A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. Holly Jackson

       Five

      Something felt a little off, like the air in the room was stale and slowly thickening and thickening until she was breathing it down in giant gelatinous clots. In all her years of knowing Naomi, it had never felt quite like this.

      Pip gave Naomi a reassuring smile and made a passing joke about the amount of Barney dog-fluff attached to her leggings. Naomi smiled weakly, running her hands through her flicky ombré blonde hair.

      They were sitting in Elliot Ward’s study, Pip on the swivelling desk chair and Naomi across from her in the oxblood-leather armchair. Naomi wasn’t looking at Pip; she was staring instead at the three paintings on the far wall. Three giant canvases of the family, immortalized forever in rainbow tinted strokes. Her parents walking in the autumn woods, Elliot drinking from a steaming mug, and a young Naomi and Cara on a swing. Their mum had painted them when she was dying, her final mark upon the world. Pip knew how important these paintings were to the Wards, how they looked to them in their happiest and saddest times. Although she remembered there used to be a couple more displayed in here too; maybe Elliot was keeping them in storage to give the girls when they grew up and moved out.

      Pip knew Naomi had been going to therapy since her mum died seven years ago. And that she had managed to wade through her anxiety, neck just above the water, to graduate from university. But a few months ago she had a panic attack at her new job in London and quit to move back in with her dad and sister.

      Naomi was fragile and Pip was trying her hardest not to tread on any cracks. In the corner of her eye she could see the ever-scrolling timer on her voice recorder app.

      ‘So, can you tell me what you were all doing at Max’s that night?’ she said gently.

      Naomi shifted, eyes moving down to circle her knees.

      ‘Um, we were just, like, drinking, talking, playing some Xbox, nothing too exciting.’

      ‘And taking pictures? There’s a few on Facebook from that night.’

      ‘Yeah, taking silly pictures. Just messing around really,’ Naomi said.

      ‘There aren’t any pictures of Sal from that night, though.’

      ‘No, well, I guess he left before we started taking them.’

      ‘And was Sal acting strangely before he left?’ said Pip.

      ‘Um, I . . . no, I don’t think he was really.’

      ‘Did he talk about Andie at all?’

      ‘I, err . . . yeah, maybe a bit.’ Naomi shuffled in her seat and the leather made a loud, rumbling sound as she unstuck herself from it. Something Pip’s little brother would have found very funny and, under other circumstances, she might have too.

      ‘What did he say about her?’ Pip asked.

      ‘Um.’ Naomi paused for a moment, picking at a ripped cuticle by her thumb. ‘He, erm . . . I think maybe they were having a disagreement. Sal said he wasn’t going to talk to her for a bit.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I don’t remember specifically. But Andie was . . . she was a bit of a nightmare. She was always trying to pick fights with Sal over the smallest things. Sal preferred to give her the silent treatment rather than argue.’

      ‘What kind of things were these fights about?’

      ‘Like the stupidest things. Like him not texting her back quick enough. Things like that. I . . . I never said it to him, but I always thought Andie was trouble. If I had said something, I don’t know, maybe everything would have turned out differently.’

      Looking at Naomi’s downcast face, at the telling tremble of her upper lip, Pip knew she needed to bring them up from this particular rabbit hole, before Naomi closed up entirely.

      ‘Had Sal said at any point in the evening that he would be leaving early?’

      ‘No, he didn’t.’

      ‘And what time did he leave Max’s?’

      ‘We’re pretty sure it was close to ten thirty.’

      ‘And did he say anything before he left?’

      Naomi shuffled and closed her eyes for a moment, the lids pressed so tightly that Pip could see them vibrating, even from across the room. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He just said that he wasn’t really feeling it and was going to walk home and get an early night.’

      ‘And what time did you leave Max’s?’

      ‘I didn’t, I . . . me and Millie stayed over in the spare room. Dad came and got me in the morning.’

      ‘What time did you go up to bed?’

      ‘Um, I think it was a bit before half twelve. Not sure really.’

      There was a sudden triad of knocks on the study door and Cara poked her head in, squeaking when her messy topknot got caught on the frame.

      ‘Bugger off, I’m recording,’ Pip said.

      ‘Sorry, emergency, two secs,’ Cara said, lingering as a floating head. ‘Nai, where the hell have all those Jammie Dodger biscuits gone?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘I literally saw Dad unpack a full packet yesterday. Where have they gone?’

      ‘I don’t know, ask him.’

      ‘He’s not back yet.’

      ‘Cara,’ Pip said, raising her eyebrows.

      ‘Yep, sorry, buggering off,’ she said, unhooking her hair and closing the door behind her again.

      ‘Um, OK,’ Pip said, trying to recover their lost tangent. ‘So when did you first hear that Andie was missing?’

      ‘I think Sal texted me Saturday, maybe late morning-ish.’

      ‘And what were your initial thoughts about where she might be?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Naomi shrugged; Pip wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her shrug before. ‘Andie was the kind of girl who knew lots of people. I guess I thought she was hanging with some other friends we didn’t know, not wanting to be found.’

      Pip took a preparatory deep breath, glancing at her notes; she needed to handle the next question carefully. ‘Can you tell me about when Sal asked you to lie to the police about what time he left Max’s?’

      Naomi tried to speak, but she couldn’t seem to find the words. A strange, underwater silence mushroomed in the small space. Pip’s ears rang with the weight of it.

      ‘Um,’ Naomi said finally, her voice breaking a little. ‘We went around on Saturday evening to see how he was doing. And we were talking about what happened and Sal said he was nervous because the police had already been asking him questions. And because he was her boyfriend, he thought he was going to be a target. So he just said did we mind saying he left Max’s a little later than he did, like quarter past twelve-ish,