Page 101 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘Honestly, Pip, we didn’t,’ Connor said.

Pip ignored him, clambering into her sleeping bag and making more noise about it than was necessary.

She laid down, using her scrunched-up jumper as a pillow, the note left open on the groundsheet beside her. She turned to watch it, ignoring four more whispered ‘Pip’s from Ant and Connor.

Pip was the last one awake. She could tell by the breathing. Alone in wakefulness.

From the ashes of her anger a new creature was born, creating itself from the cinders and dust. A feeling that fell between terror and doubt, between chaos and logic.

She said the words in her head so many times that they became rubbery and foreign-sounding.

Stop digging, Pippa.

It couldn’t be. It was just a cruel joke. Just a joke.

She couldn’t look away from the note, her eyes sleeplessly tracing back and forward over the curves of the black printed letters.

And the forest in the dead of night was alive around her. Crackling twigs, wingbeats through the trees and screams. Fox or deer, she couldn’t tell, but they shrieked and cried and it was and wasn’t Andie Bell, screaming through the crust of time.

Stop digging, Pippa.

Twelve

Pip was fidgeting nervously under the table, hoping that Cara was too busy jabbering to notice. It was the first time ever that Pip had to keep things from her and the nerves were puppet-stringing Pip’s fiddling hands and the knot in her stomach.

Pip had gone over after school on the third day back, when teachers stopped talking about what they were going to teach and actually started teaching. They were sitting in the Wards’ kitchen pretending to do homework, but really Cara was unspooling into an existential crisis.

‘And I told him that I still don’t know what I want to study at uni, let alone where I want to go. And he’s all “time’s ticking, Cara” and it’s stressing me out. Have you had the talk with your parents yet?’

‘Yeah, a few days ago,’ Pip said. ‘I’ve decided on King’s College, Cambridge.’

‘English?’

Pip nodded.

‘You are the worst person to vent to about life plans,’ Cara snorted. ‘I bet you already know what you want to be when you grow up.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I want to be Louis Theroux and Heather Brooke and Michelle Obama all rolled into one.’

‘Your efficiency offends me.’

A loud train whistle erupted from Pip’s phone.

‘Who’s that?’ Cara asked.

‘It’s just Ravi Singh,’ Pip said, scanning the text, ‘seeing if I have any more updates.’

‘Oh, we’re texting each other now, are we?’ Cara said playfully. ‘Should I be saving a date next week for the wedding?’

Pip threw a ballpoint pen at her. Cara dodged expertly.

‘Well, do you have any Andie Bell updates?’ she said.

‘No,’ Pip said. ‘Absolutely nothing new.’

The lie made the knot in her gut squeeze tighter.

Ant and Connor were still denying authorship of the note in her sleeping bag when she’d asked them at school. They’d suggested maybe it was Zach or one of the girls. Of course, their denial wasn’t solid proof it hadn’t been them. But Pip had to consider the other possibility:what if? What if it was actually someone involved in the Andie Bell case trying to scare her into giving up the project? Someone who had a lot to lose if she kept going.

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