‘Pip’s not cute.’ Josh’s necessary input.
Ravi let her go, delivering her back to the sofa. ‘Right,’ he said with an upward stretch. ‘I should head off. Not everyone has to get up at disgusting o’clock tomorrow morning for their legal apprenticeship. But my girlfriend’s probably going to need a good lawyer one day, so…’ He winked at her. The very same thing he’d said after she told him how the mediation meeting went.
It was still his first week at the apprenticeship, and Pip could already tell he loved it, despite his protestations about the early wake-up. For his first day, she’d given him a T-shirt that said: Lawyer Loading…
‘Right, goodbye, Joshua,’ he said, nudging him with his foot. ‘My favourite human being.’
‘Really?’ Josh beamed up at him. ‘What’s Pip, then?’
‘Ah, she’s a close second,’ Ravi said, returning to her. He kissed her on the forehead, his breath in her hair, and – when Josh wasn’t looking – moved down to press his lips against hers.
‘I heard that,’ Josh said anyway.
‘I’ll just go say bye to your mum and dad,’ Ravi said. But then he paused and pivoted, came back to whisper in Pip’s ear, ‘And let your mother know that, unfortunately, you are the reason your ten-year-old brother now mistakenly thinks a pervert is watching your house, nothing to do with me.’
Pip squeezed Ravi’s elbow, one of their secret I love yous, laughing to herself as he walked away.
The smile stayed a little longer this time, after Ravi was gone. It did. But when Pip walked upstairs, standing alone in her bedroom, she realized it had already left her without saying its goodbyes. She never knew how to bring it back.
The headache was starting to pinch at her temples now, as her eyes focused beyond the window at the thickening darkness outside. The clouds amassing into one dark, lurking shape. Night-time. Pip checked the time on her phone; it had just gone nine. Wouldn’t be long now until everyone was in bed, lost to sleep. Everyone but her. The lone pair of eyes in a sleeping town, begging the night to pass on by.
She’d promised herself no more. Last time was the last time. She’d repeated it in her head like a mantra. But even as she tried to tell herself that now, even as she balled her fists against her temples to out-hurt the pain, she knew it was hopeless, that she would lose. She always lost. And she was tired, so tired, of fighting it.
Pip crossed to her door and gently closed it, in case anyone walked by. Her family could never know. And not Ravi. Especially not Ravi.
At her desk, she placed her iPhone on top, between her notebook and her bulky black headphones. She opened the drawer, the second one down on the right, and began to pull out the contents: the pot of pins, her rewound red string, an old pair of white earphones, a glue stick.
She removed the pad of A4 paper and reached the bottom of the drawer – the false bottom she’d made out of white cardboard. She dug her fingertips in at one side and prised it up.
There, hidden below, were the burner phones. All six of them, arranged in a neat line. Six pre-paid phones bought with cash, each from a different shop, a cap pulled low over Pip’s face as she’d handed over the money.
The phones stared blankly up at her.
Just one more time, and then she was done. She promised.
Pip reached in and took out the one on the left, an old grey Nokia. She held the power button down to turn it on, her fingers shaking with the pressure. There was a familiar sound hiding in the beat of her heart. The phone lit up with a greenish backlight, welcoming her back. In the simple menu, Pip clicked on to her messages, to the only contact saved in this phone. In any of them.
Her thumbs worked against the buttons, clicking number 1 three times to get to C.
Can I come over now? she wrote. She pressed send with one last promise to herself: this was the very last time.
She waited, watching the empty screen below her message. She willed the response to appear, concentrated only on that, not on the growing sound inside her chest. But now that she’d thought about it, she couldn’t unthink it, couldn’t unhear it. She held her breath and willed even harder.
It worked.
Yes, he replied.
It was a race, between her ticking heart and the pounding of her trainers on the pavement. Her body alive with sound, from her chest to her feet, dulled only by the noise cancellation of her headphones. But Pip couldn’t lie to herself that one was caused by the other; she’d been running for only four minutes and already she was here, turning on to Beacon Close. The heart had preceded the feet.