Page 207 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘Oh,’ Pip said, opening up her locker and stacking her books inside. ‘Um, does she need a spare phone? My mum just upgraded and still has the old one.’

‘Nah, it’s fine. She found an old one of hers from years ago. Her SIM didn’t fit but we found an old pay-as-you-go one with some credit left. That’ll do her for now.’

‘Is she OK?’ Pip said.

‘I don’t know,’ Cara replied. ‘Don’t think she’s been OK for a long while. Not since Mum died, really. And I’d always thought there was something more she was struggling with.’

Pip closed the locker and followed her. She hoped Cara hadn’t noticed the make-up pasted dark circles under her eyes, or the bloodshot spider legs of veins running through them. Sleep wasn’t really an option any more. Pip had sent off her Cambridge admission essays and started studying for her ELAT entrance exam. But her deadline for keeping Naomi and Cara out of everything was ticking down every second. And when she did sleep there was a dark figure in her dreams just out of sight, watching her.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Pip said. ‘I promise.’

Cara gave her hand a squeeze as they turned their separate ways down the corridor.

A few doors down from her English classroom, Pip stopped sharply, her shoes squeaking against the floor. Someone was trudging down the hall towards her, someone with pixie-cut white hair and black-winged eyes.

‘Nat?’ Pip said with a small wave.

Nat da Silva slowed and came to stop just in front of her. She didn’t smile and she didn’t wave. She barely looked at her.

‘What are you doing in school?’ Pip said, noticing Nat’s electronic ankle tag was a sock-covered bulge above her trainers.

‘I forgot all details of my life were suddenly your business, Penny.’

‘Pippa.’

‘Don’t care,’ she spat, her top lip arching in a sneer. ‘If you must know, for your perverted project, I’ve officially hit rock bottom. My parents are cutting me off and no one will hire me. I just begged that slug of a head teacher for my brother’s old caretaker job. They can’t hire violent criminals, apparently. There’s an after-Andie effect for you to analyse. She really played the long game with me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Pip said.

‘No.’ Nat picked up her feet and strode away, the gust of her sudden departure ruffling Pip’s hair. ‘You’re not.’

After lunch Pip returned to her locker to grab her Russia textbook for double history. She opened the door and the paper was just sitting there on top of her book pile. A folded piece of printer paper that had been pushed through the top slit.

A flash of cold dread dropped through her. She checked over both shoulders that no one was watching her and reached in for the note.

This is your final warning, Pippa. Walk away.

She read the large black printed letters only once, folded the page back up and slipped it inside the cover of her history textbook. She pulled out the book – a two-handed job – and walked away.

It was clear now. Someone wanted her to know that they could get to her at home and at school. They wanted to scare her. And she was; terror chased away her sleep, made her watch out of the dark window these last two nights. But daytime Pip was more rational than the one at night. If this person was really prepared to hurt her or her family, wouldn’t they have done it by now? She couldn’t walk away from this, from Sal and Ravi, from Cara and Naomi. She was in too deep and the only way was down.

There was a killer hiding in Little Kilton. They’d seen her last production log entry and now they were reacting. Which meant that Pip was on the right track somewhere. A warning was all it was, she had to believe that, had to tell herself that when she lay sleepless at night. And although Unknown might be closing in on her, she was also closing in on them.

Pip pushed the classroom door with the spine of her textbook and it swung open much harder than she’d meant.

‘Ouch,’ Elliot said as the door crashed into his elbow.

The door bounded back into Pip and she tripped, dropping her textbook. It landed with a loud thwack.

‘Sorry, El– Mr Ward,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were right there.’

‘That’s OK,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll interpret it as your eagerness for learning rather than an assassination attempt.’

‘Well, we are learning about 1930s Russia.’

‘Ah, I see,’ he said, bending to pick up her book, ‘so it was a practical demonstration?’

The note slipped out from the cover and glided to the floor. It landed on its crease and came to rest, partly open. Pip lunged for the paper, scrunching it up in her hands.