Page 150 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘Called me a liar,’ she said. ‘The internet thinks I’m a liar. A jury of twelve peers think I’m a liar. My own friends think I’m a liar. So I guess I’m a liar now, and Max Hastings is the good guy.’

‘I’m sorry about the verdict,’ he said. ‘That must be really hard for you.’

‘Harder for the people he drugged and raped,’ she said.

‘Yes, and it’s unfair and awful,’ her mum said with a frown. ‘But that’s not an excuse for your violent behaviour.’

‘I’m not making an excuse. I’m not asking for forgiveness,’ Pip said, flatly. ‘It happened and I don’t feel guilty. He deserved it.’

‘What are you saying?’ she said. ‘This isn’t like you.’

‘What if it is?’ Pip rose from the stool. ‘What if this is exactly like me?’

‘Pip, don’t shout at your mother,’ her dad said, crossing over to her mum’s side, abandoning her in the middle.

‘Shouting? Really?’ Pip said, really shouting now. ‘That’s what we’re focusing on? A serial rapist walked free today. Jamie has been missing six whole days and might be dead. Oh, but the real problem is that I’mshouting!’

‘Calm down, please,’ he said.

‘I can’t! I can’t calm down any more! Why should I?’

Her phone was face down on the floor. She hadn’t looked at it for an hour, sitting here underneath her desk, her fingers hooked around her toes. Her head was pressed against the cool wood of the desk leg, eyes hiding from the light.

She hadn’t gone down for dinner, said she wasn’t hungry, even though her dad came up and said they didn’t have to talk about it, not in front of Josh. But she didn’t want to sit there at the table, in a fake truce mid-argument. An argument that couldn’t end, because she wasn’t sorry, she knew that. And that’s what her mum wanted from her.

She heard a knock at the front door, a knock she knew:long-short-long. The door opened and closed, and then the footsteps she knew too, the scuff of Ravi’s trainers on the wooden floor before he took them off and lined them up neatly by the doormat.

And the next thing she heard was her mum’s voice, passing by the stairs. ‘She’s in her room. See if you can talk any sense into her.’

Ravi couldn’t find her, as he stepped into the room; not until she said, quietly, ‘I’m down here.’

He bent down, knees clicking as his face came into view.

‘Why aren’t you answering your phone?’ he said.

Pip looked at her face-down phone, out of arm’s reach.

‘Are you OK?’ he said.

And she wanted, more than anything, to say no, to slide out from under the desk and fall into him. To stay there, in his gaze, wrap herself up in it and never set foot outside again. To let him tell her it was all going to be OK, even though neither of them knew it would be. She wanted just to be the Pip she was with Ravi for a while. But that Pip wasn’t here right now. And maybe she really was gone.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Your parents are worried about you.’

‘Don’t need their worry,’ she sniffed.

‘I’m worried about you,’ he said.

She put her head against the desk again. ‘Don’t need yours either.’

‘Can you come out and talk to me?’ he said gently. ‘Please?’

‘Did he smile?’ she asked. ‘Did he smile when they said, “not guilty”?’

‘I couldn’t see his face.’ Ravi offered his hand to help Pip out from under the desk. She didn’t take it, crawling out on her own and standing up.

‘I bet he smiled.’ She ran her finger along the sharp edge of her desk, pressing in until it hurt her.

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