They understood, or close to it, Pip could tell from the shift in their faces.

‘An alibi,’ Cara spoke the unspoken thing.

Pip tilted her head up and down, the tiniest of movements, not quite a nod.

‘You never have to lie,’ she said. ‘About any of it, any of the details, ever. All you ever need to say, need to know, is exactly what we’re going to do. You’re not doing anything wrong, anything illegal. You’re hanging out with your friend, that’s all and that’s all you know. It’s 9:44 p.m. and you just need to come with me.’

Cara nodded, and the look in her eyes was different now, sadder. It still looked like fear, but not for herself. For the friend standing in front of her, unravelling. The friend she’d known twice as long as she hadn’t. Friends who would die for each other, kill for each other, and Pip would be the first one to lean on that.

‘Where are we going?’ Naomi asked.

Pip exhaled and gave them a strained smile. She re-zipped her bag and threw it over her shoulders.

‘We’re going to McDonalds,’ she said.

They didn’t talk much on the drive. Didn’t know what to say, what they were allowed to say, or even how much to move. Cara sat in the passenger seat, her hands tucked in between her legs, shoulders arched and stiff, taking up as little space as she could.

Naomi was in the back, sitting up too straight, her back not even touching the seat. Pip glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw streaks of headlights and streetlights striped over Naomi’s face, bringing life back into her eyes.

Pip concentrated on the road instead of the silence. She’d driven the A-roads, trying to hit as many traffic cameras as possible. This time she wanted them to see her; that was the whole point. Air-tight, iron-clad. If it came to it, the police could follow the route Pip and her car had taken, through the eyes of all these cameras, retrace her steps. Proof she was right here and not somewhere else, killing a man.

‘How’s Steph?’ Pip said, when the quietness in the car got a little too loud. She’d turned the radio off a while ago; it was too eerie, too aggressively normal in what was the most unnormal drive the three of them would ever take.

‘Um.’ Cara gave a small cough, watching out the window. ‘Yeah, she’s good.’ That was it, silence again. Well, what had Pip expected, involving them in this? Asking too much of them.

Pip’s eyes drew up, catching sight of the McDonalds sign up ahead; her headlights lighting up the golden M until it glowed. It was in a motorway service station, just outside of Beaconsfield. That’s why she and Ravi had picked it. Cameras everywhere.

Pip exited the roundabout and pulled into the service station, into the huge car park that was still heaving with people and cars, even though it had just gone ten.

She rolled forward, waiting for a space near the front, right by the huge grey and glass building. Pulled in, turned off the car.

The silence was even louder, now the engine wasn’t hiding it. Saved by a group of men, clearly drunk, squawking as they stumbled in front of the car and through the doors into the well-lit station.

‘Started early,’ Cara said, nodding at the group, reaching out across the silence.

Pip grabbed at it, with both hands.

‘Sounds like my kind of night out,’ she said. ‘In bed by eleven.’

‘My kind of night out too,’ Cara said, turning around, a small smile on her face. ‘If it ends in chips.’

Pip laughed then, a guttural, hollow laugh that split open into a cough. She was so glad they were here with her, even though she hated herself for having to ask. ‘I’m sorry, for this,’ she said, staring forward at the other groups of people. People on long trips away, or long trips home, or not-very-long trips either way. People on family visits with small, sleepy children, or nights out, or even nights in, picking up food on the way. Normal people living their normal lives. And then the three of them in this car.

‘Don’t be,’ Naomi spoke up now, resting a hand on Pip’s shoulder. ‘You’d do it for us.’

And Naomi was right; she would and she had. She’d kept the secret of the hit-and-run Naomi had been involved in. Pip had found another way to clear Sal’s name, so Cara didn’t lose her father and her sister at the same time. But that didn’t make her feel any better about what she’d asked of them now. The kind of favour you hoped would never need returning.

But hadn’t Pip realized yet? Everything was returning; that full circle, dragging them all back around again.

‘Exactly,’ Cara said, pressing her finger lightly to the badly covered graze on Pip’s cheekbone, as though touching it would tell her what had happened, the thing she’d never know for sure. ‘We just want you to be OK. Just tell us what to do. Lead the way and tell us what to do.’

‘That’s the thing,’ Pip said. ‘We don’t need to do anything, really. Just act normal. Happy,’ she sniffed. ‘Like something bad hasn’t happened.’

‘Our dad killed your boyfriend’s older brother and kept a girl in his loft for five years,’ Cara said quickly with a glance back at Naomi. ‘You have yourself two experts at acting normal.’

‘At your service,’ Naomi added.

‘Thank you,’ Pip said, knowing deep down how inadequate those two words were. ‘Let’s go.’

Pip opened the door and stepped out, taking the rucksack that Cara was handing across to her. She shouldered it and looked around. There was a tall street lamp behind her, lighting up the car park with an industrial yellow glow. Halfway up the pole, Pip could see two dark cameras, one pointed their way. Pip made sure to look up, study the stars for a second, so the camera could capture her face. A million, million lights in the gaping blackness of the sky.

‘OK,’ Naomi said, shutting the back door and gathering her cardigan around herself.

Pip locked the car and they walked together, the three of them, through the automatic doors and into the service station.

It still had that buzz, that same energy all service stations had: that clash of those too heavy-eyed and those too wired, the nearly-theres and the just-beguns. Pip wasn’t either of them. The end wasn’t in sight yet – this long night would be longer still – but she was past the middle of the plan, leaving the ticked boxes behind in the back of her mind. Burying them deep. She just had to keep going. One foot in front of the other. Two hours until she had to meet Ravi.

‘This way,’ she said, leading Cara and Naomi over to the McDonalds at the back end of the cavernous building.

The drunk men were already there, at a table in the middle. Still squawking, but around mouthfuls of chips now.

Pip picked a booth close to them, but not too close, dumping her bag down on one chair. She opened it to pull out her purse, and then zipped it back up, before Naomi and Cara saw anything they shouldn’t.

‘Sit,’ Pip said to them, smiling for the cameras that she couldn’t see but knew would be here somewhere. Cara and Naomi slid themselves along the shiny, plastic-covered booth, the material screaming against their clothes. ‘I’ll get the food. What do you guys want to eat?’

The sisters looked at each other.

‘Well, we already ate dinner, at home,’ Cara said tentatively.