It was a particular cruelty that their house was so close to Little Kilton Grammar School, where both Andie Bell and Sal Singh had gone, where Pip would return for her final year in a few weeks when the August-pickled sun dipped into September.
Pip stopped and rested her hand on the front gate, instantly braver than half the town’s kids. Her eyes traced up the path to the front door. It might only look like a few feet but there was a rumbling chasm between where she stood and over there. It was possible that this was a very bad idea; she had considered that. The morning sun was hot and she could already feel her knee pits growing sticky in her jeans. A bad idea or a bold idea. And yet, history’s greatest minds always advised bold over safe; their words good padding for even the worst ideas.
Snubbing the chasm with the soles of her shoes, she walked up to the door and, pausing for just a second to check she was sure, knocked three times. Her tense reflection stared back at her: the long dark hair sun-dyed a lighter brown at the tips, the pale face, despite a week just spent in the south of France, the sharp muddy green eyes braced for impact.
The door opened with the clatter of a falling chain and a double-locked click.
‘Hello?’ he said, holding the door half open, his hand folded over the side. Pip blinked to break her stare, but she couldn’t help it. He looked so much like Sal: the Sal she knew from all those television reports and newspaper pictures. The Sal fading from her adolescent memory. Ravi had his brother’s messy black side-swept hair, thick arched eyebrows and oaken-hued skin.
‘Hello?’ he said again.
‘Um…’ Pip’s put-on-the-spot charmer reflex kicked in too late. Her brain was busy processing that, unlike Sal, he had a dimple in his chin, just like hers. And he’d grown even taller since she last saw him. ‘Um, sorry, hi.’ She did an awkward half-wave that she immediately regretted.
‘Hi?’
‘Hi, Ravi,’ she said. ‘I… you don’t know me… I’m Pippa Fitz-Amobi. I was a couple of years below you at school before you left.’
‘OK…’
‘I was just wondering if I could borrow a jiffy of your time? Well, not a jiffy… Did you know a jiffy is an actual measurement of time? It’s one one-hundredth of a second, so … can you maybe spare a few sequential jiffies?’
Oh god, this is what happened when she was nervous or backed into a corner; she started spewing useless facts dressed up as bad jokes. And the other thing: nervous Pip turned four strokes more posh, abandoning middle class to grapple for a poor imitation of upper. When had she ever seriously said ‘jiffy’ before?
‘What?’ Ravi asked, looking confused.
‘Sorry, never mind,’ Pip said, recovering. ‘So I’m doing my EPQ at school and –’
‘What’s EPQ?’
‘Extended Project Qualification. It’s a project you work on independently, alongside A levels. You can pick any topic you want.’
‘Oh, I never got that far in school,’ he said. ‘Left as soon as I could.’
‘Er, well, I was wondering if you’d be willing to be interviewed for my project.’
‘What’s it about?’ His dark eyebrows hugged closer to his eyes.
‘Um… it’s about what happened five years ago.’
Ravi exhaled loudly, his lip curling up in what looked like pre-sprung anger.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because I don’t think your brother did it – and I’m going to try to prove it.’
Pippa Fitz-Amobi
EPQ 01/08/2017
Production Log – Entry 1
Interview with Ravi Singh booked in for Friday afternoon （take prepared questions）。
Type up transcript of interview with Angela Johnson.
The production log is intended to chart any obstacles you face in your research, your progress and the aims of your final report. My production log will have to be a little different: I’m going to record all the research I do here, both relevant and irrelevant, because, as yet, I don’t really know what my final report will be, nor what will end up being relevant. I don’t know what I’m aiming for. I will just have to wait and see what position I am in at the end of my research and what essay I can therefore bring together. [This is starting to feel a little like a diary???]
I’m hoping it will not be the essay I proposed to Mrs Morgan. I’m hoping it will be the truth. What really happened to Andie Bell on the 20th April 2012? And – as my instincts tell me – if Salil ‘Sal’ Singh is not guilty, then who killed her?