Page 163 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

My mate’s cousin is in prison, Grendon Prison. Apparently his new cell mate is from that town and says he knows exactly who Child Brunswick is. Said they used to be friends and CB told him his secret a couple years ago

AnonymousSat 29 Dec 11:39:43

Really? : )

Pip’s breath shortened, barely reaching her throat any more. She tensed and Ravi felt it, his dark eyes falling on her. Connor started to speak from the other side of the room and Pip shushed him so she could think.

Grendon Prison.

Pip knew someone at Grendon Prison. That was where Howie Bowers had been sent after pleading guilty to his drug-related charges. He started his sentence in early December. This commenthadto be about him.

Which meant Howie Bowers knew exactly who Child Brunswick was. And that meant . . . wait . . . her mind stalled, peeling back the months, shedding them, searching for a hidden memory.

She closed her eyes. Focused.

And she found it.

‘Shit.’ She let the computer slide from her lap as she stood up, darting towards the desk and her phone lying on its surface.

‘What?’ Connor asked.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she muttered, unlocking her phone and thumbing into her photo reel. She swiped down to scroll it back, back through April, and March, and Josh’s birthday, and all the haircut photos Cara had needed her advice on, and back through January and the Reynoldses’ New Year’s Eve party, and Christmas and Winter Wonderland with her friends, and her first dinner out with Ravi, and November, and screenshots of the first news articles about her, and pictures from her three-day stay in the hospital, and the photos she’d taken of Andie Bell’s planner when she and Ravi broke into the Bell house and, oh hey, she’d never noticed Jamie’s name scribbled there in Andie’s handwriting beside a spattering of doodled stars. Back further and then she stopped.

On the 4thof October. The collection of photos she’d used as leverage to get Howie Bowers to talk to her last year. The photos he’d made her delete and she later restored, just in case. A younger Robin Caine seen handing over money to Howie in exchange for a paper bag. But that wasn’t it. It was the photos she’d taken just minutes before those.

Howie Bowers standing against the fence. Someone walking out of the shadows to meet him. Someone who handed over an envelope of money, but he wasn’t buying anything. In a beige coat and shorter brown hair than he had now. Cheeks flushed.

Stanley Forbes.

And though the figures in her photos were static, unmoving, their mouths were open and Pip could almost recall the conversation she’d overheard seven months ago.

‘This is the last time, do you hear me?’ Stanley had spat. ‘You can’t keep asking for more; I don’t have it.’

And Howie’s response had been almost too quiet to hear, but she could have sworn it was something like: ‘But if you don’t pay me, I will tell.’

Stanley had glared at him, replying: ‘I don’t think you would dare.’

Pip captured that very moment here, Stanley’s eyes filled with desperation and anger, closing in on Howie.

And now she knew why.

Ravi and Connor were both watching her silently as she glanced up.

‘And?’ Ravi asked.

‘I know who Child Brunswick is,’ she said. ‘He’s Stanley Forbes.’

Thirty-Eight

They sat there, silent. And Pip could hear something hiding beneath the silence, an imperceptible hum in her ears.

Nothing they’d found could disprove it.

Stanley mentioned being twenty-five in an article about house prices four years ago for the Kilton Mail, placing him right within the correct age range. He didn’t seem to have any personal social media profiles, which ticked another box. And something else Pip recalled, from last Sunday morning:

‘He doesn’t always recognize his own name. I said “Stanley” last week and he didn’t react. His colleague says he does it all the time, has selective hearing. But maybe it’s because he hasn’t had this name long, not as long as he lived with his original name.’

And they’d agreed; there were too many signs, too many coincidences for it not to be true. Stanley Forbes was Child Brunswick. He’d told his friend, Howie Bowers, who then turned on him, used the secret to extort money from him. Howie told his new cell mate, who told his cousin, who told his friend, who then put the rumour on the internet. And that’s how Layla Mead, whoever she was, whatever she wanted, found out that Child Brunswick was living in Little Kilton.