Page 167 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘I’m not going anywhere without you!’ Connor shouted.

But something in the darkness pulled Pip’s attention away from the phone. Stanley was re-emerging from the shadows, walking back down the corridor towards the outside.

‘He’s leaving,’ Pip hissed. ‘Stanley’s leaving.’

‘Fuck,’ Ravi said. ‘Text him as Layla, tell him to wait.’

But Stanley had already crossed the rotted threshold, his eyes turning back to his car.

‘It’s too late,’ Pip said, blood rushing through her ears as she made the decision. ‘I’ll distract him. You get Jamie out now, get him somewhere safe.’

‘No, Pip –’

But the phone was in her hand by her side now, her thumb on the red button as she ran out from behind the trees and across the road, scattering gravel around her feet. On to grass and Stanley finally looked up, catching her movement in the moonlight.

He stopped.

Pip slowed, walking up to him just outside the gaping front door.

Stanley’s eyes were narrowed, trying to cut through the darkness.

‘Hello?’ he said, blindly.

And when she was near enough for him to see, his face crumpled, lines crawling eye to eye.

‘No,’ he said, his voice breathy and raw. ‘No no no. Pip, it’s you?’ He stepped back. ‘You’re Layla?’

Forty

Pip shook her head.

‘I’m not Layla,’ she said, the words dented by the fast beating of her heart. ‘I sent that text to you tonight, but I’m not her. I don’t know who she is.’

Stanley’s face reshaped in the shadows, but all Pip could really see were the whites of his eyes and the white of his shirt.

‘D-do, do you . . .’ he stuttered, voice almost failing him. ‘Do you know . . . ?’

‘Who you are?’ Pip said gently. ‘Yeah, I know.’

His breath shuddered, his head dropping to his chest. ‘Oh,’ he said, eyes unable to meet hers.

‘Can we go inside and talk?’ Pip nodded to the entrance. How long would Ravi and Connor need to break open the chain and the door and get Jamie out? At least ten minutes, she thought.

‘OK,’ Stanley said in barely more than a whisper.

Pip went first, watching over her shoulder as Stanley followed her down the dark corridor, his eyes down and defeated. In the living room at the end, Pip crossed through the wrappers and beer bottles over to the wooden sideboard. The top drawer was open and the large torch Robin and his friends used was propped up against the edge. Pip reached for it, glancing up at the dark room filled with nightmare silhouettes, Stanley lost among them. She flicked the torch on, and everything grew edges and colour.

Stanley screwed his eyes against the light.

‘What do you want?’ he said, fiddling his hands nervously. ‘I can pay you, once a month. I don’t earn a lot, the town paper is mostly voluntary, but I have another job at the petrol station. I can make it work.’

‘Pay me?’ Pip said.

‘T-to not tell anyone,’ he said. ‘To keep my secret.’

‘Stanley, I’m not here to blackmail you. I won’t tell anyone who you are, I promise.’

Confusion crossed his eyes. ‘But then . . . what do you want?’