Page 144 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘I’m trying to stay hopeful, for his family,’ Pip said. ‘But . . . I don’t know.’

Nat relaxed her arm, chewing on her pale bottom lip.

‘Have you and Jamie still been talking in recent weeks?’

‘Yeah, a bit,’ Nat said.

‘Did he ever mention someone called Layla Mead to you?’

Nat looked up, thinking, teeth moving further down her lip, meeting skin. ‘No. Never heard that name before.’

‘OK. And I know you said before that he didn’t, but did Jamie come to your house after the memorial as planned? Around 10:40 p.m.?’

‘No.’ Nat tilted her head, short white hair skimming down into her eyes. ‘I told you, last time I saw him was at the memorial.’

‘It’s just . . .’ Pip began. ‘Well, an eyewitness saw Jamie go into your house at that time. He said Cross Lane and described your house exactly.’

Nat blinked, and that softness in her eyes was gone.

‘Well, I don’t care what your fucking eyewitness said. He’s wrong,’ she said. ‘Jamie never came here.’

‘OK, I’m sorry.’ Pip held up her hands. ‘I was just asking.’

‘Well you’ve already asked that, and I’ve already answered. Is there anything else?’ Nat’s hand glided to the door again, tightening around the edge.

‘There’s one last thing,’ Pip said, nervously eyeing Nat’s fingers on the door. Last time she was here like this, Nat had slammed it in her face.Tread carefully, Pip. ‘Well, it’s your boyfriend, Luke Eaton.’

‘Yeah, I know his name,’ Nat spat. ‘What about him?’

‘It’s um . . .’ She didn’t know which way to approach it, so she went with fast. ‘Um, so I guess Luke is involved with drugs – has a kid collect them from a gang in London and I presume he then distributes to various dealers in the county.’

Nat’s face tightened.

‘And the place where he picks them up from . . . it’s the abandoned farmhouse where Andie’s body was found. But it’s also the last place Jamie was, before something happened to him. So there’s a possible connection there to Luke.’

Nat shifted, her knuckles whitening from her grip on the door.

‘But there’s more,’ Pip carried on, giving Nat no room to speak. ‘The kid Luke uses to transport the drugs said that Luke was angry this week because he’d lost nine hundred pounds. And that’s the exact amount of money Jamie asked to borrow from his dad a couple of weeks ago –’

‘What point are you trying to make?’ Nat said, the downward tilt of her head shadowing her eyes.

‘Just that maybe Luke also loans people money, and he loaned Jamie money for something but Jamie couldn’t pay it back so he asked his dad, and then he was desperate enough to try stealing it from work, saying it was life or death . . .’ She paused, daring to glance up at Nat. ‘And I wondered, when I spoke to you both before, you seemed to react when Luke said he was home all night, so I just wondered –’

‘Oh, you just wondered, did you?’ There was a quiver in Nat’s top lip and Pip could feel the rage coming off her, like heat. ‘What is wrong with you? These are people’s lives. You can’t just fuck around with them for your own entertainment.’

‘I’m not, it’s for –’

‘I have nothing to do with Jamie. And neither does Luke,’ Nat shouted, stepping back. ‘Just leave me the fuck alone, Pip.’ Her voice shook. ‘Please. Leave me alone.’

And her face disappeared behind the door as it slammed shut, the sound echoing down into that pit in Pip’s stomach, staying with her as she walked away.

It was when she turned on to Gravelly Way, heading back to school, that she first had the feeling. A creeping up her neck like static on her skin. And she knew what it was, had felt this before. Eyes. Someone watching her.

She stopped in the street, looked over her shoulder. There was no one behind her on Chalk Road, except a man she didn’t know pushing a buggy, and his eyes were down.

She checked in front of her, running her eyes along the windows of the houses that lined the street, bearing down on her. There wasn’t a face in any of them, pushed up against breath-fogged glass. She scanned the cars parked along the road. Nothing. No one.

Pip could’ve sworn she felt it. Or maybe she was just losing her mind.