The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

How long has it been now? In the dark it’s difficult to tell. A few minutes? Fifteen? Twenty?

The guests freeze. They stare at one another. They are suddenly afraid again. More so than they were when the lights went out. They all know what they are hearing. It is a scream of terror.

But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.

But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them. Twenty-four hours can be curated. A wedding day is a neat little parcel of time in which I can create something whole and perfect to be cherished for a lifetime, a pearl from a broken necklace.

‘Historically, the bird has been represented as a symbol of greed, bad luck and evil.’” We both watch as the cormorant emerges from the water again.

The note was delivered through our letter box three weeks ago. It told me not to marry Will. To call it off.

I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.

It was only then that I started to miss having him to myself.

I have to keep a handle on my temper this weekend. Mine has been known to get the better of me.

So this is what worries me. Why would Will keep a friend like Johnno around simply because of a shared past? Unless that past has some sort of hold over him.

Jules would kill me. She’d kill you, too.”

“Just want to make sure our boy’s wedding is an occasion to remember.”

Femi’s a surgeon, Angus works for his dad’s development firm, Duncan’s a venture capitalist—whatever that means—and Pete’s in advertising, which probably doesn’t help his coke habit.

I haven’t seen all that much of Will recently. Yet he’s the person who knows more about me than anyone in the world, really. And I know the most about him.

But it’s possible to hate your body when you’re thin, too. To feel like it’s kept secrets from you. To feel like it’s let you down.

Since then this place has made me think of death.

When I came across it yesterday I nearly did fall in. I would have broken my neck. That would ruin Jules’s perfect wedding, wouldn’t it? The thought almost makes me smile.

“Looking for a place to hide? Me too.” I decide I like her a little bit for that.

It’s a relief, really. If I’d told her, there’d be no taking it back. It would be out there in the world: what I’ve done.

But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.

It’s a strange thing when you consider that the dead on this island far outnumber the living, even now that some of the guests have arrived. Tomorrow will redress the balance.

A cormorant on a steeple: that’s an ill omen. The devil’s bird, they call it in these parts. The cailleach dhubh, the black hag, the bringer of death.

Finally, in that terrible rasping voice, the girl speaks again. “Outside. So much blood.” And then, right before she collapses: “A body.”

As I continue to stare, unable to look away, it mouths a single word. BOO.

Let’s hope he’s decided to let bygones be bygones on that front. Poor bloke. It wasn’t my idea, all of that.

But we are tied by the other stuff. The rituals, the male bonding. When we get together there’s this kind of pack mentality. We get carried away.

This place is enough to make you believe in ghosts.

But I can’t speak. It’s like I was under some sort of spell before, it was so easy to talk. Now it feels as though the words are stuck in my throat. There’s this image in my brain. Red on white. All the blood.

They’re like overgrown boys, the ushers. I’d say they lack the innocence of boys: but some boys aren’t ever really innocent.

In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.

I’m the braver of the two of us, I know. I don’t say this with any great pride. It’s simply that when the worst has happened, you rather lose your fear of anything else.

“Yeah,” Femi shouts, “he was definitely the worse for wear. But after what we did to him on the stag—” “Less said about that the better, Fem.”

God knows I’ve been up since early.

Hate this phrasing

It made me remember the blood, all those months ago. I hadn’t known there would be so much. I shut my eyes. But I can see it there, beneath my eyelids.

I look out through the window at the boats approaching: closer now. It feels like they are bringing something bad with them to this island. But that’s silly. Because it’s here already, isn’t it? It’s me. I’m the bad thing. What I’ve done.

It’s Charlie.

This is the moment I decided he’s the killer🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

Charlie always gets a bit funny around posh people—a little unsure of himself and defensive.

“I don’t want to fucking talk about it, Hannah.” There it is. Oh God. Charlie has been drinking.

“It’s probably a good thing I don’t know his full name. The things I would do to him if I did.”

Oh is mom feeling murderous now too???

I wonder if this is a bit what drowning is like. Then I wonder if I am drowning.

And that it’s worked: I have created an event that people will remember, will talk about, will try—and probably fail—to replicate.

The wedding breakfast will be served soon.

What time of day is it???

Look at him. playing the hero, carrying jules’s sister out of the water. Just fucking look at him. He’s always been so good at getting people to see exactly what he wants them to see.

So is he gonna kill will

But he didn’t want to share the spotlight with me, oh no. When it came to it he threw me under the bus.

How, seventeen years ago this month, my beautiful, clever sister killed herself.

“You better look after my daughter. You better not feck this up. And if you do anything to hurt my girl—well, it’s simple.” He raises his glass, in a silent toast. “I’ll come for you.”

relieved, perhaps, to know how to take it. Ah, it’s a joke. Only it wasn’t a joke. I know it, Dad knows it—and I suspect, from the look on Will’s face, he knows it too.

I saw exactly how it had happened. He’d gone back into the V&A, after he put me in that taxi. There he’d met my sister, belle of the ball—so much better suited to him. Fate. And I remember what he’d said when we first met: “If you were ten years older, you’d be my ideal woman.” I saw it all.

So you see, I can’t think of him as Will. To me he’ll always be Steven. I hadn’t thought of that, when I renamed myself for the dating app. I hadn’t thought that he might have lied too.

And he’d also banked on me being too pathetic to say anything to Jules, too scared that she wouldn’t believe anything I said. He was right.