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  ‘Fine. It was fine.’ School was always fine now. Not good, not bad. Just fine. She pulled off her shoes, the leather unsticking from her feet and smacking against the tiles.

  ‘Ugh,’ her mum said. ‘Must you always leave your shoes in the kitchen?’

  ‘Must you always catch me doing it?’

  ‘Yes, I’m your mother,’ she said, whacking Pip’s arm lightly with her new cookbook. ‘Oh and, Pippa, I need to talk to you about something.’

  The full name. So much meaning in that extra syllable.

  ‘Am I in trouble?’

  Her mum didn’t answer the question. ‘Flora Green called me from Josh’s school today. You know she’s the new teaching assistant there?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Pip nodded for her to continue.

  ‘Joshua got in trouble today, sent to the headteacher.’ Her mum’s brow knotted. ‘Apparently Camilla Brown’s pencil sharpener went missing, and Josh decided to interrogate his classmates about it, finding evidence and drawing up a persons of interest list. He made four kids cry.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pip said, that pit opening up in her stomach again. Yes, she was in trouble. ‘OK, OK. Shall I talk to him?’

  ‘Yes, I think you should. Now,’ her mum said, raising her mug and taking a noisy sip.

  Pip slid off the stool with a gritted smile and padded back towards the living room.

  ‘Hey Josh,’ she said lightly, sitting on the floor beside him. She muted the television.

  ‘Oi!’

  Pip ignored him. ‘So, I heard what happened at school today.’

  ‘Oh yeah. There’s two main suspects.’ He turned to her, his brown eyes lighting up. ‘Maybe you can help –’

  ‘Josh, listen to me,’ Pip said, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. ‘Being a detective is not all it’s cracked up to be. In fact . . . it’s a pretty bad thing to be.’

  ‘But I –’

  ‘Just listen, OK? Being a detective makes the people around you unhappy. Makes you unhappy . . .’ she said, her voice withering away until she cleared her throat and pulled it back. ‘Remember Dad told you what happened to Barney, why he got hurt?’

  Josh nodded, his eyes growing wide and sad.

  ‘That’s what happens when you’re a detective. The people around you get hurt. And you hurt people, without meaning to. Have to keep secrets you’re not sure you should. That’s why I don’t do it any more, and you shouldn’t either.’ The words dropped right down into that waiting pit in her gut, where they belonged. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ He nodded, holding on to the s as it grew into the next word. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled, folding him into a quick hug. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. So, no more playing detective?’

  ‘Nope, promise.’

  Well, that had been easy.

  ‘Done,’ Pip said, back in the kitchen. ‘I guess the missing pencil sharpener will forever remain a mystery.’

  ‘Ah, maybe not,’ her mum said with a barely concealed smile. ‘I bet it was that Alex Davis, the little shit.’

  Pip snorted.

  Her mum kicked Pip’s shoes out of her way. ‘So, have you heard from Ravi yet?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Pip pulled out her phone. ‘He said they finished about fifteen minutes ago. He’ll be over to record soon.’

  ‘OK. How was today?’

  ‘He said it was rough. I wish I could be there.’ Pip leaned against the counter, dropping her chin against her knuckles.

  ‘You know you can’t, you have school,’ her mum said. It wasn’t a discussion she was prepared to have again; Pip knew that. ‘And didn’t you have enough after Tuesday? I know I did.’

  Tuesday, the first day of the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court, and Pip had been called as a witness for the prosecution. Dressed in a new suit and a white shirt, trying to stop her hands from fidgeting so the jury wouldn’t see. Sweat prickling down her back. And every second, she’d felt his eyes on her from the defendant’s table, his gaze a physical thing, crawling over her exposed skin. Max Hastings.

  The one time she’d glanced at him, she’d seen the smirk behind his eyes that no one else would see. Not behind those fake, clear-lens glasses anyway. How dare he? How dare he stand up there and plead not guilty when they both knew the truth? She had a recording, a phone conversation of Max admitting to drugging and raping Becca Bell. It was all right there. Max had confessed when she threatened to tell everyone his secrets: the hit-and-run and Sal’s alibi. But it hadn’t mattered anyway; the private recording was inadmissible in court. The prosecution had to settle for Pip’s recounting of the conversation instead. Which she’d done, word for word . . . well, apart from the beginning of course, and those same secrets she had to keep to protect Naomi Ward.

  ‘Yeah it was horrible,’ Pip said, ‘but I should still be there.’ She should; she’d promised to follow this story to all of its ends. But instead, Ravi would be there every day in the public gallery, taking notes for her. Because school wasn’t optional: so said her mum and the new headteacher.

  ‘Pip, please,’ her mum said in that warning voice. ‘This week is difficult enough as it is. And with the memorial tomorrow too. What a week.’

  ‘Yep,’ Pip agreed with a sigh.

  ‘You OK?’ Her mum paused, resting a hand on Pip’s shoulder.

  ‘Yeah. I’m always OK.’

  Her mum didn’t quite believe her, she could tell. But it didn’t matter because a moment later there was a rapping of knuckles against the front door: Ravi’s distinctive pattern. Long-short-long. And Pip’s heart picked up to match it, as it always did.

  [Jingle plays]

  Pip:

  Hello, Pip Fitz-Amobi here and welcome back to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: The Trial of Max Hastings. This is the third update, so if you haven’t yet heard the first two mini-episodes, please go back and listen to those before you return. We are going to cover what happened today, the third day of Max Hastings’ trial, and joining me is Ravi Singh . . .

  Ravi:

  Hello.

  Pip:

  . . . who has been watching the trial unfold from the public gallery. So today started with the testimony from another of the victims, Natalie da Silva. You may well recognize the name; Nat was involved in my investigation into the Andie Bell case. I learned that Andie had bullied Nat at school, and had even sought and distributed indecent images of her on social media. I believed this could be a possible motive and, for a time, I considered Nat a person of interest. I was entirely wrong, of course. Today, Nat appeared in Crown Court to give evidence about how, on 24 February 2012 at a calamity party, she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by Max Hastings, the charges listing one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. So, Ravi, can you take us through how her testimony went?

  Ravi:

  Yeah. So, the prosecutor asked Nat to establish a timeline of that evening: when she arrived at the party, the last instance she looked at the time before she began to feel incapacitated, what time she woke up in the morning and left the house. Nat said that she only has a few hazy snatches of memory: someone leading her into the back room away from the party and laying her on a sofa, feeling paralyzed, unable to move and someone lying beside her. Other than that, she described herself as being blacked out. And then, when she woke up the next morning, she felt dreadful and dizzy, like it was the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her clothes were in disarray and her underwear had been removed.

  Pip:

  And, to revisit what the prosecution’s expert witness said on Tuesday about the effects of benzodiazepines like Rohypnol, Nat’s testimony is very much in line with what you’d expect. The drug acts like a sedative and can have a depressant effect on the body’s central nervous system, which explains Nat’s feeling of being paralyzed. It feels almost like being separated from your own body, like it just won’t listen to you, your limbs aren’t connected any more.

  Ravi:

&
nbsp; Right, and the prosecutor also made sure the expert witness repeated, several times, that a side effect of Rohypnol was ‘blacking out’, as Nat said, or having anterograde amnesia, which means an inability to create new memories. And I think the prosecutor wants to keep reminding the jury of this point, because it will play a significant part in the testimonies of all the victims; the fact that they don’t remember exactly what happened because the drug impacted their ability to make memories.

  Pip:

  And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months.

  Ravi:

  Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max.

  Pip:

  And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence?

  Ravi:

  From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist.

  Pip:

  And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday?

  Ravi:

  Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something.

  Pip:

  Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders.

  Ravi:

  The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand.

  Pip:

  Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com. So, let’s talk about the cross-examination.

  Ravi:

  Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch.

  Pip:

  It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair.

  Ravi:

  Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat.

  Pip:

  It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast.

  Ravi:

  Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down.

  Pip:

  I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course.

  Ravi:

  It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.

  Two

  Words spliced, growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused, until her handwriting was just one writhing blur. Pip was looking at the page, but she wasn’t really there. It was like that now; giant holes in her attention that she slipped right into.

  There was a time, not too long ago, she would have found a practice essay about Cold War escalation enthralling. She would have cared, really cared. That was who she was before, but something must have changed. Hopefully it was just a matter of time until those holes filled back in and things went back to normal.

  Her phone buzzed against the desk, Cara’s name lighting up.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Sweet F-A,’ Cara said when Pip picked up. ‘Are you ready to Netflix and chill in the upside down?’

  ‘Yep CW, two secs,’ Pip said, taking her laptop and phone to bed with her, sliding under the duvet.

  ‘How was the trial today?’ Cara asked. ‘Naomi almost went this morning, to support Nat. But she couldn’t face seeing Max.’

  ‘I just uploaded the next update.’ Pip sighed. ‘Makes me so angry that Ravi and I have to tiptoe around it when we record, saying ‘allegedly’ and avoiding anything that steps over the presumption of innocence when we know he did it. He did all of it.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s gross. But it’s OK, it will be over in a week.’ Cara rustled in her covers, the phone line crackling. ‘Hey, guess what I found today?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re a meme. An actual meme that strangers are posting on Reddit. It’s that photo of you with DI Hawkins in front of all the press microphones. The one where it looks like you’re rolling your eyes at him while he’s talking.’

  ‘I was rolling my eyes at him.’

  ‘And people have captioned the funniest things. It’s like you’re the new “jealous girlfriend” meme. This one has a caption of Me . . . by you, and beside Hawkins it says Men on the internet explaining my own joke back to me.’ She snorted. ‘That’s when you know you’ve made it, becoming a meme. Have you heard from any more advertisers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Pip said. ‘A few companies have emailed about sponsorship. But . . . I still don’t know if it’s the right thing, profiting off what happened. I don’t know, it’s too much to think about, especially this week.’

  ‘I know, what a week.’ Cara coughed. ‘So tomorrow, you know . . . the memorial, would it be weird for Ravi . . . and his parents, if Naomi and I were there?’

  Pip sat up. ‘No. You know Ravi doesn’t think like that, you’ve spoken to each other about it.’

  ‘I know, I know. But I just thought, with tomorrow being about remembering Sal and Andie, now we know the truth, maybe it would be weird for us to –’

  ‘Ravi is the last person who’d ever want you to feel guilty for what your dad did to Sal. His parents too.’ Pip paused. ‘They lived through that, they know better than anyone.’

  ‘I know, it’s just –’

  ‘Cara, it’s OK. Ravi would want you there. I’m pretty sure he’d say Sal would’ve wanted Naomi there.
She was his best friend.’

  ‘OK, if you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m always sure.’

  ‘You are. You should think about taking up gambling,’ Cara said.

  ‘Can’t, Mum’s already too concerned about my addictive personality.’

  ‘Surely mine and Naomi’s fucked-uppedness helps to normalize you.’

  ‘Not enough, apparently,’ said Pip. ‘If you could try a bit harder, that would be great.’

  That was Cara’s way of getting through the last six months; her new normal. Hiding behind the quips and one-liners that made others squirm and fall silent. Most people don’t know how to react when someone jokes about their father who murdered a person and kidnapped another. But Pip knew exactly how to react: she crouched and hid behind the one-liners too, so that Cara always had someone right there next to her. That was how she helped.

  ‘Note taken. Although not sure my grandma can cope with any more. You know Naomi’s had this new idea: apparently she wants to burn all of Dad’s stuff. Grandparents obviously said no and got straight on the phone to our therapist.’

  ‘Burn it?’

  ‘I know, right?’ Cara said. ‘She’d accidentally summon a demon or something. I probably shouldn’t tell him; he still thinks Naomi will turn up one day.’

  Cara visited her dad in Woodhill Prison once a fortnight. She said it didn’t mean she’d forgiven him, but, after all, he was still her dad. Naomi had not seen him once and said she never would.

  ‘So, what time does the memorial – hold on, Grandpa’s talking to me . . . yes?’ Cara called, her voice directed away from the phone. ‘Yeah, I know. Yeah, I am.’

  Cara’s grandparents – her mum’s parents – had moved into the house with them last November, so Cara had some doctor-ordered stability until she finished school. But April was almost over, and exams and the end of school were fast approaching. Too fast. And when summer arrived, they would put the Wards’ house on the market and move the girls back to their home in Great Abington. At least they’d be close when Pip started university in Cambridge. But Little Kilton wasn’t Little Kilton without Cara, and Pip quietly wished the summer would never come.