The Secret Place

They both hear it in her voice: Joanne’s won. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ Joanne says, flicking one last sneer at her and turning away. ‘I forgot your dad’s a Guard.’ She makes it sound like a sewage sorter. Joanne’s dad is a banker.

Speaking of whom. Dealing with Joanne has taken Holly’s attention off the window; the first she knows about Dad arriving is when there’s a tap on the door and his head pokes round it. For one second the rush of helpless gladness blows away everything else, even embarrassment: Dad will fix it all. Then she remembers all the reasons why he won’t.

Alison’s mum must have got snared by McKenna for a de-panicking session, but Dad doesn’t get snared unless he wants to be. ‘Miss Houlihan,’ he says. ‘I’m just borrowing Holly for a minute. I’ll bring her back safe and sound, cross my heart.’ And gives Houlihan a smile like she’s a movie star. She never thinks of saying no. The fog-layer of whispers stops moving to let Holly pass underneath, watched.

‘Hiya, chickadee,’ Dad says, in the corridor. The hug is one-armed, casual as any weekend hello, except for the convulsive gripe of his hand pressing her head into his shoulder. ‘You OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ Holly says. ‘You didn’t need to come.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything else, figured I might as well.’ Dad is never doing nothing else. ‘Did you know this young fella?’

Holly shrugs. ‘I’ve seen him around. We talked a couple of times. He wasn’t my friend. Just some guy from Colm’s.’

Dad holds her away and scans her, blue eyes lasering right through hers to scour the inside of her skull for scraps. Holly sighs and stares back. ‘I’m not devastated. Swear to God. Satisfied?’

He grins. ‘Smart-arsed little madam. Come on; let’s go for a walk.’ He links her arm through his and strolls her down the corridor like they’re headed for a picnic. ‘How about your pals? Did they know him?’

‘Same as me,’ Holly says. ‘Just from around. We saw the detectives during the assembly. Do you know them?’

‘Costello, I do. He’s no genius, but he’s sound enough, gets the job done. Your woman Conway, I only know what I’ve heard. She sounds OK. No idiot, anyway.’

‘Were you talking to them?’

‘Checked in with Costello on my way up. Just to make it clear that I won’t be stepping on their toes. I’m here as a dad, not a detective.’

Holly asks, ‘What’d they say?’

Dad takes the stairs at an easy jog. He says, ‘You know the drill. Anything they tell me, I can’t tell you.’

He can be a dad all he wants; he’s always a detective too. ‘Why? I’m not a witness.’

This time, says the space in the air when she stops.

‘We don’t know that yet. Neither do you.’

‘Yeah, I do.’

Dad lets that lie. He holds the front door open for her. The air spreading its arms to them is soft, stroking their cheeks with sweet greens and golds; the sky is holiday-blue.

When they’re down the steps and crunching across the white pebbles, Dad says, ‘I’d like to believe that if you knew anything – anything at all, even something that was probably nothing – you’d tell me.’

Holly rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not stupid.’

‘Farthest thing from it. But at your age, going by what I remember from a few hundred years ago, keeping your mouth shut around adults is a reflex. A good one – nothing wrong with learning to sort stuff out by yourselves – but it’s one that can go too far. Murder isn’t something you and your mates can sort. That’s the detectives’ job.’

Holly knows it already. Her bones know it: they feel slight and bendy as grass stalks, no core to them. She thinks of Selena, rag-dolled in that chair. Things need doing, things she can’t even get hold of. She wants to lift Selena up, put her in Dad’s arms and say Take good care of her.

She feels Joanne behind her, high in the library window. Her stare zipping through the sunlit air to fingernail-pinch the back of Holly’s neck, twisting.

She says, ‘I’ve actually known that for a while. Remember?’

She can tell by Dad’s head rearing back that she’s taken him off guard. They never talk about that time when she was a kid.

‘OK,’ he says, a second later. Whether he believes her or not, he’s not going any farther down that trail. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. In that case, I’ll have a word with Costello, ask him to interview you now, get it out of the way. Then you can pack up your stuff, nice and discreetly, and come home with me.’

Holly was expecting this, but she still feels her legs go rigid against it. ‘No. I’m not going home.’

And Dad was expecting that; his stride doesn’t change. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. And it’s not forever. Just for a few days, till the lads get this sorted.’

‘What if they don’t? Then what?’

‘If they don’t have their man locked up by Monday, we’ll review the situation. It shouldn’t come to that, though. From what I hear, they’re pretty close to an arrest.’

Their man. Not Joanne. Whatever the detectives have against this guy, sooner or later it’s going to crumble in their hands, and they’re going to go hunting again.