Page 93 of The Bridesmaid

Her eyes follow the movement of mine to the tequila. ‘Oh, you know,’ she says. ‘Just getting away from being me for a while.’ She lifts the bottle. ‘Join me?’

I move toward her uncertainly.

‘You weren’t at my bachelorette party.’

‘No.’ I plumb my mind for excuses, wondering what she knows. Surely Georgia would have told her I’m undercover? But she seems clueless. And not a little drunk. ‘I … ah … went for a walk,’ I say. ‘It was intense. Finding Silky.’

She nods slowly, like she’s turning over my words for impact.

‘Drink with me.’ She holds out the bottle. I take a nervous little sip.

‘No, Holly,’ she says, without warmth. ‘It’s my bachelorette, have an actual drink.’

I take another, deeper sip, feeling the liquid burn.

‘Come on.’ Adrianna beckons me. ‘Let’s get back to the party.’ Her fingers fasten around my arm, just a shade too tight to be friendly. She walks me up the stair and back into the luxurious hallway of Fortune House. I glance helplessly back along the corridor and she escorts me to Opium Bar.

Sepulcrum is tantalizingly close, but Adrianna is leading me past the female voices of her bachelorette party, and into a private adjoining room. It’s empty. She points to a deep-purple velvet seat.

‘Sit.’ There is a hard edge to her voice. ‘We need to have a talk.’

There are glasses on the table and she sets her bottle of tequila down, but doesn’t pour us drinks.

‘What about?’ my voice comes out strangely. I glance at the door. Two heavy-set men have appeared to barricade the entrance.

‘About you being a lying little snake.’ She leans closer. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she says. ‘You’re going to tell me everything you saw north of the island. And I’ll let your NYPD friend off the island with the use of his legs.’

I stare at her, unable to fit this hard version with the glamorous Adrianna in pictures.

‘You don’t think I can be tough?’ she asks. ‘Nine years of forbearance and suffering. Kensington Manor girls are brutal, when we need to be.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ I tell her.

She looks hard into my face.

‘I’m good at telling when people are lying,’ she says. ‘You needthat, in my family. What were you looking for in the jungle?’

‘I … We were trying to find who killed Simone.’

Adrianna adjusts her position thoughtfully. The movement causes her momentary discomfort, and I catch a flash of red where it’s been digging into her underarm. Her shoes must be hurting her feet too, I find myself thinking, and for some reason, this lodges somewhere alongside the discoveries we made out in the jungle. Something about women on this island, and at the Kensington school. The burdens and strictures they’re expected to carry in the name of appearances.

Adrianna raises an eyebrow and turns her head toward the men on the door.

‘Call the off-shore boat,’ she says. ‘Code forty-six.’

‘Wait!’

‘Oh?’ she cocks her head.

I plumb my mind for something, anything to tell her that I can pass off as the truth. The bones. The graves. The old abandoned resort.

The whole puzzle of the open grave is fitting together like pieces of a skeleton.

‘There were pictures in the schoolhouse, of girls with shaved heads,’ I take a breath, at the final elements slot together. ‘This whole island used to be a prison,’ I say. ‘For girls.’

Chapter Seventy-six

PETRA