they sat around a full afternoon tea spread that Leanne had improvised.
‘So,’ Victor said, ‘are you going to the fireworks tomorrow night?’
‘Actually,’ Nisha said, looking from her husband to her son, ‘I think we should go this year. It’ll be the first time since . . . you know. But things are different now. This is the start of things being different.’
‘Yeah,’ Ravi said. ‘I’d like to go. You can never really see them from our house.’
‘Awesome sauce,’ Victor said, clapping his hands. ‘We could meet you there? Let’s say seven, by the drinks tent?’
Josh stood up then, hurrying to swallow his sandwich so he could recite: ‘Remember remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.’
Little Kilton hadn’t forgot, they’d just decided to move it to the fourth instead because the barbecue boys thought they’d get a better turnout on a Saturday. Pip wasn’t sure she was ready to be around all those people and the questions in their eyes.
‘I’ll go and refill the pot,’ she said, picking up the empty teapot and carrying it through to the kitchen.
She flicked on the kettle and stared at her warped reflection in its chrome frame until a distorted Ravi appeared in it behind her.
‘You’re being quiet,’ he said. ‘What’s going on in that big brain of yours? Actually, I don’t even need to ask, I already know what you’re going to say. It’s Andie.’
‘I can’t pretend like it’s over,’ she said. ‘It’s not finished.’
‘Pip, listen to me. You’ve done what you set out to do. We know Sal was innocent and what happened to him.’
‘But we don’t know what happened to Andie. After she left Elliot’s house that night, she still disappeared and was never found.’
‘It’s not your job any more, Pip,’ he said. ‘The police have reopened Andie’s case. Let them do the rest. You’ve done enough.’
‘I know,’ she said and it wasn’t a lie. She was tired. She needed to finally be free of all this. She needed the weight on her shoulders to be just her own. And that last Andie Bell mystery wasn’t hers to chase any more.
Ravi was right; their part was over.
Forty-Eight
She had meant to throw it out.
That’s what she’d told herself. The murder board needed to be thrown out because she was finished here. It was time to dismantle the Andie Bell scaffolding and see what remained of the Pip beneath. She’d made a good start, unpinning some of the pages and putting them in piles by a bin bag she’d brought up.
And then, without realizing what she was doing or how it happened, she’d found herself looking through it all again: re-reading log entries, tracing her finger across the red string lines, staring into the suspects’ photos, searching for the face of a killer.
She’d been so sure she was out. She hadn’t let herself think about it all day as she’d played board games with Josh, as she’d watched back-to-back episodes of American sitcoms, as she’d baked brownies with Mum, sneaking dollops of raw batter into her mouth when unwatched. But with half a second and an unplanned glance Andie had found a way to suck her in again.
She was supposed to be getting dressed for the fireworks but now she was on her knees hunched over the murder board. Some of it really did go in the bin bag: all the clues that had pointed to Elliot Ward. Everything about the Ivy House Hotel, the phone number in the planner, the hit-and-run, Sal’s stolen alibi, Andie’s nude photo that Max found at the back of a classroom and the printed notes and texts from Unknown.
But the board also needed adding to, because she now knew more about Andie’s whereabouts on the night she disappeared. She grabbed a printout of a map of Kilton and started scribbling in a blue marker pen.
Andie went to the Wards’ house and left not long after with a potentially serious head injury. Pip circled the Wards’ house on Hogg Hill. Elliot had said it was around ten-ish, but he must have been slightly off with that guess. His and Becca Bell’s statements of time did not match, yet Becca’s was backed up by CCTV: Andie had driven up the high street at 10:40 p.m. That’s when she must have headed to the Wards’ house. Pip drew a dotted line and scribbled in the time. Yes, Elliot had to be mistaken, she realized, otherwise