As Good as Dead: Part 2: Chapter 54

‘Sarge?’ Ravi said lightly, trampling the fallen leaves of Lodge Wood, the sound crisp and fresh, sounding like home, and beginnings and endings.

‘Sorry.’ Pip caught up to him, stepping in time with his feet. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said,’ he drew out the word, nudging her in the ribs, ‘what time are your parents taking you tomorrow?’ He waited. ‘To Cambridge?’ he reminded her. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

‘Oh, um, early I think,’ Pip said, shaking her head, bringing herself back. ‘Probably leave by ten.’

She didn’t know how to do it, how to say it, how to even begin. There weren’t words for this, a pain that hummed through every part of her, stuck through her chest as her ribs caved in around it. Cracking bones and blood-wet hands, and a hurt that was worse than all of that.

‘Cool,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll come round before, help your dad load up the car.’

Pip’s lip threatened to go, her throat tightening, cutting her off. Ravi didn’t see, picking their way through the woods, off the path. Exploring, he’d said, the two of them, Team Ravi and Pip, off in the wild.

‘When should I come visit?’ he said, ducking under a branch, holding it up for her without looking back. ‘Originally it was meant to be next weekend, so what about the weekend after? We could go out for dinner or something.’

She couldn’t, she couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t take another step after him.

Her eyes spilled over, fast and hard, a knot in her chest that would never go.

‘Ravi,’ she said quietly.

He heard it in her voice. He whipped around, his eyes wide, eyebrows lowered.

‘Hey, hey,’ he came back, sliding his hands up her arms. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ He pulled her into him, wrapped her in his arms, one hand to the back of her head, holding her to his chest.

‘No.’ Pip twisted away, stepping back from him, and her body felt like it was peeling away from her, back to him, choosing him over her. ‘Ravi, it’s… You can’t come tomorrow morning to help load up the car. You can’t come visit me in Cambridge. You can’t, we can’t…’ Her voice cracked, broken in half by the shudder in her chest.

‘Pip, what are you –’

‘This is the last time,’ she said. ‘This is the last time we can see each other.’

The wind played through the trees, blowing her hair across her face, strands sticking to the tears.

The light was gone from Ravi’s eyes, now darkened by fear.

‘What are you talking about? No, it’s not,’ he said, his voice growing, fighting the whistling of the trees.

‘It’s the only way,’ Pip said. ‘The only way to keep you safe from me.’

‘I don’t need to be safe from you,’ he said. ‘It’s over. We did it. Max has been charged. We’re free.’

‘We aren’t,’ she cried. ‘Hawkins knows, or he suspects. What he said to me outside the station. The idea is there, in his head.’

‘So?’ Ravi said, angry now. ‘It doesn’t matter. They’ve charged Max; they have all the evidence. There’s none against you. Hawkins can think whatever he wants, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’

‘Why?’ he shouted, voice desperate and clawing. ‘Why does it matter?’

‘Because,’ Pip’s voice picked up too, thick with the tears. ‘Because it isn’t over. We didn’t think it through all the way to the very end. There has to be a trial first, Ravi. A jury of twelve peers has to find Max guilty beyond reasonable doubt. And if they do, then it will be over, truly over, and we’ll be free. Hawkins won’t have a reason to keep looking. It’s near impossible to overturn a conviction once it’s made, just look at the statistics, at Billy Karras. That’s when we’re free.’

‘Yes, and that’s going to happen,’ he said.

‘We can’t know that,’ she sniffed, wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘He’s got away with it once before. And what if the jury find him not guilty, what happens then? The case returns to the police to be re-investigated. They have to have a killer. And who do you think will be the very first person DI Hawkins looks into if Max is found to be innocent? It will be me, Ravi, he’ll come for me, and everyone who helped me. Because that’s the truth and that’s his job.’

‘No,’ Ravi shouted.

‘Yes.’ Pip’s breath stuttered. ‘If the trial doesn’t go the right way, I’m going down. And I’m not having you go down with me, or any of the others.’

‘That’s not your choice!’ he said, his voice catching, eyes glazing.

‘Yes, it is. You went to Hawkins about the headphones, which ties you into everything. But I know how to get you out.’

‘No, Pip, I’m not listening.’ He dropped his eyes.

‘If the verdict is not guilty, if the police ever come back to talk to you about it, you tell them I made you do it.’

‘No.’

‘Under duress. I threatened you. I made you take the fall for the headphones to save me. You suspected what I’d done to Jason. You were scared for your life.’

‘No, Pip. Stop talking!’

‘You did it under duress, Ravi,’ she pleaded. ‘That’s the phrase you have to use. Under duress. You were afraid for your life if you didn’t do what I said.’

‘No! No one will believe that!’

‘Make them!’ she shouted back. ‘You have to make them believe it.’

‘No.’ Tears overran his eyes, catching at the crack in his lips. ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want this.’

‘You tell them we haven’t had any contact since I left for Cambridge. It will be the truth. You got away from me. We haven’t spoken, haven’t seen each other, no communication. But you were still scared what would happen if you told the police the truth. What I would do to you.’

‘Shut up, Pip. Stop it,’ he cried, cupping his hands over his face.

‘We can’t see each other. We can’t have any contact at all, otherwise the duress angle won’t work – the police will check our phone records. You’re afraid of me, that’s what it has to look like. So we can’t be together any more,’ she said, and the thing stuck through her chest cracked open, a thousand cuts.

‘No,’ Ravi sobbed into his hands. ‘No, this can’t be it. There must be something we can…’ His hands dropped to his sides, a glint of hope in his eyes. ‘We can get married.’

‘What?’

‘We can get married,’ he said, taking a shuddering sniff and a step towards her. ‘Spousal privilege. We can’t be made to give evidence against each other if we are co-accused. We could get married.’

‘No.’

‘We can,’ he said, the hope growing in his eyes. ‘We could do that.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?!’ he said, the desperation back in his voice, the hope gone in a blink.

‘Because you didn’t kill a man, Ravi. I did!’ Pip took his hand, slid her fingers through his in the way they used to belong, gripping tight. ‘That won’t save you from this, that just ties you to me and whatever happens to me. If it gets to that point, they might not need our testimony to put us both away. That is unacceptable. Do you think Sal would want this for you? Do you think he’d want everyone to think you’d played a part in killing someone, just like they thought of him?’

‘Stop it,’ he said, squeezing her hand too hard. ‘Stop trying to make me –’

‘It’s not just from you,’ she spoke across him, squeezing back. ‘It’s everyone. Cara, Nat, Connor – I have to cut myself off from everyone I care about, everyone who helped me. To protect them. Even my family; I can’t have the police thinking they aided or abetted me in any way, I can’t have that. I need to go away from everyone, on my own. Cut off from everyone, until the trial. And even after, if the jury –’

‘No,’ he said, but the fight was gone from his voice now, the tears falling faster.

‘I’m a ticking time bomb, Ravi. I can’t have the people I love near me when it goes off. Especially not you.’

‘If it goes off,’ he said.

‘If,’ she agreed, reaching up to catch one of his tears. ‘Until the trial. And if it goes our way, if the jury find Max guilty, then I can get it all back. My life. My family. You. We can find each other again, I promise. If that’s still what you want.’

Ravi pressed his cheek into her hand.

‘That could be months and months from now,’ he said. ‘Years even. It’s a murder case, they can take years to go to trial.’

‘Then that’s how long I have to wait,’ Pip cried. ‘And if, after the wait, the jury find him not guilty, you tell Hawkins you did it under duress. You weren’t ever at the scene, you didn’t know for sure I’d killed Jason, but I made you tell him about the headphones. I made you. Say it, Ravi.’

‘Under duress,’ he said quietly, his face breaking in half. ‘I don’t want this.’ He sobbed, his hand shaking in hers. ‘I don’t want to lose you. I don’t care, I don’t care what happens, I don’t want to not see you again, not speak to you. I don’t want to wait for the trial. I love you. I can’t… I can’t. You’re my Pip and I’m your Ravi. We’re a team. I don’t want this.’

Pip folded herself into him, tucking her face into that place it used to belong at the base of his neck. Her home, but it couldn’t be, not any more. His head fell against her shoulder and she held it there, her hand running through the back of his hair, slipping through her fingers.

‘I don’t want this either,’ she said, and it hurt so much she didn’t think she could breathe. Nothing would heal this. Not time. Not space. Nothing. ‘I love you so much,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why I have to do this, why I have to go and not come back. You would do it for me,’ she said, ‘you know you would.’ An echo of Ravi’s words when he’d saved her, just as he’d saved her back in that storeroom, without knowing it. Now Pip had to save him back, that was her choice. And she knew, no shadow of a doubt, that it was the right one to make. Maybe the other choices she’d made hadn’t been, maybe every decision up to this point had been wrong or bad, untravelled paths and other lives. This choice was the worst of them all, hurt the most, but it was right, it was good.

Ravi bawled into her shoulder and Pip stroked his hair, silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I should go,’ she said eventually.

‘No! No!’ Ravi grabbed her tighter, wouldn’t let her go, burying his face in her coat. ‘No, don’t go,’ he begged her. ‘Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go.’

But one of them had to be the first to leave. The first to take that last look. The first one to say it for the final time.

It had to be her.

Pip unwrapped herself from him, let him go. She pushed up on to her toes, pressed her forehead against his, in the way he always did to her. She wished she could take half of it from him, the hurt. Take half of everything bad, leave room for some good.

‘I love you,’ she said, stepping back.

‘I love you.’

She looked into his eyes and he looked back into hers.

Pip turned, and she walked away.

Ravi broke behind her, crying out into the trees, the wind carrying his sobs over to her, trying to pull her back. She kept going. Ten steps. Eleven. Her foot hesitated on the next step. She couldn’t. She couldn’t do this. This couldn’t be the last time. Pip looked back, over her shoulder, through the trees. Ravi was on his knees in the leaves, face hidden, bawling into his hands. It hurt more than anything, to see him that way, and her chest opened up, reaching out to him, trying to drive her back. Hold him, take the hurt away and let him take hers.

She wanted to go back. She wanted to run to him, fall into him, be Team Ravi and Pip and nothing more. Tell him she loved him in all those secret ways they had, hear him speak all those names he had for her in his butter-soft voice. But she couldn’t, that wasn’t fair. He couldn’t be her person and she couldn’t be his right now. Pip had to be the strong one, the one to walk away when neither of them wanted it. The one who chose.

Pip looked at him one last time, then she tore her eyes away, stared ahead. The way forward was blurry, her eyes filling, streaming down her face. Maybe she’d see him again, maybe she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t look back again, she couldn’t or she wouldn’t have the strength to go.

She walked away, a howl on the wind that could have been Ravi or the trees, she was too far to know. She left, and she didn’t look back.