A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

You killed Barney.’

Oh, but . . . what are people going to think if they see you going into Ravi Singh’s house?’

‘It’s sausage to me.’

Real men wear floral when trespassing

Andrea Bell, 17, was reported missing from her home in Little Kilton, Buckinghamshire, last Friday

An innocent life was taken and everyone in this town turned it ugly in their mouths, turned him into a villain. But if a villain can be made, then they can be unmade.

he shimmied his shoulders excitedly and pointed to his face, mouthing ‘very handsome’ at Pip.

The woman nodded and her eyes swayed over to him. ‘Very handsome,’ she said quietly, and then to Pip, ‘lucky girl.’

Dawn Bell must still clean her dead daughter’s room, preserving it as it had been when Andie left it for the final time. She didn’t have her daughter but she still had the place where she’d slept, where she’d woken, where she’d dressed, where she’d screamed and shouted and slammed the door, where her mum whispered goodnight and turned off the light. Or so Pip imagined, reanimating the empty room with the life that might have been lived here. This room, perpetually waiting for someone who was never coming back while the world ticked on outside its closed door.
She looked back at Ravi and, by the look on his face, she knew there was a room just like this in the Singhs’ house.

This room, perpetually waiting for someone who was never coming back while the world ticked on outside its closed door.

the room didn’t feel quite real. A place entombed in five years of grief.