Page 79 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Elliot:

Thanks for your permission.

Ravi hadn’t mentioned that Sal had an offer from Oxford University. There might be more he hasn’t told me about Sal, but I’m not sure Ravi will ever speak to me again. Not after what happened a couple of days ago. I didn’t mean to hurt him; I was trying to help. Maybe I should go around and apologize? He’ll probably just slam the door on me. [But anyway, I can’t let that distract me, not again.]

If Sal was so intelligent and Oxford-bound, then why was the evidence that linked him to Andie’s murder so obvious? So what if he didn’t have an alibi for the time of Andie’s disappearance? He was clever enough to have got away with it, that much is clear now.

PS. we were playing Monopoly with Naomi and . . . maybe I overreacted before. She’s still on the persons of interest list, but a murderer? There’s just no way. She refuses to put houses down on the board even when she has the two dark blues because she thinks it’s too mean. I hotel-up as soon as I can and laugh when others roll into my death trap. Even I have more of a killer’s instinct than Naomi.

Seven

The next day, Pip was doing one final read-through of her information request to the Thames Valley Police. Her room was sweltering and stagnant, the sun trapped and sulking in there with her, even though she’d pushed open the window to let it out.

She heard distant knocking downstairs as she verbally approved her own email, ‘Yep, good,’ and pressed the send button; the small click that began her twenty-working-day wait. Pip hated waiting. And it was a Saturday, so she had to wait for the wait to begin.

‘Pips,’ came Victor’s shout from downstairs. ‘Front door for you.’

With each step down the stairs, the air became a little fresher; from her bedroom’s first-ring-of-hell heat into quite bearable warmth. She took the turn after the stairs as a sock-skid across the oak but stopped in her tracks when she saw Ravi Singh outside the front door. He was being talked at enthusiastically by her dad. All the heat returned to her face.

‘Um, hi,’ Pip said, walking towards them. But the fast tap-tap of claws on wood grew behind her as Barney barged past and got there first, launching his muzzle into Ravi’s groin.

‘No, Barney, down,’ Pip shouted, rushing forward. ‘Sorry, he’s a bit friendly.’

‘That’s no way to talk about your father,’ said Victor.

Pip raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Got it, got it, got it,’ he said, walking away and into the kitchen.

Ravi bent down to stroke Barney, and Pip’s ankles were fanned with the dog-tail breeze.

‘How do you know where I live?’ Pip asked.

‘I asked in the estate agents your mum works in,’ he straightened up. ‘Seriously, your house is a palace.’

‘Well, the strange man who opened the door to you is a hot-shot corporate lawyer.’

‘Not a king?’

‘Only some days,’ she said.

Pip noticed Ravi looking down and, though his lips twitched trying to contain it, he broke into a big smile. That’s when she remembered what she was wearing: baggy denim dungarees over a white T-shirt with the wordsTALK NERDY TO MEemblazoned across her chest.

‘So, um, what brings you here?’ she said. Her stomach lurched, and only then did she realize she was nervous.