‘No!’ Ravi said, desperate and angry. ‘You’ll be in prison for decades, maybe your whole life. I won’t let that happen. Max killed Jason, not you. There is so much more evidence that points to him than you. We can do this, Pip. It can still be OK.’

It hurt too much to hear him like this. How was she going to be able to say goodbye when he was actually right there in front of her? Her ribs closed in on her heart, squeezing until it gave out, thinking about not being able to see him every day ever again, only fortnightly visits across a cold metal table, guards watching to make sure they didn’t touch. That wasn’t a life, not one she wanted for herself or for him.

Pip didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t fix this.

‘I don’t want you to,’ Ravi said quietly. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘If it’s a choice between me and you, I choose you,’ Pip whispered.

‘But I choose you too,’ Ravi said.

‘I’ll come over to say goodbye before I go.’ She sniffed. ‘I’m going to go downstairs and have one last normal family dinner. Say goodbye to them, even though they won’t know. Just one last bit of normal. And then I’ll come say goodbye to you. Then I go.’

Silence.

‘OK,’ Ravi finally said, his voice thicker now, and something else in it that Pip didn’t recognize.

‘I love you,’ she said.

The phone clicked off, dead tone ringing in her ears.

‘Joshua, eat your peas.’

Pip smiled as she watched her dad speaking in his mockwarning voice, opening his eyes comically wide.

‘I just don’t like them today,’ Josh complained, pushing them around his plate, kicking his feet out against Pip’s knees under the table. Normally she’d tell him to stop, but this time she didn’t mind. This time was the last, in an hour full of lasts, and Pip wouldn’t take any of them for granted. Study them, sear them into her brain to make the memories last decades. She’d need them in there.

‘That’s because I made them,’ her mum said, ‘and I don’t add a kilogram of butter,’ with a sharp look across at her dad.

‘You know,’ Pip said to Josh, ignoring her own plate, ‘peas are meant to make you better at football.’

‘No, they aren’t,’ Josh said in his I’m ten not stupid voice.

‘I don’t know, Josh,’ her dad said thoughtfully. ‘Remember how your sister knows everything. And I mean everything.’

‘Hmm.’ Josh glanced at the ceiling, considering that. Shifted his gaze to Pip, studying her just as hard back, for very different reasons. ‘She does know quite a lot of things, I’ll give you that, Dad.’

Well, she thought she did, from useless facts to how to get away with murder. But she’d been wrong, and one small mistake had brought it all crashing down. Pip wondered how her family would talk about her years from now. Would her dad still boast about her, tell everyone there’s nothing his pickle doesn’t know? Or would she become a hushed-up topic, one that didn’t carry beyond these four walls? A shameful secret, locked away as a ghost bound to the house. Would Josh make up excuses when they were visiting her, so he wouldn’t have to tell his friends what she was? Maybe he’d even pretend he never had a sister. Pip wouldn’t blame him, if that’s what he had to do.

‘But it still doesn’t mean I like these peas,’ Josh carried on.

Pip’s mum smiled in exasperation, sharing a look across the table at Pip, one that clearly said just, Boys, eh?

Pip blinked back at her. Tell me about it.

‘Pip’s going to miss my cooking, anyway, won’t you?’ her mum asked. ‘When she goes off to uni.’

‘Yep,’ Pip nodded, fighting the lump in her throat. ‘I’ll miss a lot of things.’

‘But you’ll miss your fabulous daddy the most, won’t you?’ her dad said, winking across the table.

Pip smiled, and she could feel her eyes prickling, glazing. ‘He is very fabulous,’ she said, picking up her fork and glancing down to hide her eyes.

A normal family dinner, except it wasn’t. But none of them knew it was really a goodbye. Pip had been so lucky. Why hadn’t she stopped to think about that before? She should have thought it every single day. And now she had to give it all up. All of them. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want this. She wanted to fight against this, rage against this. It wasn’t fair. But it was the right thing to do. Pip didn’t know any more about good or bad or right or wrong, those words were meaningless and empty, but she knew this was what she had to do. Max Hastings would still be free, but so would everyone else she cared about. A compromise, a trade.

Pip’s mum was busy listing off all the things they had to get sorted before this Sunday, all the things they still needed to buy.

‘You still haven’t bought a new duvet set.’

‘I can take an old duvet set, it’s fine,’ Pip said. She didn’t like this conversation, planning for a future that would never happen.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t started packing, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Normally you’re so organized.’

‘I’ve been busy,’ Pip said, and now she was the one pushing peas around her plate.

‘With this new podcast?’ her dad asked. ‘Terrible, isn’t it, what happened to Jason.’

‘Yeah, it’s terrible,’ Pip said quietly.

‘What exactly happened to him?’ Josh’s ears perked up.

‘Nothing,’ Pip’s mum said pointedly, and that was it, it was over; her mum was picking up the empty and near-empty plates and carrying them off to the side. Dishwasher sighing as it opened.

Pip stood up and she wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to hug them close to her and cry, but she couldn’t because then she’d have to tell them, tell them the terrible thing she’d done. But how could she leave, how could she say goodbye without that? Maybe just one, maybe just Josh.

She caught him as he climbed down from his chair, wrapping him in a quick hug, disguised as a wrestle, carrying him through and chucking him on to the sofa.

‘Get off me,’ he giggled, kicking out at her.

Pip grabbed her jacket, forcing herself to walk away from them, otherwise she might just never go. She headed towards the front door. Was this the last time she’d ever walk through it? Would she be a woman in her forties, her fifties, the next time she was here? The lines on her face all from that one night, etched into her forever. Or would she never come home again?

‘Bye,’ she called, her voice catching in her throat, a black hole in her chest that might never go away.

‘Where are you off to?’ Her mum poked her head out of the kitchen. ‘A podcast thing?’

‘Yeah,’ Pip shrugged, sliding her feet into her shoes, not looking back at her mum because it hurt too much.

She dragged herself towards the door. Don’t look back, don’t look back. She opened it.

‘I love you all,’ she shouted, loud, louder than she meant to because it covered the cracks in her voice. She shut the door behind her, the slam cutting her off, severing her from them. Just in time too, because she was crying now, heaving sobs that made it hard to breathe as she unlocked her car and sat inside.