Page 145 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

She carried on towards school, holding on to the straps of her bag. It took her a while to realize she wasn’t hearing her own footsteps. Not just her own, anyway. There was another set, stepping faintly in between hers, coming from the right. Pip looked up.

‘Morning,’ a voice called from across the road. It was Mary Scythe from theKilton Mail, with a black Labrador at her side. ‘Good morning,’ Pip returned the greeting, but it sounded empty even to her own ears. Luckily her ringing phone excused her. She turned away and swiped to answer.

‘Pip,’ Ravi said.

‘Oh god,’ she said, falling into his voice, wrapping herself up with it. ‘You won’t believe what’s happened this morning. It was on the news that they found a body, a white male in his twenties. So I panicked, went to the Reynoldses’ house but they called in and it wasn’t Jamie, it was someone else . . .’

‘Pip?’

‘. . . and Arthur finally agreed to talk to me. And he told me that Jamie asked him to borrow nine hundred pounds, the exact amount Robin said Luke had just lost this week, so . . .’

‘Pip?’

‘. . . that’s too coincidental to be nothing, right? So then I just went to see Nat and she insists Jamie didn’t go there after—’

‘Pip, I really need you to stop talking and listen to me.’ And now Pip heard it, the edge in his voice, new and unfamiliar.

‘What? Sorry. What?’ she said, her feet slowing to a stop.

‘The jury just returned their verdict,’ he said.

‘Already? And?’

But Ravi didn’t say anything, and she could hear a click as his breath caught in his throat.

‘No,’ she said, her heart picking up on that click before she did, throwing itself against her ribs. ‘Ravi? What? No, don’t say . . . it can’t . . .’

‘They found him not guilty, on all charges.’

And Pip didn’t hear what he said next because her ears flooded with blood, a rushing sound, like a windstorm trapped inside her head. Her hand found the wall beside her and she leaned into it, lowering herself down to sit on the cold concrete pavement.

‘No,’ she whispered, because if she said it any louder, she would scream. She still might scream; she could feel it clawing at her insides, fighting to get out. She grabbed her face and held her mouth shut, fingernails digging into her cheeks.

‘Pip,’ Ravi said, gently. ‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. It isn’t fair. This isn’t right. If there was anything I could do to change this, I would. Anything. Pip? Are you OK?’

‘No,’ she said through her hand. She would never be OK again. This was it; the worst thing that could have happened. She’d thought about it, had had bad dreams about it, but she’d known it couldn’t really happen. It wouldn’t happen. But it just did. And the truth no longer mattered. Max Hastings, not guilty. Even though she had his voice on a recording, admitting to it all. Even though she knew he was guilty, beyond any doubt. But no, she and Nat da Silva and Becca Bell and those two women from university: they were the liars now. And a serial rapist had just walked free.

Her mind turned to Nat.

‘Oh god, Nat,’ she said, removing her hand. ‘Ravi, I have to go, I have to go back to see Nat. Make sure she’s OK.’

‘OK, I lo—’ he said, but it was too late. Pip had already pressed the red button, pushing herself up from the ground as she turned back down Gravelly Way.

She knew that Nat hated her. But she also knew that Nat shouldn’t be alone when she heard the news. No one should be alone for something like that.

Pip sprinted, her trainers slapping uncomfortably against the pavement, juddering up through her body. Her chest hurt, like her heart wanted to give out already, give up. But she ran, pushing herself harder as she turned the corner on to Cross Lane, back to that painted blue door.

She knocked this time, forgetting about the bell because her mind was already stuttering, rewinding the last few minutes. It couldn’t have happened, could it? This couldn’t be real. It didn’t feel real.

Nat’s silhouette emerged in the frosted glass, and Pip tried to read it, study it, work out if Nat’s world had already been blown apart.

She opened the door, jaw clenching as soon as she saw Pip standing there.

‘What the fuck, I told you to . . .’

But then she must have noticed the way Pip was breathing. The horror that must be written all over her face.

‘What is it?’ Nat said quickly, pulling the door open fully. ‘Is Jamie OK?’

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