How to Kill Your Best Friend by Lexie Elliott

Author:Lexie Elliott [Elliott, Lexie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

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It’s much, much later before I can find a moment alone with Duncan. We all hang out at Jem’s villa until the middle of the afternoon, fortified by Jem’s (surprisingly good) eggs on toast; I don’t know why I had thought he wouldn’t be able to cook. After all, Rob is a very good cook—though he does tend to use absolutely every pot, dish and utensil in the kitchen and is apparently physically incapable of cleaning up afterward. Georgie makes an entrance after a bit, moving stiffly, but certainly easier than last night, and with a much larger bandage over her knee. I work on the computer for a bit longer, but if there’s something to find, I’m not up to the job—which, without blowing my own trumpet, means it’s overwhelmingly likely there’s actually nothing to find: this is what I do—what I did—and I am very, very good at it. But all the patterns I see make sense: a downward spiral of swirling clouds of figures circling a drain to be spat out into the waiting mouths of the suppliers, the staff, the insurance, the taxes, the booking system fees . . . the list is almost endless, but it’s a completely normal list for a business like this. The only abnormalities are the payments I’ve already discovered. The payments that are sitting in my children’s accounts.

The others have moved outside to the pool area, and there’s nothing much more I can do on the computer, so I join them, feeling restless and uncomfortable, as if this indolence is wrong, as if there is something I ought to be doing, but what? Nothing springs to mind. I’m careful to stay in the shade—my skin won’t thank me for any more sun—but even in the shade the heat is relentless today. I take regular dips in the water to cool off and pretend to read my book, a no-thought-required airport thriller, even though I can’t concentrate for more than a line or two, and I keep a watchful eye on Duncan for any chance to continue our conversation. But the opportunity doesn’t present itself: Duncan is largely comatose facedown on a sun lounger. Jem is not much different. Georgie applies sunscreen liberally and stretches herself out to soak up the sun, catlike and separate behind her enormous dark glasses. Adam watches Georgie’s application of the sunscreen, his face inscrutably blank, then takes a book from Jem’s shelves and settles down to read in the shade beside me. I’m conscious that he’s making much better progress than I am with his reading.

Midafternoon, Adam suggests a late lunch, and Jem telephones ahead to warn the main restaurant, an unspoken admission that things aren’t quite running as they should be.

“Are you okay?” I ask Georgie. She’s shrugged herself into a complicated kaftan thing that seems to float as she walks, though the effect is marred by a purpling bruise on her shoulder roughly the same size and shape as the marks a bag strap would leave, and she’s moving much more stiffly than when she arrived.

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