The Secret Place

Rebecca smiled like we were the kiddies. ‘The internet isn’t going to care how old I am,’ she pointed out. ‘Joanne isn’t going to care, the exact second she gets online.’

McKenna said to all of us, one notch too loud, ‘Every student and staff member in this school will be under the strictest instructions not to make any of today’s events public knowledge. On or off the internet.’

We all left a second for that to fall into. When it was gone Rebecca said, ‘If anyone goes looking for my name, like in a hundred years, they’re going to find mine and Chris’s. Together.’

That shiver again, hard as a spasm.

Conway said, ‘It’ll be headlines for a few days now, a few days later on.’ She didn’t say during the trial. ‘Then it’ll go off the radar. Online, it’ll drop even quicker. One celebrity caught shagging the wrong person, and this is yesterday’s news.’

That curled the corner of Rebecca’s mouth. ‘That doesn’t matter. I don’t care what people think.’

Conway said, ‘Then what?’

‘Rebecca,’ McKenna said. ‘You can speak to the detectives tomorrow. When your parents have arranged for appropriate legal counsel.’

Rebecca, thin in the slanted space of the door-frame, where one sideways turn would vanish her into the immeasurable dark of the corridor. She said, ‘I thought I was getting him off us. Getting him off Lenie, so she wouldn’t be stuck to him forever. And instead I am. When I saw him, there in the common room-’

‘I’ve told her,’ the social worker said, through a tight little mouth. ‘You all heard me tell her.’

Rebecca said, ‘So that has to mean I did the wrong thing. I don’t know how, because I was sure, I was so-’

‘I can’t force her to be quiet,’ the social worker told whoever. ‘I can’t gag

her. That’s not my job.’

‘But either I got it wrong, or else I got it right and that doesn’t make a difference: I’m supposed to be punished anyway.’ The paleness of her face blurred its edges, bled her like watercolour. ‘Could it work like that? Do you think?’

Conway lifted her hands. ‘Way above my pay grade.’

If crouds of dangers should appeare, yet friendship can be unconcern’d. That afternoon I had read it the same way Becca had. Somewhere along the way, it had changed.

I said, ‘Yeah, it could.’

Rebecca’s face turned towards me. She looked like I had lit something in her: a deep, slow-burning relief. ‘You think?’

‘Yeah. That poem you have on your wall, that doesn’t mean nothing bad can ever happen if you’ve got proper friends. It just means you can take whatever goes wrong, as long as you’ve got them. They matter more.’

Rebecca thought about that, didn’t even feel the social worker tugging at the leash. Nodded. She said, ‘I didn’t think of that last year. I guess I was just a little kid.’

I asked, ‘Would you do it again, if you knew?’

Rebecca laughed at me. Real laugh, so clear it made you shiver; a laugh that dissolved the exhausted walls, sent your mind unrolling into the vast sweet night. She wasn’t blurry any more; she was the solidest thing in the room. ‘Course,’ she said. ‘Silly, course I would.’

‘Right,’ said the social worker. ‘That’s enough. We’re saying good night now.’ She grabbed Rebecca by the bicep – nasty little pinch off those stubby fingers, but Rebecca didn’t flinch – and shoved her out of the door. Their steps faded: the social worker’s pissed-off clatter, Rebecca’s runners almost too light to hear, gone.

Conway said, ‘We’re going to head as well. We’ll be back tomorrow.’

McKenna turned her head to look at us like her neck hurt. She said, ‘I’m sure you will.’

‘If her parents get back to you, you’ve got our numbers. If Holly and Julia and Selena need anything else from their room, you’ve got the key. If anyone has anything to tell us, whatever time of night, you make sure they get the chance.’

McKenna said, ‘You have made yourselves abundantly clear. I think you can safely leave now.’

Conway was already moving. I was slower. McKenna had turned so ordinary; just one of my ma’s mates, worn down by a drunk husband or a kid in trouble, trying to find her way through the night.

I said, ‘You told us earlier: this school’s survived a lot.’

‘Indeed,’ McKenna said. She had one last punch left in her: that fisheye came up and hit me square on, showed me exactly how she smashed snotty teenagers into cringing kids. ‘And while I appreciate your belated concern, Detective, I am fairly sure that it can survive even such an impressive threat as yourselves.’

‘Put you in your place,’ Conway said, a safe distance down the corridor. ‘And serve you right for arse-licking.’ The dark took her face, her voice. I couldn’t tell how much she was joking.