Page 113 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

No worries. Bye.

NO. Just no.

First Naomi, who I can’t even look in the eye any more. And now Elliot? Why are questions about Andie Bell returning answers about the people close to me?

OK, Andie insulting a teacher to her friends in the lead-up to her death looks like an utter coincidence. Yes. It could be entirely innocent.

But – and it’s quite a big but – Elliot told me he hardly knew Andie or had anything to do with her in the last two years of her life. So why did she call him an arsehole if they had nothing to do with each other? Was Elliot lying, and for what reason?

I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t speculate wildly, as I have before, just because I’m close to Elliot. So even though it physically pains me: could this innocuous clue, in fact, indicate that Elliot Ward was the secret older man? I mean, I first thought the ‘secret older guy’ would be someone in their mid to late twenties. But maybe my instincts were wrong; maybe it refers to someone much older. I baked the cake for Elliot’s last birthday, so I know he’s now forty-seven, which would have made him forty-two in the year of Andie’s disappearance.

Andie told her friends she could ‘ruin’ this man. I thought this meant that the guy – whoever he was – was married. Elliot wasn’t; his wife had died a couple of years before. But he was a teacher at her school, in a position of trust. If there was some inappropriate relationship, Elliot could have faced jail time. That certainly can be covered under ‘ruining’ someone.

Is he the type of person who would do that? No, he isn’t. And is he the kind of man a seventeen-year-old beautiful blonde student would lust after? I don’t think so. I mean, he’s not hideous and he has a certain greying professorial look but . . . just no. I can’t see it.

I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to think this. Who will be next on the persons of interest list? Cara? Ravi? Dad? Me?

I think I should just grit my teeth and ask Elliot so I can bite down on some actual facts. Otherwise I may end up suspecting everybody I know who may have spoken to Andie at some point in their lives. And paranoia does not suit me.

But how do you casually ask a grown man you’ve known since you were six why they lied about a murdered girl?

Persons of Interest

Jason Bell

Naomi Ward

Secret Older Guy

Elliot Ward

Thirteen

Her writing hand must have had its own mind, an independent circuitry from the one contained in her head.

Mr Ward was speaking, ‘But Lenin did not like Stalin’s policy towards Georgia after the Red Army invasion in 1921,’ and Pip’s fingers moved in harmony, scribbling it all down with dates underlined too. But she wasn’t really listening.

There was a war going on inside her, the two sides of her head squabbling and pecking at each other. Should she ask Elliot about Andie’s comments, or was that a risk to the investigation? Was it rude to ask probing questions about murdered students, or was it an entirely forgivable Pippism?

The bell rang for lunch and Elliot called over the scraping chairs and zipping bags, ‘Read chapter three before our next lesson. And if you want to be really keen, you can Trotsky on over to chapter four as well.’ He chuckled at his own joke.

‘You coming, Pip?’ Connor said, standing up and swinging his rucksack on to his back.

‘Um, yeah I’ll come find you lot in a minute,’ she said. ‘I need to ask Mr Ward something first.’

‘You need to ask Mr Ward something, eh?’ Elliot had overheard. ‘That’s ominous. I hope you haven’t started thinking about the coursework already.’

‘No, well, yes I have,’ Pip said, ‘but that’s not what I want to ask you about.’

She waited until they were the only two left in the classroom.

‘What is it?’ Elliot glanced down at his watch. ‘You have ten of my minutes before I start panicking about the panini queue.’