against her chest. Her shirt is a little too tight for her; it strains across her breasts. Alleged rape. I still hate that word.

  ‘I didn’t want to believe it,’ I tell her firmly. ‘I loved Nate, in spite of the way he became towards me. I didn’t think he was capable of it. I wouldn’t hear a word against him.’

  She nods, apparently satisfied, uncrosses her arms.

  ‘And so after the break-up with Nathaniel, you decided to get back in touch with your friends.’

  It’s a statement, not a question, and I swallow, nod.

  ‘Yes. I had missed them – dreadfully. I was feeling low, you know, after what had happened with Nate, the break-up: I wanted to treat myself. And my friends. I realised they’d been right about him; I wanted to talk to Grace about it in person. I knew I needed to do something big, something drastic, to bring us all back together. My birthday was coming up.’ I smile, almost by accident. ‘I’ve always liked my birthday.’

  Another note on the pad; perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. It sounds frivolous, childish.

  ‘And did you tell them that you and Nathaniel had split up?’ I shake my head, anticipating the question. ‘I didn’t tell them because we hadn’t shared details of our lives for two years. But I thought they probably had guessed – they knew I was coming to Botswana alone, and I no longer posted about Nate on any social media. In fact, I deleted a lot of it; I was so hurt. It would have been odd for me to have called them crying about Nate. We hadn’t properly spoken after the night at the Red Lion – don’t forget, I felt betrayed by them all.’ I raise my fingers, checking them off. ‘Hannah had told him about my infertility. Grace had accused him of rape. And Alice had come on to him – that’s what he said.’

  I hold my three fingers aloft: the sins of my friends.

  ‘It would have been weird to go into it all with them,’ I carry on, ‘but I planned on telling them in Botswana, discussing it all, making peace with it, with them. I planned to ask Grace to forgive me. For not believing her about who Nate really was. I figured Hannah had just been drunk, and that he might have lied about Alice, too. I now think he probably came on to her, not the other way around.’

  ‘Can you tell us about what happened when you got to Botswana? You’d booked the Deception Valley Lodges, the whole complex.’

  I swallow, dig my nails into my skin.

  ‘Yes – it was meant to be a treat, a surprise for them. I felt I needed forgiveness – after how wrong I’d been. I’d cut them out of my life; I wasn’t sure if they’d want to see me again, so I thought I’d be able to show them how much I cared by paying for it all, getting somewhere really luxurious, you know. Proving how much they meant to me.’

  ‘It must have been expensive, paying for all that.’

  The words make me feel defensive, I don’t know why. ‘I inherited money,’ I tell her, ‘firstly when my mother died. She had cancer. And then more, just recently, when my father passed away.’ No harm in reminding them of that, of what I’ve already been through. They’d do well to pay attention to it. Be a bit more sympathetic.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Of course.’

  I wait, but she just nods at me, gesturing for me to go on. ‘I flew out there earlier in the week,’ I say. ‘I wanted a break from it all – to get out of New York. I thought I’d take a few days to myself, lick my wounds as it were, then everyone would come join me at the weekend, and we’d celebrate my birthday.’

  I swallow, my throat suddenly dry.

  ‘Nate followed me out there, to Botswana, without my knowledge. He had my passwords, he found the details in my emails. He came to the lodges on the Thursday evening, the night before the others were due to arrive. I was terrified. He forced me to stay away from them, held a knife to my throat. He wrote those text messages to the girls, pretending I was sick, acting as if everything was normal. He cancelled all the other invitations to the party – I’d invited other people, too – everything I said about the event was true. You can check. The girls were going to come early, so we’d have a chance to talk things through on the Friday night, and then on the Saturday we were going to celebrate. I was going to get my life back, turn things around.’

  She is making more notes now, her pen moving quickly across the page, making a tiny scratching sound that reminds me of my own nails against the car boot. A shudder passes through me, cold and unpleasant.

  ‘Nate locked me inside Zebra Lodge,’ I say. ‘He stayed in there with me, that first evening. He – he wouldn’t let me out to see the girls, he had my phone the entire time. I could hear them calling out to me, but he kept the blinds shut and the door bolted. He removed the locks from all the other girls’ lodges. He wanted to be able to get inside.

  ‘On the Saturday,’ I say, my voice breaking a little, cracking as I speak, ‘he drugged me. He left me alone in Zebra Lodge, that’s the last thing I remember. When I woke up, I was in the boot of the hire car. He’d left Hannah and Alice for dead, tidied up the lodge so that it looked as though I’d never even been there. He was playing a game with us all.’

  ‘Why do you think he kept you alive?’ The policewoman is sitting up straighter now, focusing on me more intently, unless I am imagining it. She seems to be leaning forward slightly, her eyes burning into mine. I close my eyes, just briefly, and bright colours flash inside my head: the blue of the plunge pools, the green of the cacti. I must keep going. I am almost at the end, now.

  ‘I think he lost control,’ I say. ‘I think things went wrong. He wasn’t expecting Grace to run from the lodge. He wanted to look like a hero in front of her, rescue her from whoever was attacking our friends.’ I inhale, exhale, one, two, three.

  ‘He planned to blame the whole thing on me.’

  I
f I close my eyes, I am back there, away from this small police interview room in London, back in the heat of Botswana, the air cloying and sticky, the blue sky illuminating the lodge complex in front of me. The grasses are swaying in the light, subtle breeze, and the sun is burning my scalp, my shoulders, hot as fire on my face. The wooden decking is solid beneath my feet, and the sound of the running water is soothing, a constant stream of it, bubbling beneath us all, just waiting for the right moment to swallow us up. I can feel the old panic rising inside me, blurring the corners of my vision, and I have to place both hands down flat on the cold grey table, bow my head slightly to keep myself calm.

  ‘Do you need a break?’ the policewoman asks, concern in her voice, and I nod gratefully, gasp out a yes.

  ‘A break would be great,’ I say. ‘Yes, please.’

  She leads me out of the room, presses another coffee into my hands. I smile at her.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  Most of what I told the police is true, but not all of it.

  Nate and I didn’t break up in New York, but he wanted to. I couldn’t stand it. I’d never loved anyone like I loved Nate Archer. I still can’t imagine that I ever will. That kind of love only happens once in a lifetime, and you have to do everything you can to hold on to it. That’s what my father told me; that’s what I believe.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of Nate with anyone else.

  I planned the trip to Botswana, organised everything. I knew he’d come if Grace was going to be there; I knew he was still obsessed with her, that New York hadn’t been enough.

  We flew over together, barely speaking on the plane. He was pretending, of course, pretending he was giving our relationship one last chance, a holiday together, the act of a desperate couple, but I knew the real reason he’d agreed so readily.

  That night, I drugged him in Zebra Lodge, crushed gifblaar in a glass of champagne. An ingenious plant, known in English as poison leaf, found in abundance in Botswana and easy to source. I knew I had to make it look like an attack on all three of them – sacrifice Hannah and Alice for the sake of killing Grace. The only way Nate would ever be mine is if I removed the object of his obsession – got her out of the picture once and for all. Crossing continents didn’t work – this was the final solution. I’d tried lesser tactics, pulling strings with the hospital chain to get him the New York job offer, threatening to sue them for allowing the operation that left me infertile, when in reality I was too young to make the choice. Most people think hospitals operate in isolation – but the private sector is owned by a select few. Once I’d spoken to them, they were happy to make Nate an offer he couldn’t refuse, rather than have what happened to me splashed all over the papers. It was a small price to pay; after all, Nate was good at his job. He was initially reluctant, but when they told him he had no choice, he went with it. And of course, I went with him. But it all continued – the Google searches, the pictures of her on his phone, the phone calls to her parents. His obsession was just as strong, and the only way to stop it was to cut off the source. Remove Grace, remove the problem. Just like my father removed the problem when I was fifteen years old.

  It’s what my father taught me, growing up. At night, when he visited my room, my father told me how much he loved me, over and over again. I was his special girl. That’s why I’ve kept his secret, and why I couldn’t listen to Grace. Daddy often used to say that rape isn’t always a sign of evil, it can be a sign of love. I knew Nate loved Grace. But I couldn’t lose him, not after I’d lost my dad.

  The difficult part was Grace herself, who utterly ruined the key part of the plan by escaping; typical Grace, messing things up. Really, it’s her fault the others died, if you think about it properly, distil it right down.

  It wasn’t hard to drown Alice. I only had to think about her kissing him that night, putting her hands all over him as if he was hers, not mine. I pictured them together as the water closed over her head; the memory of it spurred me on. She deserved it, really. I had the photo to prove it, for times when I felt weak.

  Hannah was harder. Poor Hannah. I almost didn’t go through with it, but she started asking questions about Alice when I surprised her in the kitchen; I could tell she suspected me. She cried a bit, apologised for what she did that night, her drunken slip of the tongue. I didn’t bother telling her that Nate hadn’t cared that much anyway, I didn’t really see the point. She apologised, too, for not reporting my father, for not acting on her suspicions and concerns. That was what really pushed me over the edge.

  Grace was going to be last. I had it all planned out. I’d frame Nate for all three murders, then go to the police, tell them how he’d drugged me in the lodge. My messages would all match up – they’d see how excited I’d been for the girls to come, how I’d not felt well on that very first night. Everyone knew we were friends – we’d been friends since school. Nate would take the blame; his prints were on the knife. I wore his surgical gloves to kill Hannah; he’d brought his medical bag with us, in case of emergencies.

  I’d forgive him, naturally. Just like I forgave my father.

  I imagined myself visiting him in prison, whispering promises into his ear, his only saviour. There would be no other women in prison – and above all, no Grace. Nobody to tempt him – he would be mine, and mine alone.

  Only of course, it didn’t work out like that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Botswana

  Felicity

  I watch as the girls enter Zebra Lodge. They’re anxious, now, I can see it in their faces. Grace in particular; squirming with tension. Alice’s face is paler than usual; she’s exasperated with Grace, but she’s uneasy too – she wants to know where I am, why the complex is so eerily empty. Hannah is being her sensible self, but even she is starting to feel unnerved.

  They knock before going inside – Grace first, a mousy little tap, then Alice who does it properly. I tidied up as best I could, removing any traces of myself, making it look brand new. It was too risky, being in there; we’d had a close shave when Hannah had come looking late last night after their dinner; I’d held my breath as her footsteps hesitated outside. Braver than I thought – perhaps she’d have been better off in Lion Lodge after all.

  I’ve had fun writing those notes. Just my little game. I miss the ones we played as children. No harm in recreating some of the magic. Now that my father is dead, I have found that fragments of my childhood have begun to come back to me, little slivers that have been buried in my mind for a very long time.

  We are better in the car than the lodge. Parked a few metres down the track, the headlights off, I sit watching and waiting. It is easy for me to slip in and out whilst Nate lies comatose in the back; the girls never think to leave the complex – either that, or they’re too scared to. I bet Hannah has brought a guidebook with her, warned them all about the snakes and the lions and the things that go bump in the night. Predictable to the end. I enjoy myself filling up the champagne glasses, laying out their food. One last treat – how generous I am. The main lodge is so large and I am so familiar with it now that it’s easy to slip into another room at the sound of their voices, play an endless game of hide and seek. I’ve always liked a game, and this is my best yet. There is only one moment where I almost get caught – after I’ve slipped the fortune teller between the pages of The Jungle Book, when Grace comes into the drinks room for a new bottle of champagne. I escape through the window, and forget to close it behind me. Still, I don’t think any of them actually notice – too busy lamenting the puddle of fizz on the floor.

  ‘Not much longer, my love,’ I whisper to Nate as the first rays of dawn light filter through the windscreen on Saturday morning; of course, he doesn’t reply. I gave him just enough of the gifblaar to ensure he’d stay comatose for as long as I needed, but not enough to kill him. There’s no way I want that.

  I ease myself out of the hire car, closing the door gently behind me. The sun is casting an orange glow on the lodges as I make my w
ay in, the dew of the night brushing against my ankles.

  Hannah is in the kitchen; clearly, she has barely slept; Alice’s untimely passing has obviously hit her hard. Her hair is in a lank ponytail, pulled back from her face, and she doesn’t struggle, not really, but I do feel a sense of sadness as the light goes out of her eyes. She is the least guilty of the three of them, but I know I have to stick to the plan above all else. At least the kitchen knives here are sharp – it’s over quite quickly, and afterwards, I close her eyelids. I try not to think about her baby back at home – there is no point, really. It is too young still to remember her properly; I made sure to check.

  The door to Lion Lodge is closed when I approach it, the knife still in my hand, treading softly and silently on the wooden walkways. I picture Grace inside – will she be sleeping, or wide awake, terrified? I can’t help but hope it’s the latter. The game is reaching its denouement: the end is in sight.

  It’s the last thought I have before Nate’s hand covers my mouth. The last thing I see is the knife soaring through the air, landing in the plunge pool with a soft splash, sinking beneath the blue. After that, everything goes black.

  When I awake, I don’t know where I am. The space is small and dark; it reminds me of being a child, hiding deep in a wardrobe from my parents. Playing a game, even then. Only this time, I’m on the wrong side, and I don’t like it at all. I feel my way around – my wrists are not bound, and my palm hits the curve of a wheel, the soft felt of a parcel-shelf.

  Panic washes over me; I curl my hands into fists, bang on the lid of the car boot. Nobody answers. Nobody can hear me. My father isn’t coming to find me, this time.

  It feels like hours before the car begins to move. I have no way of knowing who is driving, though I presume it must be Nate, and I shout his name, as loudly as I can, beg him to stop the car, to let me out. I tell him I am sorry, that I love him, more than anything. He will never know how much – what I have sacrificed to keep him. He doesn’t reply to me – I don’t know whether he can even hear what I’m saying. I go over and over everything in my head – I must have given him the wrong dosage, he has woken up too soon.