“Thanks. Coffee?” Kitty and Jack are on the living room floor, engrossed in the toys Georgie brought. One of them makes an extremely loud chirruping every twenty seconds or so. I silently hope it has an off switch; otherwise the batteries might mysteriously go missing very soon.
“Please. I haven’t really adjusted to the time zone; I need all the caffeine I can get. You look really well,” she says, leaning on the kitchen counter as I run the new all-singing, all-dancing coffee machine. Rob likes his coffee. He didn’t quibble about the expense for that, at least.
“Thanks.” She means I look thinner. Which I am. “I’ve been keeping up the swimming. You never know when it might come in handy,” I joke. She winces theatrically. “Too soon?”
“Just a little.”
I take the cups across to the table, and we settle opposite each other. The French doors are open onto the garden. I can hear a bee moving lazily around the lavender near the doorway. “You look well, too,” I say. She does. She’s got a nice hint of tan, and she looks relaxed, as if she’s on holiday, though apparently this is a work trip. She’s come straight from the office; she’s wearing a superchic short-sleeved shirtdress that’s the perfect office-to-social-occasion choice.
“Well, it would be hard to look worse than when we last saw each other, I suppose.” Eight weeks ago. We all said goodbye at Heathrow Airport, dead eyed with exhaustion from the flight, and from everything else, too. Poor Georgie had a connecting flight to catch and not much time to do it in, particularly with a bad knee. A memory pops into my mind of her walking away from Adam, Duncan and myself down a long airport corridor, her back ramrod straight even while she limped off, completely alone; we watched her together, all three of us, but she didn’t so much as glance backward. I’m not sure it had struck me before what a big step she took in moving to the US on her own, leaving all friends and family. Well, friends, at least. She left family a long time ago.
“Is your knee okay now?”
“Mostly. It still twinges on a breaststroke kick, but then I’ve never been much of a breaststroker.” Neither of us says what we’re both thinking: Lissa was the breaststroker.
“Where are you staying? Has your firm put you up in a nice hotel?”
She blushes a little. “They would have, but actually I’m staying with Adam.”
Interesting. And the blush makes it even more interesting. “So are you two doing the long-distance thing?”
“We haven’t really talked about it.” She stirs her coffee for absolutely no reason, seeing as she hasn’t put any milk or sugar in it. Then she surprises me with candor: “I think he wants me to say something.”
That’s smart of Adam, forcing her to make active choices. “Well, what do you want?”
She covers her face with both her hands. “Oh God, I don’t know,” she moans. “I’m basically a novice at this.” I can’t help laughing, and she removes her hands. “Don’t mock, you annoying, smug married person.”
“Married, but not smug.” I can’t joke about that. “Never smug, now.”
Her face sobers instantly, and she nods. “How much did you have to explain to Rob?” she asks delicately. We haven’t really had a chance to catch up on this. We’ve spoken a few times, but I’ve always had either the kids or Rob within earshot. I did manage to find some privacy when I called her to let her know that Lissa’s body had been found in the water—for real, this time—some five hundred miles away from the hotel, but that was a short conversation. You can’t really segue from something like that to anything at all.
I shrug. “Nothing. Lissa was unstable. For some reason, she got the wrong end of the stick about Jem. There’s nothing else for him to know.” He hadn’t really questioned much anyway. He’d always thought Lissa was a bit loony tunes—and Georgie, too, back in the day—so it fit perfectly into his worldview.
“Did Jem do anything? When they got the body back?”
“No. There wasn’t any point; there’d already been a memorial. And with the circumstances being so murky . . .”
We watch an unusually large bee fly through the open doors. It moves left, then right, then figures out its mistake and flies straight back out again.
“Have you spoken to him much?” she asks.
“Jem?” She nods. “A few times. I think it’s fair to say you’re not on his Christmas list.” She nods again and sips her coffee, not in the least surprised. Jem’s complicated view of Georgie certainly hadn’t been improved by her tipping his not-dead wife into the water: Jem thought she should be standing trial for murder, or at least manslaughter. Given he should have been in the dock for obstruction of justice, I couldn’t find a lot of sympathy for him on that score. “He should be opening up the hotel next season, though. Duncan is helping him rebrand. Oh—and Kanu Cove is becoming a nature reserve; some marine biologist found evidence of—”
“The serpent?” Her eyes are wide, expectant. Almost hopeful, which is odd.
“No, not that.” She visibly deflates. “Some rare type of mollusk. It means the government will purchase the land from the hotel estate, and Jem won’t have to worry about it in terms of guest security anymore.”
“That’s great for Jem.” She really sounds like she means it; the antipathy doesn’t seem to travel both ways.
“Would you ever go back there?” I find myself asking. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself.
She doesn’t immediately answer. “I don’t . . . I don’t know,” she says at last. “Maybe one day. But I don’t know.”
“Mummy, can I have a drink of milk?” It’s Kitty, at the kitchen door.
“Magic word,” I say repressively.
“Pleeeeease can I have a drink of milk?”
“Of course you can, sweetie.” I get up from the kitchen table and cross to the cupboard where the kiddie beakers are kept. I threw out all of our mismatched crappy plastic ones when we moved and got ten of the Emma Bridgewater polka-dot melamine ones; it’s a small thing, but they make me smile every time. “More coffee, Georgie?”
“Please.” Kitty is scrambling onto Georgie’s lap, without any care for where her sharp elbows or knees might make contact. Georgie doesn’t seem to mind at all. It crosses my mind that if she does become a mother, she may well be incapable of discipline. And then it crosses my mind that I’ve never thought of Georgie becoming a mother before. That hadn’t even seemed in the realm of possibility.
When I turn back to the table to deposit the tumbler of milk, Kitty isn’t on Georgie’s lap anymore. She’s scrambled onto the counter to reach the naughty cupboard. “Kitty!”
“Georgie wanted a cookie,” she says irrepressibly.
“She told you that telepathically, did she?”
Georgie laughs. “I would like a cookie, Kitty,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “All right.” I collect Georgie’s coffee from the machine. “Don’t forget plates,” I call to Kitty.
“I’ve got the bags instead.” I turn to her in alarm, my breath catching in my throat. Kitty, oblivious, places the cookies on the table on the brown paper bags and scrambles back into Georgie’s lap. “You can’t have them if you’re allergic to nuts,” she says seriously to Georgie. “Mummy always puts hazelnuts in them.”
I watch Georgie register the two cookies, each on their own brown paper bag as a substitute for a plate. I watch her lift her head wordlessly, her shocked eyes meeting mine across the unkempt blond head of my daughter. It’s too late. The connection has been made. I could lie, but she wouldn’t believe me; whatever she’s already seen on my face won’t allow that. I see the horror dawning on her as she works it through, making link after link. Her eyes haven’t left mine; I feel my cheeks burning. She makes a reflexive movement, as if to push away from the table, but then stops helplessly, pinned by the presence of my daughter on her lap.
“Kitty, maybe you could take Georg
ie’s cookie to Jack,” I say quickly. “I think Georgie is feeling a little sick after all.”
Kitty nods and scrambles down. Georgie breaks eye contact to watch her tiny figure disappear through the doorway. That’s why I did it, I want to scream. For her, for Jack, for Rob. For the life that was about to be destroyed through absolutely no fault of theirs.
Georgie turns back to me slowly. She no longer looks so tanned; in fact, she looks ill. But she’s Georgie: she won’t pull any punches. She’s a rip-the-Band-Aid-off-in-one-go kind of girl. “But you knew he was allergic,” she says shakily, almost bewildered. Those green eyes, warm and filled with laughter only moments ago, are looking at me as if she can’t comprehend what’s in front of her.
“Yes. We all did.”
“And yet . . .” She stops, as if it’s too appalling to even vocalize, and then steels herself to try again. “And yet you gave him the cookie.” I look at the table. I won’t cry. I won’t cry.
“Bronwyn.” Bronwyn. Not Bron. Her shock is receding; there’s a whipcrack in her tone, and yet she hasn’t raised her voice at all. I take it back: she’ll be perfectly capable of disciplining her children. But I am not her child; she cannot discipline me—she hasn’t the right. I did what I had to do under the circumstances. I lift my chin.
“Yes.”
“Wait: his EpiPen.” She looks at me with fresh horror, and other things, too. Disbelief, disappointment. I could drown on the wave of hot shame that floods through me. “You—you removed it?”
I can’t help it; I look down at the table again. That’s the crux of it, really. The rest could just about be accidental: one could feasibly have forgotten about the allergy, or have forgotten there were hazelnuts in the recipe. And it was accidental—sort of; I didn’t go there intending to give him it. He had a sweet tooth; he spotted the cookie bag and tweaked it out of my handbag and I just . . . didn’t stop him. I see him taking the first bite, my mouth opening to say words that could have sent my life one way—but I didn’t say them. I closed my mouth, I was silent, and my life took a different turn. But the EpiPen: that was deliberate. Excusing myself to use the bathroom and instead searching quickly for his jacket to find and remove his EpiPen: one couldn’t call that an accident. I lift my head and square my shoulders. “He was going to tell Lissa. He wasn’t leaving her or anything; just the opposite. He wanted to start over with her, with a clean slate. We weren’t meeting for, for—well, you know.” I can’t say sex with my kids in the next room. “All of that was over. I was trying to talk him out of it.”
“Because you knew what she would do.”
“And I wasn’t wrong! Look what she did do. I was just—”
“I know,” she interrupts. “You were just cleaning up the mess. It’s what mothers do. Isn’t that what you always say?” Her head is cocked, and now she’s looking at me like one might consider a piece of art that you haven’t quite decided where you stand on. Shock was preferable to this detachment. Suddenly I’m scared.
“You can’t tell anybody. Please. You can’t—”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t keep secrets anymore.” She’s pushing back her chair. “I kept yours, and look what it did to Lissa and me. I thought maybe Lissa killed Graeme—did you know that? I wasn’t there for her, and it was you all along. So, no, I don’t keep secrets anymore.”
“I—” She can’t mean that. She can’t. “Nobody will believe you. There’s no evidence.” The bags aren’t even from the same shop; we’ve moved since Graeme died, and I get them from a different place now.
She looks at the brown bags as she leaves the table and shrugs. “I expect not.”
“Georgie—”
“I’ll say goodbye to the kids now.”
“If you say anything, Georgie—if you say anything, just think what it could do to the kids. To Kitty. Your goddaughter—just think—”
“Goodbye, Bronwyn.” She’s turning for the door.
I fall silent, tears running down my cheeks though I’m not sobbing. I stand in the kitchen, watching her leave. Her back is ramrod straight once again, and she doesn’t look back. She never looks back.
TWENTY-SIX
GEORGIE
I walk down the street toward the lido. It’s been the kind of summer’s day that showcases England at its best: a warmth without any fierceness that extends into the long, still-light evening. Even though it’s gone 8 p.m., the people on the streets are in short sleeves, and I’ve no need of the cardigan that’s in my bag.
I call Adam. “Hey, you,” he says. I can hear his almost-smile. “I’m still at the shop. Are you still at Bron’s?”
“No, I left ages ago.”
He pauses, intuition flickering. “Is everything okay?”
“Actually, no. Not really. I’ve just come from the police station.”
“What?”
“I figured it out. She killed Graeme. The paper bag, the cookie with the nuts. It was Bron.”
“On—on purpose?”
“Yes. He was going to tell Lissa.”
“Wait—Bron admitted this to you?” He sounds incredulous. I explain. It takes far less time than it should. Surely the reason for a man’s death—a good man, a man we all loved—should consume more than fifteen seconds of phone time. “Oh my God,” he breathes. There’s silence down the phone line. I pause by a park and loll against the fence. I feel very tired, yet my head feels oddly light. Another effect of jet lag, I expect. Or perhaps of having reported my remaining best female friend to the police for murder.
“And, what, you went straight to the police?”
“Yes. I told you, I’m done with secrets.” There are still kids playing in the park, shouting as they whiz down the slide, though it seems late to me for that. Surely they should be in bed by now? An old poem floats into my head: In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day.
“I . . . Jesus.”
“I don’t expect they’ll convict her; they probably won’t even charge her.” I think again of the face of the doubtful desk sergeant that I spoke with. He seemed very young for the job. Though that probably says more about me than him.
“You know it means that Rob will find out.” There’s no accusation in his voice.
“Yes.” Of course that has occurred to me. And it has occurred to me that I may not have many friends left after this. Certainly not Bronwyn. I don’t know which way Duncan will tip, either. Will he think she did a terrible thing and should be punished? Or will he think that punishing her won’t bring Graeme back, and would hurt Rob and the kids? I can’t pick it. Adam is the only one I can count on. At least, I’m presuming I can count on him. “Not just Rob, I expect. Everyone will find out.”
“You didn’t ring me before you went to the police,” he says mildly. “Did you think I might talk you out of it?”
Did I? “I don’t know. I just knew I had to do it, so I went and did it.” Like pulling off a plaster. “Would you have tried?”
He’s quiet. I imagine him in the shop, with some kind of strange bike-specific spanner in his hand; he’ll be spinning it unconsciously as he thinks it all through with the same kind of deep, careful concentration that he applies to his work on the bikes. “I don’t know. I might have suggested you sleep on it. But I think we’d still have ended up at the same place.” We. Something loosens within me. I was right: I can count on Adam.
“It’s not vindictiveness, you know.”
“God, I know that; you’ve never been vindictive. You’re done with secrets.”
“Yes—and more than that. It’s not for me to decide if she should be tried or punished or any of it. It can’t be my responsibility; I’m too close.” I’ve learned my lesson on that score. Diane was right: there were things she didn’t do, and Philip didn’t do, and I didn’t do. And maybe if we had done those things, Lissa wouldn’t have gone as far as she did, and s
he’d still be alive, but I can’t really tell. I’m too close for any perspective. I’ve always been too close for that. “It’s like—it’s like why doctors should never treat family members.”
“A new Georgie.”
“Yes.” I pause. “You’d better like this version.”
“Does this version still live in Manhattan?”
“Yes.” A small boy trips; a fraction of a heartbeat later comes a mournful wail. I watch as a young woman rushes over to scoop him up. I take the plunge. “Though I’m thinking that my neighborhood could use a good bike shop.” There’s absolute silence down the phone. I am literally holding my breath. The sunshine isn’t reaching my skin anymore. I watch as the woman soothes the boy; in seconds he is off, running full pelt toward the sandpit. Adam is still silent. I can’t take it; I have to say something. “You could—you could come for a recce.”
Still nothing. I’ve got this wrong; how can I have misread this so completely? Then: “I could,” he says cautiously. “But it would depend. Are you going to throw yourself into certain death again? Because there’s fucked-up, and then there’s suicidal. It’s just . . . I’m just not up for the latter. You have to want to be here.”
“I know. Things are different now.” Lissa is dead; really, really dead this time. Everything is different now. “I’m different now. And anyway, I’ll have you know that I had to fight really hard to live. Even with being the daughter of a serpent and all that.” I’m trying for humor, but we both know that it wasn’t funny at the time. That it’s never going to be funny.
“Yeah, I’ll give you that.” There’s a lightness in his voice now. “I could come check out the bike scene in Manhattan, I suppose. Maybe I could even fly back with you, if Mick can look after the shop.”
“That would be perfect.” It’s an extraordinarily beautiful day. I start to walk again. “I’m going for a swim at the lido; it’s open till ten tonight. Want to join me?”
How to Kill Your Best Friend Page 29