Page 175 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

But they won’t come off when she pulls, they have to bepeeledoff, the skin underneath no longer hers, streaky and pink from blood. Eliza seals the clothes and all that’s left of Stanley inside a clear evidence bag. Looks at Pip. ‘I’m going to need your bra too.’

Because she’s right, that’s soaked red as well.

Now Pip’s wearing a new white T-shirt and grey jogging trousers but they aren’t hers and whose are they, then? Andbe quietbecausesomeone is talking to her. It’s DI Hawkins: ‘It’s just to rule you out,’ he says, ‘to eliminate you.’ And she doesn’t want to say but she already feelseliminated.

‘Sign here.’

She does.

‘Just a gun powder residue test,’ says a new person Pip doesn’t know. And he’s placing something sticky, adhesive against her hands and her fingers, sealing them away in tubes.

Anothersign here.

‘To rule you out, you understand?’

‘Yes,’ Pip says, letting them place her fingers into the soft ink pad and against the paper. Thumb, forefinger, middle, the swirling lines of her fingerprints like little galaxies of their own.

‘She’s in shock,’ she hears someone say.

‘I’m fine.’

A different room and Pip is sitting alone, a clear plastic cup of water between her hands but itripples andshakes, warning her of an earthquake. Wait . . . we don’t get those here. But the earthquake comes all the same because it’s inside her, the shakes, and she can’t hold the water without spilling.

A door slams nearby but before the soundreachesher, it has changed.

It’s a gun. It fires two three six times and, oh, Hawkins is in the room again, sitting across from her but he can’t hear the gun. Only Pip can.

He asks questions.

‘What happened?’

‘Describe the gun.’

‘Do you know where Charlie Green went? He and his wife are gone. Their belongings look packed up in a hurry.’

He has written it all down too. Pip has to read it, re-remember it all.

Sign at the bottom.

And after, Pip asks a question of her own: ‘Did you find her?’

‘Find who?’

‘The eight-year-old abducted from her garden?’

Hawkins nods. ‘Yesterday. She’s fine, was with her father. Domestic dispute.’

And ‘Oh,’ is all Pip can sayto that.

She’s left alone again listening to the gun no one else can hear. Until there’s a soft hand on her shoulder and she flinches. An even softer voice, ‘Your parents are here to take you home now.’

Pip’s feet follow the voicedraggingthe rest of her with them. Into the waiting room, too bright, and it’s her dad she sees first. She can’t think what to say to him or Mum but that doesn’t matter because all they want todo isholdher.

Ravi is behind them.

Pip goes to him and his arms pull her into his chest. Warm. Safe. It’s always safe here and Pip breathes out, listening to the sound of his heart. Butoh no, the gun is in there too,hiding beneathevery beat.

Waitingfor her.

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