The Secret Place

They laugh, softly, into the circle of still air. That flash hits Holly again – thread of wild-goose calls strung high across the sky, her fingers woven deep into the cool pelt of grass, flutter of Selena’s lashes against the sun and this has been forever, everything else is a daydream falling away over the horizon. This time it lasts.

A few minutes later Selena says, ‘Becs is right, though. We should go. If they come looking for us…’

If a teacher came into the glade: the thought squirms in their spines, pokes them up off the grass. They brush themselves off; Becca picks fragments of green out of Selena’s hair and finger-combs it into place. ‘I need to finish unpacking anyway,’ Julia says.

‘Me too,’ Holly says. She thinks of the boarders’ wing, the high ceilings that feel ready to fill up with cold airy nun-voice harmonies. It seems like there’s someone new hovering by the yellow-striped bed, waiting for her moment: a new her; a new all of them. She feels the change seeping through her skin, whirling in the vast spaces between her atoms. Suddenly she understands what Julia was doing at dinner, poking Joanne. This flood was rocking her on her feet, too; she was kicking into its current, proving that she had a say in where it took her, before it could close over her head and bowl her away.

You know you can come home any time you want, Dad said, like eighty thousand times.

Day or night: one phone call, and I’ll be there inside the hour. Got it?

Yeah I know I get it thanks, Holly said eighty thousand times, if I change my mind I’ll call you and come straight back home. It didn’t occur to her, up until now, that it might not work like that.

Chapter 3

She liked her cars, Conway. Knew them, too. In the pool, she went straight for a vintage black MG, stunner. A retired detective left it to the force in his will, his pride and joy. The fella who runs the pool wouldn’t have let Conway touch it if she hadn’t known her stuff – transmission’s playing up, Detective, sorry ’bout that, lovely VW Golf just over here… She waved, he tossed her the keys.

She handled the MG like it was her pet horse. We headed southside, where the posh people live, Conway nipping fast around corners in the whirl of laneways, laying into the horn when someone didn’t scarper fast enough.

‘Get one thing straight,’ she said. ‘This is my show. You got problems taking orders from a woman?’

‘No.’

‘They all say that.’

‘I mean it.’

‘Good.’ She braked hard, in front of a wheatbran-looking café where the windows needed washing. ‘Get me coffee. Black, no sugar.’

My ego’s not that weak; it won’t collapse without a daily workout. Out of the car, two coffees to go, even got a smile out of the depressed waitress. ‘There you go,’ I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

Conway took a swig. ‘Tastes like shit.’

‘You picked the place. Lucky they didn’t make it out of beansprouts.’

She almost smiled, clamped it back. ‘They did. Bin it. Both of them; I don’t want that stink in my car.’

The bin was across the road. Out, dodge traffic, bin, dodge traffic, back into the car, starting to see why Conway was still flying solo. She hit the pedal before I had my leg in the door.

‘So,’ she said. A little thawed out, but only a little. ‘You know the case, yeah? The basics?’

‘Yeah.’ Dogs on the street knew the basics.

‘You know we got no one. Grapevine say anything about why?’

The grapevine said plenty. Me, I said, ‘Some cases go that way.’

‘We hit a wall, is why. You know how it works: you’ve got the scene, you’ve got whatever witnesses you can pick up, and you’ve got the victim’s life, and one of those better give you something. They gave us a fuckton of nothing.’ Conway spotted a bike-sized gap in the lane she wanted, manoeuvred us in with a spin of the wheel. ‘Basically, there was no reason anyone would want to kill Chris Harper. He was a good kid, by all accounts. People say that anyway, but this time they might’ve actually meant it. Sixteen, in fourth year at St Colm’s, boarder – he’s from down the road, practically, but his da figured he wouldn’t get the full benefit of the Colm’s experience unless he boarded. Places like that, they’re all about the contacts; make the right friends at Colm’s, and you’ll never have to work for less than a hundred K a year.’ The twist to Conway’s mouth said what she thought about that.

I said, ‘Kids cooped up together, you can get bad situations. Bullying. Nothing like that on the radar, no?’