A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

‘Why?’ Pip said again when Naomi had stared wordlessly down at her feet long enough.

‘Someone made us,’ she sniffed. ‘Someone made us do it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We – me, Max, Jake and Millie – we all got a text on that Monday night. From an unrecognized number. It told us we had to delete every picture of Sal taken on the night Andie disappeared and to upload the rest as normal. It told us that at school on Tuesday we had to ask the head teacher to call in the police so we could make a statement. And we had to tell them that Sal actually left Max’s at half ten and that he’d asked us to lie before.’

‘But why would you do that?’ asked Pip.

‘Because –’ Naomi’s face cracked as she tried to hold back her sobs – ‘because they knew something about us. About something bad we’d done.’

She couldn’t hold them back anymore. She slapped her hands to her face and bawled into them, the cries strangled against her fingers. Cara jumped up from her seat and ran over, wrapping her arms round her sister’s waist. She looked over at Pip as she held the quaking Naomi, her face pale with the touch of fear.

‘Max?’ Pip said.

Max cleared his throat, his eyes down on his fiddling hands. ‘We, um . . . something happened on New Year’s Eve 2011. Something bad, something we did.’

‘We?’ Naomi spluttered. ‘We, Max? It all happened because of you. You got us into it and you’re the one who made us leave him there.’

‘You’re lying. We all agreed at the time,’ he said.

‘I was in shock. I was scared.’

‘Naomi?’ Pip said.

‘We . . . um, we went out to that crappy little club in Amersham,’ she said.

‘The Imperial Vault?’

‘Yeah. And we had all had a lot to drink. And when the club closed it was impossible to get a taxi; we were like seventieth in the queue and it was freezing outside. So Max, who’d driven us all there, he said that actually he hadn’t drunk that much and was OK to drive. And he convinced me, Millie and Jake to get in the car with him. It was so stupid. Oh god, if I could go back and change one thing in my life, it would be that moment . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Sal wasn’t there?’ Pip asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I wish he had been because he’d never have let us be that stupid. He was with his brother that night. So Max, who was just as drunk as the rest of us, he was driving too fast up the A413. It was like four o’ clock and there were no other cars on the road. And then –’ the tears came again – ‘and then . . .’

‘This man comes out of nowhere,’ Max said.

‘No, he didn’t. He was standing well back on the shoulder, Max. I remember you losing control of the car.’

‘Well, then we remember very differently,’ Max snapped defensively. ‘We hit him and spun. When we came to a stop I pulled off the road and we went to see what had happened.’

‘Oh god, there was so much blood,’ Naomi cried. ‘And his legs were bent out all wrong.’

‘He looked dead, OK?’ Max said. ‘We checked to see if he was breathing and we thought he wasn’t. We decided it was too late for him, too late to call an ambulance. And because we’d all been drinking, we knew how much trouble we’d be in. Criminal charges, prison. So we all agreed and we left.’

‘Max made us,’ Naomi said. ‘You got inside our heads and scared us into agreeing, because you knew you were the one really in trouble.’

‘We all agreed, Naomi, all four of us,’ Max shouted, a red flush creeping to the surface of his face. ‘We drove back to mine ’cause my parents were in Dubai. We cleaned off the car and then crashed it again into the tree just before my driveway. My parents never suspected a thing and got me a new one a few weeks later.’

Cara was now crying too, wiping the tears before Naomi could see them.

‘Did the man die?’ Pip said.

Naomi shook her head. ‘He was in a coma for a few weeks, but he pulled through. But . . . but . . .’ Naomi’s face creased in agony. ‘He’s paraplegic. He’s in a wheelchair. We did that to him. We should never have left him.’

They all listened as Naomi cried, struggling to suck in air between the tears.

‘Somehow,’ Max eventually said, ‘someone knew what we had done. They said that if we didn’t do everything they asked, they would tell the police what we did to that man. So we did it. We deleted the pictures and we lied to the police.’

‘But how could someone have found out about your hit-and-run?’ said Pip.

‘We don’t know,’ Naomi said. ‘We all swore to never tell anyone, ever. And I never did.’

‘Me neither,’ Max said.

Naomi looked over at him with a weepy scoff.

‘What?’ he stared back at her.

‘Me, Jake and Millie have always thought you were the one who let it slip.’

‘Oh, really?’ he spat.

‘Well, you’re the one who used to get completely plastered almost every night.’

‘I never told anyone,’ he said, turning back to Pip now. ‘I have no idea how someone found out.’

‘There’s a pattern of you letting things slip,’ said Pip. ‘Naomi, Max accidentally told me you were M.I.A. for a while the night Andie disappeared. Where were you? I want the truth.’

‘I was with Sal,’ she said. ‘He wanted to talk to me upstairs, alone. About Andie. He was angry at her about something she’d done; he wouldn’t say what. He told me she was a different person when it was just the two of them, but he could no longer ignore the way she treated other people. He decided that night that he was going to end things with her. And he seemed . . . almost relieved after he came to that decision.’

‘So let’s be clear,’ Pip said. ‘Sal was with you all at Max’s until twelve fifteen the night Andie disappeared. On the Monday, someone threatens you to go to the police and say he left at ten thirty and to delete all trace of him from that night. The next day Sal disappears and is found dead in the woods. You know what this means, don’t you?’

Max looked down, picking at the skin around his thumbs. Naomi covered her face again.

‘Sal was innocent.’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Max said.

‘Sal was innocent. Someone killed Andie and then they killed Sal, after making sure he’d look guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Your best friend was innocent, and you’ve all known it for five years.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Naomi wept. ‘I’m so, so sorry. We didn’t know what else to do. We were in too deep. We never thought that Sal would end up dead. We thought if we just played along, the police would catch whoever had hurt Andie, Sal would be cleared and we’d all be OK. We told ourselves it was just a small lie at the time. But we know now what we did.’

‘Sal died because of your small lie.’ Pip’s stomach twisted with a rage quieted with sadness.

‘We don’t know that,’ Max said. ‘Sal might still have been involved in what happened to Andie.’

‘He didn’t have time to be,’ said Pip.

‘What are you going to do with the photo?’ he said quietly.

Pip looked over at Naomi, her red puffy face etched with pain. Cara was holding her hand, staring at Pip, tears trickling down her cheeks.

‘Max,’ Pip said. ‘Did you kill Andie?’

‘What?’ He stood up, scraping the messy hair out of his face. ‘No, I was at my house the whole night.’

‘You could have left when Naomi and Millie went to bed.’

‘Well, I didn’t, OK?’

‘Do you know what happened to Andie?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Pip,’ Cara spoke up now. ‘Please don’t go to the police with that photo. Please. I can’t have my sister taken away as well as Mum.’ Her bottom lip trembled and she scrunched her face, trying to hold back the sobs. Naomi wrapped her arms round her.

Pip’s throat ached with a helpless, hollow feeling, watching them both in so much pain. What should she do? What could she do? She didn’t know whether the police would take this photo seriously anyway. But if they did, Cara would be left all alone and it would be Pip’s fault. She couldn’t do that to her. But what about Ravi? Sal was innocent and there was no question of her abandoning him now. There was only one way through this, she realized.

‘I won’t go to the police,’ she said.

Max heaved a sigh and Pip eyed him, disgusted, as he tried to hide a faint smile crossing his mouth.

‘Not for you, Max,’ she said. ‘For Naomi. And everything your mistakes have done to her. I doubt the guilt has played much on your mind, but I hope you pay in some way.’

‘They’re my mistakes too,’ Naomi said quietly. ‘I did this too.’

Cara walked over to Pip and hugged her from the side, tears soaking into her jumper.

Max left then, without another word. He packed up his laptop and notes, swung his bag on his shoulder and took off towards the front door.

The kitchen was silent as Cara went to splash her face in the sink and filled up a glass of water for her sister. Naomi was the first to break the silence.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Pip said. ‘I know you are. I won’t go to the police with the photo. It would be far easier, but I don’t need Sal’s alibi to prove his innocence. I’ll find another way.’

‘What do you mean?’ Naomi sniffed.

‘You’re asking me to cover for you and what you did. And I will. But I will not cover up the truth about Sal.’ She swallowed and it grated all the way down her tight and scratchy throat. ‘I’m going to find who really did all this, the person who killed Andie and Sal. That’s the only way to clear Sal’s name and protect you at the same time.’

Naomi hugged her, burying her tear-stained face in Pip’s shoulder. ‘Please do,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s innocent and it’s killed me every day since.’

She stroked Naomi’s hair and looked over at Cara, her best friend, her sister. Pip’s shoulders slumped as a weight settled there. The world felt heavier than it had ever been before.