Good Girl, Bad Blood

She stayed there, clicking through for hours, jumping from article to article, comment to comment. And it was with her too, of course. It always was.

The gun.

It was here now, beating within her chest, knocking against her ribs. Aiming with her eyes. It was in nightmares, and crashing pans, and heavy breaths, and dropped pencils, and thunderstorms, and closing doors, and too loud, and too quiet, and alone and not, and the ruffle of pages, and the tapping of keys and every click and every creak.

The gun was always there.

It lived inside her now.

Welcome to season two of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder – The Disappearance of Jamie Reynolds

It was here now, beating within her chest, knocking against her ribs. Aiming with her eyes. It was in nightmares, and crashing pans, and heavy breaths, and dropped pencils, and thunderstorms, and closing doors, and too loud, and too quiet, and alone and not, and the ruffle of pages, and the tapping of keys and every click and every creak.

The gun was always there.

It lived inside her now.

eat for dinner, despite still being scared of me. Of what I almost did.’

‘You wouldn’t have killed him,’ Pip said. ‘I know.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Pip said, turning to face him. ‘All Stanley wanted was a quiet life, to learn to be better, to try do some good with it. And he doesn’t get to do that any more. But we’re still here, we’re alive.’ She paused, meeting Jamie’s eyes. ‘Can you promise me something? Can you promise me you’ll live a good life? A full life, a happy one. Live well, and do it for him, because he can’t any more.’

Jamie held her eyes, a quiver in his lower lip. ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘And you too?’

‘I’ll try,’ she nodded, wiping her eyes with her sleeve just as Jamie did the same. They laughed.

June 7th 1988 – May 4th 2018

You Were Better

‘He wasn’t what people expected,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘You know, he tried to fit a whole mattress through the gap in the toilet door, so I would be comfortable. And he asked me every day what I’d like to

A man with four different names, but Stanley Forbes was the one he chose, the life he’d wanted, the one who was trying. So that was the name engraved over him, forever.

Stanley Forbes

A solid pine coffin with unadorned sides measuring eighty-four inches by twenty-eight by twenty-three, with white satin lining inside. Pip had been the one to choose it. He had no family, and his friends . . . they all disappeared after the story came out. All of them. No one stepped up to claim him, so Pip had, arranging the whole funeral. She’d chosen a burial, against the funeral director’s professional opinion. Stanley died with his ankles in her hands, scared and bleeding out while a fire raged around them. She didn’t think he’d want to be cremated, burned, like his father had done to those seven kids.

A burial, that’s what he would have wanted, Pip insisted.

‘This was always going to happen. I deserve it.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she said, pressing her hands against the hole in his chest and the hole in his neck. She could feel the pulses of blood pushing against her.

‘Jack Brunswick,’ he said quietly, eyes circling hers.