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.
‘Why does that matter?’
‘It matters,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ravi tried to hold her eyes but her gaze kept slipping away. ‘If there was anything I could do to change it, I would. Anything. But there’s nothing we can do now. And you getting suspended because you’re so angry about Max . . . he’s not worth any of that.’
‘So he just wins?’
‘No, I . . .’ Ravi abandoned his sentence, stepping over to her, his arms out to pull her in and wrap her up. And maybe it was because Max’s angled face flashed into her head, or maybe she didn’t want Ravi to get too close to the after-scream still thrumming inside her, but she pulled away from him.
‘Wha—’ His arms fell back to his sides, his eyes darkening, deepening. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So, what is it, you just want to hate the whole world right now, including me?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘Pip –’
‘Well, what’s the point?’ Her voice snagged against her dried out throat. ‘What was the point in everything we did last year? I thought I was doing it for the truth. But guess what? The truth doesn’t matter. It doesn’t! Max Hastings is innocent and I’m a liar and Jamie Reynolds isn’t missing. That’s the truth now.’ Her eyes filled. ‘What if I can’t save him? What if I’m not good enough to save him? I’m not good, Ravi, I –’
‘We will find him,’ Ravi said.
‘I need to.’
‘And you think I don’t?’ he said. ‘I might not know him like you do, and I can’t explain it, but I need Jamie to be OK. He knew my brother, was friends with him and Andie at school. It’s like it’s happening all over again six years later, and this time I actually have a chance, a small chance, to help to save Connor’s brother where I had no hope of saving my own. I know Jamie isn’t Sal, but this feels like some kind of second chance for me. You aren’t on your own here, so stop pushing people away. Stop pushing me away.’
Her hands gripped the desk, bones pushing through her skin. He needed to get away from her, in case she couldn’t control it again. The scream. ‘I just want to be alone.’
‘Fine,’ Ravi said, scratching the phantom itch at the back of his head. ‘I’ll go. I know you’re only lashing out because you’re angry. I’m angry too. And you don’t mean it, you know you don’t mean it.’ He sighed. ‘Let me know when you remember who I am. Who you are.’
Ravi moved over to the door, his hand stalling in the air before it, head slightly cocked. ‘I love you,’ he said angrily, not looking at her. He slammed the handle down and walked out, the door juddering behind him.
Thirty-Two
Makes me sick.
That’s what the text said. From Naomi Ward.
Pip sat up on her bed, clicking on to the photo Naomi sent with the message.
It was a screenshot, from Facebook. A post from Nancy Tangotits: the name of Max Hastings’ profile. A photo, of Max, his mum and dad and his lawyer, Christopher Epps. They were gathered around a table in a lavish-looking restaurant, white pillars and a giant powder-blue bird cage in the background. Max was holding up the phone to get them all in the frame. And they were smiling, all of them, glasses of champagne in their hands.
He’d tagged them in at The Savoy Hotel in London, and the caption above read: celebrating . . .
The room immediately started to shrink, closing in around Pip. The walls took an inward step and the shadows in the corners stretched out to take her. She couldn’t be here. She needed to get out before she suffocated inside this room.
She stumbled out of her door, phone in hand, tiptoeing past Josh’s room to the stairs. He was already in bed, but he’d come in to see her earlier, with a whispered, ‘Thought you might be hungry,’ leaving her a packet of Pom-Bears he’d smuggled from the kitchen. ‘Shhh, don’t tell Mum and Dad.’
Pip could hear the sounds of her parents watching television in the living room, waiting for their programme to start at nine. They were talking, a muffled drone through the door, but she could hear one word clearly: her own name.
Quietly, she stepped into her trainers, scooped up her keys from the side, and slipped out of the front door, shutting it silently behind her.
It was raining, hard, spattering against the ground and up against her ankles. That was fine, that was OK. She needed to get out, clear her head. And maybe the rain would help, water down the rage until she was no longer ablaze, just the charred parts left behind.
She ran across the road, into the woods on the other side. It was dark here, pitch dark, but it covered her from the worst of the rain. And that was fine too, until something unseen rustled through the undergrowth and scared her. She returned to the road, safe along the moonlit pavement, soaked through. She should have felt cold – she was shivering – but she couldn’t really feel it. And she didn’t know where to go. She just wanted to walk, to be outside where nothing could shut her in. So she walked, up to the end of Martinsend Way and back, stopping before she reached her house, turning and walking the road again. Up and down and back again, chasing her thoughts, trying to unravel their ends.
Her hair was dripping by her third time coming back. She stopped dead. There was movement. Someone walking down the front path of Zach’s house. But it wasn’t Zach’s house, not any more. The figure was Charlie Green, carrying a filled black sack towards the bin left out near the path.
He jumped when he saw her emerging from the dark.
‘Ah, Pip, sorry,’ he said, laughing, dropping the bag in the bin. ‘You scared me. Are you –’ He paused, looking at her. ‘God, you’re soaking. Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?’
She didn’t have an answer.
‘Well you’re almost home now. Get in and get dry,’ he said kindly.
‘I-I . . .’ she stuttered, her teeth chattering. ‘I can’t go home. Not yet.’
Charlie tilted his head, his eyes searching out hers.
‘Oh, OK,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Well, do you want to come to ours, for a bit?’
‘No. Thank you,’ she added hastily. ‘I don’t want to be inside.’
‘Oh, right.’ Charlie shuffled, glancing back to his house. ‘Well, uh . . . do you want to sit under the porch, get out of the rain?’
Pip was about to say no but, actually, maybe she was feeling cold now. She nodded.
‘OK, sure,’ Charlie said, beckoning for her to follow him down the path. They stepped under the covered front steps and he paused. ‘Do you want a drink or something? A towel?’
‘No thank you,’ Pip said, sitting herself down on the dry middle step.
‘Right.’ Charlie nodded, pushing his reddish hair back from his face. ‘So, um, are you OK?’
‘I . . .’ Pip began. ‘I’ve had a bad day.’
‘Oh.’ He sat down, on the step below her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘I don’t really know how,’ she said.
‘I, er, I listened to your podcast, and the new episodes about Jamie Reynolds,’ he said. ‘You’re really good at what you do. And brave. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m sure you’ll find a way.’
‘They found Max Hastings not guilty today.’
‘Oh.’ Charlie sighed, stretching out his legs. ‘Shit. That’s not good.’
‘To put it lightly,’ she sniffed, wiping rainwater from the end of her nose.