Page 118 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

The Reynoldses’ house stared her down, the top windows yellow and unblinking. But only for a second before the door swung inwards and Joanna Reynolds appeared in the crack.

‘You’re here.’ Joanna ushered Pip inside as Connor appeared down the hall. ‘Thanks for coming straight away.’

‘That’s OK.’ Pip shrugged off her bag and shoes. She and Ravi had just finished recording the new update on Max Hastings’ trial – discussing two witnesses for the defence, Max’s male friends from university – when Joanna had called.

‘It sounded urgent?’ Pip said, looking between the two of them. She could hear the sounds of the television behind the closed door to the living room. Presumably Arthur Reynolds was inside, still refusing to have anything to do with this. But Jamie had been gone for four days now, when would his dad relent? Pip understood: it’s hard to climb back out of the hole once you’ve dug in your heels. But surely he was starting to worry?

‘Yes, it is, I think.’ Joanna gestured for Pip to follow her down the hallway, turning to climb the stairs behind Connor.

‘Is it his computer?’ Pip asked. ‘Did you manage to get on?’

‘No, not that,’ she said. ‘We’ve been trying. Tried more than seven hundred options now. Nothing.’

‘OK, well I emailed two computer experts yesterday, so we’ll see what they say.’ Pip moved up the stairs, trying not to catch Joanna’s heels. ‘So, what’s wrong?’

‘I’ve listened to the first episode you released last night, several times already,’ Joanna spoke quickly, growing breathless halfway up the steps. ‘It’s the interview you did with the eyewitnesses from the bookshop, the ones who saw him on Wyvil at 11:40. There was something nagging at me about that interview, and I finally realized what it was.’

Joanna led her into Jamie’s chaotic bedroom, where Connor had switched on the light, waiting for them.

‘Is it Harry Scythe?’ Pip asked. ‘Do you know him?’

Joanna shook her head. ‘It’s that part where they talked about what Jamie was wearing. Two witnesses thought they saw him in the burgundy shirt, the one we know he left the house in. But those were the first two to see him, as Jamie would have been walking towards them. The other two witnesses got to the door after, when Jamie would have already passed. So, they saw him from behind. And they both thought that maybe he wasn’t wearing a burgundy shirt, maybe he was wearing something darker, with a hood, and pockets because they couldn’t see Jamie’s hands.’

‘Yes, there is that discrepancy,’ Pip said. ‘But that can happen with small details in eyewitness accounts.’

Joanna’s eyes were alight now, burning a path across Pip’s face. ‘Yes, and our instinct was to believe the two who saw him in the shirt, because that’s what we presumed Jamie was wearing. But what if it’s the other two who are right, the ones who saw him in a black hoodie? Jamie has a black hoodie,’ she said, ‘one with a zip. He wears it all the time. If it was undone, maybe from the front you wouldn’t see much of it and would focus on the shirt beneath.’

‘But he wasn’t wearing a black hoodie when he left the house on Friday,’ Pip said, looking to Connor. ‘And he wasn’t carrying it with him, didn’t have a rucksack or anything.’

‘No, he definitely didn’t have it on him,’ Connor stepped in. ‘That’s what I said at first. But . . .’ He gestured back to his mum.

‘But –’ Joanna picked it up – ‘I’ve looked everywhere. Everywhere. In his wardrobe, his drawers, all these piles of clothes, his laundry basket, the ironing pile, the cupboards in our room, Connor’s and Zoe’s. Jamie’s black hoodie isn’t here. It’s not in the house.’

Pip’s breath stalled in her chest. ‘It’s not here?’

‘We’ve, like, triple-checked everywhere it could be,’ said Connor. ‘Spent the last few hours searching. It’s gone.’

‘So, if they’re right,’ Joanna said, ‘if those two eyewitnesses are right, and they saw Jamie wearing a black hoodie, then . . .’

‘Then Jamie came back home,’ Pip said, and she felt a cold shiver, wandering the wrong way past her stomach, filling the hollows of her legs. ‘Between the calamity party and the sighting on Wyvil Road, Jamie came back home. Back here,’ she said, looking around the room with new eyes: the hectic piles of clothes strewn about, maybe when Jamie had been frantically searching for the hoodie. The smashed mug by his bed, maybe that happened by accident, in his haste. The missing knife downstairs. Maybe, if Jamiewasthe one who took it, maybe that’s the real reason he returned home.

‘Yes, exactly,’ Joanna said. ‘That’s what I was thinking. Jamie came home.’ She said it with such hope in her voice, such undisguised wanting, her little boy back home, like the part that came after couldn’t ever take that away from her; that he’d then left again and disappeared.

‘So if he did come back and take his hoodie,’ Pip said, avoiding any mention of the missing knife, ‘it must have been between, say, 10:45 p.m., after walking back from Highmoor, and 11:25ish, because it would’ve taken at least fifteen minutes to get halfway down Wyvil.’

Joanna nodded, hanging on her every word.

‘But . . .’ Pip stopped herself, and restarted, directing the question at Connor. It was easier that way. ‘But didn’t your dad get home from the pub around 11:15?’

Joanna answered anyway. ‘Yes, he did. About then. Obviously, Arthur didn’t see Jamie at all, so Jamie must have come and gone before Arthur got back.’

‘Have you asked him about that?’ Pip said tentatively.

‘Asked him what?’

‘About his movements that night?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Joanna said bluntly. ‘He got back from the pub around 11:15, as you said. No sign of Jamie.’