The Secret Place

The groundskeeper’s shed is dark, thick earth-smelling dark and she’s not about to turn on the light, but she prepared for this. Two steps forward, face left, five steps, and her outstretched hands hit the stack of tools propped against the wall.

The hoe is at the far right of the stack, where she left it yesterday. Spades and shovels are too heavy and too clumsy, anything short-handled would mean getting too close, but one hoe had a blade so sharp it almost split her fingertip like ripe fruit. Gemma came in and saw her choosing, but Becca’s not worried about her. This isn’t balconette bras and low-carb foods; this is a thousand miles outside what Gemma’s mind can reach.

She sets branches parting like swinging doors in front of her, to leave her path clear. In the centre of the glade she practises, swinging the hoe up behind her head and down; getting used to the heft of it, the reach. The gloves mean she needs to hold it extra tight, to stop her fingers sliding. The swish of it is fast and strong and satisfying. Low under the trees, here and there, luminous eyes watch her, curious.

One more go because it feels good, and Becca stops: she doesn’t want her arms to get tired. She spins the hoe between her palms and listens. Only the comfortable, familiar sounds of the night: her own breathing, the undergrowth-rustles of small things about their business. He’s nowhere near.

He’ll come from the back of the grounds. The path, under arching branches, is an endless black cave flecked with snippets of white light. She pictures different guys stepping out of it: Andrew, Seamus, Graham. She pictures, carefully and methodically, everything that needs to come after that.

The hoe has stopped spinning between her hands. She hears its swish again, and this time the splintering thud and squelch at the end.

Her whole body would love it to be James Gillen – the thought opens her mouth in almost a smile – but that at least she knows Selena would never. She hopes it’s Andrew Moore.

Becca feels lucky, so lucky she could lift right off the ground and somersault amid the whirling stars, to have been chosen for this. The beauty of the glade turns her heart over. All the clearing is lavish with every glory it can call up; the air is drenched with moonlight and the sweetness of hyacinths, owls sing like nightingales and hares dance and the cypresses are pearled in silver and lavender, for the celebration.

In the crosshatched dark away down the path, something cracks. The cypresses catch one deep breath and shiver on tiptoe. He’s here.

For one second Becca is terrified, bones jackhammered to jelly by the same terror that Julia must have felt as she lay down for him, that Selena must have felt in the instant before she said I love you. It comes to her that, afterwards, she’ll be different from everyone else. Her and this guy: that thud will take them both across one-way borderlines, into worlds they can’t imagine.

She bites down on her cheek till she tastes blood, and with one arc of her hand she sweeps a long rustle like a black wing all around the tops of the cypresses. The other place has been there all along; for months now the borders have been turning porous, sifting away. If she wanted to be frightened, if she wanted to run, the moments for that were a long time ago.

The terror is gone, as fast as it came. Becca moves back into the shadows under the trees and waits for him like a girl waiting for a secret lover, lips parted and dark blood thrumming in her throat and her breasts, all her body reaching out for the moment when at long last she’ll see his face.

Chapter 27

I went round to the front of the school. My feet crossing the grass felt strange, too solid, sinking down and down like the lawn was made of mist. Girls still watching as I passed, still whispering. This time it didn’t matter.

I waited at the corner of the boarders’ wing, pressed back into the shadow. If we’re taking a break, Detective Conway, I think I’ll walk down with you, have a quick smoke… No? Any reason why not? With Mackey around, you need to stay ahead.

I felt like someone else, waiting there for Conway. Someone changed.

She came fast. One minute the oak door looked shut forever; the next she was poised at the top of the steps, scanning for me. Floodlights on her hair. Took me a second to feel the big grin right across my face.

No Mackey behind her. I stepped out of the shadow, lifted an arm.

The matching grin lit her up. She came striding across the white pebbles, held out a hand for a high-five. It whipcracked out into the night, pure triumph, left a hard clean sting on my palm. ‘We did all right there.’

I was glad of the half-light. ‘Would you say Mackey bought it?’

‘I’d say so, yeah. Hard to tell for definite.’

‘What’d you tell him?’