A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1) - Holly Jackson Page 0,98
left the room, hands to his eyes as he turned to the stairs.
Pip watched him walk away for the last time.
When she heard the front door open and close she clenched her hand into a fist and punched her desk. The pen pot juddered and fell, scattering pens across the surface.
She screamed herself empty into her cupped hands, holding on to the scream, trapping it with her fingers.
Ravi hated her, but he would be safe now.
Thirty-Seven
The next day, Pip was in the living room with Josh, teaching him how to play chess. They were finishing their first practice match and, despite her best efforts to let him win, Josh was down to just his king and two pawns. Or prawns, as he called them.
Someone knocked on the front door and the absence of Barney was an immediate punch to the gut. No skittering claws on the polished wood racing to stand and greet.
Her mum pattered down the hall and opened the door.
Leanne’s voice floated into the living room. ‘Oh, hello, Ravi.’
Pip’s stomach leaped into her throat.
Confused, she put her knight back down and wandered out of the room, her unease ramping into panic. Why would he come back after yesterday? How could he bear to look at her ever again? Unless he was desperate enough to come and ambush her parents, tell them everything they knew and try to force Pip to go to the police. She wouldn’t; who else would die if she did?
When the front door came into view she saw Ravi unzipping a large sports rucksack and dipping his hands inside.
‘My mum sends her condolences,’ he said, pulling out two large Tupperware boxes. ‘She made you a chicken curry, you know, in case you didn’t feel like cooking.’
‘Oh,’ Leanne said, taking the boxes from Ravi’s offered hands. ‘That’s very thoughtful. Thank you. Come in, come in. You must give me her number so I can thank her.’
‘Ravi?’ Pip said.
‘Hello, trouble,’ he said softly. ‘Can I talk to you?’
In her room, Ravi closed the door and dropped his bag on the carpet.
‘Um . . . I,’ Pip stuttered, looking for clues in his face. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve come back.’
He took a small step towards her. ‘I thought about it all night, literally all night; it was light outside when I finally slept. And there’s only one reason I can think of, only one thing that makes sense of this. Because I do know you; I wasn’t wrong about you.’
‘I don’t –’
‘Someone took Barney, didn’t they?’ he said. ‘Someone threatened you and they took your dog and killed him so you would stay quiet about Sal and Andie.’
The silence in the room was buzzy and thick.
She nodded and her face cracked with tears.
‘Don’t cry,’ Ravi said, closing the distance between them in one swift step. He pulled her into him, locking his arms round her. ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’
Pip leaned into him and everything – all the pain, all the secrets she’d caged inside – came free, radiating out of her like heat. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to hold back the tears.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said when he finally let her go.
But the words got lost and tangled in Pip’s mouth. Instead she pulled out her phone and clicked on to the messages from Unknown, handing it to him. She watched Ravi’s flitting eyes as he read through.
‘Oh, Pip,’ he said, looking at her wide-eyed. ‘This is sick.’
‘They lied,’ she sniffed. ‘They said I’d get him back and then they killed him.’
‘That wasn’t the first time they contacted you,’ he said, scrolling up. ‘The first text here is from the eighth of October.’
‘That wasn’t the first,’ she said, pulling open the bottom drawer of her desk. She handed Ravi the two sheets of printer paper and pointed at the one on the left. ‘That one was left in my sleeping bag when I camped in the woods with my friends on the first of September. I saw someone watching us. That one –’ she pointed to the other – ‘was in my locker last Friday. I ignored it and I carried on. That’s why Barney’s dead. Because of my arrogance. Because I thought I was invincible and I’m not. We have to stop. Yesterday . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to get you to stop, other than to make you hate me so you stayed away, away from danger.’