‘OK,’ Ravi said, taking charge. ‘We’re going this way.’ He pointed beyond Ant and Lauren. ‘You go that way. See you around.’

Ravi led her off-path, his fingers tight around hers, anchoring her to him. Pip’s feet were moving, but her eyes were on Ant and Lauren, blinking the moment they passed, shooting them with the gun in her chest. She watched over her shoulder as they moved away through the trees, in the direction of her house.

‘My dad said she was fucked up now,’ Ant said to Lauren, loud enough for them to hear, turning back to meet Pip’s eyes.

She tensed, her heels turning in the crisped-up leaves. But Ravi’s arm folded around her waist, holding her into him. His mouth brushing the hair at her temple. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘You’re OK. They aren’t worth it. Really. Just breathe.’

So, she did. Concentrated only on air in, air out. One step, two step, in, out. Every step carrying her further away from them, the gun retreating back into its hiding place.

‘Should we go home?’ she said when it was gone, between breaths, between steps.

‘No,’ Ravi shook his head, staring straight ahead. ‘Forget about them. You need some fresh air.’

Pip circled his hot palm with her trigger finger, one way then the other. She didn’t want to say, but maybe there was no such thing in Little Kilton. No fresh air. It was all tainted, every breath of it.

They looked both ways and crossed the road to her house, the sun finding them again, warming their backs.

‘Anything?’ Pip smiled at Ravi.

‘Yes, anything you want,’ he said. ‘This is a full-on cheer-up Pip day. No true crime documentaries, though. Those are banned.’

‘And what if I said I really wanted a Scrabble tournament?’ she said, sticking her finger through his jumper into his ribs, their steps winding in and out of each other’s clumsily across the drive.

‘I’d say, Game on, bitch. You underestimate my pow—’ Ravi stopped suddenly, and Pip collided into him. ‘Oh fuck,’ he said, little more than a whisper.

‘What?’ she laughed, coming round to face him. ‘I’ll go easy on you.’

‘No, Pip.’ He pointed behind her.

She turned and followed his eyes.

There, on the driveway, beyond the pile of breadcrumbs, were three little chalk figures.

Her heart turned cold, dropped into her stomach.

‘They were here,’ Pip said, letting go of Ravi’s hand and darting forward. ‘They were just here,’ she said, standing over the little chalk people. The figures had almost reached the house now, scattered in front of the potted shrubs that lined the left side. ‘We shouldn’t have left, Ravi! I was watching. I would have seen them.’ Seen them, caught them, saved herself.

‘They only came because they knew you weren’t here.’ Ravi joined her, his breath fast in his chest. ‘And those definitely aren’t tyre marks.’ This was the first time he’d seen them. Time and rain had taken the last ones away before she’d had a chance to show him. But he could see them. He saw them and that made them real. She hadn’t made them up, Hawkins.

‘Thank you,’ Pip said, glad that he was here with her.

‘Looks like something out of the Blair Witch,’ he said, bending to get a closer look, drawing the criss-cross shapes with his finger, hovering a few inches above.

‘No.’ Pip studied them. ‘This isn’t right. There’s supposed to be five of them. There were five both other times. Why three now?’ she asked of Ravi. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’

‘I don’t think any of this makes sense, Pip.’

Pip held her breath, scouring the driveway for the two lost figures. They were here, somewhere. They had to be. Those were the rules in this game between her and them.

‘Wait!’ she said, catching something in the corner of her eye. No, it couldn’t be, was it? She stepped forward, up to one of her mum’s potted plants – pots come all the way from Vietnam, can you believe? - and brushed the leaves aside.

Behind it, against the wall of her house. Two little headless figures. So faint they were hardly there at all, hidden almost entirely among the mortar between the bricks.

‘Found you,’ Pip said with an outward breath. Her skin was alive and electric as she pushed her face right up close to the chalk, some of the white dust scattering from her breath. But was she pleased or was she scared? She couldn’t, in this moment, tell the difference.

‘Up on the wall?’ Ravi said behind her. ‘Why?’

Pip knew the answer before he did. She understood this game, now that she was playing. She stepped back from the two headless figures, the leaders of their pack, and looked directly up, following their journey. They’d mounted the wall to climb, up past the study and up and up, towards her bedroom window.

The bones cracked in her neck as she turned back to Ravi.

‘They’re coming for me.’

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Darkness consumed her, the last chink of sunlight through the curtains glowing down her face before Ravi pulled them shut, tucking one half behind the other to be extra sure.

‘Keep these closed, OK?’ he said, just a shadow in the blacked-out room until he crossed the room to switch on the light. Unnaturally yellow, a poor imitation of the sun. ‘Even during the day. In case someone is watching you. I don’t like the idea of someone watching you.’

Ravi stopped by her elbow, placed his thumb under her chin. ‘Hey, you OK?’

Did he mean about Ant and Lauren, or the little chalk figures climbing up to her room?

‘Yeah.’ Pip cleared her throat. Such a meaningless half-word.

She was sitting at her desk, fingers resting on the keyboard of her laptop. She’d just saved a copy of the photo she’d taken of the chalk figures. Finally, she’d got there before the rain or tyres or feet could wash them away, disappear them. Evidence. She herself might be the case this time, but she still needed evidence. And, more than that, it was proof. Proof that she wasn’t haunting herself; that she couldn’t be the one drawing the figures and killing those pigeons during the foggy sleepless nights, could she?

‘Maybe you can come stay at mine for a few nights,’ Ravi said, spinning her chair until they were face on. ‘Mum wouldn’t mind. I’d have to leave early from Monday, but that’s OK.’

Pip shook her head. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’ She wasn’t fine, but that was the whole point. There was no running away from this; she’d asked for it. She needed it. This was how she would make herself fine again. And the scarier it got, the more perfect the fit. Out of the grey area, into something she could comprehend, something she could live with. Black and white. Good and bad. Thank you.

‘You’re not fine,’ Ravi said, running his fingers through his dark hair, long enough now that it had started to curl at the ends. ‘This isn’t fine. I know it’s easy to forget, after all the fucked-up things we’ve been through, but this isn’t normal.’ He stared at her. ‘You know this isn’t normal, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that. I went to the police yesterday like you wanted, I tried to do the normal thing. But I guess it’s down to me again, to fix it.’ She pulled a line of loose skin by one fingernail, a bubble of blood greeting her from the deep. ‘I’ll fix it.’