A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Words left her.

She stared down at the paper and shook her head.

It was something primal and wordless, the feeling that took her. Numb rage blackened with terror. And a betrayal that gored through every part of her.

She staggered back and looked away, out of the darkening window.

Elliot Ward was Unknown.

Elliot was the killer. Andie’s killer. Sal’s. Barney’s.

She watched the half-deadened trees beckoning in the wind. And in her reflection in the glass she recreated the scene. Her bumping into Mr Ward in the history classroom, the note gliding to the floor. This note, the one he’d left for her. His deceitful kind face as he asked whether she was being bullied. Cara dropping round cookies she and Elliot had baked to cheer up the Amobis about their dead dog.

Lies. All lies. Elliot, the man she’d grown up looking to as another father figure. The man who’d made elaborate scavenger hunts for them in the garden. The man who bought Pip matching bear-claw slippers to wear at their house. The man who told knock-knock jokes with an easy high laugh. And he was the murderer. A wolf in the pastel shirts and thick-rimmed glasses of a sheep.

She heard Cara call her name.

She folded the page and slipped it in her blazer pocket.

‘You’ve been ages,’ Cara said as Pip pushed open the door to the kitchen.

‘Toilet,’ she said, placing the laptop down in front of Cara. ‘Listen, I’m not feeling so great. And I should really be studying for my exam; it’s in two days. I think I’m going to head off.’

‘Oh,’ Cara frowned. ‘But Lauren’s gonna be here soon and I wanted us all to watch Blair Witch. Dad even agreed and we can all laugh at him ’cause he’s such a wimp with scary films.’

‘Where is your dad?’ Pip said. ‘Tutoring?’

‘How often are you here? You know tutoring is Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Think he just had to stay late at school.’

‘Oh yeah, sorry, the days are blurring.’ She paused, thinking. ‘I’ve always wondered why your dad does tutoring; surely he doesn’t need the money.’

‘Why,’ Cara said, ‘because my mum’s side of the family are minted?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I think he just enjoys it,’ Naomi said, placing a lit tea light through the mouth of her pumpkin. ‘He’d probably be willing to pay his tutees just to let him garble on about history.’

‘I can’t remember when he started,’ Pip said.

‘Um.’ Naomi looked up to think. ‘He started just before I was about to leave for university, I think.’

‘So, just over five years ago?’

‘Think so,’ Naomi said. ‘Why don’t you ask him? His car’s just pulled up.’

Pip stiffened, a million bumps flaring up out of her skin.

‘OK, well, I’m going to head off now anyway. Sorry.’ She grabbed her rucksack, watching the headlights flick off to darkness through the window.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Cara said, concern lining around her eyes, ‘I get it. Maybe you and I can redo Halloween when you have less on?’

‘Yeah.’

A key scraping. The back door shoved open. Footsteps crossing the utility room.

Elliot appeared in the doorway. The lenses in his glasses steamed up around the edges as he entered the warm room, smiling at the three of them. He placed his briefcase and a plastic bag down on the counter.

‘Hello, all,’ he said. ‘Gosh, teachers do love the sound of their own voices. Longest meeting of my life.’

Pip forced a laugh.

‘Wow, look at these pumpkins,’ he said, eyes flicking between them, a wide smile splitting his face. ‘Pip, are you here for dinner? I’ve just picked up some spooky Halloween potato shapes.’

He held up the frozen packet and waved it, singing a haunted ghost-like howl.