Makes me sick.
That’s what the text said. From Naomi Ward.
Pip sat up on her bed, clicking on to the photo Naomi sent with the message.
It was a screenshot, from Facebook. A post from Nancy Tangotits: the name of Max Hastings’ profile. A photo, of Max, his mum and dad and his lawyer, Christopher Epps. They were gathered around a table in a lavish- looking restaurant, white pillars and a giant powder-blue bird cage in the background. Max was holding up the phone to get them all in the frame. And they were smiling, all of them, glasses of champagne in their hands.
He’d tagged them in at The Savoy Hotel in London, and the caption above read: celebrating . . .
The room immediately started to shrink, closing in around Pip. The walls took an inward step and the shadows in the corners stretched out to take her. She couldn’t be here. She needed to get out before she suffocated inside this room.
She stumbled out of her door, phone in hand, tiptoeing past Josh’s room to the stairs. He was already in bed, but he’d come in to see her earlier, with a whispered, ‘Thought you might be hungry,’ leaving her a packet of Pom- Bears he’d smuggled from the kitchen. ‘Shhh, don’t tell Mum and Dad.’
Pip could hear the sounds of her parents watching television in the living room, waiting for their programme to start at nine. They were talking, a muffled drone through the door, but she could hear one word clearly: her own name.
Quietly, she stepped into her trainers, scooped up her keys from the side, and slipped out of the front door, shutting it silently behind her.
It was raining, hard, spattering against the ground and up against her ankles. That was fine, that was OK. She needed to get out, clear her head.
And maybe the rain would help, water down the rage until she was no longer ablaze, just the charred parts left behind.
She ran across the road, into the woods on the other side. It was dark here, pitch dark, but it covered her from the worst of the rain. And that was fine too, until something unseen rustled through the undergrowth and scared her. She returned to the road, safe along the moonlit pavement, soaked through. She should have felt cold – she was shivering – but she couldn’t really feel it. And she didn’t know where to go. She just wanted to walk, to be outside where nothing could shut her in. So she walked, up to the end of Martinsend Way and back, stopping before she reached her house, turning and walking the road again. Up and down and back again, chasing her thoughts, trying to unravel their ends.
Her hair was dripping by her third time coming back. She stopped dead. There was movement. Someone walking down the front path of Zach’s house. But it wasn’t Zach’s house, not any more. The figure was Charlie Green, carrying a filled black sack towards the bin left out near the path.
He jumped when he saw her emerging from the dark.
‘Ah, Pip, sorry,’ he said, laughing, dropping the bag in the bin. ‘You scared me. Are you –’ He paused, looking at her. ‘God, you’re soaking. Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?’
She didn’t have an answer.
‘Well you’re almost home now. Get in and get dry,’ he said kindly.
‘I-I . . .’ she stuttered, her teeth chattering. ‘I can’t go home. Not yet.’ Charlie tilted his head, his eyes searching out hers.
‘Oh, OK,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Well, do you want to come to ours, for a bit?’
‘No. Thank you,’ she added hastily. ‘I don’t want to be inside.’
‘Oh, right.’ Charlie shuffled, glancing back to his house. ‘Well, uh . . . do you want to sit under the porch, get out of the rain?’
Pip was about to say no but, actually, maybe she was feeling cold now.
She nodded.
‘OK, sure,’ Charlie said, beckoning for her to follow him down the path. They stepped under the covered front steps and he paused. ‘Do you want a drink or something? A towel?’
‘No thank you,’ Pip said, sitting herself down on the dry middle step. ‘Right.’ Charlie nodded, pushing his reddish hair back from his face. ‘So,
um, are you OK?’
‘I . . .’ Pip began. ‘I’ve had a bad day.’
‘Oh.’ He sat down, on the step below her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ ‘I don’t really know how,’ she said.
‘I, er, I listened to your podcast, and the new episodes about Jamie Reynolds,’ he said. ‘You’re really good at what you do. And brave. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m sure you’ll find a way.’
‘They found Max Hastings not guilty today.’
‘Oh.’ Charlie sighed, stretching out his legs. ‘Shit. That’s not good.’
‘To put it lightly,’ she sniffed, wiping rainwater from the end of her nose. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘for what it’s worth, the justice system is supposed to be this purveyor of right and wrong, good and bad. But sometimes, I
think it gets it wrong almost as much as it gets it right. I’ve had to learn that, too, and it’s hard to accept. What do you do when the things that are supposed to protect you, fail you like that?’
‘I was so naïve,’ Pip said. ‘I practically handed Max Hastings to them, after everything came out last year. And I truly believed it was some kind of victory, that the bad would be punished. Because it was the truth, and the truth was the most important thing to me. It’s all I believed in, all I cared about: finding the truth, no matter the cost. And the truth was that Max was guilty and he would face justice. But justice doesn’t exist, and the truth doesn’t matter, not in the real world, and now they’ve just handed him right back.’
‘Oh, justice exists,’ Charlie said, looking up at the rain. ‘Maybe not the kind that happens in police stations and courtrooms, but it does exist. And when you really think about it, those words – good and bad, right and wrong – they don’t really matter in the real world. Who gets to decide what they mean: those people who just got it wrong and let Max walk free? No,’ he shook his head. ‘I think we all get to decide what good and bad and right and wrong mean to us, not what we’re told to accept. You did nothing wrong. Don’t beat yourself up for other people’s mistakes.’
She turned to him, her stomach clenching. ‘But that doesn’t matter now.
Max has won.’
‘He only wins if you let him.’ ‘What can I do about it?’ she asked.
‘From listening to your podcast, sounds to me like there’s not much you can’t do.’
‘I haven’t found Jamie.’ She picked at her nails. ‘And now people think he’s not really missing, that I made it all up. That I’m a liar and I’m bad and –’
‘Do you care?’ Charlie asked. ‘Do you care what people think, if you know you’re right?’
She paused, her answer sliding back down her throat. Why did she care? She was about to say she didn’t care at all, but hadn’t that been the feeling in the pit of her stomach all along? The pit that had been growing these last six months. Guilt about what she did last time, about her dog dying, about not being good, about putting her family in danger, and every day reading the disappointment in her mum’s eyes. Feeling bad about the secrets she was keeping to protect Cara and Naomi. She was a liar, that part was true.
And worse, to make herself feel better about it all, she’d said it wasn’t really her and she’d never be that person again. That she was different now .
. . good. That she’d almost lost herself last time and it wouldn’t happen again. But that wasn’t it, was it? She hadn’t almost lost herself, maybe she’d actually been meeting herself for the very first time. And she was tired of feeling guilty about it. Tired of feeling shame about who she was. She bet Max Hastings had never felt ashamed a day in his life.
‘You’re right,’ she said. And as she straightened up, untwisted, she realized that the pit in her stomach, the one that had been swallowing her from inside out, it was starting to go. Filling in until it was hardly there at all. ‘Maybe I don’t have to be good, or other people’s versions of good. And maybe I don’t have to be likeable.’ She turned to him, her movements quick and light despite her water-heavy clothes. ‘Fuck likeable. You know who’s likeable? People like Max Hastings who walk into a courtroom with fake glasses and charm their way out. I don’t want to be like that.’
‘So don’t,’ Charlie said. ‘And don’t give up because of him. Someone’s life might depend on you. And I know you can find him, find Jamie.’ He turned a smile to her. ‘Other people might not believe in you but, for what it’s worth, your neighbour from four doors down does.’
She felt it grow on her face: a smile. Small, flickering out after a moment, but it had been there. And it had been real. ‘Thank you, Charlie.’ She’d needed to hear that. All of it. Maybe she wouldn’t have listened, it if had come from anyone close to her. There’d been too much anger, too much guilt, too many voices. But she was listening now. ‘Thank you.’ She meant it. And the voice in her head thanked him too.
‘No problem.’
Pip stood up, out into the downpour, staring up at the moon, its light quivering through the sheets of rain. ‘I have to go and do something.’
