More eerie sounds of a TV audience applauding her as Pip returned to the bathroom, grabbing the pile of bloodied clothes and her rucksack.

‘Pip?’ came her mum’s voice from the stairs.

Fuck.

‘Just showered! I’ll be down in a minute!’ Pip called back, hurrying into her room and closing the door behind her.

She dropped the pile of clothes beside the bucket, and then, on her knees, she turned to the discarded pile, and gently, one by one, lowered them into the bleach mixture, stuffing them down. Her trainers too, bobbing half in at the top.

From her rucksack, she added the lengths of duct tape that had bound her face and her hands and her ankles, pushing them down into the diluted bleach. She pulled out Jason’s burner phone, sliding the back off to remove the SIM card. She snapped the little card in half and dropped the disassembled phone into the water. Then the underwear she’d used to wipe the blood from her face, and the spare T-shirt she’d sat on. Finally, the branded Green Scene gloves she and Ravi had used – perhaps most incriminating – she pushed them right to the bottom. The bleach would deal with the visible bloodstains, and probably the dye of the fabrics too, but it was just a precaution: everything in here would be gone forever by this time tomorrow. Another job for later.

For now, Pip dragged the bucket across the carpet and hid it inside her wardrobe, poking her trainers back in. The smell of bleach was strong, but no one would be coming into her bedroom.

Pip dried herself and dressed, in a black hoodie and black leggings, and then turned to the mirror to deal with her face. Her hair hung down in feeble, wet strands, her scalp too sore to run a brush through. She could see a small bald patch on the crown of her head, where she’d ripped out her hair with the tape. She’d have to cover it. Pip dragged her fingers through and secured her hair into a high ponytail, tight and uncomfortable. She layered two more hair ties on her wrist, for later, when she and Ravi returned to Green Scene. Her face still looked raw and blotchy, and then slightly sickly as she piled foundation over to cover it. Concealer on the worst parts. She looked pale and the texture of her skin looked rough, peeling in places, but it would do.

She emptied out her rucksack to repack it, ticking off items from the mental list she and Ravi had assembled, seared into her brain like a mantra. Two beanie hats, five pairs of socks. Three of the burner phones from her desk drawer, turning them all on. The small pile of cash she kept in that secret compartment too, taking it all, just in case. In the pocket of her smartest jacket, hanging in her wardrobe over the bucket of bleach, she found the embossed card she hadn’t touched since that mediation meeting, and placed it carefully in the front pocket of her bag. Darting quietly into her mum and dad’s en suite, she grabbed a handful of the latex gloves her mum used to dye her hair, at least three pairs each. She repacked her purse on top of everything, checking her debit card was inside; she would need it for her alibi. And her car keys.

That was it, everything from upstairs. She ran it through again, double-checking she had everything needed for the plan. There were a few more items to get from downstairs, somehow avoiding the watchful gaze of her family, and a younger brother who made everyone’s business his own.

‘Hey,’ she said breathlessly, skipping down the stairs. ‘Just had to shower because I’m heading out and went on a run earlier.’ The lie came out too fast, she needed to slow it down, remember to breathe.

Her mum turned her head against the backrest of the sofa, looking at her. ‘I thought you were going to Ravi’s for dinner and staying over.’

‘A sleepover,’ Joshua’s voice added, though Pip couldn’t see him beyond the couch.

‘Change of plans,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘Ravi had to go see his cousin, so I’m hanging out with Cara instead.’

‘No one asked me about any sleepover,’ added her dad.

Pip’s mum narrowed her eyes, studying her face. Could she see, could she tell what was hiding just beneath the make-up? Or was there something different in Pip’s eyes, that haunted faraway look? She’d left the house still her mum’s little girl, and she’d returned as someone who knew what it was to die violently, to cross over that line and somehow come back from it. And not only that; she was a killer now. Had that changed her, in her mother’s eyes? In her own? Reshaped her?

‘You haven’t had an argument, have you?’ she asked.

‘What?’ Pip said, confused. ‘Me and Ravi? No, we’re fine.’ She attempted a light-hearted sniff, dismissing the idea. How she wished for anything as normal, as quiet, as an argument with her boyfriend. ‘I’m just grabbing a snack from the kitchen then heading out.’

‘OK sweetie,’ her mum said, like she didn’t believe her. But that was fine; if her mum wanted to believe she and Ravi had had an argument, that was fine. Good, even. Far better than anything near the truth; that Pip had murdered a serial killer and was now, at this very moment, heading out to frame a rapist for the crime she’d committed.

In the kitchen, Pip opened the wide drawer at the top of the island, the drawer where her mum kept the foil and baking paper, and the plastic sandwich bags. Pip grabbed four of the resealable sandwich bags, and two of the larger plastic freezer bags, stuffing them on top of her rucksack. From the bits-and-bobs drawer on the other side of the kitchen, Pip retrieved the candle lighter and packed it in too.

And now for the last item on the list, which wasn’t really a specific item, more a problem to be dealt with. Pip thought inspiration would have struck her by now, but she was coming up empty. The Hastings family had fitted two security cameras either side of their front door, since Pip vandalized their house months ago, after the verdict. She needed something to deal with those cameras, but what?

Pip opened the door into the garage, the air cold in here, almost nice against her skin, still adrenaline-hot. She surveyed the room, her eyes flicking over her parents’ bikes, to her dad’s toolkit, to the mirrored dresser that her mum kept insisting they’d find room for. What could Pip use to disable those cameras? Her eyes lingered over her dad’s toolkit, pulling her over, across the room. She opened the lid and looked inside. There was a small hammer lying on top. She supposed she could sneak up and break the cameras, but that would make a sound, might alert Max inside. Or those wire-cutters, if the cameras had exposed wiring. But she’d been hoping for something less permanent, something that better fitted the narrative.

Her eyes caught on something else, head-height on the shelf above the toolbox, staring at her in that way inanimate objects sometimes did. Pip’s breath caught in her throat, and she sighed, because it was perfect.

A near-full roll of grey duct tape.

That was exactly what she needed.

‘Fucking duct tape,’ Pip muttered to herself, grabbing it and shoving it inside her bag.

She left the garage and froze in the doorway. Her dad was in the kitchen, half inside the fridge, picking at the leftovers and watching her.

‘What are you doing in there?’ he asked, lines criss-crossing his forehead.

‘Oh, um... looking for my blue Converse,’ Pip said, thinking on her feet. ‘What are you doing in there?’

‘They’re in the rack by the door,’ he said, indicating down the hall with his head. ‘I’m just getting your mother a glass of wine.’