How to Kill Your Best Friend

by Lexie Elliott

  Something flickers in the corner of my vision, and I look right, toward the inland beach. It takes me a second or two to realize what has happened: the pathway lighting has gone out. Surely it’s not on a timer? Or if it is, surely it can’t be so very late already? I twist my wrist to look at my watch, and as I do, the lights around me on the pier flicker once and then die completely. It’s instantly very, very dark.

  It’s a power cut, I reason. I stay still for a few seconds, waiting for the lights to come back on, or a reserve generator to kick in. But the darkness remains complete; there are no stars or moon to paint their silver on me tonight. Only the weak glow of the LED on the buoy provides any kind of landmark. Above the sound of the water, I can still hear snatches of music from the somewhere else in the resort. Not a resort-wide power cut, then. If it’s a power cut at all.

  Suddenly a shower of small stones comes from the cliff face behind me; I gasp as I feel a couple hit my toes even as I hear them, then take a few involuntary steps before common sense halts me. A small animal dislodged them, surely? Though what type of animal? I strain to listen for it, but I can’t hear any movements above the rushing that’s started in my ears. I don’t want to be in Kanu Cove in the dark; I don’t want to be here at all anymore. My eyes have adjusted a little, but there’s simply not enough light to find my way back safely; I might trip and fall—worse, I might fall into the water. I fish in my shoulder bag for my phone, my fingers scrabbling at every single useless item before they bump up against the familiar rubber edge of the protective case. There isn’t enough light for the phone to recognize my face: I have to tap in my PIN code, in a flurry of mildly panicked fingers; I get it wrong twice before I get it right, and the two-fingered swipe action that’s necessary to find the torch function takes several attempts also. But finally I have a bright, cold beam of light streaming from my device, which reveals that I’ve got myself turned around somehow. I sweep the torchlight around me to get my bearings, the circle of warmthless clinical white picking up the jetty with its impotent lamps, then the crumbling stone of the cliff face, and finally finding the pathway that leads back inland.

  Something hits my shoulder. I’m being showered again by soil and small stones, and it’s enough to make me drop all pretense at calm and start to run, the phone held in front in my right hand, like a talisman, and my left hand reaching across myself to grab at the cross-body shoulder strap to stop my bag banging, which means that the sandals looped over my thumb by the ankle straps bash away at me instead. The path here is gritty and uneven, being only very roughly paved, and with my movements the torchlight bounces and flares, flooding the near ground in too much light and rendering everything two-dimensional, yet throwing ludicrously large shadows for the smallest of pebbles in the periphery, making it near impossible to choose where to place my feet at the pace I’m moving. Gravel jabs at my bare soles and digs painfully into my heels, but I’m not going to stop to put on my sandals—I’m not going to stop until I’m away from here, back where there’s lights and music and people. My breathing is harsh and ragged in my ears. I’m nearly at the head of the cove now, where the path splits, and even though I’m looking for it, I almost overshoot the fork and have to turn sharply, my ankle protesting vehemently. Now I’m on a wider track, one that the little golf buggies drive along so it’s much better paved, though with cobbles that aren’t any more comfortable to run on—but every stumbling step is taking me farther from the source of my panic and closer to the holy grail of civilization: in the distance I can see the lights of the restaurant. I’ve overreacted, I know—the first pricks of shame are making themselves felt—but that’s not nearly enough to stop me running.

  Some sixth sense turns my head, just in time to see a dark shape bearing down on me, and I leap sideways, simultaneously twisting to face the danger. And it is danger: as I turn, the talisman of the phone rotates with me, washing light over . . .

  A man.

  Or a man’s chest, at least: arms stretching forward, reaching out for me. He’s so close that the circle of light is too small to show his face. The next second he has knocked my arm aside and the mobile is sailing through the dark, its light sweeping round like a beacon as it tumbles. I flail out with the hand that’s holding the sandals, swinging hard at where I think his head might be even as I start to run, but my blow doesn’t seem to land, and then I’m jerked back so abruptly by the strap of my bag that I almost come off my feet. He’s saying something, but I can’t hear it properly through the ragged shrieks that are bursting from me as I twist to extract myself from the bag, and then a scything leg sweeps one of my own out from under me, and I drop to one knee, still caught up in the bag. We’ve veered off the path in our struggles; there are leaves and branches thwacking my face as his arms go round me, and even though he’s not a big man—I sense he can’t be very much taller than myself, and his torso against me feels skinny—even despite that, it’s like being wrapped in a steel vise. For the first time it crosses my mind that I may not be able to get out of this—this what? mugging? assault?—and the ensuing panic provides enough fuel for me to throw myself backward, pulling him awkwardly down with me. He has to free one arm to brace himself, and that is enough: I twist from under him and swing again with the sandals, and this time I have a better idea of where his head is. The wedge heels connect with a thump followed by a harsh grunt. I scramble to my feet, backing away and desperately seeking out the path, and out of sheer luck I can see a circle of light: the mobile torchlight; it’s landed such that it’s illuminating paved stones. I grab it on the run, heading for the reception area, that nirvana of lights and music, screaming as loudly as I can manage in between the breaths needed for running. I daren’t look behind me; he must surely be catching up—and then it occurs to me he will be able to track me by the pool of light from the phone, and I toss it hard into the vegetation off to one side and keep on running without the screaming. I can run for a very long time, but not at this pace, and not in the dark—but suddenly I’m not in the dark. The low-level path lighting has sputtered back on, and the restaurant lights are getting closer, too, now: I can make out the long counter of the bar, the sofas; I can see Adam and the barman in conversation, and I yell something wordless that comes from somewhere I didn’t know was inside me, and Adam looks up.

  Instantly his face changes and he’s on his feet, rushing toward me. “What happened?” He’s scanning me all over. “Your knee—you’re bleeding.”

  “Someone—someone attacked me.” I’m gulping in breaths, and I’m not crying—I know I’m not crying—but my voice isn’t my own. Adam shepherds me toward the sofas; I feel the ground beneath my feet change from the stone and sand of the path to the wooden floor of the restaurant area, and it feels like entering a magic circle of safety. The barman is hovering awkwardly beside us both. “I don’t know who—someone tried to grab me.”

  “What?” says Steve sharply. I didn’t see him before, but he’s here now, looking behind me as if he might see the culprit there. “Who? Where?”

  I gesture where I’ve come from, hands on hips, bent over, trying to catch my breath. The adrenaline that has been coursing through me is abating: I know this because I suddenly feel extraordinarily like throwing up. Adam pushes me gently onto the sofa, then turns to grab a napkin and some water. “I don’t know who. Back there—ouch!” Adam mutters something that might be an apology; he’s on his knees in front of me trying to clean the sand out of the wound on my knee with a now-soaked napkin.

  “Were they after you or your bag?” Adam asks, tipping his head toward my side.

  I look down at the shoulder bag and realize that the contents must be scattered along my flight path, because one side of the bag has been ripped at the seams and is hanging open. “Me. Definitely me. The bag was collateral damage.” I remember being yanked back by the shoulder strap, then the horror of those arms closing around me, the realization that, strong as I am, as I always have been,
I might not be able to escape the viselike grip of what were, after all, just thin and unremarkable male arms. What unforgivable hubris I have been operating under, to think that my strength, my fitness, would make me capable of swatting away something like this.

  “Could you recognize him again?”

  I purse my lips, then shake my head. “The lights were out; it was dark. I was using the torch on my phone. I could describe what he was wearing, but I didn’t see his face.” Adam calls to Steve, who has stepped away a few paces to issue rapid instructions that I can’t quite hear to the barman and another staff member. He comes over, and I recount what little I can of my attacker. Only a little taller than me, possibly a local from the skin color of those reaching arms, wearing a T-shirt with very thin gray and black horizontal stripes—the circle of torchlight told me that, but no more. It’s a pitifully scant description.

  “Where were you when he attacked?” asks Steve, calmly businesslike, while Adam continues to clean my knee.

  “On the way back from Kanu Cove.” Adam’s hand stills, and he looks up at my face. I can’t read what I see there; I’m not equipped to interpret such things right now. But almost immediately he turns his attention back to my knee. Steve nods and returns to the staff, who, serious-faced, turn to immediately carry out his instructions, some at a run.

  “Hold this against it,” Adam instructs, pushing my hand against a new napkin on my knee. I wonder if they will get the blood out of all these previously pristine linen squares. Perhaps hotels have secret methods to manage tough stains? I’m starting to assess the damage to myself, too. Besides the knee, I have cuts on my feet, and my ankle and shoulder are aching in a way that suggests nothing good, and one shoulder strap of this dress might give way at any second. How long did the whole encounter take: two minutes? Less? Only two minutes to entirely crumble the image I had held of myself.

  “So,” Adam says. I suddenly realize it’s just us. Steve and the rest of the staff have melted away. Duncan is nowhere to be seen. Were he and Jem ever there? I can’t remember seeing them when I ran up. “Tell me. From the beginning.”

  I start to, but suddenly my brain catches up to me, and I interrupt myself abruptly. “Where’s Bron?”

  “She went to check on you. But”—Adam frowns as he checks his watch—“that was ages ago. She must have gone back to her room.”

  I stand, ignoring the lancing pain through my knee. “We have to check on her. We have to go now.” I turn, uncaring of whether he’s with me or not. I can’t explain the dread that has resurfaced inside me, as if it never really left after the attack, as if it never will leave—not truly; and I can’t explain the sudden fear for Bron in particular.

  Adam looks as if he wants to say something else entirely, but he stands up, too. “I’ll call her. From the phone at the bar. Stay here.” But I follow him, briefly marveling at the set of his shoulders ahead of me. Was he always like that, or was it the army that put that inside him? There’s nobody manning the bar; presumably whoever should be there is off doing Steve’s bidding. Adam leans over and grabs the phone, pulling it up to the counter and punching in the number for Bron’s room. I can hear it ringing out in low electronic hums. He lets it ring for a very long time, his eyes holding mine through all the unanswered rings while the dread inside me roils and turns, a turgid, cooling mass.

  Finally, reluctantly, he puts the receiver back in the cradle. “She’s probably asleep,” he offers, but the thin line of his mouth shows that he doesn’t believe it, either.

  “We have to go there.”

  He nods, just the briefest of movements; a minimum of effort. “You can tell me what happened on the way,” he adds as we cross the bar area to take a path from the other side, moving as quickly as I’m able without actually running, which is a lot less quickly than I’d like. There’s an umbrella stand at the end of the pavilion, with one hotel-branded umbrella in it. The wooden handle looks sturdy. I pull it out and hold it by the other end. Adam looks at the upside-down umbrella in my hand, then at my face, and then he picks up the umbrella stand itself, which is made of bare metal struts without any panels. He wraps his fist around the midpoint of one of the long struts and flexes his arm, getting the measure of the heft of it, then nods at me. Then we take the path to Bron’s villa, which is thankfully not suffering from any power outage, and Adam asks me questions, which I answer briefly because that’s the best I can do under the present circumstances. The resort is different to me now. I’m no longer charmed by the paths which twist and turn in meandering fashion through the foliage, presumably to give the guests a permanent sense of seclusion. Instead I see every bush, every dark patch of foliage, as a place where an intruder could be hiding. The path lighting is not sufficient; nothing short of full midday sunshine could be sufficient. The dread inside me hasn’t receded with activity—if anything it’s growing and hardening with every step, even though I know there’s no logical reason for it. I can’t even ascribe it to a protective instinct; the now granitelike weight in my stomach is far too excessive for that. Adam falls silent beside me. I can’t tell if he’s run out of questions or if he has just given up.

  Then we reach the steps to Bron’s villa. I can’t see any lights, other than the standard dim resort lighting around the exterior, but it would be difficult to see interior lights from this side anyway. Adam presses the electric bell; we hear it chime within, my eyes finding his as we listen, just as we listened before to the telephone ringing. There’s a stillness to the villa that makes my stomach clench around the granite inside. Adam tries the handle—a futile gesture, since all the doors lock automatically when closed—and then presses the bell again, but without waiting for a response to the chime. I bang sharply on the door with the umbrella handle and call out, “Bron? Bron, are you there?”

  There’s the faintest of noises from inside, and then the door swings open, to reveal Bron—thank God!—in a bathrobe, with her hair wrapped up in a turban of towel. Bron, blessedly alive and well, her cheeks damp and flushed, presumably straight out of a bath or shower. I spill into the room, reaching out to hug her. “Bron. Thank God. You’re okay—” And then I stop, because oddly, she’s backed a couple of paces away from me, and I’ve seen a flash of something silver in her hand as she hastily shoves it behind her back. And then I know the granite in my stomach is there for a reason: I’ve been right to be afraid. Bron is not okay. None of us are okay. “Bron.” It’s barely a whisper, but it doesn’t need to be more than that; my urgency shouts for me. “Why are you holding a knife?”

  NINE

  BRONWYN

  Why am I holding a knife? Why, indeed—and then, as Georgie steps farther into the light, my jaw drops and I’ve got the perfect excuse to delay answering that question. She’s a mess. Her mascara is smeared across one temple, there’s sand in her hairline, she’s barefoot and her dress is hanging lopsided off one shoulder, as if the fabric has become misshapen beyond repair. There may even be smatters of blood marring the misty green fabric at the hem, and she’s rather incongruously carrying an umbrella, held upside down. “Oh my God, Georgie, what happened?”

  “Somebody attacked me,” she says, unexpectedly dismissively. She drops the umbrella, and the wooden handle clatters heavily on the tiled floor. “Bron—”

  “Where? When?” And what does it mean? How does that connect to the message on my mirror and the money in the accounts? For a moment I consider saying I was attacked myself, and that’s why I have the knife, but just as quickly I discard that. They’ll never buy it; I would have raised the alarm at the time.

  “Never mind that. The knife, Bron?”

  I look down at it in my hand. It’s hardly the kind of weapon I might have hoped for. The new bread knife from home jumps to mind for that: long and serrated and kept wickedly sharp by Rob, who is very particular about that sort of thing—but this is just a bog-standard dinner knife, one that was left with the complimentary fru
it. If I hadn’t instinctively tried to hide it, I suppose I could have claimed I was about to cut into an orange when they banged on the door. “Come on in,” I temporize, stepping back and turning to put the knife carelessly on the nearby console table. Adam closes the door behind them. I could tell them everything, right from the very start—well, perhaps not the very start, but nearly. I’m almost about to—and then a look passes between the pair of them, one that I’m not invited to share, and the words turn to ash on my tongue.

  “Bron?” Georgie says again.

  “You’ll think I’m completely paranoid.” I grimace as if mortified. I’ve only got the side lamps on, and Georgie’s eyes are liquid black in the dim light, and fixed entirely on my face. I reach for the main light switch to snap it on defiantly, and she blinks, her eyelids lifting on green eyes. It’s oddly disconcerting, as if her eyes have changed rather than the ambient light. “It’s just, I . . . It’s stupid, but I thought I saw someone in here when I got back after dinner. Well, not inside, but out back, in the pool area. I didn’t know who was banging on my door all in a hurry, so . . .” I shrug. That last sentence at least is true. I didn’t know who was banging on the door, and until I’ve figured out what’s going on, I can’t trust anyone. I’d have put the knife in my pocket and it would be there even now, if Georgie hadn’t spotted it.

  Adam speaks first. “Could you describe them?”

  “Who?” I say blankly.

  “The person you saw.” His words are dripping with deliberate patience. “Out by the pool area.”

  “Oh. Not really. I doubt I could pick him out of a lineup.” Georgie’s fingers make a frustrated gesture. I sigh. If I’m going to have to make something up, I may as well describe the man I saw leaving the villa before. “Okay, well: local. Youngish. Taller than you, Adam, but not by much. Thin.”