The Secret Place

It had been months too late for that to happen. Chris had cracked the four of them right across. Even after he was gone, the fault line he made had kept widening, deep under the surface, while everything up on top shone beautiful as new. We were just finishing the job he had begun.

I said, ‘Can you remember if anyone did manage to go up to the boarders’ wing before study period that day? We’ll check the logbook, but while we have you here: anything come to mind?’

I had Julia’s attention. She was watching me hard. ‘What? You think someone else put that phone down behind Selena’s bed?’

‘If Selena didn’t take that phone off Chris, someone else did. And then somehow it got to where you found it.’

‘Like, someone tried to frame her?’

Behind her shoulder, Conway’s eyes said Careful

. I shrugged. ‘We can’t say that yet. I’d just like to know if anyone had the opportunity.’

Julia thought. Shook her head, reluctantly. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, obviously I’d love to say yeah, but actually there’s not a chance in hell anyone would’ve got up there without a really good excuse. And even then, no way would she have been allowed on her own. Seriously, when I asked could I go get my French homework, Houlihan acted like I’d asked to go into a drugden and buy heroin.’

The violin under Rebecca’s bed. The flute in Selena’s bit of wardrobe. I said, ‘What about during activities? Anyone go missing then?’

‘Seriously? You think I’d’ve noticed? If you’d seen the mess the place was in… Plus I was concentrating on trying to get that phone. Joanne and Orla do drama too, and I know they were both there because Joanne kept trying to burst into tears’ – Julia mimed puking – ‘and Orla had to comfort her and shit. But they’re the only ones I remember.’

‘We’ll try asking your mates.’ I said it nice and casual. The moonlight blazed into my face, felt like it was stripping me naked. I tried not to turn away. ‘Do they do drama as well, yeah? Or would they be able to tell us about other groups?’

‘We’re not actually surgically attached. Holly does dance. Selena and Becca do instrument practice.’

So they would have had to go back to their room to get their instruments. Two of them together, to protect each other from the brain-eating maniac; they would have been allowed.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘How many people in those, do you know?’

Julia shrugged. ‘Lots of people do dance. Like forty? Instruments, maybe like a dozen.’

The odds said the rest had been day girls. We would check the logbook, but if the numbers held, Rebecca and Selena had been the only ones through that door.

The sudden quiet, all the day’s jabbering and wailing fizzled away into that white silence. Rebecca holding out the phone she had taken to make sure that Selena was safe, that no one could ever link her to Chris. Holding it out like a gift, priceless. Like salvation.

Or: Selena burrowing in the wardrobe for her flute, slow with shock and grief. Behind her back, Rebecca, light as a ghost and just as urgent, leaning over her bed. Selena was the one who had started keeping secrets. She was the one who had let Chris in, to start things cracking apart. It had been her fault.

I looked at Conway, across that lone gallant slash of red. She was looking at me.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Your mates might remember someone leaving. Worth a shot, anyway.’

‘I’d say Selena was too upset to do much noticing,’ Conway said. ‘Let’s ask Rebecca.’ And she stood up.

Mostly people look relieved. Julia looked taken aback. ‘What, that’s it?’

‘Unless there’s something else you want to tell us.’

Blank second. Head-shake, almost reluctant.

‘Then yeah, that’s it. Thanks very much.’

I stood up too, turned towards the path. Julia said, ‘What did I give you?’

She was looking at nothing. I said, ‘Hard to tell at this point. We’ll have to see as we go.’

Julia didn’t answer. We waited for her to stand up, but she didn’t move. After a minute we left her there, looking out over what used to be her kingdom; black hair and white face and that ember of red, and the white grass spread all around her.

Chapter 28

They’re eating breakfast when Holly feels the thread-tug of something gone wrong, deep in the weave of the school. Too many footsteps tumbling too fast, down a corridor; nun-voices too shrill outside the window, snapping to hushed too suddenly.

No one else notices. Selena is ignoring her muesli and twisting at a loose pyjama button, Julia is eating cornflakes with one hand and doing her English homework with the other. Becca is gazing at her toast like it’s turned into the Virgin Mary, or maybe like she’s trying to lift it off the plate without touching it, which would be a hugely stupid idea but Holly doesn’t have time to worry about it right now. She nibbles her toast in circles, and keeps one eye on the window and the other on the door.

Her toast is down to thumb-sized when she sees the two uniformed cops, hurrying down the edge of the back lawn, trying for out of sight but getting it just wrong.