The Secret Place

Selena thinks about it for a while. Then she forgets it and starts thinking about something else.

‘God,’ Julia says, shifting her arse on the dirt. ‘Where is everyone? Didn’t this place use to be, like, interesting?’

‘It’s the weather,’ Holly says. Her itchy feeling has got worse. She finds a Crunchie wrapper in her pocket and twists it into a tight ball.

‘I like it like this,’ Becca says. ‘All it used to be was dumb guys looking for someone to pick on.’

‘Which at least wasn’t boring. We might as well have stayed inside.’

Holly realises what the itchy feeling is: she’s lonely. Realising makes it worse. ‘Then let’s go in,’ she says. Suddenly she wants the Court, wants to stuff herself full to the seams with synthetic music and pink sugar.

‘I don’t want to go in. What’s the point? We have to go back to school in like two minutes.’

Holly thinks of going inside anyway, but she can’t tell whether any of the others would come too, and the thought of dragging through the grey rain on her own swells the loneliness. Instead she launches the Crunchie wrapper into the air, spins it a couple of times and hovers it.

No one does anything. Holly floats the wrapper temptingly towards Julia, who bats it away like an annoying bug. ‘Stop.’

‘Hey. Lenie.’

Holly practically bounces it off Selena’s forehead. For a second Selena looks bewildered; then she gently plucks the wrapper out of the air and tucks it into her pocket. She says, ‘We don’t do that any more.’

The reasons hum in the air. ‘Hey,’ Holly says, too loud and ludicrous, into the wet grey silence. ‘That was mine.’

No one answers. It comes to Holly, for the first time, that someday she’ll believe – one hundred per cent believe, take for granted – that it was all their imagination.

Julia is texting again; Selena has slid back into her daydream. Holly loves the three of them with such a huge and ferocious and bruised love that she could howl.

Becca catches her eye and nods at the ground. When Holly looks down, Becca skips a pebble through the weeds and lands it on the toe of Holly’s Ugg. Holly has just time to feel a tiny bit better before Becca smiles at her, kindly, an adult giving a kid a sweetie.

It’s Transition Year, things would be weird anyway. The four of them do their work-experience weeks in different places with different hours; when teachers split the class into groups to do projects about internet advertising or volunteer work with kids with handicaps, they break up gangs of friends on purpose, because Transition Year is all about new experiences. That’s what Holly tells herself, on days when she hears Julia’s laugh rise out of a crowd across the classroom, on days when the four of them finally have a few minutes together in their room at lights-out and they barely say a word: it’s just Transition Year. It would have happened anyway. Next year everything will go back to normal.

This year when Becca says she’s not going to the Valentine’s dance, no one tries to change her mind. When Sister Cornelius catches Julia snogging François Levy right on the dance floor, Holly and Selena don’t say a word. Holly isn’t positive that Selena, swaying off-beat with her arms around herself, even noticed.

Afterwards, when they get back to their room, Becca is curled on her bed with her back to them and her earbuds in. Her reading light catches the flash of an open eye, but she doesn’t say anything and so neither do they.

The next week, when Miss Graham tells them to get into groups of four for the big final art project, Holly grabs the other three so fast she almost falls off her chair. ‘Ow,’ Julia says, jerking her arm away. ‘What the hell?’

‘Jesus, chillax. I just don’t want to get stuck with some idiots who’ll want to do a massive picture of Kanye made out of lipstick kisses.’

‘You chillax,’ Julia says, but she grins. ‘No Kanye kisses. We’ll go with Lady Gaga made of tampons. It’ll be a commentary on women’s place in society.’ She and Holly and Becca all get the giggles and even Selena grins, and Holly feels her shoulders relax for the first time in ages.

‘Hi,’ Holly calls, banging the door behind her.

‘In here,’ her dad calls back, from the kitchen. Holly dumps her weekend bag on the floor and goes in to him, shaking a dusting of rain off her hair.

He’s at a counter peeling potatoes, long grey T-shirt sleeves pushed up above his elbows. From behind – rough hair still mostly brown, strong shoulders, muscled arms – he looks younger. The oven is on, turning the room warm and humming; outside the kitchen window the February rain is a fine mist, almost invisible.

Chris Harper has been dead for nine months, a week and five days.

Dad gives Holly a no-hands hug and leans down so she can kiss his cheek – stubble, cigarette smell. ‘Show me,’ he says.

‘Dad.’

‘Show.’

‘You’re so paranoid.’