‘Another one?’ Ravi didn’t move, the expression on his face held there, like he was suspended in time, on that one patch of carpet. As though to move either way, forward or back, would confirm the thing he didn’t want to hear. If he didn’t move, it might not be real.

He’d only just walked through her bedroom door; it was the first thing Pip had said to him. Don’t freak out but I got another blocked call today. She hadn’t wanted to text him earlier, distract him while he was working, but the waiting had been hard, the secret burrowing around under her skin, looking for its own way out.

‘Yeah, this morning,’ she said, watching his face as it finally shifted, eyebrows climbing up his forehead, away from his glasses that he’d remembered again. ‘Didn’t say anything. Just breathing.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. ‘And what happened to your hand?’

‘I’m telling you now,’ she said, running a finger down his wrist. ‘And nothing really. Car nearly hit me as I was crossing the road. It’s fine, it’s just a scrape. But, look, this call is a good thing because –’

‘Oh, it’s good, is it? Getting calls from a potential serial killer. Good. Well, that’s a relief,’ Ravi said, hand raised to theatrically mop his brow.

‘Can you listen?’ she said, rolling her eyes. Such a drama queen when he wanted to be. ‘It’s good because I’ve spent all afternoon looking this up. And look, see? I’ve downloaded this app.’ Pip held up her home screen to show him. ‘It’s called CallTrapper. And what it does is, once you’ve activated it – which I now have – and paid the bloody four pound fifty subscription fee, when you get a call from a blocked number, it will unmask it. So you know the number that’s calling you.’ She smiled up at him, hooked her finger on to his belt loop, like he always did to her. ‘I should have installed it after the first call, really, but I wasn’t sure what it was at the time. Thought it might have been a random butt dial. Never mind, I have it now. And next time he calls me, I’ll have his phone number.’ She was being too cheery, she could tell, overcompensating.

Ravi nodded, and his eyebrows climbed back down just a little. ‘There’s an app for everything these days,’ he said. ‘Great, now I sound like my dad.’

‘Look, I’ll show you how it works. Call me with 141 at the front to block your number.’

‘OK.’ She watched Ravi pull out his phone and tap away at the screen. It was sudden and unexpected, the feeling that stirred in her chest, watching him. A feeling that dawdled there, took its sweet time. A slow burn. It was just an unexpected nice thing, to know that he knew her number by heart. That some parts of her lived inside him too. Team Ravi and Pip.

He would look for her if she disappeared, wouldn’t he? He might even find her.

The feeling was interrupted by her phone buzzing in her hands. No Caller ID. She held it up to show Ravi.

‘So what I do is I press this button twice to decline the call,’ she said, demonstrating. Her phone returned to its lock screen, but only for half a second before it lit up with another call. And this time, Ravi’s phone number scrolled along the top. ‘See, it diverts it to CallTrapper, where the number is unmasked and then they redirect the call back to me. And the caller has no idea on their end,’ she said, pressing the red button.

‘Can’t believe you just hung up on me.’

She put down her phone. ‘See, I have technology on my side now.’

Her first victory in the game, but not one to linger over: she was already way behind.

‘OK, I’m not going to go as far as to say that that’s good,’ Ravi said. ‘Not referring to anything as good after reading Billy’s police interview and realizing that a serial killer the whole world thinks has been locked up for six years might actually be hanging around, threatening to brutally murder my girlfriend, but it’s something.’ He wandered over to her bed, sat down inelegantly on the duvet. ‘What I don’t get, really, is how this person has your phone number.’

‘Everyone has my phone number.’

‘I should hope not,’ he replied quickly, appalled.

‘No, I mean, from the posters.’ She couldn’t help but laugh at his face. ‘We put up missing posters for Jamie all over town with my phone number on them. Anyone in Kilton could have my phone number. Anyone.’

‘Oh right,’ he said, chewing his lip. ‘We weren’t thinking about future-stalkers-slash-serial-killers at the time, were we?’

‘Hadn’t crossed our minds.’

Ravi sighed, dropped his face into his cupped hands.

‘What?’ she asked him, swivelling in her chair.

‘Just, don’t you think you should go back to Hawkins? Show him that DT article with the pigeons, and Billy’s interview. This is too big for us.’

It was Pip’s turn to sigh now. ‘Ravi, I’m not going back there,’ she said. ‘I love you, and you are perfect in all of the ways you aren’t like me, and I would do anything to make you happy, but I can’t go back there.’ She slotted one hand through the other, tightened them into a knot of criss-crossing fingers. ‘Hawkins basically called me crazy to my face last time, told me I was imagining it all. What’s he going to do if I go back and tell him that, actually, my stalker – who he doesn’t think is real in the first place – is an infamous serial killer who has been in prison for six years, who both confessed and pleaded guilty, except he might not actually have done it. He’d probably put me in a straitjacket right then and there.’ She paused. ‘They won’t believe me. They never believe me.’

Ravi peeled his fingers away, uncovered his face to look at her. ‘You know, I’ve always thought you were the bravest person I’ve ever met. Fearless. I don’t know how you do it sometimes. And whenever I’m feeling nervous about anything, I always think to myself, what would Pip do in this situation? But,’ he exhaled, ‘I don’t know if this is the time to be brave, to do what Pip would do. The risk is too high. I think... I think, maybe, you’re being reckless and...’ He trailed off into a wordless shrug.

‘OK, look,’ she said, opening up her hands. ‘At the moment, the only evidence we have is a bad feeling. When I get a name, some concrete evidence, a phone number even,’ she said, picking up her phone to wave it at him, ‘then I will go back to Hawkins, I promise. And if he doesn’t believe me, then I’ll go public with the information. I don’t care about any more lawsuits. I’ll put it out all over social media, on the podcast, and then they will listen. No one’s going to try to hurt me if I’ve told hundreds of thousands of people who they are and what they’re planning to do. That’s our defence.’

There was another reason she had to do this and do this alone, of course. But she couldn’t tell Ravi; he wouldn’t understand because it didn’t make sense, it was beyond that. It couldn’t fit into words, even if she tried. Pip had asked for this, wished for it, begged for it. One last case, the right one, to fix all of the cracks inside herself. And if Billy Karras was innocent, and if the man who wanted her to disappear was DT, then she couldn’t have wished for something more perfect. There was no grey area here, none at all, not even a trace. The DT Killer was the closest thing to evil the world could offer her. There was no good in him at all: no mistakes, no good intentions twisted, no redemption, nothing like that. And if Pip were the one to finally catch him, to free an innocent man, that would be an objectively good thing. No ambiguity. No guilt. Good and bad set right inside her again. No gun in her heart or blood on her hands. This would fix everything so it could go back to normal. To Team Ravi and Pip living their normal lives. Save herself to save herself. That’s why she had to do this her way.