The sun climbed up her legs in leaf-like patches, reaching through the tall willow tree in the Reynoldses’ garden.
The day was warm, but the stone step she sat on was cool through the back of her new jeans. Pip blinked against the shifting beams of light, watching them all.
A get-together, Joanna Reynolds’ message had read, but Jamie joked it was a Surprise, I’m not dead barbecue. Pip had found that funny. She hadn’t found much funny the last few weeks, but that had done it.
The dads were hovering around the barbecue, and Pip could see her dad was eyeing the unflipped burgers, itching to take over from Arthur Reynolds. Mohan Singh was laughing, tilting his head back to drink his beer, the sunlight making the bottle glow.
Joanna was leaning over the picnic table nearby, removing cling film from the tops of bowls: pasta salad and potato salad and actual salad. Dropping serving spoons into each one. On the other side of the garden, Cara stood talking with Ravi, Connor and Zach. Ravi was intermittently kicking a tennis ball, for Josh to chase.
Pip watched her brother, whooping as he cartwheeled after the ball. A smile on his face that was pure and unknowing. Ten years old, the same age Child Brunswick was when . . . Stanley’s dying face flashed into her mind. Pip screwed her eyes shut, but that never took him away. She breathed, three deep breaths, like her mum told her to do, and re-opened them. She
shifted her gaze and took a shaky sip of water, her hand sweating against the glass.
Nisha Singh and Pip’s mum were standing with Naomi Ward, Nat da Silva and Zoe Reynolds, words unheard passing from one to another, smiles following along behind them. It was nice to see Nat smiling, Pip thought. It changed her, somehow.
And Jamie Reynolds, he was walking towards her, wrinkling his freckled nose. He sat down on the step beside her, his knee grazing hers as he settled.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked, running his finger over the rim of his beer bottle.
Pip didn’t answer the question. ‘How are you?’ she said, instead.
‘I’m good.’ Jamie looked at her, a smile stretching into his pink-tinged cheeks. ‘Good but . . . I can’t stop thinking about him.’ The smile flickered out.
‘I know,’ said Pip.
‘He wasn’t what people expected,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘You know, he tried to fit a whole mattress through the gap in the toilet door, so I would be comfortable. And he asked me every day what I’d like to eat for dinner, despite still being scared of me. Of what I almost did.’
‘You wouldn’t have killed him,’ Pip said. ‘I know.’
‘No,’ Jamie sniffed, looking down at the smashed Fitbit still on his wrist. He’d said he would never take it off; he wanted it there, as a reminder. ‘I knew I couldn’t do it, even when the knife was in my hand. And I was so scared. But that doesn’t make it any better. I told the police everything. But, without Stanley, they don’t have enough to charge me. Doesn’t feel right, somehow.’
‘Doesn’t feel right that we’re both here and he’s not,’ Pip said, her chest tightening, filling her head with the sound of cracking ribs. ‘We both led Charlie to him, in a way. And we’re alive and he’s not.’
‘I’m alive because of you,’ Jamie said, not looking at her. ‘You and Ravi and Connor. If Charlie had worked out it was Stanley before that night, he might have killed me too. I mean, he set a building on fire with you inside.’
‘Yeah,’ Pip said, the word she used when no other would fit.
‘They’re going to find him eventually,’ he said. ‘Charlie Green, and Flora. They can’t run forever. The police will catch them.’
That’s what Hawkins had said to her that night: We will get him. But one day had turned into two had turned into three weeks.
‘Yeah,’ she said again.
‘Has my mum stopped hugging you yet?’ Jamie asked, trying to bring her out of her thoughts.
‘Not yet,’ she said.
‘She hasn’t stopped hugging me either,’ he laughed.
Pip’s eyes followed Joanna as she handed a plate to Arthur at the barbecue.
‘Your dad loves you, you know,’ Pip said. ‘I know he doesn’t always show it in the right way, but I saw him, the moment he thought he’d lost you forever. And he loves you, Jamie. A lot.’
Jamie’s eyes filled, sparkling in the dappled sunlight. ‘I know,’ he said, over a new lump in his throat. He coughed it down.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Pip said, turning to face him. ‘All Stanley wanted was a quiet life, to learn to be better, to try do some good with it. And he doesn’t get to do that any more. But we’re still here, we’re alive.’ She paused, meeting Jamie’s eyes. ‘Can you promise me something? Can you promise me you’ll live a good life? A full life, a happy one. Live well, and do it for him, because he can’t any more.’
Jamie held her eyes, a quiver in his lower lip. ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘And you too?’
‘I’ll try,’ she nodded, wiping her eyes with her sleeve just as Jamie did the same. They laughed.
Jamie took a quick sip of his beer. ‘Starting today,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to apply to the ambulance service, to work as a trainee paramedic.’
Pip smiled at him. ‘That’s a good start.’
They watched the others for a moment, Arthur dropping a load of hot- dog buns and Josh rushing to pick them up, shouting ‘Five-second rule!’ Nat’s laugh, high and unguarded.
‘And,’ Jamie continued, ‘I suppose you’ve already told the whole world I’m in love with Nat da Silva. So, I guess I should tell her myself sometime. And if she doesn’t feel the same, I move on. Onwards and upwards. And no more strangers on the internet.’
He raised his beer bottle out towards her. ‘Live well,’ he said.
Pip lifted her glass of water and clinked it against Jamie’s bottle. ‘For him,’ she said.
Jamie hugged her, a quick, teetering hug, different from Connor’s clumsy hugs. Then he stood up and walked across the garden to Nat’s side. His eyes were different when he looked at her, fuller somehow. Brighter. A dimpled smile stretched across his face as she turned to him, the laugh still in her voice. And Pip swore, maybe just for a second, she could see the same look in Nat’s eyes.
She watched the two of them joking around with Jamie’s sister, and she didn’t even notice Ravi walking over. Not until he sat down, hooking one of his feet under her leg.
‘You OK, Sarge?’ he said. ‘Yeah.’
‘You want to come over and join everyone?’ ‘I’m fine here,’ she said.
‘But everyone is –’
‘I said I’m fine,’ Pip said, but it wasn’t her saying it, not really. She sighed, looked across at him. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to snap. It’s . . .’
‘I know,’ Ravi said, closing his hand over hers, sliding his fingers in between hers in that perfect way they slotted together. They still fit. ‘It will get better, I promise.’ He pulled her in closer. ‘And I’m here, whenever you need me.’
She didn’t deserve him. Not even one little bit. ‘I love you,’ she said, looking into his dark brown eyes, filling herself with them, pushing everything else out.
‘I love you too.’
Pip shuffled, leaning over to rest her head on Ravi’s shoulder as they watched the others. Everyone had now encircled Josh as he tried his best to teach them all how to floss, straight jerking arms and locking hips everywhere.
‘Oh god, Jamie, you’re so embarrassing,’ Connor giggled, as his brother somehow managed to hit himself in the groin, bending double. Nat and Cara clutched each other, falling to the grass with laughter.
‘Look at me, I can do it!’ Pip’s dad was saying, because of course he was. Even Arthur Reynolds was trying, still at the grill, thinking nobody could see him.
Pip laughed, watching how ridiculous they all looked, the sound a small croak in her throat. And it was OK, to be out here on the sidelines, with Ravi. Separate. A gap between everyone and here. A barricade around her.
She would join them, when she was ready. But for now, she just wanted to sit, far back enough that she could see them all in one go.
It was evening. Her family had eaten too much at the Reynoldses’ house and were dozing downstairs. Pip’s room was dark, her face underlit by the ghostly white light of her laptop. She sat at her desk, staring at the screen. Studying for her exams, that’s what she’d told her parents. Because she lies now.
She finished typing in the search bar and pressed enter.
Most recent sightings of Charlie and Flora Green.
They’d been spotted nine days ago, security footage of them withdrawing money from an ATM in Portsmouth. The police had verified that one, she’d seen it on the news. But here – Pip clicked – someone had commented on an article posted to Facebook, claiming they’d seen the couple yesterday at a petrol station in Dover, driving a new car: a red Nissan Juke.
Pip ripped the top sheet from her pad of paper, screwed it up and threw it behind her. She hunched over, checking back to the screen as she scribbled the details down on a fresh page. Returned to her search.
‘We’re the same, you and me. You know it deep down,’ Charlie’s voice intruded, speaking inside her head. And the scariest thing was, Pip didn’t know if he was wrong. She couldn’t say how they were different. She just knew they were. It was a feeling beyond words. Or maybe, just maybe, that feeling was only hope.
She stayed there, clicking through for hours, jumping from article to article, comment to comment. And it was with her too, of course. It always was.
The gun.
It was here now, beating within her chest, knocking against her ribs. Aiming with her eyes. It was in nightmares, and crashing pans, and heavy breaths, and dropped pencils, and thunderstorms, and closing doors, and too loud, and too quiet, and alone and not, and the ruffle of pages, and the tapping of keys and every click and every creak.
The gun was always there. It lived inside her now.
