The Secret Place

Someone wolf-whistled after us, low, as we went out the door. Ripple of snickers. Conway didn’t look back.

Chapter 2

On the first Sunday afternoon of September, the boarders come back to St Kilda’s. They come under a sky whose clean-stripped blue could still belong to summer, except for the V of birds practising off in one corner of the picture. They come screaming triple exclamation marks and jump-hugging in corridors that smell of dreamy summer emptiness and fresh paint; they come with peeling tans and holiday stories, new haircuts and new-grown breasts that make them look strange and aloof, at first, even to their best friends. And after a while Miss McKenna’s welcome speech is over, and the tea urns and good biscuits have been packed away; the parents have done the hugs and the embarrassing last-minute warnings about homework and inhalers, a few first-years have cried; the last forgotten things have been brought back, and the sounds of cars have faded down the drive and dissolved into the outside world. All that’s left is the boarders, and the matron and the couple of staff who drew the short straws, and the school.

Holly’s got so much new coming at her, the best she can do is keep up, keep a blank face and hope that, sooner or later, this starts to feel real. She’s dragged her suitcase down the unfamiliar tiled corridors of the boarders’ wing, the whirr of the wheels echoing up into high corners, to her new bedroom. She’s hung her yellow towels on her hook and spread the yellow-and-white-striped duvet, still neatly creased and smelling packet-fresh of plastic, on her bed – she and Julia have the window beds; Selena and Becca let them have first dibs, after all. Out of the window, from this new angle, the grounds look different: a secret garden full of nooks that pop in and out of existence, ready to be explored if you’re fast enough.

Even the canteen feels like a new place. Holly’s used to it at lunch hour, boiling to the ceiling with gabble and rush, everyone yelling across tables and eating with one hand and texting with the other. By dinnertime the arrival buzz has worn off and the boarders clump in little knots between long stretches of empty Formica, sprawled over their meatballs and salad, talking in murmurs that wander aimlessly around the air. The light feels dimmer than at lunch and the room smells stronger somehow, cooked meat and vinegar, somewhere between savoury and nauseating.

Not everyone is keeping it to a murmur. Joanne Heffernan and Gemma Harding and Orla Burgess and Alison Muldoon are two tables away, but Joanne takes it for granted that everyone in any room wants to hear every word she says, and even when she’s wrong it’s not like most people have the balls to tell her. ‘Hello, it was in Elle, don’t you read? It’s supposed to be totes amazeballs, and let’s face it, I mean not being mean but you could do with an amazeballs exfoliator, couldn’t you, Orls?’

‘Jesus,’ Julia says, grimacing and rubbing her Joanne-side ear. ‘Tell me she’s not that loud at breakfast. I’m not a morning person.’

‘What’s an exfoliator?’ Becca wants to know.

‘Skin thing,’ Selena says. Joanne and the rest of them do every single thing the magazines say you have to do to your face and your hair and your cellulite.

‘It sounds like a gardening thing.’

‘It sounds like a weapon of mass destruction,’ Julia says. ‘And they’re the droid exfoliation army, just following orders. We will exfoliate.’

Her Dalek voice is deliberately loud enough that Joanne and the others whip around, but by that time Julia is holding up a forkful of meat and asking Selena if it’s actually supposed to have eyeballs in it, like Joanne has never occurred to her. Joanne’s eyes scan, blank and chilly; then she turns back, with a hair-toss like paparazzi are watching, to poking through her food.

‘We will exfoliate,’ Julia drones, and then instantly in her own voice: ‘Yeah, Hol, I meant to ask, did your mum find those net bags?’ They’re all fighting giggles.

Joanne snaps, ‘Excuse me, did you say something to me?’

‘In my suitcase,’ Holly tells Julia. ‘When I unpack, I’ll- Who, me, you mean?’

‘Whoever. Is there a problem?’

Julia and Holly and Selena look blank. Becca stuffs potato into her mouth, to keep the ball of fear and thrill from exploding out in a laugh.

‘The meatballs suck?’ Julia offers. And laughs, a second late.

Joanne laughs back, and so do the rest of the Daleks, but her eyes stay cold. ‘You’re funny,’ she says.

Julia crinkles up her nose. ‘Awww, thanks. I aim to please.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Joanne says. ‘You keep aiming,’ and goes back to her dinner.

‘We will exfoli-’

This time Joanne almost catches her. Selena comes in just in time – ‘I’ve got extra net bags, if you guys need them’; her whole face is knotted with giggles, but she’s got her back to Joanne and her voice is peaceful and sure, no hint of a laugh. Joanne’s laser stare sweeps over them and around the tables, searching for someone who would have the nerve.