Page 100 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘What happened?’ Pip said, wrapping her arms round them both, all shivering even though the night was warm. ‘Why did you scream?’

‘Because we got lost and the torch smashed and we’re drunk,’ Cara said.

‘Why didn’t you stay in the marquee?’ Connor said.

‘Because you all left us,’ Lauren cried.

‘OK, OK,’ Pip said. ‘We’ve all overreacted a bit. Everything’s fine; we just need to head back to the marquee. They’ve run off now, whoever it was, and there are six of us, OK? We’re all fine.’ She wiped the tears from Lauren’s chin.

It took them almost fifteen minutes, even with the torches, to find their way back to the marquee; the woods were a different planet at night. They even had to use the map app on Zach’s phone to see how far they were from the road. Their steps quickened when they caught sight of distant snatches of white canvas between the trunks and the soft yellow glow of the battery lanterns.

No one spoke much as they did a speedy clean-up of the empty drink cans and food packets into a bin bag, clearing space for their sleeping bags. They dropped all the sides of the marquee, safe within its four white canvas walls, their only view of the trees distorted through the mock plastic sheet windows.

The boys were already starting to joke about their midnight sprint through the trees. Lauren wasn’t ready for jokes yet.

Pip moved Lauren’s sleeping bag between hers and Cara’s and helped her into it when she could no longer bear to watch her drunkenly fumble with the zip.

‘I’m guessing no Ouija board then?’ Ant said.

‘Think we’ve had enough scares,’ said Pip.

She sat next to Cara for a while, forcing water down her friend’s throat while she distracted her by talking idly about the fall of Rome. Lauren was already asleep, Zach too on the other side of the marquee.

When Cara’s eyelids began to wilt lower with each blink, Pip crept back to her own sleeping bag. She saw that Ant and Connor were still awake and whispering, but she was ready for sleep, or at least to lie down and hope for sleep. As she slid her legs inside, something crinkled against her right foot. She pulled her knees up to her chest and reached inside, her fingers closing round a piece of paper.

Must have been a food packet that fell inside. She pulled it out. It wasn’t. It was a clean white piece of printer paper folded in half.

She unfolded the paper, eyes skipping across it.

In a large formal font printed across the page were the words:Stop digging, Pippa.

She dropped it, eyes following as it fell open. Her breath time-travelled back to running in the dark, snapshots of trees in the flashing torchlight. Disbelief staled to fear. Five seconds there and the feeling crisped at the edges, burning into anger.

‘What the hell?’ she said, picking up the note and storming over to the boys.

‘Shh,’ one of them said, ‘the girls are asleep.’

‘Do you think this is funny?’ Pip said, looking down at them as she brandished the folded note. ‘You are unbelievable.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ant squinted at her.

‘This note you left me.’

‘I didn’t leave you a note,’ he said, reaching up for it.

Pip pulled away. ‘You expect me to believe that?’ she said. ‘Was this whole stranger-in-the-woods thing a set-up too? Part of your joke? Who was it, your friend George?’

‘No, Pip,’ Ant said, staring up at her. ‘Honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What does the note say?’

‘Save me the innocent act,’ she said. ‘Connor, care to add anything?’

‘Pip, you think I would have chased that pervert so hard if it was just a bloody prank? We didn’t plan anything, I promise.’

‘You’re saying neither of you left me this note?’

They both nodded.

‘You’re full of shit,’ she said, turning back to the girls’ side of the marquee.