looked similar enough to convince himself he’d found Andie. And he’d locked her up, so he could lock up that terrible fear of being caught right along with her.
Pip nodded in agreement, watching the police car drive away. ‘I think,’ she said quietly, ‘I think she was just a girl with the wrong hair and the wrong face when the wrong man drove past.’
And that other itching question that Pip couldn’t yet give voice to: what had happened to the real Andie Bell after she’d left the Wards’ house that night?
The officer who’d taken her statement approached them with a warm smile. ‘Do you need someone to take you home, darling?’ she asked Pip.
‘No, it’s OK,’ she said, ‘I have my car.’
She made Ravi get in the car with her; there was no way she’d let him drive home on his own – he was shaking too hard. And, secretly, she didn’t want to be alone either.
Pip turned the key in the ignition, catching sight of her face in the rear-view mirror before the lights dimmed. She looked gaunt and grey, her eyes glowing inside sunken shadows. She was tired. So unutterably tired.
‘I can finally tell my parents,’ Ravi said when they were back on the main road out of Wendover. ‘I don’t know how to even start.’
Her headlights lit up the Welcome to Little Kilton sign, the letters thickening with side shadows as they moved past and crossed into town. Pip drove down the high street, heading towards Ravi’s house. She drew to a stop at the main roundabout. There was a car waiting on the cusp of the roundabout at the other side, its headlights a bright and piercing white. It was their right of way.
‘Why aren’t they moving?’ Pip said, staring at the dark boxy car ahead, lines of yellow light across its body from the street lamp above.
‘Don’t know,’ Ravi said. ‘You just go.’
She did, pulling forward slowly across the roundabout. The other car had still not moved. As they drew closer and out of the glare of the oncoming headlights, Pip’s foot eased up on the pedal as she looked curiously out of her window.
‘Oh shit,’ Ravi said.
It was the Bell family. All three of them. Jason was in the driver seat, his face red and striped with tear trails. It looked like he was shouting, smacking his hand against the steering wheel, his mouth moving with angry words. Dawn Bell was beside him, shrinking away. She was crying, her body heaving as she tried to breathe through the tears, her mouth bared in confused agony.
Their cars drew level and Pip saw Becca in the back seat on this side. Her face was pale, pushed up against the cold touch of the window. Her lips were parted and her brows furrowed, her eyes lost in some other place as she stared quietly ahead.
And as they passed Becca’s eyes snapped into life, landing on Pip. There was a flicker of recognition in them. And something heavy and urgent, something like dread.
They drove away down the street and Ravi let out his held breath.
‘You think they’ve been told?’ he said
‘Looks like they just have,’ said Pip. ‘The girl kept saying her name was Andie Bell. Maybe they have to go and formally identify that she isn’t.’
She looked into her rear-view mirror and watched as the Bells’ car finally rolled away across the roundabout, towards the snatched promise of a daughter returned.
Forty-Seven
Pip sat at the end of her parents’ bed well into the night. Her and the albatross on her shoulders and her story. The telling of it was almost as hard as the living of it.
The worst part was Cara. As the clock on her phone had ticked past 10:00 p.m., Pip knew she couldn’t avoid it any longer. Her thumb had hovered over the blue call button but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t say the words aloud and listen as her best friend’s world changed forever, as it turned dark and strange. Pip wished she was strong enough, but she’d learned that she wasn’t invincible; she too could break. She clicked over to messages and started to type.
I should be ringing to tell you this but I don’t think I could get through the telling, not with your little voice at the end of the line. This is the coward’s way out and I’m truly sorry. It was your dad, Cara. Your dad is the one who killed Sal Singh. He was keeping a girl