Page 98 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘I’m learning,’ Connor said.

Pip flashed Ravi an angry look. At least he could read her eyes, reacting right away. ‘She’s also, annoyingly, always right, so . . .’

‘Right, next plan,’ Pip said. ‘Make a Tinder profile.’

‘I just said you were always right,’ Ravi replied, voice shrill and playful.

‘To catch a catfish.’ She whacked him on the knee. ‘We’re not going to find Laila by blindly searching that name. At least on Tinder we can narrow down the search field by location. From Stella’s interview, it didn’t seem that Jamie was surprised at seeing Leyla in Little Kilton, just specifically at the calamity party. That makes me think she told him she was local, they’d just never met up IRL because, well . . . catfish.’

She downloaded the Tinder app on her phone and set about making a new profile, her thumb hovering over the name box.

‘What name should we go for?’ Ravi said.

Pip looked up at him, the question already in her eyes.

‘You want to putmeon a dating site?’ he asked. ‘You’re a weird kind of girlfriend.’

‘It’s just easier because I already have photos of you. We’ll delete the profile right after.’

‘Fine,’ Ravi smirked. ‘But you can’t use this to win any future arguments.’

‘Right,’ Pip said, typing in the bio now. ‘Enjoys mannish things like football and fishing.’

‘Aha,’ Ravi said, ‘catfishing.’

‘You two,’ Connor remarked, flicking his eyes between them like he was watching a tennis match.

Pip clicked through settings to alter the preferences. ‘Let’s keep it local, within a three-mile radius. We want it to show us women,’ she said, tapping the slider button beside that option. ‘And the age range . . . well, we know Jamie thought she was older than eighteen, so let’s put the range between nineteen and twenty-six?’

‘Yep, sounds good,’ Connor said.

‘OK.’ Pip saved the settings. ‘Let’s fish.’

Ravi and Connor huddled forward, watching over her shoulders as she swiped left through the potential matches. Soph from the bookshop was on there. And then a few swipes later so was Naomi Ward, grinning up at them. ‘We won’t mention that to her,’ Pip said, continuing, moving Naomi’s photo aside.

And there it was. She wasn’t expecting it so soon; it crept up on her and she almost swiped past it, her thumb stalling just before it hit the screen.

Layla.

‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Layla, with anA-Y. Twenty-five. Less than a mile away.’

‘Less than a mile away? Creepy,’ Connor said, shuffling closer for a better look.

Pip scrolled through the four photos on Layla’s profile. They were pictures of Stella Chapman, stolen from her Instagram, but they’d been cropped, flipped and filtered. And the main difference: Layla’s hair was ash blonde. It was done well; Layla must have played with the hue and layers on Photoshop.

‘Reader. Learner. Traveller,’ Ravi read from her bio. ‘Dog-Lover. And above all other things: Keen Breakfaster.’

‘Sounds approachable,’ Pip said.

‘Yeah, she’s right,’ said Ravi. ‘Breakfast is the best.’

‘Itisa catfish, you were right,’ Connor spluttered over a sharp intake of breath. ‘Stella – but blonde. Why?’

‘Blondes have more fun, apparently,’ Pip said, flicking through Layla’s photos again.

‘Well, you’re brunette and you actively hate fun, so yeah. True fact,’ said Ravi, affectionately scratching the back of Pip’s head.

‘Aha.’ She pointed to the very bottom of the bio, where it said:Insta @LaylaylaylaM. ‘Her Instagram handle.’

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