Pip unlocked the front door and shunted it open. Barney bounded down the hall and escorted her back as she moved towards the familiar voices. ‘Hello, pickle,’ Victor said as Pip popped her head into the living room.
‘We only just beat you home. I’m about to sort some dinner for Mum and me; Joshua ate at Sam’s house. Did you eat at Cara’s?’
‘Yeah, I did,’ she said. They’d eaten but they hadn’t talked much. Cara had been quiet all week at school. Pip understood; this project had sent the foundations of her family spinning, her life as it was was dependent on Pip finding the truth. She and Naomi had asked on Sunday, after Max left, who Pip thought had done it. She didn’t tell them anything, only warned Naomi to stay away from Max. She couldn’t risk sharing Andie’s secrets with them in case they came hand in hand with threats from the killer. That was her burden to bear.
‘So how was parents’ evening?’ Pip asked.
‘Yeah, good,’ Leanne said, patting Josh’s head. ‘Getting better in science and maths, aren’t you, Josh?’
Josh nodded, fumbling Lego bricks together on the coffee table.
‘Although Miss Speller did say you have a proclivity for being the class clown.’ Victor threw a mock-serious face in Josh’s direction.
‘I wonder where he gets that from,’ Pip said, throwing the same face right back at her dad.
He hooted and slapped his knees. ‘Don’t sass me, girl.’
‘I don’t have time to,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to get a few hours’ work done before bed.’ She stepped back into the hallway and towards the stairs.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ Mum sighed, ‘you work too hard.’ ‘There’s no such thing,’ Pip said, waving from the stairs.
On the landing, she stopped just outside her bedroom and stared. The door was open slightly and the sight jarred with Pip’s memory of this
morning before school. Joshua had taken two bottles of Victor’s aftershave and – wearing a cowboy hat – held one in each hand, squirting as he sashayed along the upstairs hallway, saying: ‘I’m rooty-tooty-perfume- booty and this house ain’t big enough for the both of us, Pippo.’ Pip had escaped, closing her door behind her, so that her room wouldn’t later smell of a sickly amalgamation of Brave and Pour Homme. Or maybe that had been yesterday morning? She hadn’t slept well this week and the days were sticking to each other.
‘Has someone been in my room?’ she called downstairs. ‘No, we just got in,’ her mum replied.
Pip went inside and dumped her rucksack on the bed. She walked over to her desk and knew with only half a glance that something wasn’t right. Her laptop was open, the screen tilted right back. Pip always, always closed the
lid when she left it for the day. She clicked the on button and as it burred back into life she noticed that the neat stack of printouts beside her computer had been fanned out. One had been picked up and placed at the top of the pile.
It was the photograph. The evidence of Sal’s alibi. And it wasn’t where she’d left it.
Her laptop sang two welcome notes and loaded her home screen up. It
was just as she’d left it; the Word document of her most recent production log in the task bar beside a minimized Chrome tab. She clicked into her log.
It opened on the page below her spider diagram. Pip gasped.
Below her final words, someone had typed: YOU NEED TO STOP THIS, PIPPA.
Over and over again. Hundreds of times. So many that it filled four entire A4 pages.
Pip’s heart became a thousand drumming beetles scattering under her skin. She drew her hands away from the keyboard and stared down at it. The killer had been here, in her room. Touching her things. Looking through her research. Pressing the keys on her laptop.
Inside her home.
She pushed away from the desk and bounded downstairs.
‘Um, Mum,’ she said, trying to speak normally over the breathless terror in her voice, ‘did anyone come over to the house today?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve been at work all day and went straight to Josh’s parents’ evening. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Pip said, improvising. ‘I ordered a book and thought it would turn up. Um . . . actually, one more thing. There was a story going round school today. A couple of people’s houses have been broken into; they think they’re using people’s spare keys to get in. Maybe we shouldn’t keep ours out until they’re caught?’
‘Oh, really?’ Leanne said, looking up at Pip. ‘No, I suppose we shouldn’t then.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Pip said, trying not to skid as she hurried for the front door.
She pulled it open and a blast of cool October night air prickled her burning face. She bent to her knees and pulled over one corner of the outside doormat. The key winked the hallway light back at her. It was sitting not in, but just next to its own imprint in the dirt. Pip reached forward and grabbed it and the cold metal stung her fingers.
She laid under her duvet, arrow-straight and shivering. She closed her eyes and focused her ears. There was a scraping sound somewhere in the house. Was someone trying to get inside? Or was it just the willow tree that sometimes scuffed against her parents’ window?
A thud from the front. Pip jumped. A neighbour’s car door slamming or someone trying to break in?
She got out of bed for the sixteenth time and went to the window. She moved a corner of the curtain and peeked through. It was dark. The cars on the front drive were dusted with pale silver moon-streaks but the navy blush of night hid everything else. Was someone out there, in the darkness?
Watching her? She watched back, waiting for a sign of movement, for a ripple of darkness to shift and become a person.
Pip let the curtain fall again and got back into bed. The duvet had betrayed her and lost all the body heat she’d filled it with. She shivered under it again, watching the clock on her phone tick through 3:00 a.m. and onwards.
When the wind howled and rattled her window and Pip’s heart jumped to her throat she threw the duvet off and climbed out again. But this time she tiptoed across the landing and pushed open the door into Josh’s room. He was sound asleep, his peaceful face lit up by his cool blue star nightlight.
Pip crept over to the foot of his bed. She climbed up and crawled over to the pillow end, avoiding the sleeping lump of her brother. He didn’t wake
but moaned a little when she flicked his duvet over herself. It was so warm inside. And Josh would be safe, if she was here to watch him.
She lay there, listening to his deep breaths, letting her brother’s sleep-heat thaw her. Her eyes crossed and tripped over each other as she stared ahead, transfixed by the soft blue light of spinning stars.
