As Good as Dead: The Finale to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

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.

Ravi bawled into her shoulder and Pip stroked his hair, silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I should go,’ she said eventually.

‘No! No!’ Ravi grabbed her tighter, wouldn’t let her go, burying his face in her coat. ‘No, don’t go,’ he begged her. ‘Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go.’

But one of them had to be the first to leave. The first to take that last look. The first one to say it for the final time.

It had to be her.

Pip unwrapped herself from him, let him go. She pushed up on to her toes, pressed her forehead against his, in the way he always did to her. She wished she could take half of it from him, the hurt. Take half of everything bad, leave room for some good.

‘I love you,’ she said, stepping back.

‘I love you.’

She looked into his eyes and he looked back into hers.

Pip turned, and she walked away.

Ravi broke behind her, crying out into the trees, the wind carrying his sobs over to her, trying to pull her back. She kept going. Ten steps. Eleven. Her foot hesitated on the next step. She couldn’t. She couldn’t do this. This couldn’t be the last time. Pip looked back, over her shoulder, through the trees. Ravi was on his knees in the leaves, face hidden, bawling into his hands. It hurt more than anything, to see him that way, and her chest opened up, reaching out to him, trying to drive her back. Hold him, take the hurt away and let him take hers.

She wanted to go back. She wanted to run to him, fall into him, be Team Ravi and Pip and nothing more. Tell him she loved him in all those secret ways they had, hear him speak all those names he had for her in his butter-soft voice. But she couldn’t, that wasn’t fair. He couldn’t be her person and she couldn’t be his right now. Pip had to be the strong one, the one to walk away when neither of them wanted it. The one who chose.

Pip looked at him one last time, then she tore her eyes away, stared ahead. The way forward was blurry, her eyes filling, streaming down her face. Maybe she’d see him again, maybe she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t look back again, she couldn’t or she wouldn’t have the strength to go.

She walked away, a howl on the wind that could have been Ravi or the trees, she was too far to know. She left, and she didn’t look back.