Page 232 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘All right, clingy,’ Cara said, trying to wriggle out. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Pip. The sadness she felt for Cara was black and twisting and hungry. How was any of this fair? Pip didn’t want to let her go, didn’t think she could. But she had to.

Connor caught her up and helped Pip up the stairs to history, even though she told him not to. Mr Ward was already in the classroom, perched on his desk in a pastel green shirt. Pip didn’t look at him as she staggered past her usual seat at the front and went to sit right at the back.

The lesson would not end. The clock mocked her as she sat watching it, looking anywhere but at Elliot. She would not look at him. She couldn’t. Her breath felt gummy, like it was trying to choke her.

‘Interestingly,’ Elliot said, ‘about six years ago, the diaries of one of Stalin’s personal doctors, a man called Alexander Myasnikov, were released. Myasnikov wrote that Stalin suffered from a brain illness that might have impaired his decision-making and influenced his paranoia. So –’

The bell rang and interrupted him.

Pip jumped. But not because of the bell. Because something had clicked when Elliot said ‘diaries’, the word repeating around her head, slowly slotting into place.

The class packed up their notes and books and started to file towards the door. Pip, hobbling and at the back, was the last to reach it.

‘Hold on, Pippa.’ Elliot’s voice dragged her back.

She turned, rigid and unwilling.

‘How did the exam go?’ he said.

‘Yeah, it was fine.’

‘Oh good,’ he smiled. ‘So now you can relax.’

She returned an empty smile and limped out into the corridor. When she was out of Elliot’s sight she dropped the limp and started to run. She didn’t care that she had a final period of politics now. She ran, that one word in Elliot’s voice chasing her as she went.Diaries.She didn’t stop until she slammed into the door of her car, fumbling for the handle.

Forty-Four

‘Pip, what are you doing here?’ Naomi stood in the front doorway. ‘Shouldn’t you still be at school?’

‘I had a free period,’ she said, trying to catch her breath. ‘I just have one question I need to ask you.’

‘Pip, are you OK?’

‘You’ve been going to therapy ever since your mum died, haven’t you? For anxiety and depression,’ Pip said. There was no time to be delicate.

Naomi looked at her strangely, her eyes shining. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Did your therapist tell you to keep a diary?’

Naomi nodded. ‘It’s a way to manage the stress. It helps,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it since I was sixteen.’

‘And did you write about the hit-and-run?’

Naomi stared at her, lines webbing around her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I did. I had to write about it. I was devastated and I couldn’t talk to anyone. No one ever sees them but me.’

Pip exhaled, cupping her hands around her mouth to catch it.

‘You think that’s how the person found out?’ Naomi shook her head. ‘No, it’s not possible. I always lock my diaries and keep them hidden in my room.’

‘I have to go,’ Pip said. ‘Sorry.’

She turned and charged back to her car, ignoring when Naomi shouted, ‘Pip! Pippa!’

Her mum’s car was parked at home when Pip pulled into the drive. But the house was quiet and Leanne didn’t call out when the front door opened. Walking down the hallway, Pip heard another sound over her throbbing pulse: the sound of her mother crying.

At the entrance to the living room Pip stopped and watched the back of her mum’s head over the rim of the sofa. She was holding her phone up in both hands and small recorded voices were playing from it.