The Secret Place

‘Exactly. So I thought maybe I could just slide out and sneak up to my room, seeing as I had the key on me, right? But nooo, the corridors were riddled with nuns and I got sent back to the hall. I tried again during study, said I needed some book, and Sister Patricia came with me. And then it was practically lights-out, you guys were still doing whatever down in the grounds, and I still hadn’t got that fucking phone out of the way.’

Julia’s voice was tightening towards something. ‘So Holly and Becca go to brush their teeth, and I’m messing around hoping Selena goes too. But she’s sitting on her bed, just sitting there staring into space. She’s not going anywhere, and Holly and Becs are gonna be back any minute. So I say, “Lenie, I need that phone.” She looks at me like I just landed in a UFO. I go, “The phone Chris gave you. We don’t have time to dick around. Come on.”

‘She’s still staring, so I’m just like, OK, forget this

. I shove past her and I stick my hand down the side of her bed, where she kept the phone – it was this little foofoo pink thing, just like Alison’s; I guess that’s what Chris thought was appropriate for girls. I’m hoping to Jesus she hasn’t moved it, ’cause I don’t have time to try and figure out where, so I’m a happy girlie when I feel it there, right? Only then I pull it out, and it’s red.’

The memory made Julia take a hard in-breath through her nose, bite down on her lip. She wasn’t someone you could pat on the head with the old You’re doing great. Conway gave her a second before she said, ‘Chris’s.’

‘Yeah. I’d seen it on him; it fell out of his pocket once, when we were… I go, “Lenie, what the fuck?” She looks at me and she’s like, “Huh?” I swear I nearly shoved the phone up her arse. I went, “Where did you get this? And where’s your one?” She looks at the phone and after a second she says – this is it, this is all she says – “Oh.”’

Julia shook her head. ‘Just like that. “Oh.” I still feel sick thinking about it.’

Conway said, ‘You figured she’d killed Chris.’

‘Duh, yeah, I did. I just- What was I supposed to think? I thought she’d been out meeting him and he told her about me, and she- And then when she was legging it back inside, she grabbed the wrong phone somehow. If they’d, I don’t know, if they’d taken off their clothes and their phones had ended up-’

I said, ‘Or she might have taken it so we couldn’t link her to Chris.’

‘Yeah, no. Selena? Wouldn’t even occur to her. What freaked me out was where was her phone, like had she left it wherever Chris was? But I figured I couldn’t worry about that. I just grabbed the phone and I was out of there.’

It jibed with Holly’s story, or partway. Holly had thought faster: like her dad, always on top of the just-in-case, never let the off-chance sneak up on her. She had swiped Selena’s phone early in the morning, before the full story got through to McKenna and the school went into lockdown. Between then and study time, someone else had found a way into that room.

Conway said, ‘Where’d you put it?’

‘Locked myself in a toilet cubicle, deleted the shit out of the message folders, took out the SIM and stuck the phone in a cistern. I figured even if you found it, you couldn’t link it to us, and without the SIM you probably couldn’t link it to Chris either. That weekend when I went home, I left the phone on the bus. If no one stole it, it’s probably in the Dublin Bus lost and found.’

She had guts, Julia. Guts and enough loyalty for a dozen. She was good stuff. I wished I knew how badly we were going to break her heart.

‘Why keep the SIM card?’ I asked.

‘I thought it could come in useful. I was pretty sure Selena was about to get arrested – even if by some miracle she hadn’t left evidence all over the place, I figured she’d go to pieces and confess. Do you even remember what a wreck she was?’

‘So was everyone else,’ Conway said. The sharp point on her voice said Should’ve known. ‘She wasn’t bawling or fainting: she looked to be in better nick than most.’

Julia’s eyebrow flicked. ‘Yeah, if only you’d told me that back then. I was there expecting you guys to come for her any minute. I thought if there was at least a way to show you that she was the one who’d dumped Chris, and that he was a total dickhead to girls, Lenie might get – I don’t know, a lighter sentence or whatever. Otherwise everyone would just think he dumped her and she went psycho, lock the evil bitch up and throw away the key. I don’t know, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly; I just figured keeping it couldn’t hurt, at least for now, and it might help.’

If Julia had talked to any of the others, she would have known that the story had tangles, that not everything pointed straight to Selena. No way to guess what they would have done next, but they would have done it together.