Page 1 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

THURSDAY

One

It was still there, every time she opened the front door. It wasn’t real, she knew that, just her mind filling in the absence, bridging the gap. She heard it: dog claws skittering, rushing to welcome her home. But it wasn’t, it couldn’t be. Just a memory, the ghost of a sound that had always been there.

‘Pip, is that you?’ her mum called from the kitchen.

‘Hey,’ Pip replied, dropping her bronze rucksack in the hall, textbooks thumping together inside.

Josh was in the living room, sitting on the floor two feet from the TV, spooling through the adverts on the Disney Channel. ‘You’ll get square eyes,’ Pip remarked as she walked by.

‘You’ll get a square butt,’ Josh tittered back. A terrible retort, objectively speaking, but he was quick for a ten-year-old.

‘Hi darling, how was school?’ her mum asked, sipping from a flowery mug as Pip walked into the kitchen and settled on one of the stools at the counter.

‘Fine. It was fine.’ School was always fine now. Not good, not bad. Just fine. She pulled off her shoes, the leather unsticking from her feet and smacking against the tiles.

‘Ugh,’ her mum said. ‘Must you always leave your shoes in the kitchen?’

‘Must you always catch me doing it?’

‘Yes, I’m your mother,’ she said, whacking Pip’s arm lightly with her new cookbook. ‘Oh and, Pippa, I need to talk to you about something.’

The full name. So much meaning in that extra syllable.

‘Am I in trouble?’

Her mum didn’t answer the question. ‘Flora Green called me from Josh’s school today. You know she’s the new teaching assistant there?’

‘Yes . . .’ Pip nodded for her to continue.

‘Joshua got in trouble today, sent to the headteacher.’ Her mum’s brow knotted. ‘Apparently Camilla Brown’s pencil sharpener went missing, and Josh decided to interrogate his classmates about it, finding evidence and drawing up apersons of interestlist. He made four kids cry.’

‘Oh,’ Pip said, that pit opening up in her stomach again. Yes, she was in trouble. ‘OK, OK. Shall I talk to him?’

‘Yes, I think you should. Now,’ her mum said, raising her mug and taking a noisy sip.

Pip slid off the stool with a gritted smile and padded back towards the living room.

‘Hey Josh,’ she said lightly, sitting on the floor beside him. She muted the television.

‘Oi!’

Pip ignored him. ‘So, I heard what happened at school today.’

‘Oh yeah. There’s two main suspects.’ He turned to her, his brown eyes lighting up. ‘Maybe you can help –’

‘Josh, listen to me,’ Pip said, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. ‘Being a detective is not all it’s cracked up to be. In fact . . . it’s a pretty bad thing to be.’

‘But I –’

‘Just listen, OK? Being a detective makes the people around you unhappy. Makesyouunhappy . . .’ she said, her voice withering away until she cleared her throat and pulled it back. ‘Remember Dad told you what happened to Barney, why he got hurt?’

Josh nodded, his eyes growing wide and sad.

‘That’s what happens when you’re a detective. The people around you get hurt. And you hurt people, without meaning to. Have to keep secrets you’re not sure you should. That’s why I don’t do it any more, and you shouldn’t either.’ The words dropped right down into that waiting pit in her gut, where they belonged. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes . . .’ He nodded, holding on to thesas it grew into the next word. ‘Sorry.’

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