Люси Фоли - The Guest List

JOHNNO

The Best Man

I couldn’t save him.

I shouldn’t have pulled the knife out, I know that now. It would only have increased the bleeding, probably.

I wanted to make them understand, when they found me out in the dark. Femi, Angus, Duncan. But they wouldn’t listen. They had these burning torches that they held out like weapons, like I was a wild animal. They were shouting at me, screaming at me, to drop the knife, to just PUT IT DOWN and there was so much noise in my head. I couldn’t get the words out. So I couldn’t make them see that it wasn’t me. I couldn’t explain.

How I’d been coming down off whatever Pete Ramsay had given me, out there in the storm.

How the lights went out.

How I found Will, out there in the dark. How I bent over him and saw the knife, sticking from his chest like something growing out of him, buried so deep you couldn’t see any of the blade. How I realised, then, that in spite of all of it, I still loved him. How I hugged him to me and cried.

They surrounded me, the other ushers. They held me like an animal until the Gardaí arrived on their boat. I could see it in their eyes, how they feared me. How they knew I had never really been one of them.

The Gardaí are here now. They’ve put me in cuffs. They’ve arrested me. They’ll take me back to the mainland. I’ll be tried back home, for the murder of my best friend.

Yeah, I did think about it, in the cave. Killing Will, I mean. Picking up a rock close to hand. And there was definitely a moment when I really thought about it. When it felt like it would have been the easiest thing. The best thing.

But I didn’t kill him. I know that – even though things did go a bit hazy after I’d had that pill from Pete Ramsay, a couple of slightly blank spots. I mean, I wasn’t even in the tent. How could I have grabbed the knife? But the police don’t seem to think that’s a problem.

I don’t think of myself as a killer, anyway.

Except I am, aren’t I? That kid, all those years ago. I was the one who tied him up, in the end. Will made sure of that, but I still did it. And it’s not really an excuse that will stand up to anything, is it, saying that you were too thick to properly think out the consequences?

Sometimes I think of what I saw the night before the wedding. That thing, that figure, crouched in my room. Obviously there’s no point in telling anyone about that. Imagine it: ‘Oh, it wasn’t me, I think Will might actually have been stabbed with a great fucking cake knife by the ghost of a boy we killed – yeah, I think I saw him in my bedroom the night before the wedding.’ Doesn’t sound all that convincing, does it? Anyway, it’s more than likely that it came from inside my head, what I saw. That would make a kind of sense, because in a way the boy’s been living there for years.

I consider that jail cell waiting for me. But when I think about it, I’ve been in a prison since that morning when the tide came in. And maybe it’s like justice catching up with me, for that terrible thing we did. But I didn’t kill my best friend. Which means someone else did.

AOIFE

The Wedding Planner

I lift up the knife. I told Freddy I only wanted to get Will here to speak to him. Which was true, at least in the beginning. Perhaps it was what I overheard in the cave that changed my mind: the lack of remorse.

Four lives destroyed by that one night. One guilty life in recompense for an innocent: it seems a more than fair trade.

I hope he sees the blade, catching in the torch beam. For a moment I want him – so golden, so untouchable – to feel a tiny fragment of what my little brother might have experienced that night as he lay on the beach, waiting for the sea to come in. The terror of it. I want this man to be more terrified than he has ever been in his life. I keep the torch trained on him, on his widening eyes.

And then, for my little brother, I stab him. In his heart.

I have raised hell.

EPILOGUE

Several hours later

OLIVIA

The Bridesmaid

The wind has stopped, finally. The Irish police have arrived. We’re all gathered in the marquee, because they want us in one place. They’ve explained to us what has happened, what they found. Who they found. We know that someone’s been arrested, but not who, yet.

It’s amazing how little noise a hundred and fifty people can make. People sit around at the tables, talking in whispers. Some of them are wearing foil blankets, for the cold and shock, and these are louder than the sound of voices, rustling as people move.

I haven’t said anything at all, not to anyone, not since he and I stood by the clifftop. I feel like all the words have been stolen from me.

All I’ve thought about for months is him. And now he’s dead, they say. I’m not pleased. At least, I don’t think I am. Mainly I’m still just shocked.

It wasn’t me. But it could have been. I remember how I felt the last time I saw him, cutting the cake with Jules. Seeing that knife … The thought was in my head. It was only for a couple of seconds. But I did think it, feel it, strong enough that a part of me wonders whether maybe I did do it, and somehow blanked it out. I can’t catch anyone’s eye, in case they see it in my face.

I jump in shock as I feel someone’s hand on my bare shoulder. I look up. It’s Jules, a foil blanket over her wedding dress. On her it looks like it’s a part of the outfit, like a warrior queen’s cape. Her mouth is set in such a thin line that her lips have disappeared and her eyes glitter. Her hand is on my shoulder, her fingers are gripping tight.

‘I know,’ she whispers. ‘About him – you.’

Oh God. So after all that soul-searching about whether to tell her, she somehow worked it out on her own, anyway. And she hates me. She must do. I can see it. I know there’s nothing I can do to change Jules’s mind once she’s made it up, nothing I can say.

Then there’s a shift and I think I glimpse something new in her expression.

‘If I’d known …’ I see her mouth the words more than hear them. ‘If I’d—’ she stops, swallows. She closes her eyes for a long moment and when she opens them again I see that they have filled with tears. And then she’s reaching for me and I’m standing up and she’s hugging me. And then I tense as I feel her body begin to shake. She’s crying, I realise, great loud, angry sobs. I can’t remember the last time Jules cried. I can’t remember the last time we hugged like this. Maybe never. There’s always been that distance between us. But for a moment it’s gone. And in the middle of everything else, all the shock and trauma of this whole night, it’s just the two of us. My sister and me.

The next day

HANNAH

The Plus-One

Charlie and I are on the boat back to the mainland. Most of the guests left earlier than us, the family are staying behind. I look back towards the island. The weather has cleared now and there’s sunlight on the water but the island is cast in the shadow of an overhanging cloud. It seems to crouch there like a great black beast, awaiting its next meal. I turn away from it.

I’ve barely been bothered by the movement of the boat this time. A little nausea is nothing compared to the deep sickness of the soul I felt when I made my discovery last night, that it was Will who as good as killed my sister.

I think of how I clung to Charlie on the ferry crossing to the island less than forty-eight hours ago, how we laughed together, despite my feeling so awful. The memory of it stings.

Charlie and I have hardly talked to one another. We have barely glanced at one another. Both of us, I think, have been lost in our own thoughts, remembering the last time we spoke before everything happened. And I don’t think I’d have the energy to speak right now, even if I wanted to. I feel physically and emotionally shattered … too weary to even begin to organise my thoughts, to work out how I feel. No one slept at all last night, obviously, but it’s more than that.