‘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.