One of the Girls(78)

Bella stared right at her, voice cracking as she said, ‘I was in love with you, Robyn.’

Robyn was completely still.

‘You claimed you were drunk, concussed. That you didn’t remember.’

Guilt scorched her. Robyn hadn’t known how to handle it. Hadn’t understood what had happened or how she felt, so she had closed it out.

‘When you said that, it made me feel like … like I’d taken advantage of you. That beautiful thing that happened – became something broken, dirty.’

To Robyn’s horror, she saw tears trailing down Bella’s cheeks. She’d had no idea that was how Bella had felt. When she’d seen her a few days later, Bella had been her usual self – smiling, joking, breezy, the life and soul.

I was in love with you.

‘Bella,’ she began, stepping towards her. ‘I’m so, so sorry …’

‘Don’t,’ Bella said, lurching dangerously close to the cliff edge.

‘Careful,’ Fen warned.

Bella swung around, the red wrap lifting in the night.

Robyn sensed danger, like something metallic filling the air. She kept her voice low, careful not to startle Bella, as she said, ‘You’re too close.’

With her back to them, Bella said, ‘What do you care?’ There was a change in her tone, a raw sadness to it.

‘Please, Bella, take a step away,’ Robyn pleaded.

‘No one cares what happens to me.’

Robyn knew that attention was Bella’s oxygen, but this – this felt different. There was something about her, a defeated rounding of her shoulders, a worn edge to her voice.

‘That’s not true,’ Robyn said softly. ‘I care about you.’

‘You’re lying!’ Bella let out a growling roar, an animal sound of pain and frustration, as she launched the bottle of ouzo over the cliff edge.

Robyn watched moonlight catching the bottleneck as it turned through the night, liquid glinting like mercury.

Maybe Bella had been watching it too, not concentrating, because as she stepped back, the movement unbalanced something.

Robyn saw it happening in slow motion: the loose stone beneath Bella’s heel, the instability of her foot from the scorpion sting, the tip of Bella’s body towards the cliff edge, the billow of the red wrap.

Robyn lurched forward, reached out, tried to pull her back.

But her hand met only air.





Not one of us thought it would end the way it did. The sea – one moment, so alluring in its shimmering glory, and the next, dark, bottomless, and deadly. It was like it had been lying in wait, biding its time. Watching it all, unmoved by our screams.





71

Fen

Fen lurched to the edge of the cliff, falling to her knees. She dug her fingertips into the dusty earth as she stared over the edge.

A dark swathe of unbroken night.

She glared through empty space, which fell away towards the dark lip of the sea.

There was nothing there, only water, air.

Blood roared in her ears. The drag of her own breath.

At her shoulder, Robyn was deathly still. Her legs glowed white in the moonlight. Her face was wiped clean of any expression she could recognise. Winded by shock, Robyn stared back at Fen, eyes wide with terror.

And then she began to scream.

‘Bella!’ Robyn yelled, her voice fierce and heavy, as if she could yank Bella to the surface with a rope of sound.

Her name echoed off the cliff face, lonely and desolate, without an answer.

‘Bella! Bella!’ Robyn screamed, the sounds streaking together, knotted and broken. ‘I can’t see her! I can’t fucking see her! Bella!’

Her hands were moving, fast gestures cutting through the night, feet pacing on the spot, thoughts firing into words. ‘We need to get to her! How high are we? Eighty feet? More? Is it deep? God. Oh, God. We need help. To get help! The police! The coastguard! My phone – it’s in the villa.’

Fen couldn’t process the rush of words. She kept staring into the black water below, desperate to see something. Hear something. She forced herself to take a breath. ‘Run to the villa. Call the police. Then take out the rowing boat. There’s a torch in the lounge cupboard.’

Robyn nodded rapidly.

‘I’ll try and get down to Bella.’

‘How?’

‘That path to the hidden cove – it’s a couple of minutes away. I’ll climb down, swim out.’

‘It’s too dangerous! Even in daylight we—’

‘Go, Robyn! Now!’ Fen yelled, before turning on her heel and sprinting along the cliff edge, dirt loosening beneath her feet.





72

Eleanor

The sea washed against the hull of the rowing boat. The sound was soporific, the warm breeze brushing over Eleanor’s skin, as she drifted and drifted …

Far off in the distance, she heard a voice.

Let it wash away, too, she thought, concentrating on the slow rock of the boat, the sensation of being lulled to sleep.

But the voice was insistent. Shouting.

At the edge of her awareness, she caught the shape of the word. ‘Bella!’

She opened her eyes, looking up at the black sky pricked silver with stars.

A dream?