A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Pip was fidgeting nervously under the table, hoping that Cara was too busy jabbering to notice. It was the first time ever that Pip had to keep things from her and the nerves were puppet-stringing Pip’s fiddling hands and the knot in her stomach.

Pip had gone over after school on the third day back, when teachers stopped talking about what they were going to teach and actually started teaching. They were sitting in the Wards’ kitchen pretending to do homework, but really Cara was unspooling into an existential crisis.

‘And I told him that I still don’t know what I want to study at uni, let alone where I want to go. And he’s all “time’s ticking, Cara” and it’s stressing me out. Have you had the talk with your parents yet?’

‘Yeah, a few days ago,’ Pip said. ‘I’ve decided on King’s College, Cambridge.’

‘English?’

Pip nodded.

‘You are the worst person to vent to about life plans,’ Cara snorted. ‘I bet you already know what you want to be when you grow up.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I want to be Louis Theroux and Heather Brooke and Michelle Obama all rolled into one.’

‘Your efficiency offends me.’

A loud train whistle erupted from Pip’s phone.

‘Who’s that?’ Cara asked.

‘It’s just Ravi Singh,’ Pip said, scanning the text, ‘seeing if I have any more updates.’

‘Oh, we’re texting each other now, are we?’ Cara said playfully. ‘Should I be saving a date next week for the wedding?’

Pip threw a ballpoint pen at her. Cara dodged expertly.

‘Well, do you have any Andie Bell updates?’ she said.

‘No,’ Pip said. ‘Absolutely nothing new.’

The lie made the knot in her gut squeeze tighter.

Ant and Connor were still denying authorship of the note in her sleeping bag when she’d asked them at school. They’d suggested maybe it was Zach or one of the girls. Of course, their denial wasn’t solid proof it hadn’t been them. But Pip had to consider the other possibility: what if ? What if it was actually someone involved in the Andie Bell case trying to scare her into giving up the project? Someone who had a lot to lose if she kept going.

She told no one about the note: not the girls, not the boys when they asked what it said, not her parents, not even Ravi. Their concern might stop her project dead in its tracks. And she had to take control of any possible leaks. She had secrets to hold to her chest and she would learn from the master, Miss Andrea Bell.

‘Where’s your dad?’ asked Pip.

‘Duh, he came in, like, fifteen minutes ago to say he was off tutoring.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Pip said. Lies and secrets were distracting. Elliot had always tutored three times a week; it was part of the Ward routine and Pip knew it well. Her nerves were making her sloppy. Cara would notice before long; she knew her too well. Pip had to calm down; she was here for a reason. And being skittish would get her caught out.

She could hear the buzz and thud of the television in the other room; Naomi was watching some American drama that involved a lot of pew-pewing from silenced guns and shouts of ‘Goddamit’.

Now was Pip’s perfect moment to act.

‘Hey, can I borrow your laptop for two secs?’ she asked Cara, relaxing her face so it wouldn’t betray her. ‘Just want to look up this book for English.’

‘Yep, sure,’ Cara said, passing it across the table. ‘Don’t close my tabs.’

‘Won’t,’ Pip said, turning the laptop so Cara couldn’t see the screen.

Pip’s heartbeat bolted into the tops of her ears. There was so much blood behind her face she was sure she must be turning red. Leaning down to hide behind the screen, she clicked up the control panel.

She’d been up until three last night, that what if question haunting her, chasing away sleep. So she had trawled through the internet, looking at badly worded forum questions and wireless printer instruction manuals.

Anyone could have followed her there into the woods. That was true. Anyone could have watched her, lured her and her friends out of the marquee so they could leave their message. True. But there was one name on her persons of interest list, one person who would have known exactly where Pip and Cara were camping. Naomi. She’d been stupid to discount her because of the Naomi she thought she knew. There could well be another Naomi. One who may or may not be lying about leaving Max’s for a period of time the night Andie died. One who may or may not have been in love with Sal. One who may or may not have hated Andie enough to kill her.

After hours of stubborn research, Pip had learned that there was no way to see the previous documents a wireless printer had printed. And no one in their right mind would save a note like that on their computer, so attempting to look through Naomi’s would be pointless. But there was something else she could do.

She clicked into Devices and Printers on Cara’s laptop and hovered the mouse over the name of the Ward family printer, which someone had nicknamed Freddie Prints Jr. She right-clicked into Printer Properties and on to the advanced tab.

Pip had memorized the steps from a ‘how to’ webpage with cartoon illustrations. She checked the box next to Keep Printed Documents , clicked apply and it was done. She closed down the panel and clicked back on to Cara’s homework.

‘Thanks,’ she said, passing the laptop back, certain that her heart was loud enough to hear, a boom box sewn on the outside of her chest.

‘No problemo.’

Cara’s laptop would now keep track of everything that came through their printer. If Pip received another printed message, she could find out for definite if it had come from Naomi or not.

The kitchen door opened with an explosion from the White House and federal agents screaming to ‘Get out of here!’ and ‘Save yourself!’ Naomi stood in the door frame.

‘God, Nai,’ Cara said, ‘we’re working in here, turn it down.’

‘Sorry,’ she whispered, as though it compensated for the loud TV. ‘Just getting a drink. You OK, Pip?’ Naomi looked at her with a puzzled expression and only then did Pip realize she had been staring.

‘Err . . . yep. You just made me jump,’ she said, her smile just a little too wide, carving uncomfortably into her cheeks.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 08/09/2017

Production Log – Entry 13

Transcript of second interview with Emma Hutton

NO . Just no.

First Naomi, who I can’t even look in the eye any more. And now Elliot? Why are questions about Andie Bell returning answers about the people close to me?

OK, Andie insulting a teacher to her friends in the lead-up to her death looks like an utter coincidence. Yes. It could be entirely innocent.

But – and it’s quite a big but – Elliot told me he hardly knew Andie or had anything to do with her in the last two years of her life. So why did she call him an arsehole if they had nothing to do with each other? Was Elliot lying, and for what reason?

I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t speculate wildly, as I have before, just because I’m close to Elliot. So even though it physically pains me: could this innocuous clue, in fact, indicate that Elliot Ward was the secret older man? I mean, I first thought the ‘secret older guy’ would be someone in their mid to late twenties. But maybe my instincts were wrong; maybe it refers to someone much older. I baked the cake for Elliot’s last birthday, so I know he’s now forty-seven, which would have made him forty-two in the year of Andie’s disappearance.

Andie told her friends she could ‘ruin’ this man. I thought this meant that the guy – whoever he was – was married. Elliot wasn’t; his wife had died a couple of years before. But he was a teacher at her school, in a position of trust. If there was some inappropriate relationship, Elliot could have faced jail time. That certainly can be covered under ‘ruining’ someone.

Is he the type of person who would do that? No, he isn’t. And is he the kind of man a seventeen-year-old beautiful blonde student would lust after? I don’t think so. I mean, he’s not hideous and he has a certain greying professorial look but . . . just no. I can’t see it.

I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to think this. Who will be next on the persons of interest list? Cara? Ravi? Dad? Me?

I think I should just grit my teeth and ask Elliot so I can bite down on some actual facts. Otherwise I may end up suspecting everybody I know who may have spoken to Andie at some point in their lives. And paranoia does not suit me.

But how do you casually ask a grown man you’ve known since you were six why they lied about a murdered girl?

Persons of Interest

Jason Bell

Naomi Ward

Secret Older Guy

Elliot Ward