There’s a local man coming down the steps from the entry to my villa as I approach; presumably one of the staff. There are more staff than guests here, it seems; I must remember to get some local currency to leave a housekeeping tip when I depart. I smile politely, and he bobs his head back, before setting off quickly down the path. The cool shade inside the air-conditioned suite is a welcome relief to my sticky skin, but I know that nothing short of the ibuprofen that’s in my toiletries bag will help my headache.
The slide door to the bathroom has been closed, presumably by housekeeping. It sticks a little; it takes both my hands to yank it into motion. Then those hands fly to my mouth. Scrawled across the mirror, which spans the width of the bathroom, in six-inch-high letters are the words:
IT’S YOUR FAULT
BITCH
I whirl around, my heart thumping in my ears, as if I might find the culprit right beside me, but the bathroom is completely empty. I reach for the bathroom phone and am midway through pressing the button to dial reception when my brain catches up to me. If I report this, I will have to answer questions, more and more questions. Questions like, who could have done this, and why? Like, what exactly is it that’s my fault, and why might I be a bitch? I slowly replace the receiver in its wall-mounted cradle and stare at the words, fighting the urge to run screaming back down to the main reception while I try to formulate a plan. Safety first: I need to check the rest of the villa. I listen for a minute, then two, straining to hear above the rasp of my own breathing. Even my heartbeat is too loud, and too rapid. But the villa sounds empty. There’s a slight nasal hum from the bathroom light, and a low-frequency whirring from the air-conditioning unit, and now that I’m concentrating on it, I can hear something from the minibar, too, but nothing that indicates the presence of a person hiding somewhere. It feels empty, too.
I slip off my noisy flip-flops and move slowly into the bedroom, trying to move soundlessly as I run my eyes over the perfectly made super king bed, the chair in the corner with the nightdress I’d dumped on it now neatly folded. In here the air-conditioning unit seems extraordinarily loud; I keep glancing over my shoulder. Would I hear anyone behind me? I force myself to check under the bed—nothing. Nothing in the walk-in wardrobe, either. The safe there is still shut; when I type my code in, which I have to do twice as my fingers are trembling and clumsy, my jewelry and passport are safely intact.
The living area is similarly empty, and the French doors that open out onto the plunge pool area are locked. Whoever came in did it through the front door, and they could have done it at any point after I went to breakfast. Though surely after housekeeping came in, given the neatly made bed; I doubt the housekeeping staff would have missed six-inch-high letters across the mirror. I think of the man I saw leaving. Was it him? Was he dressed correctly for a staff member? He had a dark blue smock on, in some kind of light material, and matching trousers. Is that what the housekeeping staff wear? I can’t think. But why on earth would a staff member write this? This is personal. This comes from someone who knows something. Or thinks they do. I find I’m shaking. It’s your fault. Lissa’s death, surely—but who would lay that at my feet?
I go back into the bathroom and approach the writing cautiously. The missing apostrophe glares at me, though I can’t imagine it says anything significant about the writer’s origins: native English speakers are just as likely to have made that mistake. It looks like it’s been written in browny-pink lipstick—my own lipstick, I realize, as I spot my MAC Verve tube wrapped in a tissue on the bathroom counter, the protruding lipstick mashed and misshapen. On further inspection I spot the missing cap on the floor. It seems particularly spiteful to have used my lipstick. Or opportunistic. I should probably bag up the lipstick tube. It’s unlikely to have fingerprints on it, assuming the culprit used the tissue when holding it, but there’s a chance—and then I stop. What’s the point in bagging it up if I’m not reporting this? But what if this is the start of something more sinister? Surely I ought to bag it anyway? In the end I repurpose the plastic bag that holds the complimentary shower cap and gingerly transfer the tissue and the lipstick tube to it, taking care never to touch them directly. Then I store the bag in the minibar; I’m not completely sure, but I think I read once in a crime novel that cold preserves fingerprints.
Lastly I take my mobile phone and carefully photograph the words in the mirror. It’s your fault. Bitch. I stare at the photo on my phone. My own reflection, holding the phone in front of me at shoulder height, is in the image. Bitch is written across my face.
I pick up one of the pristine white facecloths and set about cleaning off the lettering.
THREE
GEORGIE
Sender: Kateb, Melissa.
I read it twice, because I can’t believe it, adrenaline coursing across my skin, and my heartbeat rushing in my ears. Lissa. It can’t be. But I haven’t made a mistake; I’m definitely looking at the inbox folder of my email, and the sent date is yesterday . . . Oddly I find myself looking around at the sun-drenched terrace, but none of the other guests enjoying their breakfast are paying me the slightest attention, and Bron has already left. I turn back to my laptop and move the cursor with glacial speed to click on Lissa’s email—Lissa. I’m not breathing.
The email pops open immediately—a part of my brain recognizes that the Wi-Fi is excellent here in the restaurant—and immediately I realize what has happened. The email got caught in a quarantine; there’s explanatory information on that above the body of the message. The installation of our new IT system has not been without issues, one of which is a firewall system so enthusiastic that for a short while absolutely all of the email traffic of one of my colleagues was caught in it because the messages apparently contained profanity (his surname is Cockburn). In fact, Lissa sent her message months ago; it has only just been released to me now. I check the actual sent date again. Four days before she died. My breath comes out in a long, slow huff, and I feel my shoulders drop several inches. Relief. I don’t want to analyze why I feel it, but I know that’s what I’m feeling.
I look around again, and a waiter spots the movement and starts toward me, then he relaxes when I quickly shake my head. I could delete the email, but I can’t delete my knowledge of it. I’m going to have to read it, these words from beyond the grave—no, not the grave, from beyond the watery deep. I think again of the waters of Kanu Cove, as Adam and I saw them this morning. There was a boat there, no more than a skiff, really, with the helmsman fighting to hold position while simultaneously pulling in a lobster pot. It was high tide, and the water streaming past the bow on its way out to sea was breathtakingly fast. Apparently it’s something to do with the combination of the narrow neck of the cove and the topography of the seabed just beyond, Adam said, small crow’s-feet appearing at the outer corners of his eyes as he squinted against the sun. Christ, what was Lissa thinking?
I take a deep breath and look again at the email. Kateb, Melissa. Once Williams, Melissa and before that Dashwood, Melissa, but Kateb, Melissa last of all and forever more. I know I have to read it; there’s no point in delaying. I find that I’m glancing around again; I force myself to focus on the laptop, scrolling down past the quarantine information to the start of her words.
Hiya honey,
How are you? Hope things are settling down for you at work. Are you sure you can’t make it out? I know you’re coming next month instead, but everyone else arrived this afternoon, and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see them, but it’s not the same without you . . . Hop on a plane! You know you want to! And in case you were wondering, Adam is here too. Just saying. ;-)
Actually they’ve all gone to bed now. I’m the last one standing, just like you and I always are. Jem used to stay up with me, but he’s exhausted now, what with the hotel going gangbusters. That, or he’s bored of me. I’M JOKING. Though he still makes such a fuss of the female guests, even after I took your advice and sp
oke to him about it. They practically cream their underwear in front of him, even the married ones. Especially the married ones, actually—Bron too; she lights up like a bloody light bulb around him—and doesn’t he know it. He says it’s good for business (which is shorthand for shut-the-fuck-up-about-it). Is it me, do you think? I can’t help thinking it must be; something I’m attracted to initially, or something about me that attracts that type. I wouldn’t have stood for it when we were younger. I don’t know that I should be standing for it now, but I just don’t have the energy to fight again right now. Or “discuss,” as he calls it. He wants us to try IVF—as if it’s that easy when you live in the middle of an ocean! But even if there was a clinic down the road, you know what that was like for me. It’s as if history is trying to repeat itself, and I won’t let it. I can’t face it all again.
I’m being appallingly maudlin. It’s the wine, and missing you. We’re fine, really. Come, please. Pretty please. If you can.
Love Lissa x
Lissa. I read it again. I’m about to read it a third time, when a voice beside me makes me physically jump. It’s the waiter. “I’m sorry,” he says, smiling even while speaking. I wonder if Jem tells the staff to smile incessantly or if it’s just in his nature. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No. No, thank you. Just the bill, please.” I return to the email. What did she mean by history repeating itself—which part of history? Was she just talking about the IVF, or something . . . else? Her tone is odd; she sounds like Lissa, but not quite. More . . . no, not more; less. Less attitude, less fight. Less bravado, even. Less Lissa. I try to see this particular version of her walking along the stony path to Kanu Cove in the dead of night, pausing on the stone jetty to put on her cap and goggles, but even she won’t do it. It’s madness.
I shut the lid of the laptop smartly and sit back in my seat. A moment later I flip it open again to fire off an email to the head of IT; if there are any other messages languishing in quarantine, I’d rather like to know about them.
“Georgie.” It comes from behind me. I whip out a hand to slam the laptop shut again, even as I’m turning to the voice. It’s Jem, in what I think of as his managerial uniform: a loose linen shirt and artfully tailored shorts that sit right across the line between smart-slash-casual. Did he see Lissa’s email? But he’s smiling, or trying to, as he bends to kiss both my cheeks.
“Join me?” I ask brightly.
He pulls out the chair that Bron was sitting on only minutes ago. “A coffee wouldn’t go amiss.” He takes off his sunglasses and hangs them on the front of his shirt, then runs both hands over his face, before turning his remarkable pale green eyes on me for barely a second. His gaze is already off and roaming around the terrace as he asks, “How are you doing?”
“Do you know,” I say thoughtfully, “I think you may be the first person to ask me that.”
“Christ, lucky you. People are asking me that nonstop.” He turns to the waiter and rattles off an order in the local language. I wonder how many languages he speaks. He turns back to me. “It’s not because they don’t care.”
“I know. It’s because they’re afraid I might answer.”
Jem’s lips quirk upward. “Maybe. Nobody knows how to pigeonhole you in the grief stakes. Husband is easy, but the two of you . . . there was always something so intense between you.” He’s still easily the handsomest man on the terrace—in the whole resort, probably—but he’s not quite his usual self. His eyes won’t rest; his edges are frayed. Even his French accent is stronger. He glances at me briefly as if waiting for an answer, but I didn’t hear a question. “I didn’t quite understand it myself. The—the dependency.”
I shrug with deliberate nonchalance. “Maybe at uni. But we haven’t even been living in the same country for nigh on five years.”
“Really?” He looks like he’s about to challenge that, but at that moment the waiter brings him an espresso. He raises a hand briefly in thanks, then takes a sip, those strange eyes wandering once again across the terrace. Sea glass, I think, finally realizing what they put me in mind of. Broken bottles rubbed into smooth pebbles by the bottom of the ocean; pale enough that you almost think you can see through them, that they might allow you to see the same world with a different filter—but you never quite can. I wonder if it’s his eyes that are the clincher with the married women. “You know,” he says, as if there hasn’t been an interruption, “it didn’t feel like the distance made a difference. You still spoke all the time.”
No, I think, though I simply shrug. No, we didn’t; not anymore, not in a way that counts. There are things you can only talk about in person, late at night, softened by a blanket of darkness and alcohol. We hadn’t spoken like that since Graeme died.
“Tell me something about her,” he says. “Something I don’t already know.” He finally fixes me in his gaze, and it’s a shock when I see what he’s no longer trying to conceal: the naked, ugly resentment toward me. “Something nobody else knows.”
“Jem—”
“Tell me,” he insists.
“Jem, I could tell you a hundred things, but it wouldn’t—”
“One thing, Georgie. That’s all I’m asking.” His words are a challenge, and as my shock recedes, it’s hard not to rise to it. He has no right to lash out at me this way. And maybe I’m angry with him because of Lissa’s email, too. Is he still flirting with all the female guests now that he’s a widower? Does that add to or detract from attractiveness? “Just tell me one. Just—”
“All right!” I sit back in my chair in frustration. He raises his eyebrows: Well? I take a moment, as if to collect my thoughts, but I already know what to say. If he wants a story, I’ll deliver one he won’t forget. I let him stew for a beat or two more, then sit forward again, my elbows on the table. “All right. Well, in our third year, there was a party. Actually there were lots of parties, but this was our party, at the house that we were renting—”
He’s nodding, all of his attention fixed on me. “With Duncan, right? And a couple of others.”
“Yes, Martin and Julia.” I can’t think when I last spoke to either of them. I got the impression they were rather relieved when the year was up: it’s one thing to be around the party crowd when you choose to join it, but it’s quite another to live with it the morning after.
“I never did understand how you guys could party like that and also be on the varsity team.” Varsity: it betrays his American college education. Nobody called it the varsity team.
“It wasn’t like the US setup. Nobody had a scholarship; we didn’t even have a paid coach. Don’t get me wrong: we had some great swimmers, and we all put in a fair amount of training, but it was just another strand of university life. And, actually, it was usually the sports teams that threw the best parties.” He’s frowning slightly; it still doesn’t compute for him. “Anyway, at this particular party, everyone was hammered on shots of vodka jelly, and Lissa was high, too. I don’t remember what she’d taken.” He looks away, but just as quickly he looks back, unable to call a halt to the car crash that he’s asked for. “It got late. Almost everyone had left; the ones that were still there were either copping off or passed out. Bron was throwing up in the bathroom upstairs—she never could hold her drink. Her boyfriend at the time had gone AWOL, so I wound up looking after her; I put her to bed in my room. And after that I went looking for Lissa.” I can see the hotel terrace, but now it’s overlaid with the five-bedroom student house. I feel myself walking unsteadily down the narrow stairs, one hand on the wall for much-needed balance after all those virulent jelly shots. Nobody has yet bothered to turn off the speakers in the lounge, and Pure Morning by Placebo is still pumping out: A friend in need’s a friend indeed . . .
Jem clears his throat. “Where was she?”
“In the kitchen. With Bron’s boyfriend, Scott.” I see them now: Lissa is on the counter, her long hippie-dippie skirt bu
nched up at the top of her thighs and her slender legs wrapped round Scott’s waist, the ankles locked. Her bare skin is painted an unhealthy yellow from the streetlight just outside the kitchen window; it’s the only light in the room. My hand flies to my mouth, and I’m turning to leave, but Lissa’s head tips back as Scott buries his own in the curve of her neck. I see her face, and it’s the disconnect between the two of them—Scott urgent and hungry, Lissa entirely flat—that stops me in my tracks. “It looks like they’re fucking—or about to, but something seems . . . off.” One of her hands is busy at his fly, and the other is reaching behind her, stretching for something . . . I’m too slow to make sense of it until it’s too late. “And then I realize she’s picked up a bread knife. One of those long, serrated ones.” I’m peripherally aware that Jem is leaning toward me. I’m not sure he’s breathing. “And she puts it to his dick.” Jem recoils involuntarily, murmuring something like Jesus. “She says—I can’t remember exactly, I wasn’t entirely sober at the time, but something like: Bron is one of my best friends. Did you really think I would let you do something like this?” All those years ago, it takes a second or two for the situation to dawn on Scott. The instant it does, he tries to buck away, but she has him held too tightly, the knife pressed against the base of his penis, on the underside, and all he succeeds in doing is forcing the blade more firmly against himself.
“Christ,” breathes Jem. “Did she—did she hurt him?”
Are you fucking psycho? Scott yelps in the dimly lit kitchen. You’re cutting me. And she is: I can see drops on the blade. They look black in the dim light. The music is still playing: A friend with weed is better. “She cut him a little. I stepped in at that point and tried to get her to put down the knife.” Fifteen years ago, I’m slowly lowering my hand from my mouth. Lissa. Put it down. I think he’s got the message. They both turn to me. Lissa’s face isn’t expressionless anymore. It’s strangely dreamy, as if she’s floating. Scott’s is a mix of outrage and fear—and shame, too, when he sees that it’s me. He starts to plead even though he can’t meet my eye. Georgie. She’s gone nuts. Please. Get her off me.
How to Kill Your Best Friend Page 4