‘I came here first just as a courtesy,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Because, Naomi, you’ve been like a sister to me nearly my whole life. Max, I owe you nothing.’

‘Pip, what are you talking about?’ Cara said, her voice strained with the beginnings of worry.

Pip unzipped her bag and pulled out the plastic folder. She opened it and, leaning across the table, laid the three printed pages out in the space between Max and Naomi.

‘This is your chance to explain before I go to the police. What do you have to say, Nancy Tangotits?’ She glared at Max.

‘What are you on about?’ he scoffed.

‘That’s your photo, Nancy. It’s from the night Andie Bell disappeared, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Naomi said quietly. ‘But, why –’

‘The night Sal left Max’s house at ten thirty to go and kill Andie?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Max spat. ‘And what point are you trying to make?’

‘If you stop blustering for one second and look at the photo, you’ll see my point,’ Pip snapped back. ‘Obviously you’re no stickler for detail or you wouldn’t have uploaded it in the first place. So I’ll explain. Both you and Naomi, Millie and Jake are in this picture.’

‘Yeah, so?’ he said.

‘So, Nancy, who took that picture of the four of you?’

Pip noticed Naomi’s eyes widen, her mouth hanging slightly open as she stared down at the photo.

‘Yeah, OK,’ Max said, ‘so maybe Sal took the photo. It’s not like we said he wasn’t there at all. He must have taken this earlier on in the night.’

‘Nice try,’ Pip said, ‘but –’

‘My phone.’ Naomi’s face fell. She reached up to hold it in her hands. ‘The time is on my phone.’

Max went quiet, looking down at the printouts, a muscle tensing in his jaw.

‘Well, you can hardly see those numbers. You must have doctored this photo,’ he said.

‘No, Max. I got it from your Facebook as it is. Don’t worry, I’ve researched this: the police can access it even if you delete it now. I’m sure they’d be very interested to see it.’

Naomi turned to Max, her cheeks reddening. ‘Why didn’t you check properly?’

‘Shut up,’ he said quietly but firmly.

‘We’re going to have to tell her,’ Naomi said, pushing back her chair with a scrape that cut right through Pip.

‘Shut up, Naomi,’ Max said again.

‘Oh my god.’ Naomi stood and started pacing the length of the table. ‘We have to tell her –’

‘Stop talking!’ Max said, getting to his feet and grabbing Naomi by the shoulders. ‘Don’t say anything else.’

‘She’ll go to the police, Max. Won’t you?’ Naomi said, tears pooling in the grooves around her nose. ‘We have to tell her.’

Max took in a deep and juddering breath, his eyes darting between Naomi and Pip.

‘Fuck,’ he shouted abruptly, letting go of Naomi and kicking out at the table leg.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Cara said, pulling at Pip’s sleeve.

‘Tell me, Naomi,’ Pip said.

Max fell back into his chair, his blonde hair in wilting clumps across his face. ‘Why have you done this?’ He looked up at Pip. ‘Why didn’t you just leave everything alone?’

Pip ignored him. ‘Naomi, tell me,’ she said. ‘Sal didn’t leave Max’s at ten thirty that night, did he? He left at twelve fifteen, just like he told the police. He never asked you all to lie to give him an alibi; he actually had one. He was with you. Sal never once lied to the police; you all did on that Tuesday. You lied to take away his alibi.’

Naomi squinted as tears glazed her eyes. She looked at Cara and then slowly over to Pip. And she nodded.

Pip blinked. ‘Why?’

Twenty-Eight

‘Why?’ Pip said again when Naomi had stared wordlessly down at her feet long enough.

‘Someone made us,’ she sniffed. ‘Someone made us do it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We – me, Max, Jake and Millie – we all got a text on that Monday night. From an unrecognized number. It told us we had to delete every picture of Sal taken on the night Andie disappeared and to upload the rest as normal. It told us that at school on Tuesday we had to ask the head teacher to call in the police so we could make a statement. And we had to tell them that Sal actually left Max’s at half ten and that he’d asked us to lie before.’

‘But why would you do that?’ asked Pip.

‘Because –’ Naomi’s face cracked as she tried to hold back her sobs – ‘because they knew something about us. About something bad we’d done.’

She couldn’t hold them back anymore. She slapped her hands to her face and bawled into them, the cries strangled against her fingers. Cara jumped up from her seat and ran over, wrapping her arms round her sister’s waist. She looked over at Pip as she held the quaking Naomi, her face pale with the touch of fear.

‘Max?’ Pip said.

Max cleared his throat, his eyes down on his fiddling hands. ‘We, um . . . something happened on New Year’s Eve 2011. Something bad, something we did.’