How to Kill Your Best Friend

by Lexie Elliott

  “Yeah. Um. Sorry. Though in my defense, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

  My gaze jumps to his face, and then just as quickly away again. “How could it be a good thing?”

  “Because . . . because it’s just a thing. Like green eyes. Or blond hair. It’s just one of many things about you.”

  “That I’m fucked-up?” I want to be cross, I want to work up a good head of steam, but it’s hard in the face of this, this—whatever this is. I don’t have the words to describe it. Nothing about this conversation is going the way I expected from We should talk.

  “Totally fucked-up. Also smart and funny and sexy as hell, but yeah, totally fucked-up. And I was in active combat in the army; I know a lot of screwed-up people. Believe me, I know how to recognize it. I had counseling. I mean, I’m practically an expert.”

  I’m laughing out loud now, and when I turn to look at him, I see tiny crow’s-feet are crinkling at the corners of his eyes and his lips are curling up. “Would you recommend it?” I ask, when I’ve stopped laughing.

  “What?”

  “Counseling. Lissa was very dismissive of it. Though to be fair, that may have been because she hadn’t found the right therapist. It’s not like there’s an enormous pool of them here.” I try not to look at my watch, I try not to count the minutes that are passing, but I can’t help looking out toward the sea again, still wondering about the boat. It was coming in to meet someone, surely. Or to drop someone off.

  “You’ve never tried it?” I shake my head. “I suppose it depends on who you see, but I’ve had a good experience with it.” He pauses and takes a swig of the beer. “The way I think about it, it’s a method of getting an objective look at what pushes your buttons. It’s up to you what you do with that information afterward.” He moves as if to take another swallow of beer but pauses with the bottle near his lips. “You really stopped drinking without counseling?” I nod. “How?”

  “I moved to the States.”

  He makes the connection frighteningly fast. “Because it took you away from the people you drank with. It took you away from Lissa.”

  I don’t even need to nod, because he knows it’s true. It was a good career move for me—it would probably have taken me a couple more years to make partner without it—but that wasn’t why I leaped at the opportunity. “Everyone drank at uni; everyone drank to excess. We weren’t so different to everyone else—except I always knew we were, really. I could never see the point of just one glass of wine; I still can’t. For me, the goal was always complete annihilation; Lissa was like that, too—you know that.” I take a sip of my sparkling water. “I was in a pretty crappy headspace when I got to uni. Lissa and me—it was like we saved each other; I can’t explain it any other way.” Complete unconditional love. “Only, everyone else calmed down after they left uni, and we didn’t. I started to feel like . . .”

  “Like the cure was going to kill you.”

  “Something like that.” And that unconditional love is dangerous. There should be limits and boundaries. I did betray her, but not how she thinks. I betrayed her twice: first, by not being strong enough to stop her in her mad schemes; she relied on me for that, and I couldn’t always deliver. And second, by leaving her. I yield: I look at my watch. Almost fifteen hours now. Surely if I can share all of this with Adam, I can share my suspicions? I take a deep breath, but suddenly he says: “If you thought that Lissa killed Graeme, why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I couldn’t do that. Not without being sure.” If I had been sure, what would I have done then? I look across: he’s taking a swallow of beer. There’s that vulnerable triangle on show at the base of his throat again. “You could have gone to the police yourself.”

  “I know.” He stops, beer midway to his mouth, thinking. “That’s fair. But I couldn’t put a motive to it, not one that would stack up for the police. They were fighting a lot, I know, but that’s not exactly conclusive.” The bottle of beer travels down rather than up, unsipped. He looks at me. “Did you have something more?” I shake my head. It’s true: I didn’t. I’m certain Lissa didn’t know about Bron. And it’s clear Adam doesn’t know, either. He goes on: “I mean, if Graeme was having an affair or something, I would have had something to hang it on, but . . .” I can’t spill Bron’s secrets. I made a promise. I look away, and then I wonder if that’s too telling, and make myself look across at him. He lifts the beer to his mouth and actually swallows this time, his eyes looking into the past and taking absolutely no notice of me.

  I rest my eyes on him, once again weighing whether I should tell him what I know. I’m so exhausted by the secrets. But there’s still that odd thrum of tension that makes my stomach tighten in dread; a different kind of dread to that which is already there. “There’s something else you wanted to talk about,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  I look across to the left, to the pool of light from the lamps on the jetty on that side of the bay. “Out with it, then.”

  I hear him sigh; I hear the clunk of the bottle as he places it on the bar. “Her email,” he says quietly. I glance across, taken by surprise. “You lied about what was in it. I’ve been trying to work out why.” I freeze. Every single muscle in my body has instantly clenched tight. “You made out like it was all about her suspicions of Bron and Jem, but it really wasn’t. It was about something else entirely.”

  Slowly my muscles are unclenching. “How exactly do you know what was in her email?”

  “I read it on your phone when you went to the loo,” he says bluntly. I stare at him blankly. “Which is an unforgivable invasion of privacy, I know.” There’s a burst of laughter from the table; I glance across to see Steve tossing his cards down in mock disgust.

  “You read . . . But—my phone locks automatically. It has facial recognition.”

  “Yeah, but your PIN code for when that doesn’t work is really obvious. Two, five, eight, zero: straight down the middle, all the digits. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times.”

  “That is . . .” I really can’t find the words. I’m also trying to work it through. If he’s read the email, what does he really know? What was implied and what was actually in black and white?

  “Unacceptable. Unforgivable. I know.” I risk a glance at his face. He’s utterly impassive.

  “You don’t sound sorry for that,” I say tartly.

  “I’m not, really. I thought you weren’t being entirely truthful. I needed to know. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not sorry. Now I want to know why you were lying.”

  It’s such a straightforward delivery: no-nonsense, direct, unapologetic. I’m more confused than upset. “How on earth do you think I can ever trust you?”

  “Come on, Georgie.” He sounds weary. “You already don’t trust me. Or anyone else. Otherwise you wouldn’t have lied.”

  “Well, with that kind of circular logic you can really justify anything.” My fingers are kneading my temples, my eyes now on my knees as I perch on this ridiculously uncomfortable barstool.

  “And what’s your logic? You don’t trust anyone so you can lie to everyone?”

  “Actually, no.” I keep staring at my knees, my fingers working furiously at my temples. “I wasn’t lying.” Not exactly. “I was just trying to keep a promise.”

  This, at least, startles him. “A promise? To who? To Lissa?”

  “No. To Bron.”

  “Bron? But that makes no sense.”

  I shake my head. “Just—okay, stop. It doesn’t matter. That’s not what’s important right now.” I glance at the card players again.

  Adam follows my gaze. “We can go for a walk,” he suggests.

  I shake my head minutely. “We shouldn’t be apart from the others. It isn’t safe.”

  “Isn’t safe? Because of what happened to you and Cristina?” He looks at me for a beat. “No, that’s not it. What’s going on here,
Georgie? What do you know?”

  I should think this through, I should strategize, I should play every scenario through in my head before I say a single thing . . . but I’m just too tired. Bron would be able to do it—more than that, Bron would be incapable of not doing it—but I’m not Bron. I start speaking almost without deciding to. “I don’t know what I know. I went back to Jem’s, after I picked up my stuff to move into the presidential villa. I wanted to get the pull buoy, so I wouldn’t have to disturb him by picking it up if I decide to swim early tomorrow.” I glance at the card players. Duncan is smirking about something, and Bron is half groaning, half laughing. The table is now littered with empty beer bottles. I wonder where Jem is. Was the boat meant to meet Jem? Does it mean anything that Jem is so tight with Jimi? Adam waits for me to continue, his face watchful, but one leg, hitched up on the bar of the stool, is jiggling to a frenzied beat. “I saw . . .” I take a deep breath. I see it again: my hand opening the louvered door. The cupboard has one large space up to around waist height, in which boogie boards are stacked, then several shelves above which apparently have no order to them. I see my hand ferreting through the jumble of snorkeling masks and flippers and swim floats and swim paddles and swimsuits and goggles and caps and trunks; through all the detritus of water-related paraphernalia, looking for the distinctive blue-and-white or yellow-and-black stripes of a pull buoy. “I saw her red TYR swimsuit.” I almost miss it: it’s slipped down the back of the lowest shelf, and is obscured by the boogie boards below, but the fire-engine red catches my eye. “It’s in Jem’s pool cupboard. Right at the back, behind a load of other stuff.” I glance at him, trying to keep my own agitation under wraps. It’s hard not to whisper; it’s hard to trust that the music will cover my words if spoken at a normal volume. “Don’t you see? She couldn’t have been pulled from the ocean wearing it. I doubt she was in the ocean at all. He must have paid the fisherman to say that. He—”

  “He. Jem?”

  I nod jerkily.

  “Jem.” He looks at me seriously. “She could have had more than one Baywatch-red TYR swimsuit.”

  I shake my head definitively. “No. She only had one, and she couldn’t have got a second. Bron and I really liked it; we looked to see if we could get one ourselves, but they’d discontinued that style. And there hasn’t been anything similar available since from TYR. All three of us have been on the lookout; we’ve literally had WhatsApp chats on it.”

  “Not entirely conclusive, but okay, I’ll buy it.” He’s scanning the area whilst endeavoring to look calm. “So, what do you think happened?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t quite string it together.” If only I’d made her confide in me; I could have talked her out of whatever madness pushed Jem along this path. If only I’d been there for her. “Maybe he figured out she was planning to leave him.”

  “And what? Killed her? That’s an extreme reaction to the threat of divorce.”

  “Or maybe he thought she was going to kill him.”

  “If she’d been going to kill him, he’d be dead.” He delivers this in such a matter-of-fact manner that I choke back a half-hysterical laugh. “Anyway, why would he think she was going to kill him?”

  “Because . . .” I stop. Why would he?

  Adam is nodding. “Exactly. How would he know about her past vendettas?” I remember what Adam said the other day about Graeme: He wasn’t under any illusions about her. He just loved her anyway. Like you did. My throat is hot and closed tight. I look out into the darkness and tell myself I’m tracing the horizon line, even though I can’t see it. I should have been here. If I’d just been here . . . “I’m sure Jem knew nothing. Just look at his reaction to that story with the knife. He was drunkenly mouthing off about it the other day; he thinks you made it up.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” I hear the caustic note in my voice. “He’s trying to convince himself I made it up, but deep down he doesn’t believe that.” Adam tips his head briefly in silent agreement. “But you’re right, he had no reason to feel in danger. An argument, then? A fight with a tragic accident?”

  “Maybe. And then what? How would he dispose of the body?” He thinks for a minute and then answers his own question. “Off the side of a boat in deep water, with weights attached. That’s what anybody round here would do.”

  “So she’d have ended up in the water anyway, but probably nowhere near where the search had been taking place.” And not wearing a red swimsuit. She’s spinning gently underwater again, her hair swirling around her, obscuring her face. But this time she’s naked and vertical, held in place by a rope bound around her ankles that snakes down to a rock on the seabed, with her arms half raised, as if she’s about to start conducting an orchestra.

  “But, remember: someone saw her swimming,” Adam says. “Though I suppose she could have, and then she returned. Or maybe he was paid to say that, too . . . We’d have to question him, and the fisherman. And there’s no way that I can think of to do that without going through Jimi.”

  “I know. And Jimi is so close to Jem, I can’t imagine that he’d listen to us.”

  “Steve?” Adam suggests.

  I shake my head. “He’s loyal to Jem. And he wants his job back. He won’t go out on a limb.”

  “The blue boat from this evening. You think it was coming to meet Jem?”

  “Maybe that’s the fisherman’s boat. Or maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with anything.” Only I don’t believe that; not with how the driver spun away from Steve. It fits in somehow; I just don’t understand how yet. I glance at the ocean. If the boat is out there, circling, I wouldn’t hear it above the music.

  We sit quietly for a moment. “Follow the money,” I murmur. Adam looks at me. “You know, it’s so weird what Bron said about Graeme’s house. I distinctly remember him saying that the mortgage on it was next to nothing.”

  “Yes, that’s right: he inherited some money when his great-aunt died, and paid almost all of it down.”

  “So it doesn’t seem to make sense that Lissa didn’t have enough of her own money to invest fifty-fifty with Jem. Unless she didn’t want to—maybe she was more cautious on the business plan than I thought.”

  Adam shakes his head. “No, I spoke to Duncan about that. He was absolutely sure she couldn’t afford it, and Jem thinks the only thing in Lissa’s estate is her share of the hotel.”

  “That can’t be true.” Could she have spent it? Thousands, certainly; maybe even hundreds of thousands—but not millions, surely? Not without people noticing. “But regardless, the only thing Jem really wants is control of his own hotel. Which he had either way, whether she was alive or dead.”

  “Probably not if they divorced,” Adam reasons. “Duncan and Lissa could have ganged up against him.”

  “Yes, I suppose. If he thought she was going to divorce him, killing her would have guaranteed himself control.” Killing her. We’re talking about this as one might discuss whether to get take-out for dinner. I glance at the ocean again. Perhaps the boat is out there, idling above the waves, whilst beneath it the long, dark shape of the serpent ripples silently through the depths. “Assuming he didn’t get caught.”

  “True, but if he did, what would happen?” His brow furrows. “I’m sure the law says you can’t profit from your own crime. Would her share go to her parents instead, then?”

  “I suppose. But I expect Duncan would buy them out. I can’t imagine that they would want anything to do with this place.”

  “So Duncan would benefit more than Jem in that scenario.”

  “Yes. But not intentionally, right?”

  Adam shrugs. “Once you suspect one of us, you have to suspect all of us,” he says mildly.

  I close my eyes briefly. He’s right. It’s like a poison—no, a virus with no cure, spreading and infecting all it touches. We can’t go on together with suspicious minds . . . Some more noise erupts from
the card table. Bron’s smile is wide and loose; she’s several glasses of wine down and it shows. Steve is getting up from the table and heading our way. “Another beer?” asks Adam, climbing down from his stool and moving behind the bar.

  “Please. And one for Duncan. Excellent service here,” he says jocularly.

  “What are you playing?” I ask, though I have absolutely no interest.

  “Shithead. Though I always knew it by the much less offensive name of Threes. Duncan is cleaning up.”

  “Only because Georgie isn’t playing,” Adam says, passing across two beers.

  Steve takes a drink from one of the bottles. “Is your flight tomorrow morning?”

  “No, midafternoon,” I say.

  “You’ll want to keep an eye on the weather. There’s a cyclone that might or might not head this way. Even if we just get the tail, those things can really do some damage. It might be worth heading to the airport pretty early; the last ten kilometers of the road down to this place can suffer landslides if the rain is really heavy.”

  “Good advice; we’ll keep an eye on it.” Adam immediately starts tapping on his phone, searching for a weather website. I watch Steve make his way back to Bron and Duncan. They have their heads close together, but as Steve approaches, they break apart in what looks like a transparent change of subject.

  “Shall I try and figure out the coffee maker?” Adam suggests eventually.

  “Please.” I turn to face him as he studies the complicated silver machine, but I have to adjust to be side-on; I can’t turn my back on the sea, on the double threat it represents. So I sit awkwardly, half looking out and half studying Adam. It’s interesting to watch him ponder a problem. He’s like Bron in a way: fiercely analytical. He likes to gather the facts; I’d bet he had the most detailed business plan ever seen before he embarked on his bike shop business. He starts to amass what he has deduced he needs, and I glance idly at my phone, wondering if I ought to change the PIN code now. I’ll only forget the new one, but I probably should on principle . . .