One of the Girls(89)
Bella gasped.
They were all there. All watching. All saw the way Ana staggered back towards the wall.
Fell.
85
Fen
Fen flew up the stone steps, elbows pumping. A male voice, loud and scornful, cut across the others. Then she heard Ana shouting, ‘Watch your fucking mouth!’
Fen ground to a halt, head craned towards the villa.
It all happened so fast. Everyone too near the terrace edge. That low, low wall. She knew the fear of being pinned there by Nico, the terror of understanding there was nothing but night at her back.
From this angle, she couldn’t see who it was, not clearly. She only saw a figure stumbling, as if they were about to rest on the wall, but instead of sitting, they leaned back – too far back – arms widening into wings, legs lifting off the ground, rising.
In silent horror, she watched as the figure tipped over the edge of the terrace wall, falling through the night.
Arms windmilling.
A guttural, raw cry.
Dropping like a stone.
Red material swirling.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Then the dull, hard blow of a body against rock.
Silence.
Nothing more.
The sea stilled.
The sky blinking stars.
Fen was rooted to the spot, blood hot in her throat.
Then, from the terrace, she heard someone scream.
86
Lexi
The cry was piercing and wild, cutting high into the night. It echoed off the stone villa and the lonely, sheer cliff.
Lexi dug her fingernails into her throat, clawing her scream into silence.
No … no … no …
Robyn rushed forwards, gripping the wall as she peered down towards the rocks. ‘Oh my God …’ she gasped, shoulders beginning to shake.
No one moved. No one did anything.
‘Call an ambulance,’ Lexi whispered, her voice strange, hoarse.
But she knew.
They all knew.
It was a sheer drop of over a hundred feet onto jagged rock.
No one survives a fall like that.
87
Ana
Ana remained motionless. She felt as if all the blood had been drained from her body, a cool, hollow feeling suffusing her.
She blinked.
Stared at the empty space in front of the wall.
One moment she’d been standing on the terrace, listening as Ed said those awful things about Sam. She could not be witness to that, watching as Ed’s words destroyed someone else. So she’d stepped forward, told him, Watch your fucking mouth!
Without warning, his hand had cut through the air, connecting with her cheek. The slap had been bone-shakingly hard and she’d slammed into the wall, fallen to the ground. Her cheek had flamed with an instant, bright pain. She’d put her fingertips to her skin, amazed to find there was no blood.
When she’d dragged her gaze to Ed, he’d no longer been looking at her. He was staring at Eleanor, chin jutting forward, eyes narrowed. Ana realised it was not the first time Ed had hit a woman. It was all right there, pulsing in the space between brother and sister.
In the moonlight, Eleanor’s skin looked white, her gaze burning. Her whole body trembled, alight with rage.
‘You!’ she’d snarled.
One word. Filled with fire and spit and hate.
And that’s when it’d happened. When Eleanor’s lips had peeled back from her teeth, and she’d charged.
88
Eleanor
He shouldn’t have said it, that thing about Sam.
That he was laughable.
Eleanor had once believed that she was the only person Ed treated with easy cruelty – and that, somehow, she deserved it for being odd, for not acting like other people, for showing him up. She’d internalised that belief because it was less painful to imagine herself as strange than admit that her big brother – who was meant to love and protect her – was callous.
Watch your fucking mouth! Ana had warned.
Ed had barely glanced at her as he’d swung his palm hard at her cheek, like she was nothing.
‘You!’ Eleanor heard herself growl, an electric tingle spreading down to her fingertips, a rush of blood pounding in her ears.
Ed raised an eyebrow in contempt. It was the dismissiveness of the gesture. That none of it – none of what he had done to her, to Sam, to Ana – mattered, because he saw himself as better. White noise filled her head and something that had been smouldering inside her for too long finally ignited.
She felt herself moving, storming forward, head down, charging. It was motion fuelled by instinct and anger and a lifetime of cruelties and hurts. Love flying so very close to hate.
She heard the grunt of air being expelled from Ed’s lungs as her shoulder connected with his chest. He staggered towards the low wall but, rather than catching him – breaking his fall like it had done for Ana – the wall took his legs out from beneath him.
Eleanor was aware of his body tipping away from her, from the terrace, from safety. His expression shifted from surprise to fear as he reached out, grabbing for her.
Everything slowed: she could feel the damp press of the red wrap, still draped over her arm, beneath his grip; she could feel her bare feet sliding across the flagstone, desperate for purchase; she could feel her body, destabilising, lurching forwards with his.