‘Pip, what are you doing here?’ Naomi stood in the front doorway. ‘Shouldn’t you still be at school?’
‘I had a free period,’ she said, trying to catch her breath. ‘I just have one question I need to ask you.’
‘Pip, are you OK?’
‘You’ve been going to therapy ever since your mum died, haven’t you? For anxiety and depression,’ Pip said. There was no time to be delicate. Naomi looked at her strangely, her eyes shining. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Did your therapist tell you to keep a diary?’
Naomi nodded. ‘It’s a way to manage the stress. It helps,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it since I was sixteen.’
‘And did you write about the hit-and-run?’
Naomi stared at her, lines webbing around her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I did. I had to write about it. I was devastated and I couldn’t talk to anyone. No one ever sees them but me.’
Pip exhaled, cupping her hands around her mouth to catch it.
‘You think that’s how the person found out?’ Naomi shook her head.
‘No, it’s not possible. I always lock my diaries and keep them hidden in my room.’
‘I have to go,’ Pip said. ‘Sorry.’
She turned and charged back to her car, ignoring when Naomi shouted, ‘Pip! Pippa!’
Her mum’s car was parked at home when Pip pulled into the drive. But
the house was quiet and Leanne didn’t call out when the front door opened.
Walking down the hallway, Pip heard another sound over her throbbing pulse: the sound of her mother crying.
At the entrance to the living room Pip stopped and watched the back of her mum’s head over the rim of the sofa. She was holding her phone up in
both hands and small recorded voices were playing from it. ‘Mum?’
‘Oh, sweetie, you scared me,’ she said, pausing her phone and wiping her eyes quickly. ‘You’re home early. So, the exam went well?’ She patted the cushion beside her eagerly, trying to rearrange her tear-stained face.
‘What was your essay about? Come and tell me.’ ‘Mum,’ Pip said, ‘why are you upset?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, really nothing.’ She gave Pip a teary smile. ‘I was just looking through old pictures of Barney. And I found the video from that Christmas two years ago, when Barney went round the table giving everyone a shoe. I can’t stop watching it.’
Pip walked over and hugged her from behind. ‘I’m sorry you’re sad,’ she whispered into her mum’s hair.
‘I’m not,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m happy-sad. He was such a good dog.’
Pip sat with her, swiping through their old photos and videos of Barney, laughing as he jumped in the air and tried to eat the snow, as he barked at the vacuum cleaner, as he splayed on the floor with his paws up, little Josh rubbing his belly while Pip stroked his ears. They stayed like that until her mum had to go and pick up Josh.
‘OK,’ Pip said. ‘I think I’m going to nap upstairs for a bit.’
It was another lie. She went to her room to watch the time, pacing from bed to door. Waiting. Fear burned to rage and if she didn’t pace, she would scream. It was Thursday, a tutoring day, and she wanted him to be there.
When Little Kilton was the other side of five o’clock, Pip tugged the charger out of her phone and pulled on her khaki coat.
‘I’m going to Lauren’s for a few hours,’ she called to her mum who was in the kitchen helping Josh with his maths homework. ‘See you later.’
Outside, she unlocked the car, climbed in and tied her dark hair on top of her head. She looked down at her phone, at the lines and lines of messages from Ravi. She replied: It went OK, thanks. I’ll come to yours after dinner and we’ll phone the police then. Yet another lie, but Pip was fluent in them now. He would only stop her.
She opened the map app on her phone, typed in the search bar and pressed
Go on the directions.
The harsh mechanical voice chanted up at her: Starting route to 42 Mill End Road, Wendover.
