Page 45 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

Connor:

Well me and Zach didn’t fancy going to the calamity party with Ant and Lauren, because they ignore everyone else anyway, so I went back to Zach’s new house and we . . . we played Fortnite, so now the world knows that then. And later Zach dropped me home.

Pip:

What time?

Connor:

We left Zach’s just after half eleven, so I must have been back around twelve. I was tired, went straight to bed, didn’t even brush my teeth. And Jamie never came back. I was sleeping, went to bed with no second thought about Jamie. It’s so stupid, really, how you take things like that for granted. I was stupid. I thought he’d come home. He was supposed to come home. And now he’s . . .

Eight

‘Photos?’

‘Yes, recent photos of him,’ Pip said, looking between the two of them, the sounds of the large kitchen clock counting the silence. But the ticks felt far too slow, as though she were somehow moving faster than time. A feeling she hadn’t had in a while, one she missed. ‘I suppose you don’t have any photos of him at the memorial, what he was wearing?’

‘No,’ Joanna said, unlocking her phone and flicking through. ‘But I did take lots on Jamie’s birthday last Thursday.’

‘One where his face shows clearly?’

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