One of the Girls(91)

‘Yes,’ Bella said.

‘How can you be so calm? Ed is fucking dead! Right now! Down there! He’s dead, Bella! And we all saw what happened!’ Eleanor had charged at him. Sent him crashing towards the wall. She’d have gone over too if they hadn’t grabbed her.

Robyn couldn’t lie.

This is madness.

‘I’m getting my phone,’ Robyn said, breaking free of Bella’s gaze and hurrying into the villa.

It was a relief to step away from the others. She flicked on the light and stood in the centre of the kitchen, heart pounding, blinking into the glare.

She found her phone on the kitchen side, the screen coming to life at her touch.

Glancing towards the terrace, she saw her friends still framed in the flickering lantern light. Eleanor had been guided to the cushioned area and now sat hunched forward, fists gripping her top as if she needed something to hang onto.

When she’d charged at Ed, had she intended to send him over the wall?

Robyn didn’t think so, but how could she know for certain?

All she knew was that Ed was lying at the bottom of a cliff, dead.

Those were the facts.

She needed to stick to them.

Tell the truth.

Fingers trembling, she dialled.





92

Lexi

Lexi tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. There was an intense throbbing pressure in her temples. She pulled her hands free of Bella’s and squeezed them against the sides of her head.

Ed. He was dead. Her fiancé was dead.

She kept repeating these facts – yet she felt detached from them, like she couldn’t feel them.

She looked up to see Robyn exiting the villa, phone in hand. ‘I’m calling the police. I need to do it on the cliff.’

No one spoke.

No one told Robyn, Don’t.

No one told her, Do.

Robyn’s gaze found Lexi. Was there a beat of hesitation, a question in the rise of her brow? Was she silently asking, What do you want?

Soon the terrace, the villa, the rocks below, would be overtaken by search beams, flashing blue lights, uniformed police officers. For now – for a few more minutes – it was only them.

What do I want?

She got to her feet, passing Robyn, crossing the terrace towards the stone wall. Heart pounding, she planted her palms and looked down.

What she wanted was for Ed to get up! She wanted him to dust himself off, climb the villa steps, look her in the eye, and start talking! She wanted him to hold her, tell her he loved her, loved their baby – and that everything else she’d heard was a mistake!

She gripped the wall, thinking about the way Ed had once held her hands, saying, One day soon I’m going to ask you to marry me. She’d felt like there was a light shining in the centre of her chest. They’d been happy. She had felt happy, hadn’t she?

Yet right here, she’d seen the coldness in his expression as he’d slapped Ana. He’d changed in front of her eyes, like there had been another Ed lurking beneath his persona of charm the whole time. Maybe she’d glimpsed it before. Just flickers – like a static energy that suddenly, fleetingly, sparks.

Lexi was overtaken by a violent trembling, like she was cold on the inside.

Slowly, she turned. Bella was watching her, eyes large with concern. Robyn was standing at Fen’s shoulder, phone in hand, the emergency number dialled. Beyond them, Ana was kneeling beside Eleanor, who sat with her knees hugged to her chest.

She thought of Eleanor growing up with Ed as an older brother. The relentless, inescapable bullying that followed her from home to school and back again. Then Eleanor had met Sam, someone kind and genuine, who she’d loved with her whole being, who she was going to marry, spend a lifetime with. But Ed had blindfolded Sam. Instructed him: Trust me.

Lexi pictured Eleanor in a courtroom, sitting before a faceless jury who didn’t know her. Who hadn’t been standing on this terrace watching how years of insidious bullying had led to one burning flash of fury.

But Lexi had.

They all had.

She looked again to Eleanor, whose face was shock-white. She was rocking on her haunches, silent, tears running down her cheeks. ‘This is what happens next,’ Lexi said authoritatively, knowing what she wanted.

Her friends were all looking right at her. The night felt stilled, a dark heat pressing close to her skin. Beyond them she caught the drift of smoke rising from the embers of the fire.

‘I am going to ring the police. I am going to say …’ Her gaze travelled deliberately over each of the women in turn: Fen, then Ana, then Bella, then Eleanor – finally resting on Robyn.

The two women held one another’s eye for a long moment, years of history, of friendship, of understanding, weighed in that steady gaze.

‘We are all going to say that there was an accident. No one touched Ed. He fell.’





The hen weekend was never meant to end that way: Ed’s body broken on the rocks. Us pacing the terrace, stricken, waiting for the police to arrive. Each of us silently replaying the moment we chose to reach for Eleanor, not Ed.

We all had our part to play.

One of us asked, ‘But, what do we say? How do we explain?’

– We say Ed travelled out here to surprise Lexi.

– We were all in on the surprise. Were happy to see him.