Pip nodded. ‘So, veggie burger for you, Naomi. And chicken nuggets for Cara, of course, don’t even need to ask. Cokes?’

They nodded.

‘OK, perfect. Be back in a sec.’

Pip strolled past the table of drunk men, purse swinging from her hand, up to the counter. There was a queue, three people in front of her. Pip stared ahead, clocking the security cameras posted on the ceiling behind the tills. She side-stepped a few inches, so they had a good view of her, waiting in line. She tried to act normal, natural, like she didn’t know she was being watched. And she couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what normal was for her now: an act. A lie.

Pip stuttered when it was her turn at the front, smiling at the cashier to cover the hesitation. She didn’t want to eat, just as much as Cara and Naomi didn’t. But it didn’t matter what she wanted. This was all a show, a performance for the cameras, a believable narrative in the traces she was leaving behind.

‘Hi,’ she smiled, recovering. ‘Can I please have a veggie burger meal, and... um, two chicken nugget meals, please. All with Coke.’

‘Yep, sure,’ the cashier said, plugging something into the screen in front of him. ‘Want any sauces with that?’

‘Um... just ketchup, please.’

‘Sure,’ he said, scratching at his head beneath the cap. ‘Is that everything?’

Pip nodded, trying not to glance up at the camera behind the cashier’s head as he called the order to a colleague. Because she would be looking directly into the eyes of the detective who might be watching this footage in the weeks to come, daring them not to believe her this time. It would likely be Hawkins, wouldn’t it? Jason was from Little Kilton, so his murder would probably be dealt with by the Thames Valley Police officers based at the Amersham station. A new game with new players: her against DI Hawkins, and Max Hastings was her offering.

‘Hello?’ the cashier stared at her, narrowing his eyes. ‘I said that comes to fourteen pounds, eight pence.’

‘Sorry.’ Pip unzipped her purse.

‘Paying by card?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, almost too forceful, straying out of character for a moment. Of course she had to pay by card; she had to leave an indisputable trace of her being here at this time. She pulled out her debit card and tapped it against the contactless card reader. It beeped and the cashier handed her a receipt. She should keep that too, she thought, folding it neatly and tucking it inside her purse.

‘It’ll just be a minute,’ the cashier said, gesturing her aside so he could take the order of the man standing behind her.

Pip stood off to the left, leaning against the backlit menu, still in sight of the cameras. She arranged her face for Hawkins, slack and unthinking, but really she was thinking about him studying the position of her feet, the arch of her shoulders and the look in her eyes. She tried not to fiddle too much as she waited, in case he thought she looked nervous. She wasn’t nervous; she was just here to eat some junk food with her friends. She glanced over to Cara and Naomi and gave them a small wave. See, Hawkins? Just getting food with her friends, nothing to see here.

Someone handed Pip her order and she thanked them, smiling for the cameras, for Hawkins. She gripped the three paper bags in one hand and balanced the cardboard tray of drinks on the other, walking carefully back to their table.

‘Here we go.’ Pip passed the drinks tray to Cara and slid the food bags across the table. ‘That’s you, Naomi,’ she said, handing her the one at the front.

‘Thanks,’ Naomi said, hesitating to open it. ‘So...’ She broke off, studying Pip’s eyes for answers. ‘We just eat and talk?’

‘Exactly.’ Pip grinned back, with a small laugh, as though Naomi had said something funny. ‘We just eat and talk.’ She unrolled her paper bag and reached inside, pulling out her box of six nuggets and her chips, a few lying abandoned and soggy at the bottom of the bag. ‘Oh, I’ve got the ketchups,’ she said, passing one each to Naomi and Cara.

Cara took the small pot from her, staring down at Pip’s outstretched arm, her sleeve sliding back towards her elbow.

‘What happened to your wrists?’ she asked quietly, uncertainly, her eyes on the raw, ragged skin the duct tape had left behind. ‘And your face?’

Pip cleared her throat, pulling the sleeve back down over her hand. ‘We don’t talk about that,’ she said, avoiding Cara’s eyes. ‘We talk about everything except that.’

‘But if someone hurt you, we can –’ Cara began, but it was Naomi who cut her off this time.

‘Cara, could you go grab us some straws?’ she asked, an older-sister edge to her voice.

Cara’s gaze flicked between the two of them. Pip nodded.

‘OK,’ she said, pushing up from the booth and over to a counter a few tables away with a straw dispenser and napkins. She returned with a few of each.

‘Thanks,’ Pip said, piercing the straw through the lid of her Coke, taking a sip. It burned in her throat, in the gouges left by her screams.

She picked up one nugget. She didn’t want to eat it, she couldn’t eat, but she put it in her mouth and chewed all the same. The texture felt rubbery, her tongue coating itself with saliva. She forced it down, noticing that Cara hadn’t started her own food, was staring too hard at Pip.

‘It’s just,’ Cara said, voice dipping into whispers, ‘if someone hurt you, I would kill th—’

Pip choked, swallowing the regurgitated food back down. ‘So, Cara,’ she said when she recovered. ‘Have you and Steph decided where you’re going on your travels? I know you said you really wanted to do Thailand?’

Cara checked with Naomi before answering. ‘Um, yeah,’ she said, finally opening her box of nuggets, dipping one into the ketchup. ‘Yeah. We want to do Thailand, do our scuba diving there, I think. Steph really wants to go to Australia too, maybe do some kind of tour.’

‘That sounds amazing,’ Pip said, turning to her chips instead, forcing a few down. ‘You’ll remember to pack sun cream, won’t you?’

Cara sniffed. ‘Such a Pip thing to say.’

‘Well,’ Pip smiled, ‘I’m still me.’ She hoped that was true.

‘You’re not going to do skydiving or bungee jumping, are you?’ Naomi said, taking another bite of her veggie burger, chewing uncomfortably. ‘Dad would freak out if he knew you were throwing yourself off a bridge or out of a plane.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know.’ Cara shook her head, staring down at her own hands. ‘I’m sorry, this is just really strange, I don’t –’

‘You’re doing really well,’ Pip said, taking a sip of Coke to force down another bite. ‘Really well.’

‘I want to help, though.’

‘This is helping.’ Pip locked her eyes on Cara’s, trying to tell her with her mind. They were saving her life right now. They were sitting in a service station McDonalds forcing down chips, having stilted, awkward conversation, but really they were saving her life.

There was a crash behind Pip. She whipped her head around, saw one of the drunken men had tripped over a chair, knocked it to the ground. But that’s not what the sound was, by the time it reached Pip’s ears. And she was surprised, in a way, that the sound wasn’t the crack of Jason Bell’s skull breaking open. It was still a gunshot, blowing an unfixable hole through Stanley Forbes’ chest. Staining the sweat on her hands a deep, deep, violent red.