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I didn’t reply straight away. I just watched Pippa as she busied about, tidying costumes and props out of the way. I didn’t have a script prepared. I was just going to have to play it by ear from here.

  She picked up Bert’s Dorothea costume from the floor and hung it on a hanger on the costume rail.

  ‘It was a shame, wasn’t it,’ I said, perching on the arm of one of the lumpy old armchairs the old people sit on at the beginning of the play. ‘About that email coming out. You know, just before the show and everything. Distracted people a bit, didn’t it.’

  Pippa hung her own costume on the rail – a long dress with daisies all over it, her orange wig hanging over one shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her face grim. ‘Such a shame.’

  ‘And the photos too,’ I went on. ‘Shame about that too. No one wants the whole class to see them naked.’

  Pippa turned around and to look at me. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No they don’t.’

  She was staring at me now. I stared back. This was already a battle.

  I flopped down in the chair, my legs dangling over the arm. The seat was lower than I’d thought it would be and I felt silly – like a rag doll, all folded in on itself. I didn’t want to scramble back out though, and admit my mistake. That would look even sillier. I just had to style it out. I put my hands behind my head and leant back. That was better. The casual pose suited the conversation. Made me seem relaxed. In control.

  ‘Bert’s not like us, you know,’ I said after a while.

  ‘No. She’s not.’

  ‘She’s … naive sometimes. Too trusting, don’t you think?’ I jerked my head upright so I was looking directly at Pippa, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  Pippa stayed glued to the spot, watching me warily. I could tell she was trying to work out where this was going.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said eventually. Then she laughed suddenly. ‘Seriously, Frances, you’re such a strange little person. Always creeping around, trailing behind Bert. What do you want?’

  She laughed again, her little stubby teeth and acres of gum all showing. I hated her so much at that moment. It was all I could do to stop myself rushing over there and punching her in her stupid face. I’d had enough of the mind games, the trying to psyche each other out. It was time to get to the point.

  ‘Bert knows, Pippa. We know everything. We worked it out.’ It was my turn to laugh now. ‘You weren’t exactly subtle. Never consider life as a career criminal.’

  Pippa stared at me, her face blank. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ I said impatiently. I pushed myself out of my chair and stood up, facing her. ‘You do realise that that’s the exact line that every guilty person in history has come out with when they’ve been confronted? Couldn’t you think of something a bit more original?’

  Pippa just frowned. She wasn’t really putting up a convincing defence so far. ‘What?’

  I sighed. ‘Look, Pippa. We both know the truth now. There’s no one else here. Just us. So can we skip all the boring denial stuff and get to the bit where we strike a bargain? Then we can both get out of here and get on with our day.’

  ‘I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  I went around the back of the chairs where Pippa had left her bag – a light grey shoulder bag decorated with badges bearing various charitable slogans: ‘Save the rainforest’, ‘Make cakes not war’. I held the bag up.

  ‘That’s mine,’ Pippa said. ‘Leave it.’

  I ignored her. Instead, I unzipped the top.

  ‘I said get off!’ she said, making a lunge for it.

  But I was too fast for her. I whipped the bag away from her and stood up on the arm of the chair, the bag high above my head. ‘Oh I bet you don’t want me to look. But why? That’s the question. What have you got to hide?’

  34

  I didn’t wait for her to reply. I opened the bag, turned it upside down and let the contents tumble to the floor. Then I jumped down from the chair and we both stared at the pile of books, scraps of paper, lip gloss and other debris that had fallen out. Pippa’s face was pink, her eyes shining and her teeth gritted. I was careful to keep my expression cool. It wouldn’t do to look too ferocious, too wild.

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, crouching down. ‘What’ve we got here?’

  I reached forward and picked up a little wodge of photos. There were about ten or twelve there I guessed, all bundled together with an elastic band.

  ‘Photos, I see,’ I said, holding them up. ‘Holiday snaps, is it?’ I flicked through. Exactly as I knew they would be, they were all of Bert. Bert in various states of undress. ‘Oh!’ I said, in mock surprise. ‘Blimey. Not holiday snaps. Why have you got these in your bag, Pippa?’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Give them here.’

  I ignored her, still flicking through. There were a few of Bert with Richard there too, their faces pushed close together as they held the camera out in front of them.

  ‘Oh, you found some of the man himself this time, did you?’ I said. ‘Well done. That’ll help prove your point, won’t it? People will have to believe her disgusting married-man affair once they see these.’

  I tossed them down onto the pile and surveyed the scene again.

  ‘What else have we got?’ My eyes fell on an envelope. It wasn’t hard to miss – it was bright pink and decorated with little hearts, drawn on in Biro. ‘Mr Allenby’, it said on the front. I picked it up. It was soft, stuffed full with something. I lifted the flap and pulled out a pair of lacy knickers. Quite possibly the same pink ones that Bert had on in the photos. As I tugged at them a little note fell out with them. I recognised the paper at once – it was the same graph paper that Bert’s threatening note had been written on. And when I unfolded it, the little blocky handwriting was the same too. I read it out.

  MR ALLENBY

  KEEP THESE UNDER YOUR PILLOW,

  LOVE ALBERTA

  ‘What’s this then, Pippa?’ I asked lightly. ‘Bert ask you to pass these on did she? Or was this the next step in your little plan? Your little scheme to ruin Bert’s life? What were you going to do with them? Leave them on Allenby’s desk?’

  Pippa glared at me. ‘You put that there,’ she said, her teeth still bared like a little terrier ready for a fight. ‘All of it.’

  I’d expected this line of defence. Pippa was too, too predictable.

  ‘OK,’ I said in a sing-song voice. ‘Let’s go with that line of reasoning for a minute shall we? Let’s say this is all just an elaborate set-up and you’re completely innocent. Let’s call Mr Jeffrey down here now. And Bert, let’s get her in too. That’s a good idea, because at the moment, she sort of thinks it was you, but she’s not convinced. She doesn’t want to believe that her dear friend Pippa has been going behind her back all this time. But if I bring her here, show her this, she won’t have any choice.’

  Pippa didn’t say anything. I was still holding the knickers up but I felt silly waving them around like that so I tossed them back down on the pile. Pippa followed them with her eyes.

  ‘Or, we can make a bargain,’ I went on. ‘That’s why I came here, remember? To find you. To make a deal.’

  ‘What deal?’

  I went over to the corner of the stage and collected a metal wastepaper bin. Then I gathered up the photos, the knickers, the bright pink envelope, the whole lot of it, and I dropped it all into the bin, pushing it down nice and tight.

  ‘In this bin is all the evidence of what you’ve been up to. I know what you’ve done and you know what you’ve done, but this is all the concrete proof. Sure, we can go through the long-winded process of calling Mr Jeffrey in here, getting Bert in, you denying it all, the formal investigation … blah blah blah. But how long will that take? Do you think they’re going to let you go ahead with your big TV debut with this hanging over you? Do you really think Bert’s going to cosy up to you now, when she knows what you’ve done?’ I laughed suddenly. ‘In
fact, it’d be just like Bert to blurt the whole thing out on live TV.’

  Pippa just looked at me. ‘Sorry, so what’s your point? I’m not really keeping up with this little charade. What exactly do you want, Frances?’

  ‘I want you out of the way. Off the scene. Out of the picture.’

  Pippa frowned, then looked down, into the bucket filled with photos. ‘You want what?’

  ‘I want you to leave Bert alone. I want you to stop hassling her, stop spending time with her at all. You’re evil, Brookman. People like Bert are too good for people like you.’

  Pippa rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘God, Frances, you’re so weird.’

  I ignored her and neither of us spoke for a moment or two.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Pippa said, suddenly throwing her hands up. ‘What will it take to make you – and all this,’ she waved her hands towards the bin, ‘just go away? To disappear and let me get on with things here?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s easy. All I want is your word.’

  ‘My word?’ she repeated, one eyebrow raised. ‘What word is that exactly?’

  ‘I just want your word that you’ll back off. You’ll finish your little show tomorrow, and then you’ll leave Bert alone. No more hanging around her, no more hassle.’

  Of course, the idea that Pippa’s word would ever mean anything to me – that I’d ever trust her to do what she’d said she would – was ridiculous, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t care whether she promised to stay away from Bert or not. The important bit was the next bit. The bit where I took control.

  ‘If you give me your word, I’ll give you this,’ I said, holding the bin up. ‘And you can burn it. Burn it all. All the evidence – gone.’ I nodded towards a box of safety matches, sitting on top of the piano.

  Pippa snorted. ‘I’m not going to burn it!’

  Of course I hadn’t had long to put the plan together but as I’d been working through it, I’d assumed that Pippa would jump at the chance to destroy the evidence. It was all quite damning after all. My whole scheme rested on her taking me up on the offer and on her being caught in the act. I honestly hadn’t anticipated her arguing at this point. I had to think on my feet.

  ‘No?’ I said, lightly. ‘Well, well, well. What kind of friend does that make you? Here you are, with a whole pile of stuff that Bert would be horrified to know you have, and I’m offering you the chance to get rid of it, but you don’t want to. You want to hold onto it. I’ve got to wonder why, Pippa. Either you want to use it for your evil campaign of terror or otherwise … otherwise you just want it for yourself.’ I pulled my face into a disgusted grimace. ‘I don’t know which is worse.’

  I reached over and took the matches from the piano. I held them out to her. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Do the right thing, Pippa. For once.’

  ‘No!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m not going to set fire to anything, you lunatic! Get Bert down here if you want. This stuff isn’t proof of anything. There’s nothing to prove I took those photos from Bert, nothing to prove I wrote that note. You’ve got nothing, Frances. Frances Frankenstein.’

  I’d had enough of her by this point. I lost my cool. ‘For God’s sake!’ I shouted. Then I roughly pulled the box of matches open and took one out. I struck it and it fizzed into life. I dropped it into the bin. It went out immediately.

  Pippa laughed. ‘So much for your towering inferno.’

  I glared at her, then I took a couple of sheets of newspaper that were lying on the floor, screwed them into a ball and tossed them into the bin too.

  ‘Hey!’ Pippa said. ‘That’s a prop!’

  ‘So buy another newspaper!’ I yelled. I didn’t care if I looked wild now. I felt wild.

  I struck another match and dropped that one in. The newspaper caught straight away, and soon the photos were alight too, their edges curling, images of Bert and Richard warping into something quite hideous before our eyes.

  ‘Happy now?’ Pippa asked, one hand on her hip, the fire crackling next to us.

  The fire seemed to catch whatever was in the bin and was burning away quite nicely. But it was then that I noticed Pippa’s costume. The fabric belt of her daisy dress was dangling in the bin and the flames had started to crawl up it, towards her dress, towards her wig. Towards the whole costume rail.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, nodding towards the burning dress. ‘Very happy.’

  Pippa sprang into action. ‘Shit!’ she said, darting over to the other side of the stage and grabbing a blanket from a table. ‘The costumes! Quick, help me put it out! The whole lot’s going to go up!’ She tossed the blanket onto the fire, I suppose in an effort to smother the flames, but the blanket just ended up catching fire too.

  At this point the gathering smoke must’ve reached the hall’s fire alarm because a piercingly shrill ringing noise surrounded us.

  I laughed. ‘How’s that for a towering inferno?’ I shouted over the noise.

  I turned and headed for the stage door. It was time to make my exit. I slipped outside assuming that Pippa wouldn’t be far behind – surely even saving the costumes for the stupid play wasn’t worth hanging around in a flame-filled room, even Pippa would see that.

  It was just as I was closing the door behind me that I heard the noise. It wasn’t really a bang, more of a crack. Like a firework going off. I jumped.

  And then I ran.

  35

  I didn’t know she was going to end up dead. That wasn’t part of the plan.

  I’d planned to search Pippa’s bag for the photos, the knickers, the note, all of it, then get her to try to torch the lot. The idea was that the smoke alarm would alert people to her little bonfire and when they came running, there she’d be, caught red-handed with a bucket of smouldering evidence. I knew just being caught with it wasn’t enough. I wanted her to be caught getting rid of it. The unquestionable sign of guilt. Bert and I would report our suspicions about the identity of Bert’s tormentor long before the rumours were out about what Pippa had been trying to burn, so when they sifted through the debris and found the traces of the photos, the charred knickers, all the rest, it’d fit together perfectly.

  Pippa would probably be expelled, I thought. Both for the bullying and for starting a fire on school property. She’d protest her innocence but her explanation would sound half-baked. I have to admit, I have had doubts about the plan since that day but I hadn’t had long to put things into action. It was the best I could come up with at short notice. I mean, it wasn’t ideal that I ended up lighting the fire myself, for example. That wasn’t the plan. And I don’t know for sure what she would’ve said about the whole episode or how convincing she would’ve been. I’d only just convinced Bert of her guilt. It wouldn’t have taken much, I don’t think, for her to be persuaded back to the other side. It was all a bit risky, I admit. But what choice did I have? This was Bert we were talking about. I had to do something.

  Anyway, none of it mattered in the end. We never had to find out how good a plan it was because Pippa was dead. Obviously I never set out to kill her. Things weren’t meant to get out of hand like that. I didn’t know there was a half-empty spray-paint can in the bin. I didn’t know that it was going to explode just as Pippa was leaning over the fire. I didn’t know that Pippa’s greasy hair was so full of hairspray and other gunk that she’d go up like a human candle. She died later that night. In a way I suppose it was for the best. She would’ve been horribly disfigured if she’d survived.

  As I made my way back to Bert’s I kept going over and over that time in the playground at St Paul’s. All I’d wanted was one stupid chalk to play with. Was that too much to ask?

  I was back at Bert’s within ten minutes. I crept in the back door and up to the den. Bert was on her feet at once and peppering me with questions.

  ‘What happened? What did Pippa say? Did she admit anything?’

  I flopped down into the Egg. On the walk over I’d decided how much Bert needed to know. At this point, I hadn�
�t realised the extent of Pippa’s injuries so I decided I’d keep my version of events to what I’d planned to happen. I didn’t want Bert to get in a panic.

  I explained about the photos, the knickers – all the undeniable proof.

  ‘My knickers,’ Bert said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘When did she even get hold of them? God, when I think of all those times I let her in my bedroom … It must’ve been easy for her to root around, I suppose. To have a good rummage through my things …’

  Bert did a little shudder and I felt myself do the same. It was the thought of Pippa hanging around Bert’s house like that. In her bedroom. In the Egg too, I imagined. When had ‘all those times’ been exactly? No one had ever mentioned them to me.

  I just shrugged. ‘Didn’t ask.’

  Bert stared out into the middle of the den. ‘God. So … she admitted everything …?’

  I nodded and sat down beside her. ‘Yep.’ I rubbed my face with my hand. I could smell the smoke. ‘Pretty much.’

  I gave Bert a minute to take this news in. I knew she hadn’t fully accepted things, not until that point. I guess it was a hard thing to come to terms with, realising that even now she was still such an iffy judge of character. I knew it wasn’t a time to be saying ‘I told you so,’ but I guess she was thinking it. I’d been right about Pippa all along.

  Then I told Bert what had happened next, how Pippa had panicked and tried to persuade me to keep it all to myself.

  ‘It was so desperate,’ I said, laughing. ‘The tactics she was trying – she was even offering to get me in on the TV interview. Said I could take your place, if I promised not to mention anything about what I’d found. Mental.’ I laughed again and shook my head.

  Then I told Bert how, in a last desperate attempt to cover up what she’d done, Pippa had frantically piled all the evidence into the bin and set fire to it. I explained that I’d made my exit at this point, that I hadn’t wanted to be caught hanging about when the teachers came sniffing around to see what was burning.

  ‘Yes,’ Bert said seriously. ‘Very sensible.’ She leant forward and rested her chin on her palm. ‘God,’ she said again. ‘I wonder what’ll happen to her.’