Page 11 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

She recognized a few faces at the back as they approached: Adam Clark, her new history teacher, standing beside Jill from the café, and over there Cara’s grandparents waving at her. They pushed forward and, as eyes turned and met theirs, the crowd parted for Ravi, swallowing them, re-forming behind them to block the way back.

‘Pip, Ravi.’ A voice pulled their attention to the left. It was Naomi, hair pulled back tight, like her smile. She was standing with Jamie Reynolds – the older brother of Pip’s friend Connor – and, Pip realized with a stomach lurch, Nat da Silva. Her hair so white in the thickening twilight that it almost set the air around her aglow. They had all been in the same school year as Sal and Andie.

‘Hi,’ Ravi said, pulling Pip out of her thoughts.

‘Hi Naomi, Jamie,’ she said, nodding to them in turn. ‘Nat, hey,’ she faltered as Nat’s pale-blue eyes fell on her and her gaze hardened. The air around her lost its glow and turned cold.

‘Sorry,’ Pip said. ‘I-I . . . just wanted to say I’m sorry you had to go through that, th-the trial yesterday, but you did amazingly.’

Nothing. Nothing but a twitch in Nat’s cheek.

‘And I know this week and next must be awful for you, but we are going to get him. I know it. And if there’s anything I can do . . .’

Nat’s eyes slid off Pip like she wasn’t really there at all. ‘OK,’ Nat said, a sharp edge to her voice as she faced the other way.

‘OK,’ Pip said quietly, turning back to Naomi and Jamie. ‘We’d better keep moving. See you later.’

They moved on through the crowd, and when they were far enough away, Ravi said in her ear, ‘Yeah, she definitely still hates you.’

‘I know.’ And she deserved it, really; shehadconsidered Nat a murder suspect. Why wouldn’t Nat hate her? Pip felt cold, but she packed away Nat’s eyes into the pit in her stomach, alongside the rest of those feelings.

She spotted Cara’s messy dark blonde top-knot, bobbing above the heads in the crowd, and she manoeuvred herself and Ravi towards it. Cara was standing with Connor, who was nodding his head in quick doubles as she spoke. Beside them, heads almost pressed together, were Ant and Lauren, who were now always Ant-and-Lauren said in one quick breath, because one was never seen without the other. Not now that they weretogethertogether, unlike before when they must have beenpretendtogether. Cara said apparently it had started at the calamity party they all went to last October, when Pip had been undercover. No wonder she hadn’t noticed. Zach was standing the other side of them, ignored, fiddling awkwardly with his liquid black hair.

‘Hi,’ Pip said as she and Ravi breached the outer circle of the group.

‘Hey,’ came a quiet chorus of replies.

Cara turned to look up at Ravi, nervously picking at her collar. ‘I, um . . . I’m . . . how are you? Sorry.’

Cara was never lost for words.

‘It’s OK,’ Ravi said, breaking free from Pip’s hand to hug Cara. ‘It really is, I promise.’

‘Thank you,’ Cara said quietly, blinking at Pip over Ravi’s shoulder.

‘Oh, look,’ Lauren hissed, nudging Pip and indicating with a flash of her eyes. ‘It’s Jason and Dawn Bell.’

Andie and Becca’s parents. Pip followed Lauren’s eyes. Jason was wearing a smart wool coat, surely too hot for the evening, leading Dawn towards the pavilion. Dawn’s eyes were down on the ground, on all those bodiless feet, her eyelashes mascara-clumped like she’d already been crying. She looked so small behind Jason as he pulled her along by the hand.

‘Have you heard?’ Lauren said, beckoning for the group to draw in tighter. ‘Apparently Jason and Dawn are back together. My mum says his second wife is divorcing him and apparently Jason has moved back intothathouse with Dawn.’

Thathouse. The house where Andie Bell died on the kitchen tiles and Becca stood by and watched. If thoseapparentlys were true, Pip wondered how much choice Dawn had had in that decision. From what she’d heard about Jason during her investigation, she wasn’t sure how much choice anyone around him ever had. He’d certainly not come out of her podcast smelling of roses. In fact, in a twitter poll a listener made of theMost Hateable Person in AGGGTM, Jason Bell had received almost as many votes as Max Hastings and Elliot Ward. Pip herself had come in close fourth place.

‘It’s so weird they still live there,’ Ant said, widening his eyes like Lauren’s. They fed off each other like that. ‘Eating dinner in the same room she died.’

‘People deal with what they have to deal with,’ said Cara. ‘Don’t think you can judge them by normal standards.’

That shut Ant-and-Lauren up.

There was an awkward silence that Connor tried to fill. Pip looked away, immediately recognizing the couple standing next to them. She smiled.

‘Oh hi, Charlie, Flora.’ Her new neighbours from four doors down: Charlie with his rusty coloured hair and well-trimmed beard, and Flora who Pip had only ever seen wearing florals. She was the new teaching assistant at her brother’s school, and Josh was more than a little bit obsessed with her. ‘Didn’t see you there.’

‘Hello,’ Charlie smiled, dipping his head. ‘You must be Ravi,’ he said, shaking Ravi’s hand which hadn’t yet found its way back to Pip. ‘We are both very sorry for your loss.’

‘It sounds like your brother was an amazing guy,’ Flora added.

‘Thank you. Yeah, he was,’ said Ravi.

---