The Secret Place

‘Again,’ Holly said. Her eyes stayed closed. ‘I didn’t want to be a rat again.’

‘If you’d told me everything you knew, you would’ve probably ended up testifying in court, and the rest of the school would’ve found out you’d squelt. But you still wanted the killer caught. That card was the perfect chance. You didn’t have to tell me anything; just point me in the right direction, and keep your fingers crossed.’

Holly said, ‘You weren’t stupid, last time. And you didn’t act like anyone under twenty had to be stupid. I thought if I could just get you in here…’

Conway said, ‘And you were right.’

‘Yeah,’ Holly said. The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, would have broken your heart. I couldn’t look at Mackey. ‘Go me.’

I asked, ‘How did you figure out it wasn’t Joanne after all? When we came to take you to the art room, you knew. What happened?’

Holly’s chest lifted and fell. ‘When that light bulb blew up,’ she said. ‘I knew then.’

‘Yeah? How?’

She didn’t answer. She was done.

‘Chickadee,’ Mackey said. His voice was a kind of gentle I’d never thought could come out of him. ‘It’s been a long, long day. Time to go home.’

Holly’s eyes opened. She said to him, like no one else existed, ‘You thought it was me. You thought I killed Chris.’

Mackey’s face closed over. He said, ‘We’ll talk about it in the car.’

‘What did I ever do to make you think I would kill someone? Like ever, in my whole life?’

‘The car, chickadee. Now.’

Holly said, ‘You just figured if anyone annoyed me I’d bash them over the head, because I’m your daughter and it’s in our blood. I’m not just your daughter. I’m an actual person. Of my own.’

‘I know that.’

‘And you kept me down there so they could make Becca confess. Because you knew if I got up here, I’d shut her up. You made me leave her here till she…’ Her throat closed.

Mackey said, ‘I’m asking you, as a favour to me: let’s go home. Please.’

Holly said, ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She straightened, joint by joint, moved out from under the cypresses. Mackey took a fast breath to call after her, then bit it down. Conway and I both had better sense than to look at him.

In the centre of the clearing, Holly dropped to her knees in the grass. For a second I thought the others were going to tighten their backs against her. Then they opened like a puzzle, arms unfurling, reached out to draw her in and closed around her.

A nightbird ghosted across the top of the glade, calling high, trailing a dark spiderweb of shadow over our heads. Somewhere a bell grated for lights-out; none of the girls moved. We left them there as long as we could.

We waited in McKenna’s office for the social worker to come take Rebecca away. For a different crime, we could have released her into McKenna’s custody, let her have one last night at Kilda’s. Not for this. She would spend the night, at least, in a child detention school. Whispers crowding around the new girl, eyes probing for clues to where she fit in and what they could do with her: deep down, under the rough sheets and the raw smell of disinfectant, it wouldn’t be too different from what she was used to.

McKenna and Rebecca faced each other across the desk, Conway and I stood around in empty space. None of us talked. Conway and I couldn’t, in case something came across like questioning; McKenna and Rebecca didn’t, being careful or because they had nothing to say to us. Rebecca sat with her hands folded like a nun, gazing out of the window, thinking so hard she sometimes stopped breathing. Once she shivered, all over.

McKenna didn’t know what face to wear, for any of us, so she looked down at her hands clasped on the desk. She had layered up her makeup but she still looked ten years older than that morning. The office looked older too, or a different kind of old. The sunlight had given it a slow voluptuous glow, packed every scrape with a beckoning secret and turned every dust-mote into a whispering memory. In the stingy light off the overhead bulb, the place just looked worn out.

The social worker – not the one from that morning; a different one, fat in floppy tiers like she was made of stacked pancakes – didn’t ask questions. You could tell from the fast sneaky glances that her job gave her more piss-sprayed blocks of flats than places like this, but she just said, ‘Well! Time we were getting some sleep. Off we go,’ and held the door open for Rebecca.

‘Don’t call me we,’ Rebecca said. She got up and headed for the door, not a glance at the social worker, who was clicking her tongue and tucking in her chins.

At the door she turned. ‘It’s going to be all over the news,’ she said, to Conway. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘I haven’t heard you caution her,’ the social worker said, pointing a waggy finger at Conway. ‘You can’t use anything she says.’ To Rebecca: ‘We need to be very quiet right now. Like two little mice.’

‘The media won’t use your name,’ Conway said. ‘You’re a minor.’