As Good As Dead: The brand new and final book in the YA thriller trilogy that everyone is talking about… (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Book 3)

‘Just got to keep going,’ she told Ravi, and everyone else that lived in her head. ‘Keep going.’
Her judgement day would come, but for now, Pip walked and she promised. That’s all. One foot in front of the other, even if she had to drag them, even when that hole in her heart felt too big to keep standing. She walked and she promised and he was with her, Ravi’s fingers slotting in between hers in the way they used to fit, fingertips in the dips of his knuckles. The way they might again. Just one foot in front of the other, that was all. Pip didn’t know what was waiting for her at the end, she couldn’t see that far, and the light was failing, night drawing in, but maybe, just maybe, it would be something good.

There was another sound, hiding beneath her breath, a faint whine, high and reeling, growing closer and closer.
A siren.
More than one.
Screaming up and down, clashing together.
Pip whipped her head around. There were three police cars at the end of the road, overtaking traffic, speeding towards her.
Louder.
Louder.
Blue lights spiralling, breaking up the twilight, flashing in her eyes and lighting up the street.
Pip turned away and shut her eyes, screwed them tight.
This was it. They’d found her. Hawkins had worked it out. It was over. They’d come for her.
She stood there and held her breath.
Louder.
Closing in.
Three.
Two.
One.
A scream in her ears. A rush of wind through her hair as the cars streamed past, one after the other, their sirens fading as they carried on down the road away from her. Left her behind on the pavement.
Pip peeled her eyes open, carefully, slowly.
They were gone. Their sirens dwindling to a whine again, then a hum, then nothing.
Not for her.
Not today.
One day they might be for her, but not today, day seventy-two.

She thought about Ravi every day, almost every moment of every day, seventy-two days full of moments. What he was thinking, what he was doing, whether he’d like the sandwich she’d just eaten – the answer was always yes – whether he was OK, whether he missed her as much as she missed him. Whether that absence had grown into resentment.
She hoped, whatever he was doing, he would learn to be happy again. If that meant waiting for her, waiting for the trial, or if that meant waiting to find someone else, Pip would understand. It broke her heart to think of him doing that crooked smile for anyone else, making up new nicknames, new invisible ways of saying I love you, but that was his choice. All Pip wanted to know was that he was happy, that there was good in his life again, that was all. Her freedom for his, and it was a choice she would make over and over again.
And if he did wait, if he did wait for her and the verdict went their way, Pip would work every day to be the kind of person who deserved Ravi Singh.
‘You old softie,’ he said in her ear, and Pip smiled, a breath of laughter.

It broke her heart to think of him doing that crooked smile for anyone else, making up new nicknames, new invisible ways of saying I love you, but that was his choice.

She hoped, whatever he was doing, he would learn to be happy again.

She still spoke to Ravi every day. Not the real one, the one who lived in her head. She spoke to him when she was scared or unsure, asked him what he would do if he were there. He sat beside her when she was lonely, and she was always lonely, looking at old photos on her phone. He told her goodnight and kept her company in the dark while she learned how to sleep again. Pip wasn’t sure any more, if she was getting the timbre of his voice quite right, the exact way he had leaned into his words, whether they lilted or tilted. How had he said ‘Sarge,’ again? Had his voice dipped up or dipped down? She had to remember, she had to hold on, preserve him.

He sat beside her when she was lonely, and she was always lonely

It wasn’t Max’s trial she was waiting for, not really. It was hers. Her final judgement. The jury wouldn’t only decide Max’s fate, they would decide hers, whether she could have her life back and everyone in it.
Especially him.

Promises and promises.
Pip would earn them all back, if she got the chance.

And Becca Bell, Pip made a promise to her: she would tell Becca everything when they were both free. Pip had had to cut her off too, missed visits, missed phone calls. But prison wasn’t Becca’s cage; her father had been her cage. He was gone now, but Becca deserved to know everything, about her dad and how he died, about Max, and the part Pip had played. But mostly she deserved to know about Andie. Her big sister who’d known about the monster in their house and did all she could to save Becca from him. She deserved to read Andie’s email and know how much she was loved, that those cruel things Andie said to her in her final moments was really her sister trying to protect her. Andie was terrified that one day their father would kill them both, and maybe she was scared that that would be the thing that made him snap. Pip would tell her all of it. Becca deserved to know that, in another life, she and Andie would have escaped their father, together.