Nine
They probably thought she couldn’t hear them. Her parents, bickering in the living room downstairs. She had long ago learned that the word ‘Pip’ was one that travelled exceptionally well through walls and floors.
Listening through the crack of her bedroom door, it wasn’t hard to catch hold of snatches and shape them into a gist. Her mum wasn’t happy that Pip was spending so much of her summer on schoolwork. Her dad wasn’t happy that her mother had said that. Then her mum wasn’t happy because her dad had misunderstood what she meant. She thought that obsessing over the Andie Bell thing would be unhealthy for her. Her dad wasn’t happy that her mum wouldn’t give Pip the space to make her own mistakes, if that’s what they were.
Pip grew bored of the sparring match and closed her bedroom door. She knew their cyclical argument would burn itself out soon, without neutral intervention. And she had an important phone call to make.
She had private-messaged both of Andie’s best friends last week. Emma Hutton replied a few hours ago with a phone number, saying she didn’t mind answering ‘just a few’ questions at eight o’clock tonight. When Pip told Ravi this, he’d texted back with a whole page of shock-face and fist- bump emojis.
She glanced at the clock on her computer dashboard and the glance became a stare. The clock stood stubbornly at 7:58 p.m. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said when, even after twenty Mississippis, the eight in the :58 hadn’t sprung into the leg of a nine.
When it did, an age later, Pip said, ‘Close enough,’ and pressed the record button on her app. She dialled Emma’s number, her skin prickling with
nerves. It picked up on the third ring. ‘Hello?’ said a high and sweet voice.
‘Hi, Emma, this is Pippa here.’ ‘Oh yeah, hi. Hold on, let me just go up to my room.’ Pip listened impatiently to the sound of Emma’s feet skipping up a flight of stairs. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So, you said you’re doing a project about Andie?’ ‘Sort of, yeah. About the investigation into her disappearance and the media’s role in it. A kind of case study.’ ‘OK,’ Emma said, sounding uncertain. ‘I’m not sure how much help I can be with that.’ ‘Don’t worry, I just have a few basic questions about the investigation as you remember it,’ Pip said. ‘So firstly, when did you find out she was missing?’ ‘Um . . . it was around one o’clock that night. Her parents rang both me and Chloe Burch; we were Andie’s best friends. I said how I hadn’t seen her or heard from her and told them I would call around a bit. I tried Sal Singh that night but he didn’t pick up until the next morning.’ ‘Did the police contact you at all?’ asked Pip. ‘Yeah, Saturday morning. They came around asking questions.’ ‘And what did you tell them?’ ‘Just the same as I said to Andie’s parents. That I had no idea where she was; she hadn’t told me she was going anywhere. And they were asking about Andie’s boyfriend, so I told them about Sal and that I’d just rung and
told him she was missing.’ ‘What did you tell them about Sal?’ ‘Well, only that at school that week they were kind of fighting. I definitely saw them bickering on the Thursday and Friday, which was out of the ordinary. Usually Andie bickered at him and he didn’t get involved. But this time he seemed super mad about something.’ ‘What about?’ Pip said. It was suddenly clearer to her why the police might have thought it prudent to interview Sal that afternoon. ‘I don’t know, honestly. When I asked Andie she just said that Sal was being “a little bitch” about something.’ Pip was taken aback. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So Andie didn’t have plans to see Sal on the Friday?’ ‘No, she didn’t have plans to do anything actually; she was supposed to stay at home that night.’ ‘Oh, how come?’ Pip sat up a little straighter.
‘Um, I don’t know if I should say.’ ‘Don’t worry –’ Pip tried to hide the desperation in her voice – ‘if it’s not relevant it won’t go in my project. It just might help me better understand the circumstances of her disappearance.’ ‘Yeah, OK. Well, Andie’s little sister, Becca, had been hospitalized for self-harming several weeks before. Her parents had to go out, so they told Andie she had to stay in and take care of Becca.’ ‘Oh,’ was all Pip could think to say. ‘Yeah, I know, poor girl. And still Andie left her. Only looking back now can I understand how difficult it must have been having Andie as an older
sister.’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘Erm, it’s just, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, you know, but . . .
I’ve had five years to grow up and reflect on everything and when I think back to those times I don’t like the person I was at all. The person I was with Andie.’ ‘Was she a bad friend to you?’ Pip didn’t want to say too much; she needed to keep Emma talking. ‘Yes and no. It’s really difficult to explain,’ Emma sighed. ‘Andie’s friendship was very destructive, but at the time, I was addicted to her. I wanted to be her. You’re not going to write any of this, are you?’ ‘No, of course not.’ Small lie. ‘OK. So Andie was beautiful, she was popular, she was fun. Being her friend, being someone she chose to spend her time with, it made you feel special. Wanted. And then she would flip and use the things you were most self-conscious about to cut you down and hurt you. And still we both remained by her side, waiting for the next time she would pick us up and make us feel good again. She could be amazing and awful, and you never knew which side of Andie was turning up at your door. I’m surprised my
self-esteem even survived.’ ‘Was Andie like this with everyone?’ ‘Well, yeah, to me and Chloe. Andie wouldn’t let us go over to her house much, but I saw the way she was with Becca too. She could be so cruel.’ Emma paused. ‘I’m not saying any of this because I mean that Andie deserved what she got. No, no that’s not what I mean at all, no one deserves to be murdered and put in a hole. I only mean that, appreciating now the kind of person Andie was, I can understand why Sal snapped and killed her.
She could make you feel so high and then so low; it was bound to end in tragedy, I think.’ Emma’s voice slipped into a wet sniff and Pip knew the interview was over. Emma couldn’t hide the fact that she was crying, and she didn’t try to. ‘OK, those are all the questions I have. Thank you so much for your help.’ ‘That’s OK,’ Emma said. ‘Sorry, I thought I was over everything. Guess not.’ ‘No, I’m sorry for making you go over it all. Um, actually, I’ve also messaged Chloe Burch for an interview, but she hasn’t got back to me yet.
Are you two still in contact?’ ‘No, not really. Like, I’ll message her on her birthday, but . . . we definitely drifted after Andie and then leaving school. I think we both wanted it that way really, a clean break from the people we had been back then.’ Pip thanked her again and hung up the phone. She exhaled and just stared at it for a minute. She knew that Andie had been pretty and popular, that much social media had made perfectly clear. And like everyone that’s ever been to high school, she knew that popular people sometimes had their hard edges. But she hadn’t expected this. That Emma could still resent herself after all this time for loving her tormentor.
Was this the real Andie Bell, hiding behind that perfect smile, behind those sparkling pale blue eyes? Everyone in her orbit so dazzled by her, so blinded, that they didn’t notice the darkness that might lurk beneath. Not until it was too late.
