Page 223 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘Or a vagina on fire,’ Cara said, grabbing a banana instead.

‘Now that is scary,’ Naomi laughed.

No, this was.

Naomi had had the pumpkins and knives laid out and ready for when Cara and Pip got in from school. Pip hadn’t had a chance to sneak off yet.

‘Naomi,’ she said, ‘thanks for ringing me the other day. I got that email from your friend’s cousin about the Cambridge exam. It was very helpful.’

‘Oh good,’ she smiled. ‘No worries.’

‘So when will your phone be fixed?’

‘Tomorrow actually, the shop says. It’s taken bloody long enough.’

Pip nodded, tensing her chin in what she hoped was a sympathetic look. ‘Well, at least you had your old phone with a SIM that still worked. Lucky you held on to them.’

‘Well, lucky Dad had a spare pay-as-you-go micro SIM kicking around. And bonus: eighteen pounds credit on it. There was just an expired contract one in my phone.’

The knife almost fell from Pip’s hand. A climbing hum in her ears.

‘Your dad’s SIM card?’

‘Yeah,’ Naomi said, scoring the knife along her pumpkin face, her tongue out as she concentrated. ‘Cara found it in his desk. At the bottom of his bits and bobs drawer. You know that drawer every family has, full of old useless chargers and foreign currency and stuff.’

The hum split into a ringing sound, shrieking and shrieking and stuffing her head. She felt sick, the back of her throat filling with a metallic taste.

Elliot’s SIM card.

Elliot’s old phone number scribbled out in Andie’s planner.

Andie calling Mr Ward an arsehole to her friends the week she disappeared.

Elliot.

‘You OK, Pip?’ Cara asked as she dropped the lit candle into her pumpkin and it glowed into life.

‘Yeah.’ Pip nodded too hard. ‘I’m just, um . . . just hungry.’

‘Well, I would offer you a biscuit, but they seem to have disappeared, as always. Toast?’

‘Err . . . no thanks.’

‘I feed you because I love you,’ Cara said.

Pip’s mouth filled, all tacky and sickly. No, it might not mean what she was thinking. Maybe Elliot was just offering to tutor Andie and that’s why she wrote his number down. Maybe. It couldn’t be him. She needed to calm down, try to breathe. This wasn’t proof of anything.

But she had a way to find proof.

‘I think we should have spooky Halloween music on while we do this,’ Pip said. ‘Cara, can I go get your laptop?’

‘Yeah, it’s on my bed.’

Pip closed the kitchen door behind her.

She raced up the stairs and into Cara’s room. With the laptop tucked under her arm she crept back downstairs, her heart thudding, fighting to be louder than the ringing in her ears.

She slipped into Elliot’s study and gently closed the door, staring for a moment at the printer on Elliot’s desk. The rainbow-coloured people from Isobel Ward’s paintings watched her as she put Cara’s laptop down on the oxblood leather chair and pulled open the lid, kneeling on the floor before it.

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