How to Kill Your Best Friend

by Lexie Elliott

  Adam is flattening off the coffee grounds in the portafilter. “You know, the emails.” I look at him inquiringly. “How can we be sure they were from Lissa? You said yourself that she sounded . . . off. Not her normal self. And, not to throw myself straight back in the doghouse or anything, but it was a cinch for me to break into your email account, and we’re not even married . . .”

  “Yes.” I don’t even bother trying to pretend I’m still cross at his flagrant breach of privacy. I stare at him, thinking. Then I grab my phone and unlock it, scrolling quickly to the email from georgieayers698@gmail.com. He twists the portafilter into the machine as if he’s been a barista all his life, sets it running, then comes to look over my shoulder. I turn my head to look at him archly.

  “Oh, come on,” he says, off my look. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it already.”

  I shake my head disapprovingly, but I don’t hide my screen from him. We both start to read.

  Subject: Wish you were here

  Seriously, honey, you should be here. You were meant to be here. I need you to keep me in check. Actually, I needed you a while ago. I’ve not been entirely honest in my emails; I thought I could guilt you into coming out here. Alas, no. But this one is the unadulterated truth. I’ve done a bad thing and I’m not sorry. I can’t tell you what it is right now, but you’ll find out anyway.

  The therapist I was seeing, the one I told you about with the ridiculous skirt suits that are too small for her and shoes that are too big for her (like I’ve said before, you can’t be choosy about your therapists on an island in the middle of nowhere) thinks I should seek forgiveness for past transgressions. (I’ve been amusing myself by recounting some of my exploits. She pretends not to be horrified, but she is.) Apparently, seeking forgiveness is an important step in moving forward, in starting anew. A clean slate and all that. I think of it more like a level playing field. Mine’s not level, but we differ substantially, her and I, in our opinion on the direction of the slant. I’m owed, and I’ve never been one for forgiveness.

  I miss you. I know I shut you out after Graeme died, so you could say it’s my own fault, but I miss you. Graeme died. It’s still hard to write that, to think that, to live with that. And you think I killed him—I know you do, no matter what you say or have said. I was never upset that you thought that. I could have, under certain circumstances. We both know that. I’m upset because of why you thought that. You took a side, and it wasn’t mine. That’s betrayal. I’ve tried so hard to cast it in another light, but I can’t. I lost you at the same time as I lost Graeme. I just didn’t realize it. It’s ironic actually; it was the fact that you questioned me, that you thought I might have done it, that led me to hunt for clues. I’m not sure I would ever have found out if not for that. Would I have been happier not knowing? Maybe. But maybe not. I’d have been blaming myself, and now I know who I should be blaming.

  There are countless versions of this email that I’ve drafted and deleted, most of them full of tirades of vitriol against Bron and Jem. (I swear he’s needling me on purpose now. He’s all: Bronwyn, your kids are so gorgeous! You seem like such a great mother! I really want to cum on your enormous freckled lactating tits! Okay, he didn’t say that last one, but I know he’s thinking it. To hear him tell it, she’s a “voluptuous Titian painting” rather than a fucking Picasso.) But all of that is just background noise for the purpose of this particular email. This is about your betrayal.

  So. I’ve done something. It’s taken a long time to put it all in place. You’ll find out soon enough what it is. I really wish you had been here to stop me, but also, I really don’t. It’s probably better this way. My jellyfish therapist (no brains, no spine) thinks I need to move on, which is the one point we actually agree on, but I can’t do that until everything has been leveled off. When the dust has settled I can start again. You won’t be part of my new life. I love you, you know I love you, but I can’t forgive.

  I expect you’ll call as soon as you get this. Don’t bother. I won’t answer.

  The impact is no less significant for this being a second read. If anything, it’s greater; the blows have the time to properly land. I finish a few seconds ahead of Adam. I can feel him looking at me when he’s done. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  He absorbs that. “What do you think?”

  “It’s definitely her. And she doesn’t sound in the slightest like someone who’s planning to either kill herself or go out swimming somewhere known to be highly dangerous in the dead of night.”

  “Yeah.” A beat passes. “Would you have called her if you’d got it when she sent it?”

  “Yes.” I look at the ocean again. It makes no sense to rage at an overenthusiastic email firewall, but nonetheless I’m filled with it. If only. If only the email had got to me. If only I’d been able to call her. “She’d have picked up. I think. I think she’d have picked up.”

  I can feel him nodding. “Yes. She says otherwise, but I’m sure deep down she wanted you to stop her, whatever it was she had planned.” He pauses. “I guess Jem stopped her instead. Maybe Cristina figured it out. Maybe he . . .” Shot her. He doesn’t say the words. He doesn’t have to.

  “What do we do now?” I thought I would feel better, sharing this with someone—with Adam—but I don’t. I can no longer kid myself that I’ve simply got myself worked up inside my own head, that’s there’s a reasonable explanation just waiting to be heard. The reasonable explanation is that my best friend’s husband is a killer.

  He sighs. “I don’t know. I suppose we ought to get proof on the swimsuit.”

  “I should have taken a photo. I can’t think why I didn’t.” Because it was such a shock. Because the instant I saw it I wanted to run and not ever stop running, bad knee be damned. “I can do that when I return the pull buoy.”

  “The safest thing would be to send the photo to Jimi when we’re at the airport.”

  “Yes.” I look at my watch. Less than fifteen hours.

  I can feel him looking at me again. “Why did she think you betrayed her?” he asks diffidently.

  I want to tell him, I really do. Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to open myself up and let everything blow out of me, like dust in the wind? But I promised. I shake my head. “Not my secret to tell.”

  SEVENTEEN

  BRONWYN

  My wineglass is empty. It’s possible I’ve drunk too much again—probable, even—but I’m actually having fun, for what feels like the first time since I got here. Steve is making a valiant effort to drink away the truly awful day he’s had, and Jem hasn’t joined us, for which I’m eternally grateful—that would have been a buzzkill, if ever there was one. Quite apart from the fact that he would have been—understandably—reeling from the shock of Cristina’s death, I’d have been supremely self-conscious and awkward around him, wondering if the others were analyzing my every word and gesture. And they would have been; at least, Adam and Georgie would have been, for sure. They’re up at the bar now, their heads together in that way they have that seems to shout that the rest of the world isn’t welcome. Georgie and Lissa had that, too. When they were together, you knew that everyone else was just the sideshow, in their opinion. In everybody’s opinion, actually. You never quite knew what might happen when you were around them; it felt wild and reckless to even be along for the ride.

  Ooh, I’m about to win. “And I’m out,” I say, dramatically laying down my ace to groans from Steve and Duncan. “I’m going to get another glass whilst you two battle it out for second place.” I put my right hand up to my forehead in the shape of an L. “Losers,” I singsong. “How many have you actually won, Steve?”

  Steve shakes his head at me, smiling ruefully. “It’s rude to mock the afflicted. But can you grab us two more beers whilst you’re there, please?”

  “Sure.” I’m a little unsteady on my feet as I head toward Adam and Georgie at the
bar, but I’m not sure anyone would notice. Georgie smiles at me as I approach. I slip my arm round her waist. She’s so slim, Georgie, but there’s nothing insubstantial about her. She’s like rope.

  “Come and play, Georgie Porgie,” I wheedle, whilst nodding to Adam, who has already retrieved the wine from the fridge to fill up my glass. I tug at her gently, but she resists, holding on to both the barstool and the counter, and shaking her head.

  “Sorry. I can’t quite get into the frame of mind today.”

  “Beers for the boys, too?” Adam interjects.

  “Yes, please.” I take Georgie’s hand off the counter and use it to try to pull her off the barstool. “Please come. You’ll get into the frame of mind; you just need more to drink. What are you having?”

  “Sparkling water.”

  “That’s your problem. Come on, have a glass of wine. You used to be fun, you know, before you gave up drinking.” Her eyes leap to my face, shocked; shocked, and something else: hurt. Adam is suddenly still, on the other side of the bar, in a way that seems almost menacing. I’m acutely aware that I’ve crossed a line. “I—I’m sorry, I—”

  “Here are the beers,” says Adam evenly. His face is implacable, as it always is, but his eyes are flint. He’s holding the bottles out to me. I want to keep apologizing, but it’s clear he won’t brook it. After a second I take the bottles, awkwardly in one hand, so that my other can scoop up the glass of wine. I turn and head back to the card table, feeling their eyes upon me, and their silence, too: they won’t speak whilst I’m in earshot.

  “Thanks,” says Duncan, reaching out to take the two beers off me. Then he glances at me again. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I say brightly, settling back down at the table. Duncan starts to deal, and I take a sip of my wine, glancing sideways toward the bar. Their heads are together again, and Adam’s forearm is stretched across the bar, the back of one finger gently stroking down her arm. He’s timed it to perfection, I think. There wouldn’t have been space for him if Lissa was still alive.

  * * *

  —

  “Up we go,” says Duncan. We’re back at the ranch, as Duncan has taken to calling the presidential villa, in a nasal imitation of an American accent. He has an arm around me, and I am dependent on it to an embarrassing degree as we navigate the steps to the front door. It’s a big door; heavy, wooden and almost twice the width of a normal front door in the UK. I like it.

  “You should live here, you know,” I tell Duncan. “You’d have no trouble getting the double buggy through this door.”

  “One day. Right now the commute would be a killer.”

  “You practically run the company. You can work from anywhere.” I slither from his support onto the white sofa and fight not to close my eyes. I can’t imagine ever having a white sofa. The impracticality of it is jaw-dropping.

  “I actually do run the company.” Did I know that already, or did he get promoted recently? “And to run it, you need to be on the ground. Water?” He doesn’t wait for me to reply; he starts pouring from one of the courtesy bottles that have been left out.

  Georgie and Adam are just behind us. “The weather report is looking worse,” says Adam to nobody in particular. “I checked the British Airways’ site, and they haven’t put up any kind of notice about it, though.” Of course you did, I think. Be prepared: isn’t that what they teach you in the army?

  The sofa, for all that it’s white, is very comfortable. I’ve slid down on it, and my eyes are starting to close. Suddenly I feel a gentle tapping on my head. “You’ll feel much better if you sleep in your own bed,” Duncan is saying.

  For a moment I consider staying where I am, but I know he’s right. I groan and lever myself upright. “Here,” he says, offering a glass. “Best get some water down you.” I drink it all obediently, and then he takes it off me and refills it whilst I struggle to my feet.

  “Thanks, Dunc,” I say, taking the glass back and weaving wearily toward my room. “Night, all.”

  “Night, Bron,” says Georgie. There’s nothing in her tone to suggest she hasn’t forgiven me, but nonetheless, what I said sits between us. I hadn’t even imagined that the words that came out of my mouth—you gave up drinking—were true until I saw her reaction, because surely I’ve seen her drinking plenty of times lately? Well, every swimming holiday, at least; I wouldn’t know what she does in Manhattan. Regardless, I hadn’t meant to hurt her; I don’t think I knew that I could. It throws everything I’ve ever thought about Georgie off-kilter; all those wild, reckless times at uni when she seemed invulnerable, having the time of her life. I have the sense that everything is shifting and sliding in my mind, but I don’t quite understand it yet. I’ll speak to her in the morning. Things are always better in the morning.

  At the door of my bedroom, I fumble for the light switch with one hand, half facing the wall. I find it, and the dim hotel lighting gently switches on: mood lighting, completely useless for real life. I turn toward the main body of the room, and—I drop my glass. Even as it’s smashing on the hard tiled floor, into one large piece and a myriad of small shards among a puddle of water, I recognize the cliché from a thousand movies. What has caused me to drop the glass is a cliché, too, but no less effective for all of that: sprawled across the wall of my room, in a line of foot-high black spray-painted letters that cross both the painted wall behind the bed and the ceiling-high cupboard doors on either side of the bed, is:

  HAVE YOU TOLD THEM WHAT YOU DID, BITCH?

  Underneath the letters, there’s a large knife stuck in the wall, pinning something to the plaster, some sort of scrap of material, in a pattern of blue and purple diamonds that faintly tugs at recognition in my brain, but it’s so incongruous that I can’t place it—and then all of a sudden I realize what it is. It’s one of my swimsuits. The knife is a cleaver, almost a machete; a rectangular blade attached to a sleek black handle with a pleasing aesthetic curve to it. It’s the type of knife one might use to chop meat; I expect my swimsuit offered little resistance, but only the top corner of the knife is buried. The wall must be quite unexpectedly hard, I find myself thinking.

  Duncan gets to me first. “Are you al—” He breaks off. “What the—” I grab his arm as he starts to step inside, intending to explain that I smashed a glass, but the words don’t come. Instead I gesture at the floor. He looks down wordlessly, then back at the wall. Georgie and Adam have joined us in the doorway by now, their own questions dying in their throat. The size of the letters, the sheer abandon of spraying paint with no care or regard to the decor, somehow demands silent homage. I stare at it. There can’t be much doubt that the message is meant for me. Once could be a mistake, but twice is beyond coincidence.

  I realize I’m being gently shaken. “Bron, come away,” Georgie is saying. She might have been saying it for a while; it’s as if I’ve gradually become aware of a radio in the background, and also simultaneously aware that it’s been on for some time. “Bron, come now; come away, honey. Come now.” She shepherds me gently to the pristine white of the living room, with its snowy sofa and unblemished walls. For a moment I consider refusing to sit down—surely I will besmirch the sofa?—until a small iota of sense prevails: the writing is on the wall, not on me. Adam hands me a can of Coca-Cola, one of the small ones from the minibar. Rob would never let us take drinks from there: Daylight robbery, he would say. But Rob isn’t here, so I take the drink mechanically and sip it, and the sugar which rushes through my system is like a light bulb turning on, or a muffler being removed: suddenly sound and light flood back in.

  Georgie sits beside me on the sofa, her worried eyes focused on my face. Duncan and Adam are hovering anxiously in front of us. “I’m all right,” I say, because that’s what one says, no matter whether it’s true or not at the time. Just saying it is a talisman: it will become true at some point.

  “We should call the police,” Duncan says. “I�
��ll call Jem. He can sort it out.” He takes a few steps away and starts to talk into his phone in a low voice, pacing around the room as he speaks.

  “You can sleep in my room,” Georgie says to me. “We ought to leave yours untouched for the police.”

  “Thanks.” I wonder if she intends to be in the room, too, or if she’ll be with Adam. Then I realize it doesn’t matter: I won’t be able to sleep anyway. Not when someone has buried a knife through my swimsuit into the wall; not when someone is out there who surely wants to put that blade through me, with or without the swimsuit.

  Adam has gone to the kitchen; in a few seconds he reappears. “That knife is from the kitchen here. There’s one missing from the knife block. I take it that’s your swimsuit?” I nod. “Then at least we know who the messages are meant for,” he says grimly.

  Duncan rejoins us. “Jem is calling the police. But he’s not sure they’ll be able to come out anytime soon; the other end of the island is getting battered pretty hard.” As if on cue, there’s a sudden flash from outside. All four of us turn toward the long wall of glass that separates the indoor living space from the outdoor space, which is beautifully lit and equally well provided with sofas and tables and the like in the open area between the villa and the pool. From nowhere, rain starts to hammer down, hitting the ground improbably hard, as if it has been flung there with force and malice. The noise is extraordinary, a constant tattoo of a million drumbeats. It takes another flash, and the crash of thunder several seconds later, for me to realize that the flashes are lightning. I should have twigged to that before now; I must be still drunk, for all that I thought the shock of the bedroom scene had tipped me into full sobriety.

  “Wow,” says Georgie, wide-eyed. “If this is just the tail, I’d hate to be close to the center of the storm.”

  “Did anybody leave anything outside?” Duncan asks, in a remarkable moment of practicality. “The wind is picking up; you might lose it if you did.” Nobody moves. The rain is mesmerizing. We watch it for what might be seconds or minutes or hours. I have an urge to go outside and stand in it, face upturned; to feel it hammering on my skin, washing me clean. Another movie cliché.