ONE
Pip knew where they lived.
Everyone in Little Kilton knew where they lived.
Their home was like the town’s own haunted house; people’s footsteps
quickened as they walked by and their words strangled and died in their
throats. Shrieking children would gather on their walk home from school,
daring one another to run up and touch the front gate.
But it wasn’t haunted by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live their
lives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spectral falling
chairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of Scum Family and stone-shattered
windows.
Pip had always wondered why they didn’t move. Not that they had to;
they hadn’t done anything wrong. But she didn’t know how they lived like
that.
Pip knew a great many things; she knew that
hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia was the technical term for the fear of
long words, she knew that babies were born without kneecaps, she knew
verbatim the best quotes from Plato and Cato, and that there were more than
four thousand types of potato. But she didn’t know how the Singhs found the
strength to stay here. Here, in Kilton, under the weight of so many widened
eyes, of the comments whispered just loud enough to be heard, of
neighbourly small talk never stretching into long talk any more.
It was a particular cruelty that their house was so close to Little Kilton
Grammar School, where both Andie Bell and Sal Singh had gone, where Pip
would return for her final year in a few weeks when the August-pickled sun
dipped into September.
Pip stopped and rested her hand on the front gate, instantly braver than
half the town’s kids. Her eyes traced up the path to the front door. It might
only look like a few feet but there was a rumbling chasm between where shestood and over there. It was possible that this was a very bad idea; she had
considered that. The morning sun was hot and she could already feel her
knee pits growing sticky in her jeans. A bad idea or a bold idea. And yet,
history’s greatest minds always advised bold over safe; their words good
padding for even the worst ideas.
Snubbing the chasm with the soles of her shoes, she walked up to the
door and, pausing for just a second to check she was sure, knocked three
times. Her tense reflection stared back at her: the long dark hair sun-dyed a
lighter brown at the tips, the pale face, despite a week just spent in the south
of France, the sharp muddy green eyes braced for impact.
The door opened with the clatter of a falling chain and a double-locked
click.
‘Hello?’ he said, holding the door half open, his hand folded over the
side. Pip blinked to break her stare, but she couldn’t help it. He looked so
much like Sal: the Sal she knew from all those television reports and
newspaper pictures. The Sal fading from her adolescent memory. Ravi had
his brother’s messy black side-swept hair, thick arched eyebrows and oaken-
hued skin.
‘Hello?’ he said again.
‘Um . . .’ Pip’s put-on-the-spot charmer reflex kicked in too late. Her
brain was busy processing that, unlike Sal, he had a dimple in his chin, just
like hers. And he’d grown even taller since she last saw him. ‘Um, sorry, hi.’
She did an awkward half-wave that she immediately regretted.
‘Hi?’
‘Hi, Ravi,’ she said. ‘I . . . you don’t know me . . . I’m Pippa Fitz-Amobi.
I was a couple of years below you at school before you left.’
‘OK . . .’
‘I was just wondering if I could borrow a jiffy of your time? Well, not a
jiffy . . . Did you know a jiffy is an actual measurement of time? It’s one
one-hundredth of a second, so . . . can you maybe spare a few sequential
jiffies?’
Oh god, this is what happened when she was nervous or backed into a
corner; she started spewing useless facts dressed up as bad jokes. And the
other thing: nervous Pip turned four strokes more posh, abandoning middle
class to grapple for a poor imitation of upper. When had she ever seriously
said ‘jiffy’ before?
‘What?’ Ravi asked, looking confused.‘Sorry, never mind,’ Pip said, recovering. ‘So I’m doing my EPQ at
school and –’
‘What’s EPQ?’
‘Extended Project Qualification. It’s a project you work on
independently, alongside A levels. You can pick any topic you want.’
‘Oh, I never got that far in school,’ he said. ‘Left as soon as I could.’
‘Er, well, I was wondering if you’d be willing to be interviewed for my
project.’
‘What’s it about?’ His dark eyebrows hugged closer to his eyes.
‘Um . . . it’s about what happened five years ago.’
Ravi exhaled loudly, his lip curling up in what looked like pre-sprung
anger.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because I don’t think your brother did it – and I’m going to try to prove it '.
