so she didn’t fall off the world. ‘It’s over. It’s all over now. I’ve got you.’
‘How didddu find me?’
‘Your tracking device is still on,’ Ravi said, showing her a fuzzy, jumping screen with an orange blip on the Find My Friends map. ‘As soon as I saw you here, I knew.’
Kilton blinked.
‘It’s OK, I’ve got you, Pip. You’re going to be OK.’
Blink.
They were talking again, Ravi and her dad. But not in words she could hear, in the scratching of ants. She couldn’t see them any more. Pip’s eyes were the sky and fireworks were rupturing inside. Flower sprays of Armageddon. All red. Red glows and red shines.
And then she was a person again, on the cold damp ground, Ravi’s breath in her ear. And through the trees were flashing blue lights spewing black uniforms.
Pip watched them both, the flashes and the fireworks.
No sound. Just her rattlesnake breath and the sparks and the lights.
Red and blue. Red
and blue. Bled a n
drue. Be
ll an
n
d
‘There are a lot of people out there, Sarge.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, like, two hundred.’
She could hear them all; the chattering and the clattering of chairs as people took their seats in the school hall.
She was waiting in the wings, her presentation notes clutched in her hands, the sweat from the bulbs of her fingers smudging the printed ink.
Everyone else in her year had done their EPQ presentations earlier in the week, to small classrooms of people and the modulators. But the school and the exam board thought it would be a good idea to turn Pip’s presentation into ‘a bit of an event ,’ as the head teacher had put it. Pip had been given no choice in the matter. The school had advertised it online and in the Kilton Mail. They’d invited members of the press to attend; Pip had seen a BBC van pull up earlier and the equipment and cameras unpacked.
‘Are you nervous?’ Ravi said.
‘Are you asking obvious questions?’
When the Andie Bell story broke it had been in the national newspapers and on TV stations for weeks. It was in the height of all that craziness that Pip had had her interview for Cambridge. The two college fellows had recognized her from the news, gawping at her, yapping questions about the case. Her offer was one of the very first to come in.
Kilton’s secrets and mysteries had followed Pip so closely in those weeks she’d had to wear them like a new skin. Except that one that was buried deep down, the one she’d keep forever to save Cara. Her best friend who’d never once left Pip’s side in the hospital.
‘Can I come over later?’ Ravi asked her.
‘Sure. Cara and Naomi are round for dinner too.’
They heard a sharp patter of clip-clop heels and Mrs Morgan appeared, fighting through the curtain.
‘I think we’re just about ready when you are, Pippa.’
‘OK, I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘Well,’ Ravi said when they were alone again, ‘I’d better go and take my seat.’
He smiled, put his hands on the back of her neck, fingers in her hair, and leaned in to press his forehead against hers. He’d told her before that he did it to take away half her sadness, half her headache, half her nerves as she’d got on the train to Cambridge for her interview. Because half less of a bad thing meant there was room for half good.
He kissed her, and she glowed with that feeling. The one with wings.
‘You bring the rain down on them, Pip.’
‘I will.’
‘Oh, and,’ he said, turning one last time before the door, ‘don’t tell them the only reason you started this project was because you fancied me. You know, think of a more noble reason.’
‘Get out of here.’
‘Don’t feel bad. You couldn’t help yourself, I’m ravishing,’ he grinned. ‘Get it? Ravi-shing. Ravi Singh.’
‘Sign of a great joke, having to explain it,’ she said. ‘Now go.’
She waited another minute, muttering the first lines of her speech under her breath. And then she walked out on stage.
People weren’t quite sure what to do. About half the audience started clapping politely, the news cameras panning to them, and the other half sat deadly still, a poppy field of eyes stalking her as she moved.
From the front row, her dad stood up and whistled with his fingers, shouting: ‘Get ’em, pickle.’ Her mum swiftly pulled him back down and exchanged a look with Nisha Singh, sitting beside her.
Pip strode over to the head teacher’s lectern and flattened her speech down on top.
‘Hi,’ she said, and