First published in Great Britain in 2019by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK LimitedThe Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4ANText copyright © 2019 Holly JacksonThe moral rights of the author have been assertedFirst e-book edition 2019ISBN 978 1 4052 9318 1Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9384 6www.egmont.co.ukA CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British LibraryAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, orstored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is notresponsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites cancontain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.Egmont takes its responsibility to the planet and its inhabitants very seriously. We aim to use papers from well-managed forestsrun by responsible suppliers. To Mum and Dad,this first one is for you. ContentsCoverTitle pageCopyrightDedicationPart IOneProduction Log – Entry 1Transcript of interview with Angela Johnson from the MissingPersons BureauTwoProduction Log – Entry 2ThreeProduction Log – Entry 3Transcript of interview with Stanley Forbes from the Kilton MailnewspaperFourProduction Log – Entry 4Transcript of interview with Ravi SinghProduction Log – Entry 5FiveProduction Log – Entry 7Transcript of interview with Max HastingsSixProduction Log – Entry 8Transcript of interview with Elliot WardSevenEightNineProduction Log – Entry 11Transcript of interview with Chloe BurchTenElevenPart IITwelveProduction Log – Entry 13 Transcript of second interview with Emma HuttonThirteenProduction Log – Entry 15Transcript of second interview with Naomi WardFourteenProduction Log – Entry 17Production Log – Entry 18FifteenProduction Log – Entry 19Production Log – Entry 20Transcript of interview with Jess Walker (Becca Bell’s friend)SixteenSeventeenEighteenProduction Log – Entry 22NineteenTwentyProduction Log – Entry 23Twenty-OneProduction Log – Entry 24Twenty-TwoTwenty-ThreeProduction Log – Entry 25Production Log – Entry 26Twenty-FourProduction Log – Entry 27Production Log – Entry 28Production Log – Entry 29Twenty-FiveTwenty-SixTwenty-SevenTwenty-EightPart IIIProduction Log – Entry 31Twenty-NineThirtyProduction Log – Entry 33 Thirty-OneProduction Log – Entry 34Thirty-TwoThirty-ThreeThirty-FourThirty-FiveThirty-SixThirty-SevenThirty-EightThirty-NineFortyForty-OneForty-TwoForty-ThreeForty-FourForty-FiveForty-SixForty-SevenForty-EightForty-NineThe Months LaterAcknowledgementsEndnotesAbout the Author OnePip knew where they lived.Everyone in Little Kilton knew where they lived.Their home was like the town’s own haunted house; people’s footstepsquickened as they walked by and their words strangled and died in theirthroats. Shrieking children would gather on their walk home from school,daring one another to run up and touch the front gate.But it wasn’t haunted by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live theirlives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spectral fallingchairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of Scum Family and stone-shatteredwindows.Pip had always wondered why they didn’t move. Not that they had to;they hadn’t done anything wrong. But she didn’t know how they lived likethat.Pip knew a great many things; she knew thathippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia was the technical term for the fear oflong words, she knew that babies were born without kneecaps, she knewverbatim the best quotes from Plato and Cato, and that there were more thanfour thousand types of potato. But she didn’t know how the Singhs found thestrength to stay here. Here, in Kilton, under the weight of so many widenedeyes, of the comments whispered just loud enough to be heard, ofneighbourly small talk never stretching into long talk any more.It was a particular cruelty that their house was so close to Little KiltonGrammar School, where both Andie Bell and Sal Singh had gone, where Pipwould return for her final year in a few weeks when the August-pickled sundipped into September.Pip stopped and rested her hand on the front gate, instantly braver thanhalf the town’s kids. Her eyes traced up the path to the front door. It mightonly 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 hadconsidered that. The morning sun was hot and she could already feel herknee 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 goodpadding for even the worst ideas.Snubbing the chasm with the soles of her shoes, she walked up to thedoor and, pausing for just a second to check she was sure, knocked threetimes. Her tense reflection stared back at her: the long dark hair sun-dyed alighter brown at the tips, the pale face, despite a week just spent in the southof France, the sharp muddy green eyes braced for impact.The door opened with the clatter of a falling chain and a double-lockedclick.‘Hello?’ he said, holding the door half open, his hand folded over theside. Pip blinked to break her stare, but she couldn’t help it. He looked somuch like Sal: the Sal she knew from all those television reports andnewspaper pictures. The Sal fading from her adolescent memory. Ravi hadhis 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. Herbrain was busy processing that, unlike Sal, he had a dimple in his chin, justlike 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 ajiffy . . . Did you know a jiffy is an actual measurement of time? It’s oneone-hundredth of a second, so . . . can you maybe spare a few sequentialjiffies?’Oh god, this is what happened when she was nervous or backed into acorner; she started spewing useless facts dressed up as bad jokes. And theother thing: nervous Pip turned four strokes more posh, abandoning middleclass to grapple for a poor imitation of upper. When had she ever seriouslysaid ‘jiffy’ before?‘What?’ Ravi asked, looking confused. ‘Sorry, never mind,’ Pip said, recovering. ‘So I’m doing my EPQ atschool and –’‘What’s EPQ?’‘Extended Project Qualification. It’s a project you work onindependently, 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 myproject.’‘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-sprunganger.‘Why?’ he said.‘Because I don’t think your brother did it – and I’m going to try to proveit.’ Pippa Fitz-Amobi EPQ 01/08/2017Production Log – Entry 1Interview 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 finalreport. My production log will have to be a little different: I’m going to record all the research I do here, both relevant andirrelevant, because, as yet, I don’t really know what my final report will be, nor what will end up being relevant. I don’t knowwhat 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 thereforebring 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 toAndie Bell on the 20th April 2012? And – as my instincts tell me – if Salil ‘Sal’ Singh is not guilty, then who killed her?I don’t think I will actually solve the case and discover the person who murdered Andie. I’m not a police officer with accessto a forensics lab (obviously) and I am also not deluded. But I’m hoping that my research will uncover facts and accounts that willlead to reasonable doubt about Sal’s guilt, and suggest that the police were mistaken in closing the case without digging further.So my research methods will actually be: interviewing those close to the case, obsessive social media stalking and wild,WILD speculation.[DON’T LET MRS MORGAN SEE ANY OF THIS!!!]The first stage in this project then is to research what happened to Andrea Bell – known as Andie to everyone – and thecircumstances surrounding her disappearance. This information will be taken from news articles and police press conferencesfrom around that time.[Write your references in now so you don’t have to do it later!!!]Copied and pasted from the first national news outlet to report on her disappearance: ‘Andrea Bell, 17, was reported missingfrom her home in Little Kilton, Buckinghamshire, last Friday.She left home in her car – a black Peugeot 206 – with her mobile phone, but did not take any clothes with her. Police sayher disappearance is “completely out of character”.Police have been searching woodland near the family home over the weekend.Andrea, known as Andie, is described as white, five feet six inches tall, with long blonde hair. It is thought that she waswearing dark jeans and a blue cropped jumper on the night she went missing.’ 1After everything happened, later articles had more detail as to when Andie was last seen alive and the time window inwhich she is believed to have been abducted.Andie Bell was ‘last seen alive by her younger sister, Becca, at around 10:30 p.m. on the 20th April 2012.’ 2This was corroborated by the police in a press conference on Tuesday 24th April: ‘CCTV footage taken from a securitycamera outside STN Bank on Little Kilton High Street confirms that Andie’s car was seen driving away from her home at about10:40 p.m.’ 3According to her parents, Jason and Dawn Bell, Andie was ‘supposed to pick (them) up from a dinner party at 12:45 a.m.’When Andie didn’t show up or answer any of their phone calls, they started ringing her friends to see if anyone knew of herwhereabouts. Jason Bell ‘called the police to report his daughter missing at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning.’ 4So whatever happened to Andie Bell that night, happened between 10:40 p.m. and 12:45 a.m.Here seems a good place to type up the transcript from my telephone interview yesterday with Angela Johnson. I found these statistics online:80% of missing people are found in the first 24 hours. 97% are found in the first week. 99% of cases are resolved inthe first year. That leaves just 1%.1% of people who disappear are never found. But there’s another figure to consider: just 0.25% of all missing personcases have a fatal outcome. 5And where does this leave Andie Bell? Floating incessantly somewhere between 1% and 0.25%, fractionally increasing anddecreasing in tiny decimal breaths.But by now, most people accept that she’s dead, even though her body has never been recovered. And why is that?Sal Singh is why. TwoPip’s hands strayed from the keyboard, her index fingers hovering overthe w and h as she strained to listen to the commotion downstairs. A crash,heavy footsteps, skidding claws and unrestrained boyish giggles. In the nextsecond it all became clear.‘Joshua! Why is the dog wearing one of my shirts?!’ came Victor’sbuoyant shout, the sound floating up through Pip’s carpet.Pip snort-laughed as she clicked save on her production log and closedthe lid of her laptop. It was a time-honoured daily crescendo from themoment her dad returned from work. He was never quiet: his whispers couldbe heard across the room, his whooping knee-slap laugh so loud it actuallymade people flinch, and every year, without fail, Pip woke to the sound ofhim tiptoeing the upstairs corridor to deliver Santa stockings on ChristmasEve.Her stepdad was the living adversary of subtlety.Downstairs, Pip found the scene mid-production. Joshua was runningfrom room to room – from the kitchen to the hallway and into the livingroom – on repeat, cackling as he went.Close behind was Barney, the golden retriever, wearing Pip’s dad’sloudest shirt: the blindingly green patterned one he’d bought during their lasttrip to Nigeria. The dog skidded elatedly across the polished oak in the hall,excitement whistling through his teeth.And bringing up the rear was Victor in his grey Hugo Boss three-piecesuit, charging all six and a half feet of himself after the dog and the boy, hislaugh in wild climbing scale bursts. Their very own Amobi home-madeScooby-Doo montage.‘Oh my god, I was trying to do homework,’ Pip said, smiling as shejumped back to avoid being mowed down by the convoy. Barney stopped for