Silence.
‘OK,’ Ravi finally said, his voice thicker now, and something else in it that Pip didn’t recognize.
‘I love you,’ she said.
The phone clicked off, dead tone ringing in her ears.
‘Joshua, eat your peas.’
Pip smiled as she watched her dad speaking in his mockwarning voice, opening his eyes comically wide.
‘I just don’t like them today,’ Josh complained, pushing them around his plate, kicking his feet out against Pip’s knees under the table. Normally she’d tell him to stop, but this time she didn’t mind. This time was the last, in an hour full of lasts, and Pip wouldn’t take any of them for granted. Study them, sear them into her brain to make the memories last decades. She’d need them in there.
‘That’s because I made them,’ her mum said, ‘and I don’t add a kilogram of butter,’ with a sharp look across at her dad.
‘You know,’ Pip said to Josh, ignoring her own plate, ‘peas are meant to make you better at football.’
‘No, they aren’t,’ Josh said in his I’m ten not stupid voice.
‘I don’t know, Josh,’ her dad said thoughtfully. ‘Remember how your sister knows everything. And I mean everything.’
‘Hmm.’ Josh glanced at the ceiling, considering that. Shifted his gaze to Pip, studying her just as hard back, for very different reasons. ‘She does know quite a lot of things, I’ll give you that, Dad.’
Well, she thought she did, from useless facts to how to get away with murder. But she’d been wrong, and one small mistake had brought it all crashing down. Pip wondered how her family would talk about her years from now. Would her dad still boast about her, tell everyone there’s nothing his pickle doesn’t know? Or would she become a hushed-up topic, one that didn’t carry beyond these four walls? A shameful secret, locked away as a ghost bound to the house. Would Josh make up excuses when they were visiting her, so he wouldn’t have to tell his friends what she was? Maybe he’d even pretend he never had a sister. Pip wouldn’t blame him, if that’s what he had to do.
‘But it still doesn’t mean I like these peas,’ Josh carried on.
Pip’s mum smiled in exasperation, sharing a look across the table at Pip, one that clearly said just, Boys, eh?
Pip blinked back at her. Tell me about it.
‘Pip’s going to miss my cooking, anyway, won’t you?’ her mum asked. ‘When she goes off to uni.’
‘Yep,’ Pip nodded, fighting the lump in her throat. ‘I’ll miss a lot of things.’
‘But you’ll miss your fabulous daddy the most, won’t you?’ her dad said, winking across the table.
Pip smiled, and she could feel her eyes prickling, glazing. ‘He is very fabulous,’ she said, picking up her fork and glancing down to hide her eyes.
A normal family dinner, except it wasn’t. But none of them knew it was really a goodbye. Pip had been so lucky. Why hadn’t she stopped to think about that before? She should have thought it every single day. And now she had to give it all up. All of them. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want this. She wanted to fight against this, rage against this. It wasn’t fair. But it was the right thing to do. Pip didn’t know any more about good or bad or right or wrong, those words were meaningless and empty, but she knew this was what she had to do. Max Hastings would still be free, but so would everyone else she cared about. A compromise, a trade.
Pip’s mum was busy listing off all the things they had to get sorted before this Sunday, all the things they still needed to buy.
‘You still haven’t bought a new duvet set.’
‘I can take an old duvet set, it’s fine,’ Pip said. She didn’t like this conversation, planning for a future that would never happen.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t started packing, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Normally you’re so organized.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ Pip said, and now she was the one pushing peas around her plate.
‘With this new podcast?’ her dad asked. ‘Terrible, isn’t it, what happened to Jason.’
‘Yeah, it’s terrible,’ Pip said quietly.
‘What exactly happened to him?’ Josh’s ears perked up.
‘Nothing,’ Pip’s mum said pointedly, and that was it, it was over; her mum was picking up the empty and near-empty plates and carrying them off to the side. Dishwasher sighing as it opened.