The Secret Place

The second they’re through the homeroom door, Holly has a hand clamped round Selena’s wrist and she’s force-fielding the whole four of them past sobbing hugging clumps, into a back corner by the window. She grabs them into a fake hug and says, hard, ‘They’re going to be talking to everyone, the Murder detectives are. Don’t tell them anything. No matter what. Specially don’t tell them we can get out. Do you get that?’

‘OhmyGod, look,’ Julia says, holding up a cupped palm, ‘it’s a great big handful of duhhhh. Is it all for us?’

Holly hisses into her face, ‘I’m not joking. OK? This is real. Someone’s going to actual jail, for life.’

‘No, seriously, are they? Do I look handicapped?’

Becca smells the acrid electrical-short urgency. ‘Hol,’ she says. Holly’s all jammed-out angles and staticky hair; Becca wants to stroke her soft and smooth again. ‘We know. We won’t tell them anything. Honestly.’

‘Right, that’s what you think now. You don’t know what it’s like. This isn’t going to be like Houlihan going, “Ooh dear, I smell tobacco, have you girls been smoking cigarettes?” and if you look innocent enough she believes you. These are detectives. If they get one clue that you know anything about anything, they’re like pit bulls. Like, eight hours in an interview room with them interrogating you and your parents going apeshit, does that sound like fun? That’s what’ll happen if you even pause before you answer a question.’

Holly’s forearm is steel, pressing down across Becca’s shoulders. ‘And the other thing is: they lie. OK? Detectives make stuff up all the time. So if they’re all, “We know you were getting out at night, someone saw you,” don’t fall for it

. They don’t actually know anything; they’re just hoping you’ll get freaked out and give them something. You have to look stupid and go, “Nuh-uh, they must’ve got mixed up, it wasn’t us.”’

Someone behind them sobs, ‘He was sooo full of life,’ and a wavering wail rises above the fug of the room. ‘Jesus Christ, someone shut those dumb bitches up,’ Julia snaps, shouldering Holly’s arm away. ‘Fucking ow, Holly, that hurts.’

Holly jams her arm back where it was, clamping Jules in place. ‘Listen. They’ll make up mental stuff. They’ll be like, “We know you were going out with Chris, we’ve got proof-”’

Becca’s eyes snap wide open. Holly is looking straight at Selena, but Becca can’t tell why, if it’s just because they’re opposite each other or if it’s because much more. Selena doesn’t feel staticky. She feels too soft, bruised to jelly.

Julia’s face has gone sharp. ‘They can do that?’

‘OhmyGod, here, have some more duh. They can say whatever they want. They can say they’ve got proof that you

killed him, if they want, just to see what you do.’

Julia says, ‘I have to talk to someone.’ She shrugs Holly’s arm off and heads across the classroom. Becca watches. There’s a high-pitched huddle around Joanne Heffernan, who’s draped artistically over a chair with her head back and her eyes half-shut. Gemma Harding is in the huddle, but Julia says something close to her and they move a step away. Becca can tell by the angles of their heads that they’re keeping their voices down.

Holly says, ‘Please tell me you get that.’

She’s still looking at Selena, who, without the tight brace of the fake hug on both sides, rocks a little and comes down on someone’s desk. Becca’s pretty sure she hasn’t heard any of it. She wishes she could tell Lenie how utterly OK everything is, shake out a great soft blanket of OK and wrap it round Lenie’s shoulders. Things will run their own slow dark ways, down their old underground channels, and heal in their own time. You just have to wait, till you wake up one morning perfect again.

‘I got it,’ she says to Holly, comfortingly, instead.

‘Lenie.

’

Lenie says obligingly, from somewhere way off outside the window, ‘OK.’

‘No. Listen. If they say to you, “We’ve got total proof that you were with Chris,” you just say, “No I wasn’t,” and then you shut up. If they show you an actual video, you just say, “That’s not me.” Do you get it?’

Selena gazes at Holly. Eventually she asks, ‘What?’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Holly says up to the ceiling, hands in her hair. ‘I guess that could work. It’d better.’

Then Mr Smythe comes in and stands in the doorway looking skinny and petrified at the soggy heaving hugging mess in front of him, and starts flapping his hands and bleating, and gradually everyone unweaves themselves and brings the sobs down to sniffles, and Smythe takes a deep breath and starts in on the speech that McKenna made him memorise.