Page 245 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘She let Andie die,’ Pip said or she thought she said. ‘But we have to let her go. It’s not fair. Not fair.’

Kilton blinked.

‘I might not remember. I might get mm . . . nesia. She’s in septic tank. Farmhouse . . . Sycamore. That’s where . . .’

‘It’s OK, Pip,’ Ravi said, holding her so she didn’t fall off the world. ‘It’s over. It’s all over now. I’ve got you.’

‘How didddu find me?’

‘Your tracking device is still on,’ Ravi said, showing her a fuzzy, jumping screen with an orange blip on the Find My Friends map. ‘As soon as I saw you here, I knew.’

Kilton blinked.

‘It’s OK, I’ve got you, Pip. You’re going to be OK.’

Blink.

They were talking again, Ravi and her dad. But not in words she could hear, in the scratching of ants. She couldn’t see them any more. Pip’s eyes were the sky and fireworks were rupturing inside. Flower sprays of Armageddon. All red. Red glows and red shines.

And then she was a person again, on the cold damp ground, Ravi’s breath in her ear. And through the trees were flashing blue lights spewing black uniforms.

Pip watched them both, the flashes and the fireworks.

No sound. Just her rattlesnake breath and the sparks and the lights.

Red and blue. Red

and blue. Bled an

drue.Be

llan

n

d

‘There are alotof people out there, Sarge.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, like, two hundred.’

She could hear them all; the chattering and the clattering of chairs as people took their seats in the school hall.

She was waiting in the wings, her presentation notes clutched in her hands, the sweat from the bulbs of her fingers smudging the printed ink.

Everyone else in her year had done their EPQ presentations earlier in the week, to small classrooms of people and the modulators. But the school and the exam board thought it would be a good idea to turn Pip’s presentation into ‘a bit of an event,’ as the head teacher had put it. Pip had been given no choice in the matter. The school had advertised it online and in theKilton Mail.They’d invited members of the press to attend; Pip had seen a BBC van pull up earlier and the equipment and cameras unpacked.

‘Are you nervous?’ Ravi said.

‘Are you asking obvious questions?’

When the Andie Bell story broke it had been in the national newspapers and on TV stations for weeks. It was in the height of all that craziness that Pip had had her interview for Cambridge. The two college fellows had recognized her from the news, gawping at her, yapping questions about the case. Her offer was one of the very first to come in.

Kilton’s secrets and mysteries had followed Pip so closely in those weeks she’d had to wear them like a new skin. Except that one that was buried deep down, the one she’d keep forever to save Cara. Her best friend who’d never once left Pip’s side in the hospital.

‘Can I come over later?’ Ravi asked her.

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