She shrugged.

‘And Hawkins is an idiot, frankly,’ Ravi said with a small smile. ‘If he hasn’t learned by now that you’re – annoyingly – always right, then he never will.’

‘Never,’ Pip repeated.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said, drawing lines in the valleys between her knuckles. ‘Everything will be OK, I promise.’ He paused, staring at the space below her eyes a little too long. ‘Did you get much sleep last night?’

‘Yes,’ she lied.

‘Right.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘I think we need to get you out of the house. Come on. Up, up. Socks on.’

‘Why?’ she said, sinking into the bed as Ravi got off.

‘We’re going out for a walk. Oh, what a fantastic idea, Ravi, you’re so smart and handsome. Oh, Pip, I know I am, but do try to keep it in your pants, your father is downstairs.’

She threw a pillow at him.

‘Come on.’ He dragged her out of bed by her ankles, giggling as she and the duvet slid to the floor. ‘Come on, Sporty Spice, you can put your trainers on and run circles around me if you really want.’

‘I already do,’ Pip quipped, fighting her feet into a pair of discarded socks.

‘Ooohhhh, sick burn, Sarge.’ He clapped her on the backside as she stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

It worked. Whatever Ravi was doing, it worked. Pip didn’t think about disappearing or dead birds or chalk lines or DI Hawkins, not on the way down the stairs, not when her dad stopped them to ask her where all the wafer-thin ham had gone, not even as they walked down the driveway, Ravi’s fingers hooked on to her jeans, heading for the woods. No pigeons, no chalk, no six gunshots disguised in the beating of her heart. It was just the two of them. Team Ravi and Pip. No thoughts beyond the first inane things that came into her head. No deeper, no darker. Ravi was the fence in her head that kept it all back.

A grumpy-faced tree that she insisted looked like Ravi when he woke up.

Planning when he would first come to stay with her in Cambridge; maybe the weekend after Freshers’ Week? Was she nervous to go? What books did she still need to buy?

They followed the winding path of the woods. Ravi recreating their first walk together through these same trees, a high-pitched impression of Pip as she took him through her initial theories on the Andie Bell case. Pip laughed. He’d remembered almost every word. Barney had been with them on that first walk, a golden flash through the trees. Herding them together. Tail wagging as Ravi had teased him with a stick. Thinking back on it now, maybe that was the moment Pip knew. Had it been a tightening in her gut, or maybe that drunk feeling behind the eyes, or could it have been that glow below her skin? She hadn’t realized it at the time, hadn’t known what it was, but maybe some part of her had already decided she would love him. Right then. In a conversation about his dead brother and a murdered girl. It all came back to death, in the end. Oh, there you go, she’d gone and ruined it. The fence was down.

Pip’s attention was drawn up and away as a dog from here and now crashed through the undergrowth towards them, barking as it jumped up to plant its paws on her legs. A beagle. She recognized this dog, just as he had recognized her.

‘Oh no,’ she muttered, giving him one quick stroke, as the other sound reached them: a double set of footsteps through the early fallen leaves. Two voices she knew.

Pip stopped as they walked around a knot of trees and finally came into view.

Ant-and-Lauren, arm in arm. Eyes widening in unison when they realized who she was.

Pip didn’t imagine it. Lauren actually gasped, coughing into her hand to cover it. They stopped too. Ant and Lauren over there, Pip and Ravi back here.

‘Rufus!’ Lauren screamed, her wild voice echoing through the trees. ‘Rufus, come here! Get away from her!’

The dog turned and tilted his head.

‘I’m not going to hurt your dog, Lauren,’ Pip said, levelling her voice.

‘Who knows, with you,’ Ant said darkly, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

‘Oh, come on,’ Pip sniffed. One part of her itched to stroke Rufus again, just to really set Lauren off. Go on, do it.

It was as though Lauren had read her mind and the glint in her eye. She screamed for the dog again until he bounded back over to her on his unsure little legs.

‘No!’ Lauren turned her voice on him now, giving him a one-fingered tap on the nose. ‘You don’t go up to strangers!’

‘Ridiculous,’ Pip said, with a hollow laugh, swapping a look with Ravi.

‘What was that?’ Ant barked, straightening up. Pointless, really because Pip was still taller than him; she could take him. She already had once before, and she was stronger now.

‘I said that your girlfriend was ridiculous. Should I repeat it a third time?’ she said.

Pip could feel Ravi’s arm tensing against hers. He hated confrontation, hated it, and even so, Pip knew he would go to war for her if she ever asked. She didn’t need him now though, she had this. Almost like she’d been waiting for this encounter, felt herself coming alive with it.

‘Well, don’t talk about her like that.’ Ant brought his hands back out, flexed them at his sides. ‘Why haven’t you gone to uni yet? Thought Cambridge started earlier.’

‘Later, actually,’ Pip said. ‘Why, are you waiting for me to... disappear?’

She studied their faces carefully. The wind whipped Lauren’s red hair across her forehead, strands catching across her narrowed eyes. She blinked. One side of Ant’s mouth pulled up in a sneer.

‘The fuck are you talking about?’ he said.

‘No, I know.’ Pip nodded. ‘You must feel really embarrassed. You accused me, Connor and Jamie of orchestrating his disappearance for money, just hours after we all found out a serial rapist walked free. Are you the ones who spoke to that reporter? I guess it doesn’t matter any more. And now Jamie’s alive but another man is dead, and you must feel really quite stupid about the whole thing.’

‘Deserved to die though, didn’t he, so I guess it all worked out nicely in the end.’

He winked.

He fucking winked at her.

The gun was back in Pip’s heart, pointing through her chest at Ant. Backbone curling and her teeth bared. ‘Don’t you ever say that again,’ she pushed the words through her teeth, dark and dangerous. ‘Don’t you ever say that in front of me.’

Ravi re-took her hand, but she didn’t feel it. She wasn’t in her body any more, she was standing over there, that same hand around Ant’s throat. Tightening, tightening, squeezing it all out into Ravi’s fingers.

Ant seemed to sense this, taking one step back from her, almost tripping over the dog. Lauren hooked her arm through Ant’s again and locked their elbows together. A shield. But that wouldn’t stop Pip.

‘We used to be friends. Do you really hate me enough to want me to die?’ she said, the wind carrying her voice away from her.

‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Lauren spat, drawing more strength from Ant. ‘You’re a psycho.’

‘Hey,’ Ravi’s voice floated in from somewhere beside her. ‘Come on now, that’s not nice.’

But Pip had an answer of her own. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘So, you should make sure your doors are locked up real nice and tight at night.’