First published in Great Britain in 2020

by Egmont UK Limited

2 Minster Court, 10th floor, London EC3R 7BB

Text copyright © 2020 Holly Jackson

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Illustration here © Priscilla Coleman

ISBN 978 1 4052 9777 6

www.egmontbooks.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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For Ben,

and for every

version of you these

last ten years.

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

After and Before

One Month Later

THURSDAY: One

Two

FRIDAY: Three

SATURDAY: Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

MONDAY 3 DAYS MISSING: Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

TUESDAY 4 DAYS MISSING: Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

THURSDAY: 6 DAYS MISSING: Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

FRIDAY 7 DAYS MISSING: Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

SUNDAY 16 DAYS LATER: Forty-Two

SATURDAY 6 DAYS LATER: Forty-Three

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Back series promotional page

About the Author

After and Before

You think you’d know what a killer sounds like.

That their lies would have a different texture; some barely perceptible shift. A voice that thickens, grows sharp and uneven as the truth slips beneath the jagged edges. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Everyone thinks they’d know, if it came down to it. But Pip hadn’t.

‘It’s such a tragedy what happened in the end.’

Sitting across from him, looking into his kind, crinkled eyes, her phone between them recording every sound and sniff and throat-clearing huff. She’d believed it all, every word.

Pip traced her fingers across the mousepad, skipping the audio file back again.

‘It’s such a tragedy what happened in the end.’

Elliot Ward’s voice rang out from the speakers once more, filling her darkened bedroom. Filling her head.

Stop. Click. Repeat.

‘It’s such a tragedy what happened in the end.’

She’d listened to it maybe a hundred times. Maybe even a thousand. And there was nothing, no giveaway, no change as he slipped between lies and half-truths. The man she’d once looked to as an almost-father. But then, Pip had lied too, hadn’t she? And she could tell herself she’d done it to protect the people she loved, but wasn’t that the exact same reason Elliot gave? Pip ignored that voice in her head; the truth was out, most of it, and that’s the thing she clung to.

She kept going, on to the other part that made her hairs stand on end.

‘And do you think Sal killed Andie?’ asked Pip’s voice from the past.

‘. . . he was such a lovely kid. But, considering the evidence, I don’t see how he couldn’t have done it. So, as wrong as it feels, I guess I think he must have. There’s no other explanation –’

Pip’s door pushed inward with a slap.

‘What are you doing?’ interrupted a voice from right now, one that lifted with a smirk because he knew damn well what she was doing.

‘You scared me, Ravi,’ she said, annoyed, darting forward to pause the audio. Ravi didn’t need to hear Elliot Ward’s voice, not ever again.

‘You’re sitting here in the dark listening to that, but I’m the scary one?’ Ravi said, flicking on the light switch, the yellow glow reflecting off the dark hair swept across his forehead. He pulled that face, the one that always got her, and Pip smiled because it was impossible not to.

She wheeled back from her desk. ‘How did you get in anyway?’

‘Your parents and Josh were on their way out, with a very impressive looking lemon tart.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They’re on neighbourly welcome duties. A young couple have just moved into the Chens’ house down the street. Mum did the deal. The Greens . . . or maybe the Browns, can’t remember.’

It was strange, thinking of another family living in that house, new lives reshaping to fill its old spaces. Pip’s friend Zach Chen had always lived there, four doors down, ever since Pip had moved here aged five. It wasn’t a real goodbye; she still saw Zach at school every day, but his parents had decided they could no longer live in this town, not after all that trouble. Pip was certain they considered her a large part of all that trouble.

‘Dinner’s seven thirty by the way,’ Ravi said, his voice suddenly skipping clumsily over the words. Pip looked at him; he was wearing his nicest shirt tucked in at the front, and . . . were those new shoes? She could smell aftershave too, as he stepped towards her, but he stopped short, didn’t kiss her on the forehead nor run a hand through her hair. Instead he went to sit on her bed, fiddling with his hands.

‘Meaning you’re almost two hours early,’ Pip smiled.

‘Y-yeah.’ He coughed.

Why was he being awkward? It was Valentine’s Day, their first since knowing each other, and Ravi had booked them a table at The Siren, out of town. Pip’s best friend Cara was convinced Ravi was going to ask Pip to be his girlfriend tonight. She said she’d put money on it. The thought made something in Pip’s stomach swell, spilling its heat up into her chest. But it might not be that: Valentine’s Day was also Sal’s birthday. Ravi’s older brother would have turned twenty-four today, if he’d made it past eighteen.

‘How far have you got?’ Ravi asked, nodding at her laptop, the audio editing software Audacity filling her screen with spiky blue lines. The whole story was there, contained within those blue lines. From the start of her project to the very end; every lie, every secret. Even some of her own.

‘It’s done,’ Pip said, dropping her eyes to the new USB microphone plugged into her computer. ‘I’ve finished. Six episodes. I had to use a noise reduction effect on some of the phone interviews for quality, but it’s done.’

And in a green plastic file, beside the microphone, were the release forms she’d sent out to everyone. Signed and returned, granting her permission to publish their interviews in a podcast. Even Elliot Ward had signed one, from his prison cell. Two people had refused: Stanley Forbes from the town newspaper and, of course, Max Hastings. But Pip didn’t need their voices to tell the story; she’d filled in the gaps with her production log entries, now recorded as monologues.

‘You’ve finished already?’ Ravi said, though he couldn’t really be surprised. He knew her, maybe better than anyone else.

It had been just a couple of weeks since she’d stood up in the school hall and told everyone what really happened. But the media still weren’t telling the story right; even now they clung to their own angles because they were cleaner, neater. Yet the Andie Bell case had been anything but neat.

‘If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,’ Pip said, her gaze climbing the spiking audio clips. Right then, she couldn’t decide whether this felt like something beginning or something ending. But she knew which she wanted it to be.

‘So, what’s next?’ asked Ravi.

‘I export the episode files, upload them to Soundcloud on schedule, once a week, and then copy the RSS feed to podcast directories like iTunes and Stitcher. But I’m not quite finished,’ she said. ‘I need to record the intro, over this theme song I found on Audio Jungle. But to record an intro, you need a title.’

‘Ah,’ Ravi said, stretching back, ‘we’re still title-less are we, Lady Fitz-Amobi?’

‘We are,’ she said. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to three options.’

‘Hit me,’ he said.

‘No, you’ll be mean about them.’

‘No, I won’t,’ he said earnestly, with the smallest of smiles.

‘OK.’ She looked down at her notes. ‘Option A is: An Examination into a Miscarriage of Justice. Wha— Ravi, I can see you laughing.’

‘That was a yawn, I swear.’

‘Well, you won’t like option B either because that’s A Study into a Closed Case: The Andie Bell – Ravi, stop!’

‘Wha— I’m sorry, I can’t help it,’ he said, laughing until his eyes lined with tears. ‘It’s just . . . of all your many qualities, Pip, there’s one thing you lack –’

‘Lack?’ She spun her chair to face him. ‘I lack something?’

‘Yes,’ he said, meeting her attempt at stony eyes. ‘Pizazz. You are almost entirely pizazzless, Pip.’

‘I am not pizazzless.’

‘You need to draw people in, intrigue them. Have a word like “kill” or “dead” in there.’

‘But that’s sensationalism.’

‘And that’s exactly what you want, for people to actually listen,’ he said.

‘But all of my options are accurate and –’

‘Boring?’

Pip threw a yellow highlighter at him.

‘You need something that rhymes, or alliteration. Something with . . .’

‘Pizazz?’ she said in her Ravi voice. ‘You think of one then.’

‘Crime Time,’ he said. ‘No, oh Little Kilton . . . maybe Little Kill Town.’

‘Ew, no,’ said Pip.

‘You’re right.’ Ravi got up, started to pace. ‘Your unique selling point is, really, you. A seventeen-year-old who solved a case the police had long considered closed. And what are you?’ he looked at her, squinting his eyes.

‘Lacking, clearly,’ she said with mock irritation.

‘A student,’ Ravi thought aloud. ‘A girl. Project. Oh, how about Project Murder and Me?’

‘Nah.’

‘OK . . .’ He chewed his lip and it made Pip’s stomach tighten. ‘So, something murder, or kill or dead. And you are Pip, who’s a student and a girl who’s good at . . . oh shit,’ he said suddenly, eyes widening. ‘I’ve got it!’

‘What?’ she said.

‘I’ve literally got it,’ he said, far too pleased with himself. ‘What is it?’

‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.’

‘Noooo.’ Pip shook her head. ‘That’s bad, way too try- hard.’

‘What are you talking about? It’s perfect.’

‘Good girl?’ she said, dubiously. ‘I turn eighteen in two weeks; I won’t contribute to my own infantilization.’

‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,’ Ravi said in his deep, movie-trailer voice, pulling Pip up from her chair and spinning her towards him.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he retorted, placing one hand on her waist, his warm fingers dancing up her ribs.

‘Absolutely not.’

If you haven’t yet listened to episode 6 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, look away now. Serious spoilers below.

Of course, many of us knew how this mystery ended, from when it exploded on to the news cycles last November, but the whodunnit wasn’t the whole story here. The real story of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has been the journey, from a 17-year-old sleuth’s hunch about a closed case – the murder of teenager Andie Bell, allegedly by her boyfriend Sal Singh – to the spiralling web of dark secrets she uncovers in her small town. The ever-shifting suspects, the lies and the twists.

The final episode certainly isn’t lacking in twists as it brings us the truth, starting with Pip’s shocking revelation that Elliot Ward, her best friend’s father, wrote the threatening notes Pip received during her investigation. Irrefutable proof of his involvement and truly a ‘loss of innocence’ moment for Pip. She and Ravi Singh – Sal’s younger brother and co-detective on this case – believed that Andie Bell might still be alive and Elliot had been keeping her the whole time. Pip confronted Elliot Ward alone and, recounting Ward’s words, the whole story unravels. An illicit relationship between student and teacher, allegedly initiated by Andie. “If true,” Pip theorizes, “I think Andie wanted an escape from Little Kilton, particularly from her father who allegedly, according to a source, was controlling and emotionally abusive. Perhaps Andie believed Mr Ward could get her a place at Oxford, like Sal, so she could get far away from home.”

The night of her disappearance, Andie went to Elliot Ward’s house. An argument ensued. Andie tripped, hitting her head against his desk. But as Ward rushed to get a first aid kit, Andie disappeared into the night. In the following days as Andie was officially declared missing, Elliot Ward panicked, believing Andie must have died from her head injury and when police eventually found her body, there might be evidence that would lead back to him. His only chance was to give them a more convincing suspect. “He cried as he told me,” Pip says, “how he killed Sal Singh.” Ward made it look like suicide and planted evidence so police would think Sal killed his girlfriend and then himself.

But, months later, Ward was shocked to see Andie walking on the side of the road, thin and dishevelled. She hadn’t died after all. Ward couldn’t allow her to return to Little Kilton, and that’s how she ended up his prisoner for five years. However, in a twist truly stranger than fiction: the person in Ward’s loft wasn’t Andie Bell. “She looked so much like her,” Pip claims, “she even told me she was Andie.” But she was actually Isla Jordan, a vulnerable young woman with an intellectual disability. All this time, Elliot had convinced himself – and Isla – that she was Andie Bell.

This left the final question of what happened to the real Andie Bell? Our young detective beat the police to that too. “It was Becca Bell, Andie’s little sister.” Pip worked out that Becca had been sexually assaulted at a house party (nicknamed calamity parties), and that Andie had sold drugs at these parties, including Rohypnol which Becca suspected played a part in her assault. When Andie was out that night with Ward, Becca allegedly found proof in her sister’s room that Max Hastings had bought Rohypnol from Andie and was likely Becca’s attacker (Max will soon face trial for several rape and sexual assault charges). But when Andie returned, she didn’t react in the way Becca hoped; Andie forbade her little sister from going to the police because it would get her in trouble. They started arguing, pushing, until Andie ended up on the floor, unconscious and vomiting. Andie’s post-mortem – completed last November when her body was finally recovered – showed that “Andie’s brain swelling from a head trauma was not fatal. Though it, no doubt, caused Andie’s loss of consciousness and vomiting, Andie Bell died from asphyxiation, choking on her own vomit.” Becca froze, allegedly watching Andie die, too shocked, too angry to save her sister’s life. Hiding her body because she was scared no one would believe it was an accident.

And there it is, our ending. “No angles or filters, just the sad truth of how Andie Bell died, how Sal was murdered and set up as her killer and everyone believed it.” In Pip’s scathing conclusion, she picks out everyone she finds at fault for the deaths of these two teenagers, naming and blaming: Elliot Ward, Max Hastings, Jason Bell (Andie’s father), Becca Bell, Howard Bowers (Andie’s drug dealer), and Andie Bell herself.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder stormed to the top of the iTunes chart with its first episode six weeks ago and it looks set to stay there for some time. With the final episode released last night, listeners are already clamouring for a season two of the hit podcast. But in a statement posted to her website, Pip said: “I’m afraid my detective days are over and there will not be a second season of AGGGTM. This case almost consumed me; I could only see that once I was out the other side. It became an unhealthy obsession, putting me and those around me in considerable danger. But I will finish this story, recording updates on the trials and verdicts of all those involved. I promise I will be here until the very last word.”

THURSDAY

One

It was still there, every time she opened the front door. It wasn’t real, she knew that, just her mind filling in the absence, bridging the gap. She heard it: dog claws skittering, rushing to welcome her home. But it wasn’t, it couldn’t be. Just a memory, the ghost of a sound that had always been there.

‘Pip, is that you?’ her mum called from the kitchen.

‘Hey,’ Pip replied, dropping her bronze rucksack in the hall, textbooks thumping together inside.

Josh was in the living room, sitting on the floor two feet from the TV, spooling through the adverts on the Disney Channel. ‘You’ll get square eyes,’ Pip remarked as she walked by.

‘You’ll get a square butt,’ Josh tittered back. A terrible retort, objectively speaking, but he was quick for a ten-year-old.

‘Hi darling, how was school?’ her mum asked, sipping from a flowery mug as Pip walked into the kitchen and settled on one of the stools at the counter.

‘Fine. It was fine.’ School was always fine now. Not good, not bad. Just fine. She pulled off her shoes, the leather unsticking from her feet and smacking against the tiles.

‘Ugh,’ her mum said. ‘Must you always leave your shoes in the kitchen?’

‘Must you always catch me doing it?’

‘Yes, I’m your mother,’ she said, whacking Pip’s arm lightly with her new cookbook. ‘Oh and, Pippa, I need to talk to you about something.’

The full name. So much meaning in that extra syllable.

‘Am I in trouble?’

Her mum didn’t answer the question. ‘Flora Green called me from Josh’s school today. You know she’s the new teaching assistant there?’

‘Yes . . .’ Pip nodded for her to continue.

‘Joshua got in trouble today, sent to the headteacher.’ Her mum’s brow knotted. ‘Apparently Camilla Brown’s pencil sharpener went missing, and Josh decided to interrogate his classmates about it, finding evidence and drawing up a persons of interest list. He made four kids cry.’

‘Oh,’ Pip said, that pit opening up in her stomach again. Yes, she was in trouble. ‘OK, OK. Shall I talk to him?’

‘Yes, I think you should. Now,’ her mum said, raising her mug and taking a noisy sip.

Pip slid off the stool with a gritted smile and padded back towards the living room.

‘Hey Josh,’ she said lightly, sitting on the floor beside him. She muted the television.

‘Oi!’

Pip ignored him. ‘So, I heard what happened at school today.’

‘Oh yeah. There’s two main suspects.’ He turned to her, his brown eyes lighting up. ‘Maybe you can help –’

‘Josh, listen to me,’ Pip said, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. ‘Being a detective is not all it’s cracked up to be. In fact . . . it’s a pretty bad thing to be.’

‘But I –’

‘Just listen, OK? Being a detective makes the people around you unhappy. Makes you unhappy . . .’ she said, her voice withering away until she cleared her throat and pulled it back. ‘Remember Dad told you what happened to Barney, why he got hurt?’

Josh nodded, his eyes growing wide and sad.

‘That’s what happens when you’re a detective. The people around you get hurt. And you hurt people, without meaning to. Have to keep secrets you’re not sure you should. That’s why I don’t do it any more, and you shouldn’t either.’ The words dropped right down into that waiting pit in her gut, where they belonged. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes . . .’ He nodded, holding on to the s as it grew into the next word. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled, folding him into a quick hug. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. So, no more playing detective?’

‘Nope, promise.’

Well, that had been easy.

‘Done,’ Pip said, back in the kitchen. ‘I guess the missing pencil sharpener will forever remain a mystery.’

‘Ah, maybe not,’ her mum said with a barely concealed smile. ‘I bet it was that Alex Davis, the little shit.’

Pip snorted.

Her mum kicked Pip’s shoes out of her way. ‘So, have you heard from Ravi yet?’

‘Yeah.’ Pip pulled out her phone. ‘He said they finished about fifteen minutes ago. He’ll be over to record soon.’

‘OK. How was today?’

‘He said it was rough. I wish I could be there.’ Pip leaned against the counter, dropping her chin against her knuckles.

‘You know you can’t, you have school,’ her mum said. It wasn’t a discussion she was prepared to have again; Pip knew that. ‘And didn’t you have enough after Tuesday? I know I did.’

Tuesday, the first day of the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court, and Pip had been called as a witness for the prosecution. Dressed in a new suit and a white shirt, trying to stop her hands from fidgeting so the jury wouldn’t see. Sweat prickling down her back. And every second, she’d felt his eyes on her from the defendant’s table, his gaze a physical thing, crawling over her exposed skin. Max Hastings.

The one time she’d glanced at him, she’d seen the smirk behind his eyes that no one else would see. Not behind those fake, clear-lens glasses anyway. How dare he? How dare he stand up there and plead not guilty when they both knew the truth? She had a recording, a phone conversation of Max admitting to drugging and raping Becca Bell. It was all right there. Max had confessed when she threatened to tell everyone his secrets: the hit-and-run and Sal’s alibi. But it hadn’t mattered anyway; the private recording was inadmissible in court. The prosecution had to settle for Pip’s recounting of the conversation instead. Which she’d done, word for word . . . well, apart from the beginning of course, and those same secrets she had to keep to protect Naomi Ward.

‘Yeah it was horrible,’ Pip said, ‘but I should still be there.’ She should; she’d promised to follow this story to all of its ends. But instead, Ravi would be there every day in the public gallery, taking notes for her. Because school wasn’t optional: so said her mum and the new headteacher.

‘Pip, please,’ her mum said in that warning voice. ‘This week is difficult enough as it is. And with the memorial tomorrow too. What a week.’

‘Yep,’ Pip agreed with a sigh.

‘You OK?’ Her mum paused, resting a hand on Pip’s shoulder.

‘Yeah. I’m always OK.’

Her mum didn’t quite believe her, she could tell. But it didn’t matter because a moment later there was a rapping of knuckles against the front door: Ravi’s distinctive pattern. Long-short-long. And Pip’s heart picked up to match it, as it always did.

[Jingle plays]

Pip:
Hello, Pip Fitz-Amobi here and welcome back to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: The Trial of Max Hastings. This is the third update, so if you haven’t yet heard the first two mini-episodes, please go back and listen to those before you return. We are going to cover what happened today, the third day of Max Hastings’ trial, and joining me is Ravi Singh . . .

Ravi:
Hello.

Pip:
. . . who has been watching the trial unfold from the public gallery. So today started with the testimony from another of the victims, Natalie da Silva. You may well recognize the name; Nat was involved in my investigation into the Andie Bell case. I learned that Andie had bullied Nat at school, and had even sought and distributed indecent images of her on social media. I believed this could be a possible motive and, for a time, I considered Nat a person of interest. I was entirely wrong, of course. Today, Nat appeared in Crown Court to give evidence about how, on 24 February 2012 at a calamity party, she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by Max Hastings, the charges listing one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. So, Ravi, can you take us through how her testimony went?

Ravi:
Yeah. So, the prosecutor asked Nat to establish a timeline of that evening: when she arrived at the party, the last instance she looked at the time before she began to feel incapacitated, what time she woke up in the morning and left the house. Nat said that she only has a few hazy snatches of memory: someone leading her into the back room away from the party and laying her on a sofa, feeling paralyzed, unable to move and someone lying beside her. Other than that, she described herself as being blacked out. And then, when she woke up the next morning, she felt dreadful and dizzy, like it was the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her clothes were in disarray and her underwear had been removed.

Pip:
And, to revisit what the prosecution’s expert witness said on Tuesday about the effects of benzodiazepines like Rohypnol, Nat’s testimony is very much in line with what you’d expect. The drug acts like a sedative and can have a depressant effect on the body’s central nervous system, which explains Nat’s feeling of being paralyzed. It feels almost like being separated from your own body, like it just won’t listen to you, your limbs aren’t connected any more.

Ravi:
Right, and the prosecutor also made sure the expert witness repeated, several times, that a side effect of Rohypnol was ‘blacking out’, as Nat said, or having anterograde amnesia, which means an inability to create new memories. And I think the prosecutor wants to keep reminding the jury of this point, because it will play a significant part in the testimonies of all the victims; the fact that they don’t remember exactly what happened because the drug impacted their ability to make memories.

Pip:
And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months.

Ravi:
Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max.

Pip:
And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence?

Ravi:
From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist.

Pip:
And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday?

Ravi:
Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something.

Pip:
Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders.

Ravi:
The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand.

Pip:
Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com. So, let’s talk about the cross-examination.

Ravi:
Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch.

Pip:
It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair.

Ravi:
Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat.

Pip:
It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast.

Ravi:
Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down.

Pip:
I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course.

Ravi:
It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.

Two

Words spliced, growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused, until her handwriting was just one writhing blur. Pip was looking at the page, but she wasn’t really there. It was like that now; giant holes in her attention that she slipped right into.

There was a time, not too long ago, she would have found a practice essay about Cold War escalation enthralling. She would have cared, really cared. That was who she was before, but something must have changed. Hopefully it was just a matter of time until those holes filled back in and things went back to normal.

Her phone buzzed against the desk, Cara’s name lighting up.

‘Good evening, Miss Sweet F-A,’ Cara said when Pip picked up. ‘Are you ready to Netflix and chill in the upside down?’

‘Yep CW, two secs,’ Pip said, taking her laptop and phone to bed with her, sliding under the duvet.

‘How was the trial today?’ Cara asked. ‘Naomi almost went this morning, to support Nat. But she couldn’t face seeing Max.’

‘I just uploaded the next update.’ Pip sighed. ‘Makes me so angry that Ravi and I have to tiptoe around it when we record, saying ‘allegedly’ and avoiding anything that steps over the presumption of innocence when we know he did it. He did all of it.’

‘Yeah, it’s gross. But it’s OK, it will be over in a week.’ Cara rustled in her covers, the phone line crackling. ‘Hey, guess what I found today?’

‘What?’

‘You’re a meme. An actual meme that strangers are posting on Reddit. It’s that photo of you with DI Hawkins in front of all the press microphones. The one where it looks like you’re rolling your eyes at him while he’s talking.’

‘I was rolling my eyes at him.’

‘And people have captioned the funniest things. It’s like you’re the new “jealous girlfriend” meme. This one has a caption of Me . . . by you, and beside Hawkins it says Men on the internet explaining my own joke back to me.’ She snorted. ‘That’s when you know you’ve made it, becoming a meme. Have you heard from any more advertisers?’

‘Yeah,’ Pip said. ‘A few companies have emailed about sponsorship. But . . . I still don’t know if it’s the right thing, profiting off what happened. I don’t know, it’s too much to think about, especially this week.’

‘I know, what a week.’ Cara coughed. ‘So tomorrow, you know . . . the memorial, would it be weird for Ravi . . . and his parents, if Naomi and I were there?’

Pip sat up. ‘No. You know Ravi doesn’t think like that, you’ve spoken to each other about it.’

‘I know, I know. But I just thought, with tomorrow being about remembering Sal and Andie, now we know the truth, maybe it would be weird for us to –’

‘Ravi is the last person who’d ever want you to feel guilty for what your dad did to Sal. His parents too.’ Pip paused. ‘They lived through that, they know better than anyone.’

‘I know, it’s just –’

‘Cara, it’s OK. Ravi would want you there. I’m pretty sure he’d say Sal would’ve wanted Naomi there. She was his best friend.’

‘OK, if you’re sure.’

‘I’m always sure.’

‘You are. You should think about taking up gambling,’ Cara said.

‘Can’t, Mum’s already too concerned about my addictive personality.’

‘Surely mine and Naomi’s fucked-uppedness helps to normalize you.’

‘Not enough, apparently,’ said Pip. ‘If you could try a bit harder, that would be great.’

That was Cara’s way of getting through the last six months; her new normal. Hiding behind the quips and one-liners that made others squirm and fall silent. Most people don’t know how to react when someone jokes about their father who murdered a person and kidnapped another. But Pip knew exactly how to react: she crouched and hid behind the one-liners too, so that Cara always had someone right there next to her. That was how she helped.

‘Note taken. Although not sure my grandma can cope with any more. You know Naomi’s had this new idea: apparently she wants to burn all of Dad’s stuff. Grandparents obviously said no and got straight on the phone to our therapist.’

‘Burn it?’

‘I know, right?’ Cara said. ‘She’d accidentally summon a demon or something. I probably shouldn’t tell him; he still thinks Naomi will turn up one day.’

Cara visited her dad in Woodhill Prison once a fortnight. She said it didn’t mean she’d forgiven him, but, after all, he was still her dad. Naomi had not seen him once and said she never would.

‘So, what time does the memorial – hold on, Grandpa’s talking to me . . . yes?’ Cara called, her voice directed away from the phone. ‘Yeah, I know. Yeah, I am.’

Cara’s grandparents – her mum’s parents – had moved into the house with them last November, so Cara had some doctor-ordered stability until she finished school. But April was almost over, and exams and the end of school were fast approaching. Too fast. And when summer arrived, they would put the Wards’ house on the market and move the girls back to their home in Great Abington. At least they’d be close when Pip started university in Cambridge. But Little Kilton wasn’t Little Kilton without Cara, and Pip quietly wished the summer would never come.

‘OK. Goodnight Grandpa.’

‘What was that?’

‘Oh, you know, it’s gone ten thirty so it’s suuuuuuuper late and past “lights out” time and I should have been in bed hours ago and not chatting to my “girlfriends”. Plural. At this rate, I’ll probably never have a girlfriend, let alone multiple, plus no one has said “lights out” since like the seventeen hundreds,’ she huffed.

‘Well, the light bulb was invented in 1879 so –’

‘Ugh, please stop. Have you got it lined up?’

‘Almost,’ Pip said, dragging her finger across the mousepad. ‘We’re on episode four, yes?’

This had started in December, when Pip first realized Cara wasn’t really sleeping. Not surprising, really; lying in bed at night is always when the worst thoughts come. And Cara’s were worse than most. If only Pip could stop her listening to them, distract her into sleep. As kids, Cara was always the first one to go at sleepovers, her light snores disrupting the end of the cheesy horror film. So Pip tried to recreate those childhood sleepovers, calling Cara while they binge-watched Netflix together. It worked. As long as Pip was there, awake and listening, Cara eventually fell asleep, her soft breaths whistling through the phone.

Now they did it every night. They’d started with shows Pip could legitimately argue had ‘educational value’. But they’d been through so many that the standard had slipped somewhat. Still, at least Stranger Things had some historical quality.

‘OK, ready?’ Cara said.

‘Ready.’ It had taken them several attempts to get the shows to run in exact synchronization; Cara’s laptop had a slight delay so she pressed play on one and Pip went on go.

‘Three,’ Pip said.

‘Two.’

‘One.’

‘Go.’

FRIDAY

Three

She knew his footsteps; knew them across carpet and hardwood floors, and knew them now across the gravel on the common car park. She turned and smiled at him, and Ravi’s feet picked up in that small-stepped half-run he always did when he spotted her. It made Pip glow every time.

‘Hey, Sarge,’ he said, pressing the words into her forehead with his lips. His very first nickname for her, now one among dozens.

‘You OK?’ she asked, though she already knew he wasn’t; he’d just over-sprayed deodorant and it was following him around like a fog. That meant he was nervous.

‘Yeah, bit nervous,’ Ravi said. ‘Mum and Dad are already there but I wanted to shower first.’

‘That’s OK, the ceremony doesn’t start until seven thirty,’ Pip said, taking his hand. ‘There are lots of people around the pavilion already, maybe a few hundred.’

‘Already?’

‘Yeah. I walked through on my way home from school and the news vans were already setting up.’

‘Is that why you came in disguise?’ Ravi smiled, tugging at the bottle-green jacket hood pulled over Pip’s head.

‘Just until we get past them.’

It was probably her fault they were here anyway; her podcast had reignited Sal and Andie’s stories on the news cycles. Especially this week, the six-year anniversary of their deaths.

‘How did court go today?’ asked Pip, and then: ‘We can talk about it tomorrow if you don’t want –’

‘No, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I mean, it wasn’t OK. Today was one of the girls who lived in the same halls as Max at university. They played her 999 call from the morning after.’ Ravi swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘And in cross-examination, Epps went in on her, of course: no DNA profile lifted from the rape kit, no memory, that sort of thing. You know, watching Epps sometimes makes me reconsider if I really want to be a criminal defence solicitor.’

That was The Plan they’d worked out: Ravi would resit his A-Level exams as a private candidate the same time Pip was taking hers. Then he would apply for a six-year law apprenticeship starting in September, when Pip went to university. ‘Quite the power couple,’ Ravi had remarked.

‘Epps is one of the bad ones,’ Pip said. ‘You’ll be a good one.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Are you ready? We can wait here a bit longer if you –’

‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Just . . . I . . . will you stay with me?’

‘Of course.’ She pressed her shoulder into his. ‘I won’t let go.’

The sky was already darkening as they left the crunchy gravel behind for the soft grass of the common. To their right, little clusters of people were walking out on to the green from the direction of Gravelly Way, all heading towards the pavilion on the south side of the common. Pip heard the crowd before she saw them; that low, living hum that only happens when you put hundreds of people into one small place. Ravi gripped her hand tighter.

They rounded a tight knot of whispering sycamore trees and the pavilion came into view, glowing a faint yellow; people must have started lighting the candles and tealights laid out around the structure. Ravi’s hand started to sweat against hers.

She recognized a few faces at the back as they approached: Adam Clark, her new history teacher, standing beside Jill from the café, and over there Cara’s grandparents waving at her. They pushed forward and, as eyes turned and met theirs, the crowd parted for Ravi, swallowing them, re-forming behind them to block the way back.

‘Pip, Ravi.’ A voice pulled their attention to the left. It was Naomi, hair pulled back tight, like her smile. She was standing with Jamie Reynolds – the older brother of Pip’s friend Connor – and, Pip realized with a stomach lurch, Nat da Silva. Her hair so white in the thickening twilight that it almost set the air around her aglow. They had all been in the same school year as Sal and Andie.

‘Hi,’ Ravi said, pulling Pip out of her thoughts.

‘Hi Naomi, Jamie,’ she said, nodding to them in turn. ‘Nat, hey,’ she faltered as Nat’s pale-blue eyes fell on her and her gaze hardened. The air around her lost its glow and turned cold.

‘Sorry,’ Pip said. ‘I-I . . . just wanted to say I’m sorry you had to go through that, th-the trial yesterday, but you did amazingly.’

Nothing. Nothing but a twitch in Nat’s cheek.

‘And I know this week and next must be awful for you, but we are going to get him. I know it. And if there’s anything I can do . . .’

Nat’s eyes slid off Pip like she wasn’t really there at all. ‘OK,’ Nat said, a sharp edge to her voice as she faced the other way.

‘OK,’ Pip said quietly, turning back to Naomi and Jamie. ‘We’d better keep moving. See you later.’

They moved on through the crowd, and when they were far enough away, Ravi said in her ear, ‘Yeah, she definitely still hates you.’

‘I know.’ And she deserved it, really; she had considered Nat a murder suspect. Why wouldn’t Nat hate her? Pip felt cold, but she packed away Nat’s eyes into the pit in her stomach, alongside the rest of those feelings.

She spotted Cara’s messy dark blonde top-knot, bobbing above the heads in the crowd, and she manoeuvred herself and Ravi towards it. Cara was standing with Connor, who was nodding his head in quick doubles as she spoke. Beside them, heads almost pressed together, were Ant and Lauren, who were now always Ant-and-Lauren said in one quick breath, because one was never seen without the other. Not now that they were together together, unlike before when they must have been pretend together. Cara said apparently it had started at the calamity party they all went to last October, when Pip had been undercover. No wonder she hadn’t noticed. Zach was standing the other side of them, ignored, fiddling awkwardly with his liquid black hair.

‘Hi,’ Pip said as she and Ravi breached the outer circle of the group.

‘Hey,’ came a quiet chorus of replies.

Cara turned to look up at Ravi, nervously picking at her collar. ‘I, um . . . I’m . . . how are you? Sorry.’

Cara was never lost for words.

‘It’s OK,’ Ravi said, breaking free from Pip’s hand to hug Cara. ‘It really is, I promise.’

‘Thank you,’ Cara said quietly, blinking at Pip over Ravi’s shoulder.

‘Oh, look,’ Lauren hissed, nudging Pip and indicating with a flash of her eyes. ‘It’s Jason and Dawn Bell.’

Andie and Becca’s parents. Pip followed Lauren’s eyes. Jason was wearing a smart wool coat, surely too hot for the evening, leading Dawn towards the pavilion. Dawn’s eyes were down on the ground, on all those bodiless feet, her eyelashes mascara-clumped like she’d already been crying. She looked so small behind Jason as he pulled her along by the hand.

‘Have you heard?’ Lauren said, beckoning for the group to draw in tighter. ‘Apparently Jason and Dawn are back together. My mum says his second wife is divorcing him and apparently Jason has moved back into that house with Dawn.’

That house. The house where Andie Bell died on the kitchen tiles and Becca stood by and watched. If those apparentlys were true, Pip wondered how much choice Dawn had had in that decision. From what she’d heard about Jason during her investigation, she wasn’t sure how much choice anyone around him ever had. He’d certainly not come out of her podcast smelling of roses. In fact, in a twitter poll a listener made of the Most Hateable Person in AGGGTM, Jason Bell had received almost as many votes as Max Hastings and Elliot Ward. Pip herself had come in close fourth place.

‘It’s so weird they still live there,’ Ant said, widening his eyes like Lauren’s. They fed off each other like that. ‘Eating dinner in the same room she died.’

‘People deal with what they have to deal with,’ said Cara. ‘Don’t think you can judge them by normal standards.’

That shut Ant-and-Lauren up.

There was an awkward silence that Connor tried to fill. Pip looked away, immediately recognizing the couple standing next to them. She smiled.

‘Oh hi, Charlie, Flora.’ Her new neighbours from four doors down: Charlie with his rusty coloured hair and well-trimmed beard, and Flora who Pip had only ever seen wearing florals. She was the new teaching assistant at her brother’s school, and Josh was more than a little bit obsessed with her. ‘Didn’t see you there.’

‘Hello,’ Charlie smiled, dipping his head. ‘You must be Ravi,’ he said, shaking Ravi’s hand which hadn’t yet found its way back to Pip. ‘We are both very sorry for your loss.’

‘It sounds like your brother was an amazing guy,’ Flora added.

‘Thank you. Yeah, he was,’ said Ravi.

‘Oh,’ Pip patted Zach’s shoulder to bring him into the conversation. ‘This is Zach Chen. He used to live in your house.’

‘Lovely to meet you, Zach,’ Flora said. ‘We love the house so much. Was yours the back bedroom?’

A hissing sound behind Pip distracted her for a moment. Connor’s brother Jamie had appeared beside him, talking to each other in hushed tones.

‘No, it’s not haunted,’ Charlie was saying as Pip tuned back into the conversation.

‘Flora?’ Zach turned to her. ‘Have you never heard the pipes groaning in the downstairs toilet? It sounds like a ghost saying ruuuuun, ruuuunn.’

Flora’s eyes widened suddenly, her face draining as she looked at her husband. She opened her mouth to reply but started to cough, excusing herself, stepping back from the circle.

‘Look what you’ve started.’ Charlie smiled. ‘She’ll be best friends with the toilet ghost by tomorrow.’

Ravi’s fingers walked down Pip’s forearm, sliding back into her hand as he gave her a look. Yes, they should probably move on and find his parents; it would start soon.

They said goodbye and carried on towards the front of the gathering. Looking back, Pip could have sworn the crowd had doubled since they’d arrived; there might be nearly a thousand people here now. Almost at the pavilion, Pip saw for the first time the blown-up photographs of Sal and Andie, resting against easels on opposite sides of the small building. Matching smiles etched into their forever-young faces. People had laid bouquets of flowers in orbiting circles underneath each portrait, and the candles flickered as the crowd shuffled on their feet.

‘There they are,’ Ravi said, pointing. His parents were at the front on the right, the side Sal looked out on. There was a group of people around them, and Pip’s family were close by.

They passed right behind Stanley Forbes taking photos of the scene, the flash of his camera lighting up his pale face and dancing across his dark brown hair.

‘Of course he’s here,’ Pip said out of earshot.

‘Oh, leave him alone, Sarge.’ Ravi smiled back at her.

Months ago, Stanley had sent the Singhs a four-page handwritten apology letter, telling them he was ashamed of the way he’d spoken about their son. He’d printed another public apology in the small-town newspaper he volunteered at, the Kilton Mail. And he’d also led the charge on fundraising to get a bench dedicated to Sal on the common, just up the path from Andie’s one. Ravi and his parents had accepted his apology, but Pip was sceptical.

‘At least he said sorry,’ Ravi continued. ‘Look at all of them.’ He indicated the group around his parents. ‘Their friends, neighbours. People who made their life hell. They’ve never apologized, just pretended like the last six years never even happened.’

Ravi cut off as Pip’s dad folded them both into a hug.

‘Doing OK?’ he asked Ravi, patting him on the back before he let go.

‘Doing OK,’ Ravi replied, tousling Josh’s hair in greeting and smiling at Pip’s mum.

Ravi’s dad, Mohan, came over. ‘I’m going in now to get a few things ready. I’ll see you after.’ He tapped Ravi affectionately under the chin with one finger. ‘Look after Mum.’ Mohan walked up the stairs of the pavilion and disappeared inside.

It started at seven thirty-one exactly, Ravi standing between Pip and his mum, holding both of their hands. Pip circled her thumb in his palm as the district councillor who’d helped organize the memorial stepped up to the microphone at the top of the stairs to say ‘a few words’. Well, he said far more than a few, going on about family values in the town and the inevitability of truth, praising the Thames Valley Police for all their ‘tireless work on this case’. He wasn’t even trying to be sarcastic.

Next up to speak was Mrs Morgan, now headteacher at Little Kilton Grammar School. Her predecessor had been forced by the board to resign early, in the fallout from everything Mr Ward had done while working at the school. Mrs Morgan spoke about Andie and Sal in turn, about the lasting impact their stories would have on the whole town.

Then Andie’s best friends, Chloe Burch and Emma Hutton, walked out of the pavilion and up to the microphone. Clearly Jason and Dawn Bell had declined to speak at the vigil. Chloe and Emma did a joint reading, from Christina Rossetti’s poem, Goblin Market. When they were done, they re-joined the quietly murmuring crowd, Emma sniffing and dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. Pip was watching her when someone behind bumped her elbow.

She turned. It was Jamie Reynolds, shuffling slowly through the crowd, a determined look in his eyes, the candles lighting up a sheen of sweat breaking across his face.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered distractedly, like he didn’t even recognize her.

‘It’s OK,’ Pip replied, following Jamie with her eyes until Mohan Singh walked out of the pavilion and cleared his throat at the microphone, silencing the common. Not a sound, except the wind in the trees. Ravi gripped tighter, his fingernails pressing half-moons into Pip’s skin.

Mohan looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand. He was shaking, the page fluttering in his grip.

‘What can I tell you about my son, Sal?’ he started, a crack halfway through his voice. ‘I could tell you he was a straight-A student with a bright future ahead of him, but you probably already know that. I could tell you he was a loyal and caring friend who never wanted anyone to feel alone or unwanted, but you probably already know that too. I could tell you he was an incredible big brother and an amazing son who made us proud every day. I could share memories of him, as a grinning toddler who wanted to climb everything, to a teenager who loved early mornings and late nights. But instead, I will tell you just one thing about Sal.’

Mohan paused, looked up to smile at Ravi and Nisha.

‘If Sal were here today, he’d never admit to this and would probably be thoroughly embarrassed, but his favourite movie of all time, from age three to eighteen, was Babe.’

There was a light and tense laugh from the crowd. Ravi too, eyes starting to glaze.

‘He loved that little pig. Another reason he loved the film was because it contained his favourite song. The one that could make him smile and cry, the one that made him want to dance. So I’m going to share a little of Sal and play that song for you now to celebrate his life, as we light and release the lanterns. But first, there’s something I want to tell my boy, something I’ve waited six years to say out loud.’ The page quivered against the microphone like paper wings as Mohan wiped his eyes. ‘Sal. I’m sorry. I love you. You will never be truly gone; I will carry you with me through every moment. The big moments and the small, every smile, every laugh, every up and every down. I promise.’ He paused, nodded at someone off to the right. ‘Take it away.’

And from the speakers set up on both sides, the super high-pitched voice of a mouse exclaimed: ‘And-a-one-and-a-two-and-a-three, hit it!’

The song started, a steady drum and the climbing melody sung by a squeaky mouse, until a whole chorus of other mice joined in.

Ravi was laughing now, and crying, and something in between the two. And somewhere, behind them, someone started clapping in time to the song.

Now a few more.

Pip watched over her shoulder as the clapping caught, passing up and down as it swelled through the swaying crowd. The sound was thunderous and happy.

People started singing along with the shrill mice, and – as they realized it was just the same few lyrics repeated – others joined in, struggling to hit those impossibly high notes.

Ravi turned to her, mouthing the words, and she mouthed them back.

Mohan walked down the steps, the page in his hand replaced with a Chinese lantern. The district councillor carried another down, passing it to Jason and Dawn Bell. Pip let Ravi go as he joined his mum and dad. Ravi was handed the small box of matches. The first one he struck was blown into a thin line of smoke by the wind. He tried again, sheltering the flame with his cupped hands, holding it under the lantern’s wick until it caught.

The Singhs waited a few seconds for the fire to grow, filling the lantern with hot air. They each had two hands on the wire rim at the bottom, and when they were ready, when they were finally ready, they straightened up, arms above their heads, and let go.

The lantern sailed up above the pavilion, juddering in the breeze. Pip craned her neck to watch it go, its yellow-orange flicker setting the darkness around it on fire. A moment later, Andie’s lantern crossed into view too, mounting the night as it chased Sal across the endless sky.

Pip didn’t look away. Her neck strained, sending stabs of pain down her spine but she refused to look away. Not until those golden lanterns were little more than specks, nestling among the stars. And even beyond that.

SATURDAY

Four

Pip tried to fight them off, her sinking eyelids. She felt fuzzy around the edges, ill-defined, like sleep had already taken her, but no . . . she really should get up off the sofa and do some revision. Really.

She was lying on the red sofa in the living room, in Josh’s Place apparently, as he kept intermittently reminding her. He was on the rug, rearranging Lego while Toy Story played in the background. Her parents must still be out in the garden; her dad had enthusiastically told her this morning that they were painting the new garden shed today. Well, there wasn’t much her dad wasn’t enthusiastic about. But the only thing Pip could think of was the stalk of the solitary sunflower planted near there, over their dead dog’s grave. It hadn’t yet bloomed.

Pip checked her phone. It was 5:11 p.m. and there was a text waiting on the screen from Cara, and two missed calls from Connor twenty minutes ago; she must have actually fallen asleep for a bit. She swiped to open Cara’s message: Urgh, been throwing up literally all day and Grandma keeps tutting. NEVER AGAIN. Thank you so much for coming to get me xx

Cara’s previous text, when you scrolled up, had been sent at 00:04 last night: Polpp whertf ui i I traifng finds anfulpw ggind hekp me safd. Pip had called her immediately, whispering from her bed, but Cara was so drunk she couldn’t speak in full sentences, not even half sentences or quarter, broken up by cries or hiccups. It took some time to understand where she was: a calamity party. She must have gone there after the memorial. It took even longer to coax out whose house the party was at: ‘Stephen-Thompson’s-I-think.’ And where that was: ‘Hi-Highmoor somewhere . . .’

Pip knew Ant and Lauren were at that party too; they should have been looking out for Cara. But, of course, Ant and Lauren were probably too preoccupied with each other. And that wasn’t even what worried Pip most. ‘Did you pour your own drinks?’ she’d asked. ‘You didn’t accept a drink from someone, did you?’ So Pip had climbed out of bed and into her car, to ‘Highmoor somewhere’ to find Cara and take her home. She didn’t get back into bed until gone half one.

And today hadn’t even been quiet to make up for it. She’d taken Josh to football this morning, standing in a cold field to watch the game, then Ravi came over at lunch to record another update on the Max Hastings trial. Afterwards, Pip had edited and uploaded the mini episode, updated her website and replied to emails. So she’d sat down on the sofa for two minutes, in Josh’s Place, just to rest her eyes. But two had somehow become twenty-two, sneaking up on her.

She stretched out her neck and reached for her phone to text Connor, when the doorbell went.

‘For goodness sake,’ Pip said, getting up. One of her legs was still asleep and she stumbled over it, into the hallway. ‘How many bloody Amazon deliveries does one man need?’ Her dad had a serious next-day delivery addiction.

She undid the chain – a new rule in their house – and pulled open the door.

‘Pip!’

It wasn’t the Amazon delivery guy.

‘Oh, Connor, hey,’ she said, fully opening the door. ‘I was literally just texting you back. What’s up?’

It was only then that she noticed his eyes: the way they somehow looked both far-off yet urgent, too much white showing above and below the blue. And though Connor had a pink-cheeked, freckle-faced complexion, his face was flushed red, a line of sweat trickling down his temple.

‘Are you OK?’

He took a deep breath. ‘No, I’m not.’ His words cracked at the edges.

‘What’s wrong . . . do you want to come in?’ Pip stepped back to clear the threshold.

‘Th-thank you,’ Connor said, stepping past as Pip shut and locked the door. His T-shirt was sticking to his back, damp and bunched up.

‘Here.’ Pip led him into the kitchen and pointed him into one of the stools, her trainers discarded beneath it. ‘Do you want some water?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, filling up one of the clean glasses on the draining board and placing it in front of him with a thud that made him flinch. ‘Did you run here?’

‘Yeah.’ Connor picked up the glass with two hands and took a large gulp that spilled over his chin. ‘Sorry. I tried to call you and you didn’t answer and I didn’t know what to do other than just come here. And then I thought you might be at Ravi’s instead.’

‘That’s OK. I’m right here,’ Pip said, sliding up into the seat opposite him. His eyes still looked strange and Pip’s heart reacted, kicking around her chest. ‘What is it? What do you need to speak to me about?’ She gripped the edges of her stool. ‘Has . . . has something happened?’

‘Yes,’ Connor said, wiping his chin on his wrist. He parted his lips and his jaw hung open and close, chewing the air like he was practising the words before he said them.

‘Connor, what?’

‘It’s my brother,’ he said. ‘He . . . he’s missing.’

Five

Pip watched Connor’s fingers as they slipped down the glass.

‘Jamie’s missing?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Connor stared at her.

‘When?’ she asked. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘At the memorial.’ Connor paused to take another sip of water. ‘I last saw him at the memorial, just before it started. He never came home.’

Pip’s breath caught. ‘I saw him there after that. Maybe around eight, eight fifteen. He was walking through the crowd.’ She pulled up the memory, unpicked it from everything else last night. Jamie knocking into her as he made his way to the other side, his hurried apology, the way his jaw was set, determined. She’d thought it was strange at the time, hadn’t she? And the look in his eyes, not unlike Connor’s were now: somehow both distant and sharp. They looked very similar, even for brothers. They hadn’t as kids, but Pip had watched it happen over the years, the gap closing. Jamie’s hair was just a couple of shades darker, closer to brown than blonde. And Connor was all angles where Jamie was heavier, softer. But even a stranger could tell they were brothers. ‘You’ve tried calling him?’

‘Yes, hundreds of times,’ said Connor. ‘It goes straight to voicemail like it’s off or . . . or it’s dead.’ He stumbled over that last word, his head hanging from his shoulders. ‘Me and Mum spent hours calling anyone who might know where he is: friends, family. No one has seen him or heard from him. No one.’

Pip felt something stirring, right in that pit in her stomach that never quite left her any more. ‘Have you called around all the local hospitals to see if –’

‘Yes, we called them all. Nothing.’

Pip awakened her phone to check the time. It was half five now, and if Jamie hadn’t been seen since around eight last night, seen by her, that meant he’d been missing for over twenty-one hours already.

‘OK,’ she said firmly, bringing Connor’s eyes back to hers, ‘your parents need to go to the police station and file a missing persons report. You’ll need –’

‘We already did,’ Connor said, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. ‘Me and Mum went down to the station a few hours ago, filed the report, gave them a recent photograph, all that. It was Nat da Silva’s brother, Daniel, the officer who took the report.’

‘OK, good, so officers should be –’

Connor cut her off again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No officers are doing anything. Daniel said that because Jamie is twenty-four, an adult, and has a history of leaving home without communicating with his family, that there is very little the police can do.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah, he gave us a reference number and just told us to keep calling Jamie’s phone and anyone he’s been known to stay with before. Said that almost all missing people return within forty-eight hours, so we just have to wait.’

The stool creaked as Pip shifted. ‘They must think he’s low risk. When a missing persons report is filed,’ she explained, ‘the police determine a risk assessment based on factors like age, any medical issues, if the behaviour is out of character, things like that. Then the police response depends on whether they think the case is low, medium or high risk.’

‘I know how it might look to them,’ Connor said, his eyes a little less far-away now, ‘that Jamie’s disappeared a couple times before and he always comes back –’

‘The first time was after he dropped out of uni, wasn’t it?’ Pip said, scratching at the memory, how the air had been thick with tension in the Reynoldses’ house for weeks after.

Connor nodded. ‘Yeah, after he and my dad had a huge argument about it, he stayed with a friend for a week and wouldn’t answer any calls or texts. And it was two years ago when Mum actually filed a report because Jamie never returned from a night out in London. He’d lost his phone and wallet and couldn’t get home so just stayed on someone’s sofa for a couple of days. But . . .’ He sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. ‘But something feels different this time. I think he’s in trouble, Pip, I really do.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘He’s been acting strange the last few weeks. Distant, kind of jumpy. Short-tempered. And, you know Jamie, he’s normally really chilled out. Well, lazy, if you ask my dad. But recently, he’s seemed, at times, a little off.’

And wasn’t that how he seemed last night when he knocked into her? That strange focus, like he could see nothing else, not even her. And why was he moving through the crowd right then, anyway? Wasn’t that a little off?

‘And,’ Connor continued, ‘I don’t think he’d run off again, not after how upset Mum got last time. Jamie wouldn’t do that to her again.’

‘I . . .’ Pip began. But she didn’t really know what to say to him.

‘So me and Mum were talking,’ Connor said, shoulders contracting like he was shrinking in on himself. ‘If the police won’t investigate, won’t contact the media or anything, then what can we do ourselves, to find Jamie? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Pip.’

She knew what was coming but Connor didn’t pause long enough for her to cut in.

‘You know how to do this; everything you did last year where the police failed. You solved a murder. Two of them. And your podcast,’ he swallowed, ‘hundreds of thousands of followers; that’s probably more effective than any media connections the police have. If we want to find Jamie, spread the word that he’s missing so people can come forward with any information they have, or sightings, you are our best hope of that.’

‘Connor –’

‘If you investigate and release it on your show, I know we’ll find him. We’ll find him in time. We have to.’

Connor tailed off. The silence that followed was teeming; Pip could feel it crawling around her. She knew what he’d been going to ask. How could it have been anything else? She breathed out, and that thing that lived inside her twisted in her gut. But her answer was inevitable.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t do it, Connor.’

Connor’s eyes widened, and he grew back out of his shoulders. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask but –’

‘It’s too much to ask,’ she said, glancing at the window, checking her parents were still busy in the garden. ‘I don’t do that any more.’

‘I know, but –’

‘Last time I almost lost everything: ended up in the hospital, got my dog killed, put my family in danger, blew up my best friend’s life. It’s too much to ask. I promised myself. I . . . I can’t do it any more.’ The pit in her stomach ripped wider still; soon it might even outgrow her. ‘I can’t do it. It’s not who I am.’

‘Pip, please . . .’ He was pleading now, words catching on their way up his throat. ‘Last time you didn’t even really know them, they were already gone. This is Jamie, Pip. Jamie. What if he’s hurt? What if he doesn’t make it? I don’t know what to do.’ His voice finally cracked as the tears broke the surface of his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Connor, I am,’ Pip said, though the words hurt her to say. ‘But I have to say no.’

‘You aren’t going to help?’ He sniffed. ‘At all?’

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t.

‘I didn’t say that.’ Pip jumped down from her stool to hand Connor a tissue. ‘As you can probably guess, I have a certain relationship with the local police now. I mean, I don’t think I’m their favourite person, but I probably have more sway in matters like this.’ She scooped up her car keys from the side by the microwave. ‘I’ll go talk to DI Hawkins right now, tell him about Jamie and why you’re worried, see if I can get them to rethink their risk assessment so they actually investigate.’

Connor slid from his stool. ‘Really? You’ll do that?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise anything, but Hawkins is a good guy really. Hopefully he sees sense.’

‘Thank you,’ Connor said, wrapping his awkward and angular arms around her quickly. His voice lowered. ‘I’m scared, Pip. ’

‘It’s going to be OK.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I’ll give you a lift home on my way. Come on.’

Stepping out into the early evening, the front door got caught in a cross-breeze and slammed loudly behind them. Pip carried the sound with her, inside her, echoing around that hollow growing in her gut.

Six

The russet-brick building was just starting to lose its edges to the grey evening sky as Pip climbed out of her squat car. The white sign on the wall read: Thames Valley Police, Amersham Police Station. The policing team for Little Kilton was stationed here, at a larger town ten minutes away.

Pip walked through the main door into the blue-painted reception. There was just one man waiting inside, asleep on one of the hard metal chairs against the back wall. Pip strode up to the help desk and knocked on the glass, to get someone’s attention from the attached office. The sleeping man snorted and shuffled into a new position.

‘Hello?’ The voice emerged before its owner: the detention officer Pip had met a couple of times. The officer strolled out, slapping some papers down and then finally looking at Pip. ‘Oh, you’re not who I was expecting.’

‘Sorry,’ Pip smiled. ‘How are you, Eliza?’

‘I’m OK, love.’ Her kindly face crinkled into a smile, grey hair bunching at the collar of her uniform. ‘What brings you here this time?’

Pip liked Eliza, liked that neither of them had to pretend or dance around small talk.

‘I need to talk to DI Hawkins,’ she said. ‘Is he here?’

‘He is right now.’ Eliza chewed her pen. ‘He’s very busy though, looking to be a long night.’

‘Can you tell him it’s urgent? Please,’ Pip added.

‘Fine, see what I can do,’ Eliza sighed. ‘Take a seat, sweetheart,’ she added as she disappeared back into the office.

But Pip didn’t take a seat. Her body was humming and didn’t know how to be still right now. So she paced the width of the front desk, six steps, turn, six steps back, daring the squeak of her trainers to wake the sleeping man.

The keypad-locked door leading to the offices and interview rooms buzzed open, but it wasn’t Eliza or Richard Hawkins. It was two uniformed officers. Out first was Daniel da Silva, holding the door for another constable, Soraya Bouzidi, who was tying her tightly curled hair into a bun beneath her black peaked hat. Pip had first met them both at the police meeting in Kilton library last October, back when Daniel da Silva was a person of interest in Andie’s case. Judging by the strained, toothless smile he gave her now as he passed, he clearly hadn’t forgotten that.

But Soraya acknowledged her, throwing her a nod and a bright, ‘Hello,’ before following Daniel outside to one of the patrol cars. Pip wondered where they were going, what had called them out. Whatever it was, they must think it more important than Jamie Reynolds.

The door buzzed again, but only opened a few inches. A hand was all that appeared through it, holding up two fingers towards Pip.

‘You’ve got two minutes,’ Hawkins called, beckoning her to follow him down the corridor. She hurried over, trainers shrieking as she did, the sleeping man snorting awake behind her.

Hawkins didn’t wait to say hello, striding down the hall in front of her. He was dressed in black jeans and a new jacket, padded and dark green. Maybe he’d finally thrown out that long wool coat he’d always worn when he was lead investigator on Andie Bell’s disappearance.

‘I’m on my way out,’ he said suddenly, opening the door to Interview Room 1 and gesturing her inside. ‘So I mean it when I say two minutes. What is it?’ He closed the door behind them, leaning against it with one leg up.

Pip straightened and crossed her arms. ‘Missing person,’ she said. ‘Jamie Reynolds from Little Kilton. Case number four nine zero zero –’

‘Yeah I saw the report,’ he interrupted. ‘What about it?’

‘Why aren’t you doing anything about it?’

That caught him off guard. Hawkins made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a throat-clear, rubbing his hand across his stubbled chin. ‘I’m sure you know how it works, Pip. I won’t patronize you by explaining.’

‘He shouldn’t be filed as low risk,’ she said. ‘His family believe he’s in serious trouble.’

‘Well, family hunches aren’t one of the criteria we trust in serious police work.’

‘And what about my hunches?’ Pip said, refusing to let go of his eyes. ‘Do you trust those? I’ve known Jamie since I was nine. I saw him at Andie and Sal’s memorial before he disappeared, and something definitely felt off.’

‘I was there,’ Hawkins said. ‘It was very emotionally charged. I’m not surprised if people weren’t acting quite themselves.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Look, Pip,’ he sighed, dropping his leg and peeling away from the door. ‘Do you know how many missing persons reports we get every single day? Sometimes as many as twelve. We quite literally don’t have the time or resources to chase up every single one. Especially not with all these budget cuts. Most people return on their own within forty-eight hours. We have to prioritize.’

‘So prioritize Jamie,’ she said. ‘Trust me. Something’s wrong.’

‘I can’t do that.’ Hawkins shook his head. ‘Jamie is an adult and even his own mother admitted this isn’t out of character. Adults have a legal right to disappear if they want to. Jamie Reynolds isn’t missing; he’s just absent. He’ll be fine. And if he chooses to, he’ll be back in a few days.’

‘What if you’re wrong?’ she asked, knowing she was losing him. She couldn’t lose him. ‘What if you’re missing something, like with Sal? What if you’re wrong again?’

Hawkins winced. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wish I could help but I really have to go. We’ve got an actual high-risk case: an eight-year-old who’s been abducted from her back garden. There’s just nothing I can do for Jamie. It’s the way it is, unfortunately.’ He reached down for the door handle.

‘Please,’ Pip said, the desperation in her voice surprising them both. ‘Please, I’m begging you.’

His fingers stalled. ‘I’m –’

‘Please.’ Her throat clenched like it did before she cried, breaking her voice into a million little pieces. ‘Don’t make me do this again. Please. I can’t do this again.’

Hawkins wouldn’t look at her, tightening his grip around the handle. ‘I’m sorry, Pip. My hands are tied. There’s nothing I can do.’

Outside, she stopped in the middle of the car park and looked up into the sky, clouds hiding the stars from her, hoarding them for themselves. It had just started to rain, cold droplets that stung as they fell into her open eyes. She stood there a while, watching the endless nothing of the sky, trying to listen to what her gut was telling her. She closed her eyes to hear it better. What do I do? Tell me what to do.

She started to shiver and climbed into her car, wringing the rain from her hair. The sky had given her no answers. But there was someone who might; someone who knew her better than she knew herself. She pulled out her phone and dialled.

‘Ravi?’

‘Hello, trouble.’ The smile was obvious in his voice. ‘Have you been sleeping? You sound strange.’

She told him; told him everything. Asked for help because he was the only one she knew how to ask.

‘I can’t tell you what decision to make,’ he said.

‘But, could you?’

‘No, I can’t make that decision for you. Only you know, only you can know,’ he said. ‘But what I do know is that whatever you decide will be the right thing. That’s just how you are. And whatever you choose, you know I’ll be here, right behind you. Always. OK?’

‘OK.’

And as she said goodbye, she realized the decision was already made. Maybe it had always been made, maybe she’d never really had a choice, and she’d just been waiting for someone to tell her that that was OK.

It was OK.

She searched for Connor’s name and clicked the green button, her heart dragging its way to her throat.

He picked up on the second ring.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

Seven

The Reynoldses’ house on Cedar Way had always looked like a face. The white front door and the wide windows either side were the house’s toothy smile. The mark where the bricks were discoloured, that was its nose. And the two squared windows upstairs were its eyes, staring down at you, sleeping when the curtains were closed at night.

The face usually looked happy. But as she stared at it now, it felt incomplete, like the house itself knew something inside was wrong.

Pip knocked, her heavy rucksack digging into one shoulder.

‘You’re here already?’ Connor said when he opened the door, moving aside to let her in.

‘Yep, stopped by home to pick up my equipment and came straight here. Every second counts with something like this.’

Pip paused to slip her shoes off, almost over-balancing when her bag shifted. ‘Oh, and if my mum asks, you fed me dinner, OK?’

Pip hadn’t told her parents yet. She knew she’d have to, later. Their families were close, ever since Connor first asked Pip round to play in year four. And her mum had seen a lot of Jamie recently; he’d been working at her estate agency the last couple of months. But even so, Pip knew it would be a battle. Her mum would remind her how dangerously obsessed she got last time – as if she needed reminding – and tell her she should be studying instead. There just wasn’t time for that argument now. The first seventy-two hours were crucial when someone went missing, and they’d already lost twenty-three of those.

‘Pip?’ Connor’s mum, Joanna, had appeared in the hallway. Her fair hair was piled on top of her head and she looked somehow older in just one day.

‘Hi, Joanna.’ That was the rule, always had been: Joanna, never Mrs Reynolds.

‘Pip, thank you for . . . for . . .’ she said, trying on a smile that didn’t quite fit. ‘Connor and I had no idea what to do and we just knew you were the person to go to. Connor says you had no luck trying again with the police?’

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Pip said, following Joanna into the kitchen. ‘I tried, but they won’t budge.’

‘They don’t believe us,’ Joanna said, opening one of the top cupboards. It wasn’t a question. ‘Tea?’ But that was.

‘No, thank you.’ Pip dropped her bag on to the kitchen table. She rarely drank it any more, not since fireworks night last year when Becca Bell slipped Andie’s remaining Rohypnol pills into her tea. ‘Shall we get started in here?’ she said, hovering beside a chair.

‘Yes,’ Joanna said, losing her hands in the folds of her oversized jumper. ‘Best do it in here.’

Pip settled into a chair, Connor taking the one beside her as she unzipped her bag and pulled out her computer, the two USB microphones and pop filters, the folder, a pen, and her bulky headphones. Joanna finally sat down, though she couldn’t seem to sit still, shifting every few seconds and changing the positions of her arms.

‘Is your dad here? Your sister?’ Pip directed the questions at Connor, but Joanna was the one who answered.

‘Zoe’s at university. I called her, told her Jamie’s missing, but she’s staying there. She seems to have come down on her father’s side of things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Arthur is . . .’ Joanna exchanged a quick look with Connor. ‘Arthur doesn’t think Jamie’s missing, thinks he’s just run off again and will be back soon. He seems very angry with the whole thing – with Jamie.’ She shifted again, scratching a point just under her eye. ‘He thinks Connor and I are being ridiculous with all this –’ She gestured to Pip’s equipment. ‘He’s gone to the supermarket but he’ll probably be back soon.’

‘OK,’ Pip said, making a mental note, trying to betray nothing with her face. ‘Do you think he’ll talk to me?’

‘No,’ Connor said firmly. ‘No point even asking.’

The atmosphere in the room was tight and uncomfortable, and Pip’s armpits prickled with sweat. ‘OK, before we do anything, I need to speak honestly with you both, give you . . . I guess, a kind of disclaimer.’

They nodded at her, eyes wholly focused now.

‘If you’re asking me to investigate, to help find Jamie, we have to agree upfront where this could potentially take us and you need to be happy to accept that or I can’t do it.’ Pip cleared her throat. ‘It might lead us to potentially unsavoury things about Jamie, things that might be embarrassing or harmful, for you and him. Secrets he might have kept from you and wouldn’t want exposed. I agree that releasing the investigation for my podcast is the fastest way to get media attention for Jamie’s disappearance, bring in witnesses who might know something. It might even get Jamie’s attention if he really has just left, and bring him back. But with that, you have to accept that your private lives will be laid bare. Nothing will be off-the-record, and that can be hard to deal with.’ Pip knew this better than most. The anonymous death and rape threats still came in weekly, comments and tweets calling her an ugly, hateful bitch. ‘Jamie isn’t here to agree to this, so you need to accept, for him and yourselves, that you’re opening up your lives to be scrutinized and when I start digging, it’s possible you’ll learn things you never would have wanted to know. That’s what happened last time, so I . . . I just want to check you’re ready for that.’ Pip trailed into silence, her throat dry, wishing she’d asked for another drink instead.

‘I accept,’ Joanna said, her voice growing with each syllable. ‘Anything. Anything to get him home.’

Connor nodded. ‘I agree. We have to find him.’

‘OK, good,’ Pip said, though she couldn’t help but wonder if the Reynoldses had just given her permission to blow up their family, like she had with the Wards and the Bells. They’d come to her, invited her in, but they didn’t really understand the destruction that came in with her, hand-in-hand through that front door which looked like a grinning smile.

It was just then that the front door opened, heavy footsteps on the carpet, the rustling of a plastic bag.

Joanna jumped up, her chair screeching against the tiles.

‘Jamie?’ she shouted, running towards the hallway. ‘Jamie?’

‘Just me,’ said a male voice. Not Jamie. Joanna immediately deflated, like she’d just halved in size, holding on to the wall to keep the rest of her from disappearing too.

Arthur Reynolds walked into the kitchen, curly red hair with wisps of grey around the ears, a thick moustache that peppered out into well-trimmed stubble. His pale blue eyes seemed almost colourless in the bright LED lights.

‘Got more bread and –’ Arthur broke off, his shoulders slumping as soon as he spotted Pip, and the laptop and microphones in front of her. ‘For goodness sake, Joanna,’ he said. ‘This is ridiculous.’ He dropped the shopping bag on the floor, a tin of plum tomatoes rolling out under the table. ‘I’m going to watch TV,’ he said, marching out of the kitchen and towards the living room. The door slammed behind him, ricocheting through Pip’s bones. Of all her friends’ dads, she would have said Connor’s was the scariest; or maybe Ant’s. But Cara’s dad would have been the least and look how that turned out.

‘I’m sorry, Pip.’ Joanna came back to the table, picking up the lonely tin on her way. ‘I’m sure he’ll come round. Eventually.’

‘Should I . . .’ Pip began. ‘Should I be here?’

‘Yes,’ Joanna said firmly. ‘Finding Jamie is more important than my husband’s anger.’

‘Are you –’

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

‘All right.’ Pip unclipped the green folder and pulled out two sheets. ‘I need you to sign release forms before we begin.’

She handed Connor her pen, while Joanna fetched one from the counter. As they read through the forms, Pip awakened her laptop, opened up Audacity and plugged in the USB microphones, readjusting the pop filters over them.

Connor signed his name, and the microphones came alive, picking up the scratching of his pen, the blue soundwave spiking from the centre line.

‘Joanna, I’ll interview you first, if that’s OK?’

‘Sure.’ Joanna handed her the signed form.

Pip shot Connor a quick, close-lipped smile. He blinked vacantly back at her, not understanding the signal.

‘Connor,’ she said gently. ‘You have to leave. Witnesses must be interviewed separately, so they aren’t influenced by anyone else’s account.’

‘Right. Got it,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’ll go upstairs, keep trying Jamie’s number.’

He closed the kitchen door behind him, and Pip adjusted the microphones, placing one in front of Joanna.

‘I’m going to ask you questions about yesterday,’ said Pip, ‘try to create a timeline of Jamie’s day. But I’ll also ask about Jamie in recent weeks, in case anything is relevant. Just answer as truthfully as you can.’

‘OK.’

‘Are you ready?’

Joanna breathed out, nodded. Pip slipped on her headphones, securing them around her ears, and guided the on-screen arrow towards the red record button.

The mouse lingered over it.

Pip wondered.

Wondered whether the moment of no return had already been and gone, or whether this was it, here, right now, hovering above that red button. Either way, going back didn’t exist any more, not for her. There was only forward. Only onwards. She straightened up and pressed record.

Pip:
OK, before we get into the questions, Joanna, could you introduce yourself and Jamie a little?

Joanna:
OF COURSE, MY NAME IS –

Pip:
Sorry, Joanna, you don’t need to speak directly into the microphone. It picks you up just fine if you sit normally.

Joanna:
Sorry. My name is Joanna Reynolds, I’m Jamie’s mum. I have three children, Jamie is the oldest, my first. He just turned twenty-four, his birthday was last week. We celebrated here, had Chinese take-away and a Colin the Caterpillar birthday cake. Connor just managed to fit twenty-four candles on it. Oh, sorry, my other children: my daughter Zoe, she’s twenty-one, at university. And Connor, he’s my baby, eighteen and in his last year of school. Sorry, that was terrible, should I try it again?

Pip:
No, that’s OK, it was perfect. This is just a raw interview; I’ll edit all of this with sections of me talking and explaining in between so you don’t need to worry about consistency or sounding polished or anything.

Joanna:
OK.

Pip:
And some things, I obviously already know the answer to, but I have to ask so we can present all the information in the episode. Like for example, I’m going to ask you: Does Jamie still live at home with you?

Joanna:
I understand. OK. Yes, Jamie still lives at home with me and my husband, Arthur, and my youngest son, Connor.

Pip:
And does he have a job currently?

Joanna:
Yes, you know he works with your mum, Pip.

Pip:
I know, I just need you to say –

Joanna:
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Let me try again. Yes, Jamie is currently working part-time as a receptionist at a local estate agency, Proctor and Radcliffe Homes. He’s been there for almost three months now. It was very kind of your mum to give him the job, Pip, I’m very grateful. Since dropping out of uni in first year, Jamie’s been struggling to find a job, or stay in the ones he does get. He’s been a bit lost the last couple of years, can’t decide what he wants to do or what he’s good at. We’ve tried helping him but, with Jamie, the more you push him towards something, the more he pulls away from it. That’s why Arthur gets so frustrated with him. But I’m glad Jamie seems to be enjoying his job, at least for now.

Pip:
And would you say Jamie struggles to commit to things? Is that why he dropped out of university?

Joanna:
Yes, I think that’s part of the problem. He tried, he really did, but he found the pressure too much and just shut down, had a panic attack during one of his exams. I think some people just aren’t made for that sort of academic environment. Jamie . . . he’s a very sensitive boy . . . man. I mean, you know him, Pip. Arthur worries that he’s over-sensitive, but he’s been like this since he was a child. A very sweet little boy, all the other mothers used to say so.

Pip:
Yeah, he’s only ever been nice to me, was never Connor’s scary older brother or anything. And everyone else seems to like him. Speaking of, who are Jamie’s closest friends? Any in Little Kilton?

Joanna:
He still occasionally talks to one guy from university and I think he might have some internet friends too, he’s always on that computer. Jamie’s never been too good at friends; he makes fierce one-on-one friendships and falls in deep, so he’s always devastated when they don’t work out. I’d say his closest friend, at the moment, is Nat da Silva.

Pip:
I know Nat.

Joanna:
Yes, of course. There’s not many from their school year still living here in Kilton, apart from Naomi Ward and M-Max Hastings. Sorry, shouldn’t bring him up. But Nat and Jamie seem to have a lot in common. She also had issues at university and left early, and she’s struggling to find a job she really wants because she’s got a criminal record. I think they both feel left behind in this town, and it’s nicer to be left behind with someone else. Everything that happened last year sort of brought them together too. Nat had been friendly with Sal Singh, and Jamie was friends with Andie Bell; he spent a lot of time with Andie during rehearsals for school plays. Jamie and Nat were on the periphery of everything that happened, and I think they bonded over it. They’ve become really close since last year, talk all the time. She’s probably his only real friend at the moment. Though, truth be told, I think Jamie sees her in a different way than she sees him.

Pip:
What do you mean?

Joanna:
Well, oh god, Jamie is going to be furious I’m saying this. But I did agree nothing was off-record . . . I know my son very well and he’s never been good at hiding his feelings. I could always tell, by the way he talked about her, how he kept finding ways to bring Nat up into every single conversation that he was quite enamoured with her. Smitten. They spoke on the phone almost every day, always texting. But, of course, things were different after Nat turned up with a new boyfriend a couple of months ago. I don’t think Jamie ever mentioned his name but he was devastated. I found him crying in his room; he said it was because he had a stomach-ache, but I knew. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him like that. I knew it was because his heart was broken, and it was probably about Nat.

Pip:
How long ago was this?

Joanna:
Must have been early March. There were a couple of weeks without much contact, I think. But they’re still friends now; in fact Jamie’s always on his phone texting and it must be her because he jumps up so none of us can see. I can hear him up late sometimes too, on the phone. By his voice, I can tell it’s Nat he’s talking to.

Pip:
OK, thank you, I’ll certainly talk to Nat as soon as I can. So, Connor said to me that he’s more worried about Jamie this time because he’s been acting strangely in the last few weeks. Distant and short-tempered. Have you noticed the same?

Joanna:
He’s not been quite himself the last couple of weeks. Up late, coming in at all hours, over-sleeping and almost missing work. Snapping at his brother when they normally get on so well. I think it’s partly everything with Nat, but also, like I said before, feeling like he’s been left behind, watching all the people he went to school and uni with starting successful careers, settling down with partners, moving out of their parents’ houses. Jamie’s very self-conscious; he’s told me before he often feels worthless, never quite good enough. He’s been struggling with his weight too over the last six months or so. I told him it doesn’t matter as long as he is healthy and comfortable in his skin, but . . . well, you know how the world tries to make anyone over a certain size feel ashamed of that. I think Jamie’s been unhappy the last few weeks because he’s comparing himself to everyone else, feeling like he’ll never catch up. But I know he will.

Pip:
Sorry, Joanna, I don’t want to ask this, but you don’t think . . . you don’t think he could be at risk of harming himself?

Joanna:
No, absolutely not. Jamie wouldn’t do that to me, to his family. He wouldn’t. That’s not what this is, Pip. He’s missing. He’s not dead. And we will find him, wherever he is.

Pip:
OK, I’m sorry. Let’s move on. Jamie went missing yesterday, Friday evening, but can you talk me through what happened during the day?

Joanna:
Yes. I woke up around nine; my hours on a Friday are late, I don’t start till eleven. Arthur was already at work – he commutes in – and Connor had already walked into school. But Jamie was still fast asleep, so I told him he was going to be late for work and he left the house around twenty past nine, said he would grab breakfast from the café on the way. Then I went to work. Arthur left work early, to get home in time for the memorial. He texted around five that he was home. I left work soon after, stopping by the supermarket and got home maybe six or six thirty. Did a quick turnaround and then the four of us left for the memorial.

Pip:
What was Jamie wearing that evening? I can’t remember.

Joanna:
He was wearing jeans and his favourite shirt: it’s burgundy and collarless. Like the Peaky Blinders, Jamie always says.

Pip:
Shoes?

Joanna:
Oh, um, his trainers. White.

Pip:
Brand?

Joanna:
Puma, I think.

Pip:
Did you drive to the memorial?

Joanna:
Yes.

Pip:
And was Jamie acting strangely before the memorial at all?

Joanna:
No, not really. He was quiet, but he was probably just thinking about Andie and Sal. Everyone was being quiet, in fact. I think we had an almost silent car journey. And when arrived at the pavilion, around seven, Connor went to find his friends, you guys. And Jamie left too, said he was going to stand with Nat during the memorial. That was when I last saw him.

Pip:
I saw him after that. He did find Nat, he was with her and Naomi. And then after that he came over to talk to Connor briefly. He seemed fine to me, both those times. And then during the memorial, before Ravi’s dad spoke, Jamie walked past, knocked into me from behind. He seemed distracted, maybe even nervous. I don’t know what he saw that made him want to struggle through the crowd right in the middle of the ceremony. But it had to be something.

Joanna:
When was that?

Pip:
Maybe ten past eight.

Joanna:
So now you’re the last person to see him.

Pip:
I guess I am, for now. Do you know if Jamie had any plans for after the memorial?

Joanna:
No, I thought he’d go home. But today Connor told me that Jamie mentioned seeing Nat, or something.

Pip:
OK, I’ll get that from Connor first-hand. And where did you go after the memorial?

Joanna:
Arthur and I went out for dinner, to the pub. With some friends: the Lowes – Ant’s parents – and the Davises and the Morgans, you know, Mrs Morgan and her husband. The date had been in the diary for ages.

Pip:
And when did you both get home?

Joanna:
Well, we actually came back separately. I was driving so I didn’t drink, but some of our party who weren’t supposed to be drinking said they needed one after the memorial. I said I’d drop the Lowes and the Morgans home, so they could drink. Of course, that meant the car was full, but Arthur didn’t mind walking home; it isn’t far.

Pip:
What time did you leave the pub? Was this the King’s Head?

Joanna:
Yes. I think we all left just before eleven. Everyone was tired and it felt wrong staying out too late enjoying ourselves, after the memorial. The Lowes live in town, as you know, but the Morgans are out in Beaconsfield and, as Arthur says, I’m terrible for chatting, so I didn’t get back until quarter past twelve at least. Connor and Arthur were there, in bed. But no Jamie. I texted him before I went to sleep. Look, I’ll read out what I said. Going to bed now, sweetie, will you be home soon? xx That was at 12:36. Look. It never delivered. It hasn’t gone through.

Pip:
It still hasn’t gone through?

Joanna:
No. That’s bad isn’t it? His phone is still off and it must have already been off before 12:36 . . . or something, something bad . . .

Pip:
Please don’t get upset, Joanna. OK, let’s stop there.

Pip:
Recording. You need to stop chewing your nails though, the mike’s picking it up.

Connor:
Sorry.

Pip:
So I wanted to focus on that comment you made earlier, that Jamie had been acting strangely the last few weeks. Short-tempered and distant. Can you give me specific instances and dates?

Connor:
Yeah, I’ll try. It’s been the last couple of months, really, that Jamie’s mood has seemed kind of erratic. He was fine, just normal Jamie, and then at the start of March he seemed really miserable and quiet, would hardly talk to anyone. A ‘black cloud hanging over him’, to use my mum’s words.

Pip:
Your mum seems to think Jamie was upset when Nat da Silva got a new boyfriend, as they’d been getting so close. Could that have explained Jamie’s mood then?

Connor:
Yeah maybe, that probably matches up timewise. So he was like that a couple of weeks and then, suddenly, he was OK again, smiling and joking, spending a lot of time on his phone. We have a ‘no phones with Netflix’ rule, otherwise Mum just goes on Facebook and we have to rewind when she misses stuff. But I noticed Jamie was always on his, and not just on Reddit, it looked like he was typing, talking to someone.

Pip:
And he seemed in a good mood during this period?

Connor:
Yeah definitely. For like a week and a half, he was on really good form: chatty, smiley. Normal Jamie. And then it switched back again, just as suddenly. I know exactly which day it was, because we all went to see the new Tomb Raider film, which was the 30th March. Before we left, Jamie comes out of his room and says he’s not coming, and I could tell from his voice he was trying not to cry. But my dad told him he had to because we’d already bought the tickets. They got into a bit of a row about it, and in the end Jamie did come. I sat next to him, could see him crying during the film. He didn’t think anyone could see, because it was dark.

Pip:
Do you know what made him so upset?

Connor:
No idea. He carried on like that for a few days, locking himself in his room, straight after work. I asked him if he was OK one night, and he just said, ‘Yeah, fine,’ though we both knew he wasn’t. Jamie and me, we’ve always told each other everything. Everything. Up until recently. I don’t know what happened to us.

Pip:
And after those few days?

Connor:
Well, then he kind of went back to normal. He seemed happy, not like happy happy, but better than before. And on his phone the whole time. I just wanted us to be close again, to play around like we always used to, so one day when he was typing away on his phone, a few weeks ago, I ran past and grabbed it, saying, ‘Who’re you texting then?’ It’s just a joke, he always does it to me. But Jamie didn’t take it like that. He snapped. Pushed me up against the wall until I dropped the phone. I was never going to actually look at it, it was just a joke. But when he had me up against the wall like that, it . . . it didn’t feel like my brother any more. He said sorry afterwards, said something about privacy, but it was . . . you know, it felt wrong. And I’ve heard him, up really late on the phone. In fact, almost every night the last two weeks or so. And a couple of times over the last week or so, I’ve heard him sneak out of his room once Mum and Dad have gone to bed. Don’t know where he goes. He did that last week, on his birthday night. I heard him sneak out before midnight. I waited up, listening. He came back in around two and when I mentioned it the next morning he said I must’ve been hearing things. And I woke up randomly at three a.m. Monday night this week; I’m pretty sure it was him sneaking back in that woke me.

Pip:
I see.

Connor:
But this is not normal Jamie. You know him, Pip, he’s usually so easy-going, calm. And now his mood is suddenly up and down. Keeping secrets, sneaking out. Getting angry. Something’s wrong, I just know it. My mum showed you the text, right? She sent it to Jamie around half twelve last night and it’s still not delivered. His phone’s been off since before then. Or broken.

Pip:
Or out of battery?

Connor:
No. It was on almost full-charge. I know because when we were in the car, I asked Jamie the time and he showed me his screen. He was on eighty-eight percent or something. It’s a newish phone, it wouldn’t die that quickly. And why would he turn it off when he was out and about? Doesn’t make sense.

Pip:
Yes, the text not delivering at that time certainly is significant.

Connor:
What do you think it means?

Pip:
I can’t speculate until I know more.

Connor:
It means he’s in trouble, doesn’t it? You just don’t want to say. That someone’s hurt him. Or taken him?

Pip:
Connor, we don’t know anything yet. I’m not ruling anything out, but we can’t settle on conclusions without any evidence, that’s not how this works. Let’s move on to yesterday. Can you talk me through your day, your interactions with Jamie? Anything significant?

Connor:
Um.

Pip:
What?

Connor:
Well, there was something.

Pip:
Connor . . . ?

Connor:
You won’t tell my mum, will you?

Pip:
Remember what you asked of me? This will go out to hundreds of thousands of people. Your mum is going to hear it, so whatever it is, you need to tell me and then you need to tell her.

Connor:
Shit, yeah. It’s just . . . OK, so Jamie and my mum, they get on really well. They always have done. I guess you might call him a mama’s boy; they just click. But Jamie and Dad have a tricky relationship. Jamie’s said to me before that he thinks Dad hates him, that Dad’s constantly disappointed by him. They don’t really talk anything through, they just let things build up until they occasionally explode into big arguments. And then once that’s done and the awkwardness has gone, they go back to normal and the cycle resets. Well . . . they had one of their big arguments – yesterday.

Pip:
When?

Connor:
At, like, half five. Mum was at the supermarket. It ended before she got back, she doesn’t know. I was listening from the stairs.

Pip:
What was it about?

Connor:
The usual things they fight about. Dad telling Jamie he needs to buck up his ideas and sort his life out, that he and Mum won’t always be there to pick up the pieces. Jamie said that he was trying, that Dad never notices when he’s trying because he presumes Jamie’s going to fail anyway. I couldn’t hear the whole fight, but I remember Dad saying something like, ‘We aren’t a bank, we are your parents.’ I don’t know what that was about, I guess maybe Dad brought up that he thinks Jamie should pay rent to still live here. Mum thinks that’s ridiculous and will never allow it, but Dad’s always, going on about ‘How else will he learn?’ The last thing they said to each other before Mum came back was . . .

Pip:
What?

Connor:
Dad said, ‘You’re a waste of space.’ And Jamie said, ‘I know.’

Pip:
Is this why everyone was quiet on the drive to the memorial? Your mum picked up on that.

Connor:
Yeah. Oh god, she’s gonna be so upset when I tell her.

Pip:
You should tell her tonight, when I’m gone.

Connor:
I guess.

Pip:
So, back to that night. You arrive at the memorial, and you go off to find our friends, and Jamie goes off to find Nat. But then Jamie did come up to you at one point. When Zach and I were talking to my new neighbours, Jamie came and spoke to you.

Connor:
Yeah.

Pip:
What did he say then?

Connor:
He apologized. Said sorry about the argument with Dad; he knows I hate it when they fight. And then he told me that after the memorial, he was going to go to Nat da Silva’s house for a bit; spend the evening with her. I think they thought it was only right, to be in the company of someone else who knew Sal and Andie. He said he’d back home that night, though. And as he walked off, the last thing he said to me was, ‘See you later.’ I don’t think he’d lie to my face like that, if he knew he wasn’t coming back. But Mum and I called Nat this morning; Nat never saw Jamie after the memorial. She doesn’t know where he is.

Pip:
And where did you go, after the memorial?

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 . . .

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