Page 176 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

It follows Pip as they leave. Sits beside her in the dark car. It tucks itself up into bed with her. Pip shakes and she blocks her ears and she tellsthe guntogoaway.

Butitwon’tgo.

SUNDAY

16 DAYS LATER

Forty-Two

They were dressed in black, all of them, because that’s how it was supposed to be.

Ravi’s fingers were entwined with hers and if Pip held them any tighter, they would break, she was sure of it. Crack in half, like ribs.

Her parents were standing on her other side, hands clasped in front of them, eyes down, her dad breathing in time with the wind in the trees. She noticed everything like that now. On the other side were Cara and Naomi Ward, and Connor and Jamie Reynolds. Connor and Jamie were both wearing black suits that didn’t quite fit, too small here, too long there, as though they’d both borrowed them from their father.

Jamie was crying, his whole body shuddering with them inside that ill-fitting suit. Face reddening as he tried to swallow the tears down, glancing across at Pip, over the coffin.

A solid pine coffin with unadorned sides measuring eighty-four inches by twenty-eight by twenty-three, with white satin lining inside. Pip had been the one to choose it. He had no family, and his friends . . . they all disappeared after the story came out. All of them. No one stepped up to claim him, so Pip had, arranging the whole funeral. She’d chosen a burial, against the funeral director’sprofessional opinion. Stanley died with his ankles in her hands, scared and bleeding out while a fire raged around them. She didn’t think he’d want to be cremated, burned, like his father had done to those seven kids.

A burial, that’s what he would have wanted, Pip insisted. So they were outside, on the left hand-side of the churchyard, beyond Hillary F. Weiseman. The petals of the white roses shivering in the wind from atop his coffin. It was positioned over an open grave, inside a metal frame with straps and green carpeting like fake grass, so it didn’t look like exactly what it was: a hole in the ground.

Members of the police force were supposed to have been here, but Detective Hawkins had emailed her last night, saying he’d been advised by his supervisors that attending the funeral would be ‘too political’. So here they were, just the eight of them, and most only here for Pip. Not for him, the one lying dead in the solid pine coffin. Except Jamie, she thought, catching his rubbed-red eyes.

The priest’s collar was too tight, the flesh of his neck bunching over it as he read out the sermon. Pip looked beyond him, at the small grey headstone she’d picked out. A man with four different names, but Stanley Forbes was the one he chose, the life he’d wanted, the one who was trying. So that was the name engraved over him, forever.

Stanley Forbes

June 7th1988 – May 4th2018

You Were Better

‘And before we say our final prayer, Pip, you wanted to say a few words?’

The sound of her name caught her off-guard and she winced, her heart spiking, and suddenly her hands were wet but it didn’t feel like sweat, it was blood, it was blood, it was blood . . .

‘Pip?’ Ravi whispered to her, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. And no, there was no blood, she’d only imagined it.

‘Yes,’ she said, coughing to clear her voice. ‘Yes. Um, I wanted to say thank you, everyone for coming. And to you, Father Renton, for the service.’ If Ravi wasn’t holding her hand still, it would be shaking, fluttering on the wind. ‘I didn’t know Stanley all that well. But I think, in the last hour of his life, I got to know who he truly was. He –’

Pip stopped. There was a sound, carrying on the breeze. A shout. It came again, louder this time. Closer.

‘Murderer!’

Her eyes shot up and her chest tightened. There was a group of about fifteen people, marching past the church towards them. Painted signs held up in their hands.

‘You’re mourning a killer!’ a man yelled.

‘I-I-I . . .’ Pip stuttered, and she felt the scream again, growing in her stomach, burning her inside out.

‘Keep going, pickle.’ Her dad was behind her, his warm hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re doing so well. I’ll go talk to them.’

The group was nearing, and Pip could recognize a few faces among them now: Leslie from the shop, and Mary Scythe from theKilton Mail, and was that . . . was that Ant’s dad, Mr Lowe in the middle?

‘Um,’ she said, shakily, watching her dad hurrying away up the path towards them. Cara gave her an encouraging smile, and Jamie nodded. ‘Um. Stanley, he . . . when he knew his own life was in danger, his first thought was to protect me and –’

‘Burn in hell!’

She tightened her hands into fists. ‘And he faced his own death with bravery and –’