The Wild Girls Read online

  None of them says what they’re thinking: how unlikely it is that there will be any cars passing at all, given how quiet it was the night they were dropped off, how remote and isolated this entire place feels. None of them is ready to voice their fears.

  Chapter Twelve

  Grace

  I put my hand on the door handle, go to wrench it open – I really have had enough of this, of Alice going round madly accusing people, of the suffocating feeling inside this lodge – the dust in the air, the weird, still dinner table like something from the Mary Celeste ship. The door handle doesn’t budge and I try again, harder this time, thinking it must be jammed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Alice asks impatiently, barging me out of the way, her shoulder knocking into mine – quite hard, actually, it might even leave a bruise – and she tries the door too. But there is no doubt about it now – it’s locked.

  ‘Is it locked?’ Hannah asks, and Alice nods, confusion written across her features.

  ‘This isn’t funny,’ I say, trying not to sound like a two-year-old. ‘Did one of you lock it? It was open earlier when we came in.’

  ‘Of course we didn’t lock it, Grace,’ Hannah says, giving it a go herself, banging the flat of her palm against the wooden door to no avail.

  ‘Where’s the key?’ Alice says. ‘There must be a key.’

  We look at each other and it strikes me how utterly stupid we have been. None of us bothered to ask for a proper address or contact details of the owner of the complex, none of us asked for the basic safekeeping one normally would – keys, being an obvious one – but then it’s because we didn’t need to, isn’t it? We thought Felicity would be here, our friend and our host. We thought she’d tell us everything in person, that she’d be by our side right now, laughing and drinking and discussing what to wear for the party tonight. I feel a stupid stab of disappointment, thinking of myself earlier, wondering about what I might wear and who I might meet. Thinking that this might actually be a chance for me to break out of my rut, to shake things up and move on, to have stories to tell Ben and Rosie when I get back home. Well, this is a story all right. But it’s not a good one.

  There’s a sound, light at first as though I’m imagining it, but then louder and louder. It’s rain – drumming on the roof of the lodge; hot, thick rain beating down on us, trapping us inside. I’ve read about the rainfall in Africa – the way it appears suddenly during this season, out of nowhere, drenching everything in drama. So different from the British showers.

  ‘We can try the windows,’ Alice says, and we follow her through to the next room, where the huge glass panes are slimy with water, dirty green droplets running down like tears that are growing more and more hysterical. We look out onto the rest of the complex; the plunge pools are beginning, already, to overflow, water splashing out onto the decking. The sound feels like it’s building, reaching for a crescendo. Reminding us that we’re trapped, powerless against the circumstances.

  ‘They have monsoons here,’ Hannah says, but her voice is small and quiet. ‘I don’t think it’ll last long – it’s just really intense rain for a short period of time. It’ll stop soon. It said so in the guidebook.’

  The bloody guidebook; anyone would think it was the Bible.

  ‘Does the window open?’ I ask, and Alice tries the white-painted handle. It too is locked, and I feel claustrophobia rising up inside me, threatening to take over. Suddenly, all I want is to be back in Peckham, in my stuffy, drab little flat, wearing my stained dressing gown, drinking hot tea and listening to a Nineties playlist on Spotify. I don’t want to be here, trapped in this luxury lodge with two friends who walk all over me and treat me as badly as Ben does. Why do I let myself be treated like this? What is it about me that makes the others dismiss me? Is it the same thing that made me a victim, all those years ago, some sort of weakness that is visible to all, a tattoo on my forehead that only I can’t see? Because they do dismiss me, they do. They discount my ideas and push me out of the way and laugh at me behind my back. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have known better, after all this time and all these years.

  This entire trip was a mistake.

  ‘I want to get out,’ I say, quietly and then louder, until I’m almost shouting it. ‘I want to get out of here!’

  ‘Jesus, Grace, will you calm down?’ Alice says, and there it is again, the disdain in her voice, the casual way she speaks to me, as though there is never any doubt about which of us has status in this friendship group and which of us most definitely does not. Why do we pretend to be on an equal footing, I wonder, when the lines between us are so obvious?

  Hannah is kinder, as she always is. She puts her arm around me, and actually it feels nice – soft and comforting. Motherly. The anxiety inside me begins to dissipate, just a tiny bit.

  ‘It’s OK, Grace, it’s OK. We will get out, don’t worry. We’ll get out and find someone that can take us to a town, somewhere we can find out what’s going on. We won’t be trapped in here, and hey, look, even if we are, I can think of worse places, right?’

  She smiles at me and I know she’s just trying to be nice, make a joke, make light of things. I probably am overreacting, I think, as her thumb strokes my shoulder, nothing terrible has happened, we just don’t know where Felicity is and we don’t know where we are. But they don’t know about the note in the library, the note that only I found.

  Perhaps now is the time to tell them.

  Alice

  She can’t believe they’re bloody trapped in here. Furious, Alice stomps away from the hallway, back into the dining room, thinking that at least if they’re stuck inside whilst it rains like mad and whilst the door is locked, she may as well have a glass of champagne to take the edge off and maybe ease her hangover. Hair of the dog, and all that.

  Grace is driving her absolutely mad, and Hannah isn’t much better, obsessed with the guidebook even though it’s patently obvious something fucking strange is going on. What was she thinking, coming here? She should have listened to Tom, let bygones be bygones, left the past in the past.

  Tom hasn’t even bothered to reply to her last message, and the thought makes Alice feel sick. It’s Saturday – he will have been at football all morning but he’ll definitely be finished by now. She pictures him in the pub, making jokes with his ridiculous ‘lad’ friends, downing pint after pint as they make jokes about ‘his mistress’ being away. Perhaps he doesn’t even miss her. Perhaps he’s glad she’s gone.

  Alice can’t tell the girls how things are between her and Tom – she doesn’t want to admit it. She wants them to think she is perfect, as good as Felicity, no, better. She doesn’t want them to know about their constant sniping, their snide remarks over money (or lack of), the cruel way he sometimes looks at her, even when they’re in bed, their bodies tangled together. The tiny hints at violence. She wants to push all of these things down deep inside her where nobody can see them; her messy insides.

  In the dining room, Alice pulls out a chair and sits down heavily, her hair falling over her face. The rain on the roof is incessant and annoying – she pictures the river outside bursting its banks, overflowing and sweeping them and the entire lodge away. At least it’d get them out of here.

  The champagne is warm on her tongue – it’s been sitting out for too long but that doesn’t stop Alice from necking the glass. She wants the buzz of the alcohol in her bloodstream, she wants it to relax her and help her figure out what to do. Fucking Felicity.

  She tries calling her again but it’s fruitless. Voicemail clicks in and Alice hangs up without leaving a message.

  ‘What if something’s happened to her?’

  Grace has come up behind her without Alice hearing. She always was light on her feet. Alice used to be jealous of how thin she was, how a size 10 on her would be baggy, loose. She’s got even thinner in the last few years; she’s like a rake. All skin and bones, as opposed to Alice’s curves that are undoubtedly still there, no matter how sinewy she felt ye
sterday.

  ‘Who?’ Alice asks flatly, not bothering to turn around, reaching for a second glass of champagne from in front of the empty seat beside her.

  Grace appears, sliding into the chair opposite and looking disapproving as Alice takes another gulp of her drink.

  ‘Felicity.’

  Alice pauses, mid-sip.

  ‘Why would something have happened to her?’

  ‘Well’ – Grace spreads her hands flat on the table – ‘we don’t know where she is. She’s not picking up her phone. She hasn’t been online. If we were back home we’d be worried. We’d think she was missing.’

  Honestly, she’s so dramatic.

  ‘Missing? No, we wouldn’t, Grace, don’t be ridiculous. We’d think she’d swanned off with her boyfriend or something and left us in the lurch – it’s not like it’d be the first time, is it? Felicity is tough. She can look out for herself.’

  ‘What if she went on a walk or something though?’ Grace persists, her voice grating on Alice. How has Alice never noticed how nasal she sounds before? She wonders now how she ever put up with seeing so much of her. Alice glances away from her, focuses on the fruit bowl on the other side of the room; the soft flat peaches, beginning to rot in the heat. Soon, she thinks, they’ll attract flies. She feels like she is rotting too, disintegrating with every second that goes by in this place, time becoming thick and soupy.

  ‘What if she did?’ Alice says, playing devil’s advocate just for the sake of it, because really, she knows what Grace is getting at.

  ‘Well, she could have been…’ Grace trails off and her eyes travel to the huge statue of the marble-eyed lion standing proudly by the fireplace. The grate is empty; Alice pictures flames, more heat, the room filling with smoke, the lion springing to life and leaping for the door, away from the fire.

  ‘I don’t think she’s been eaten, Grace,’ she says with a snort and Grace flushes red, blotches appearing on her cheeks and her neck, a tell-tale sign that Alice has rattled her.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting eaten, Alice,’ she snaps back. ‘I just meant she might’ve been… attacked. We’re surrounded by wild animals, it’s not out of the question. There are hyenas out here. You don’t need to sound so – so scathing.’

  Alice sighs, puts her head in her hands. She feels mean now, just a little bit – Grace is staring at her with puppy-dog eyes and she knows she’s being too harsh to her. Her heart is racing – whether it’s the champagne or what Grace is saying, she’s not sure.

  ‘She might have been attacked.’ Hannah comes into the room. Her face is pale, with a strange, waxen-looking sheen to it.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Alice asks, and she nods, comes to sit down.

  ‘I’ve texted Chris,’ she says. ‘I managed to get signal out on the deck at the back. I want someone to know what’s going on. Just in case, you know. I want a record of it.’

  Alice sees Grace look down at the table and wonders if she’s thinking about who she’d text – who she’d call on. She surprises herself by stretching out a hand across the table to Grace, grasping the other woman’s fingers. She’s bitten her nails – Alice feels one of them catch unpleasantly beneath her touch.

  ‘Sorry for being scathing,’ Alice says, forcing a smile, trying to get her to smile back. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just a bit stressed.’

  ‘We all are,’ Hannah clarifies, and Grace finally looks up, meets Alice’s gaze.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, squeezing Alice’s hand, ‘I know you didn’t mean it.’

  She forgives easily; it’s a good trait, Alice supposes. Felicity could learn a thing or two from Grace in that department.

  ‘What’s that?’ Grace says suddenly, and she holds out a little white card from the table, one Alice hadn’t noticed. Flipping it open, she reads the contents aloud, and Alice watches as the blood slowly drains from her face. She shows them, ashen. There is a single line, written in the same curly script as the original invitation. Don’t ignore me. One of you knows why you’re here. And one of you will pay.

  Hannah

  ‘Give me that!’ Hannah says, a little bit more harshly than she was intending, but she can feel her frustration beginning to bubble over. Grace hands her the card and Hannah stares at it, her mind racing. She can feel her two friends watching her, their eyes burning into her forehead. She counts to three before looking up, one, two, three.

  She’s had enough of this.

  ‘Right,’ Hannah says, taking charge, looking them both square in the face. She used to think she was good at reading people; when they first met, Chris said he thought she had a real knack for it.

  ‘You’re like a mindreader!’ he’d laughed at her on one of their first dates – Hannah can see his smile now, grinning across the table at her. They’d been in a French restaurant, talking about past relationships. Even early on, she’d known it was serious between them; that insatiable need to know everything and anything about the other person you were considering giving your heart to. Chris didn’t have surprises, but Hannah liked that about him. She liked how dependable he was, some might say staid. That’s why the sight of two wine glasses has got to her. She can’t bear to think of him having skeletons in the closet.

  ‘Is there anything anyone wants to share?’ she asks, feeling like a teacher in front of a naughty classroom, and she can feel Alice bristle. Well, let her. Something strange is going on around here, and one of the two of them clearly has something to do with it.

  Grace reaches for a champagne glass, takes a quick sip, something desperate in her movement. Hannah can see her cheeks flushing, wine-red stains creeping up from her neck, peeping out of her T-shirt collar.

  ‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘This is nothing to do with me. But look, now that we’re discussing it, I’ve been feeling the same. I found another note, last night. It was in a fortune teller, you know, like the ones we used to make as kids.’

  The others stare at her, and Hannah remembers them all, crammed into Felicity’s attic, staring at the square folded paper in Felicity’s hands, a bottle of wine between them in the centre of their circle.

  ‘Pick a colour,’ she recalls Felicity saying, her face flickering in the candlelight, and then, ‘truth or dare? Come on, Hannah, pick one.’

  She had, and Felicity had criss-crossed her fingers, unfolded Hannah’s fate. Dare. It was always dare.

  ‘What did it say?’ Alice says, in a slightly strangled voice. Hannah watches her out of the corner of her eye. Either she genuinely doesn’t know, or she’s doing a very good job at pretending.

  ‘It said that there was another reason for us being here – that we’re not only here for a birthday party. It felt – sinister.’ Grace pauses; the word hangs in the air like an axe waiting to fall. ‘And now this,’ she says, ‘saying one of us knows why we’re here. Whatever that means, it’s not me. It’s one of you.’

  Hannah glares at her. ‘You found that last night and didn’t think it worth mentioning?’

  Grace looks abashed, then annoyed. ‘I thought it must be left over from another group – maybe the people who rented this place out before we did. It’s a holiday complex, after all. I just didn’t think it could be anything to do with us. I trusted you guys. But now…’ Her voice tails off.

  Alice looks rattled, her usually smug face (Hannah can admit it now, she does think Alice has always had a touch of smugness about her, of superiority) looks shaken. Hannah can see by the look in her eyes that she’s going to turn on Grace.

  ‘Really, Grace, if we’re going to talk about trust, do you think you’re the best person to judge?’ she says snippily, and Hannah sees Grace’s features fall. ‘You haven’t trusted anyone in years, Grace. You’ve successfully built a perfect little wall around yourself, haven’t you? You wouldn’t know the first thing about trust.’

  ‘Allie,’ Hannah says, ‘come on, there’s no need for that. All I was asking was whether you two know more about why Felicity invited us out here than I do – I fe
el very in the dark about this whole thing.’

  ‘That’s what you’d like us to think, isn’t it, Hannah?’ Grace hits out at her, and Hannah is taken aback by the amount of venom in her voice. She’s usually softly spoken, and yes, OK, she’s been fairly whiny so far on this trip, but she never normally talks to either of them like that.

  Hannah sighs, wishing she hadn’t started this. ‘Look, I don’t think turning on each other is the answer, do you?’ she tries, hoping to regain a sense of control, but Alice has pushed back her chair and is on her feet, pacing up and down the dining room like a caged animal. It’s on the tip of Hannah’s tongue to tell them about the note she found last night, but something stops her. Something tells her she needs to put herself first now, keep her cards close to her chest. Give nothing away.

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Alice says angrily. ‘I hardly ever get any time off work and the one chance I get to do something different, to do something fun, has to be with the pair of you. We all know it was a mistake to come here – Felicity’s obviously come to the same conclusion. She might have left already – her stuff isn’t even here.’

  She’s breathing fast, her long dark hair whipping back and forth across her face as she moves.

  ‘Alice,’ Hannah says, but Alice holds up a hand, silencing her. Hannah bristles. She’d never do that to someone. She’d never be so bloody rude.

  ‘No, Hannah,’ Alice says. ‘I think I’m allowed to be honest. We may as well admit that there are things in this friendship group that need talking about. We’ve kept our distance for a long time, now, and maybe we ought to have stayed that way. But if you’re going to come in here and accuse me of knowing more than I let on, then I think it’s only fair I defend myself. Don’t you? I’d rather get it out in the open than put up with these little missives, too – I suppose you thought me being in Cheetah Lodge was the perfect fit, didn’t you? The little note on my pillow implied as much. Perhaps you and Felicity conjured that one up together! You’ve had plenty of time to yourself out here, and it wouldn’t be the first time you’d pulled a disappearing act, would it? All this time you say you’ve been looking for Felicity, you could easily have been writing these little messages!’