Page 132 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘What did you see?’ Ravi asked as Pip rounded the corner, chasing after the car.

‘Nothing.’ She pressed down on the pedal, hearing gravel kick up, dinging off the sides of her car. ‘But he must have spotted me in the doorway. And now he’s running.’

‘Why would he run?’ Connor asked, his hands gripped around Ravi’s headrest.

‘Don’t know.’ Pip sped up as the road dropped down a hill. ‘But running is something that guilty people do. Are those his tail lights?’ She squinted into the distance.

‘Yeah,’ Ravi said. ‘God he’s going fast, you need to speed up.’

‘I’m already doing forty-five,’ Pip said, biting her lip and pushing her foot down a little harder.

‘Left, he turned left there.’ Ravi pointed.

Pip swung around the corner, into another narrow country lane.

‘Go, go, go,’ said Connor.

And Pip was gaining on him, the white body of his car now visible against the dark hedgerows at the side of the road.

‘Need to get close enough to read his number plate,’ Pip said.

‘He’s speeding up again,’ Cara said, face wedged between Pip and Ravi’s seats.

Pip accelerated, the speedometer needling over fifty and up and up, closing the gap between the cars.

‘Right!’ Ravi said. ‘He went right.’

The turn was sharp. Pip took her foot off the pedal and pulled at the steering wheel. They flew around the corner, but something was wrong.

Pip felt the steering wheel escape from her, slipping through her hands.

They were skidding.

She tried to turn into it, to correct it.

But the car was going too fast and it went. Someone was yelling but she couldn’t tell who over the screaming of the wheels. They slid, left then right, before spinning in a full circle.

They were all yelling as the car skidded to a stop, coming to rest facing the wrong way, the bonnet half embedded in the brambles that bordered the road.

‘Fuck,’ Pip said, hitting her fist against the steering wheel, the car horn blaring for a split second. ‘Is everyone OK?’

‘Yeah,’ Connor said, his breath heavy and his face flushed.

Ravi looked over his shoulder, exchanging a look with a shaken Cara before passing it on to Pip. And she knew what was in their eyes, the secret the three of them knew that Connor never could: that Cara’s sister and Max Hastings had been involved in a car accident when they were this age, Max convincing his friends to leave a severely injured man on the road. And that had really been the start of it all, how Ravi’s brother was eventually murdered.

And they’d just come recklessly close to something like that.

‘That was stupid,’ Pip said, that thing in her gut stretching out to take more of her with it. It was guilt, wasn’t it? Or shame. She wasn’t supposed to be like this this time, losing herself again. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s my fault.’ Ravi tucked his fingers around hers. ‘I told you to go faster. I’m sorry.’

‘Did anyone see the number plate?’ Connor asked. ‘All I saw was the first letter and it was either an N or an H.’

‘Didn’t see,’ Cara said. ‘But it was a sports car. A white sports car.’

‘A BMW,’ Ravi added, and Pip tensed, right down to the fingers gripping his hand. He turned to her. ‘What?’

‘I . . . I know someone with that car,’ she said quietly.