The Secret Place

by Tana French

  Selena knows this is good, either way. When they slid through the gap into the Field and she saw Chris sitting there, she prayed he wouldn’t come over. But she wasn’t ready for how it would hurt, how every time his eyes skim past her would feel like the air being ripped out of her lungs. Harry Bailey keeps talking to her about the mock exams and she keeps answering, but she has no clue what she’s said. The whole world is weighted and sliding towards Chris.

  He has two months and three weeks left to live.

  ‘My photos!’ Becca bursts out, on a rising note that’s almost a wail. For the last few minutes Selena’s felt Becca winding tighter beside her, doing something more and more hyper with her phone, but Chris pushed that to the edge of her mind.

  ‘Huh?’ says Holly.

  ‘They’re gone! OhmyGod, all of them—’

  ‘Breathe, Becs. They’re in there.’

  ‘No they’re not, I checked everywhere— I never backed them up! All my photos of us, like everything all year – oh Jesus—’

  She’s panicking. ‘Hey,’ says Marcus Wiley, eyes sliding up from his slouch among his mates and all over Becca. ‘What’ve you got on there that’s such a big deal?’

  Finbar Wright says, ‘Gotta be tit pics.’

  ‘Maybe she’s sent them to all her contacts,’ says someone else. ‘Everyone check, quick.’

  ‘Fuck that, man,’ Marcus Wiley says. ‘Who wants to see those?’

  Howls of laughter, exploding up like mines. Becca is scarlet – with fury, not embarrassment, but it silences her just as hard. ‘Nobody wants to see your mini-dick either,’ Julia points out coolly, ‘but that doesn’t stop you.’

  Howls, even louder ones. Marcus grins. ‘You liked the pic, yeah?’

  ‘It gave us a laugh. Once we figured out what it was supposed to be.’

  ‘I thought it was a cocktail sausage,’ Holly says. ‘Only smaller.’

  She bounces it Selena’s way with a glance – Your turn – but Selena looks away. She remembers that day in the Court with Andrew Moore and his friends, just a few months ago, the wild gale of new strength whipping her breath away: We can do this we can say this whether they want us to or not. Now it feels stupid, like spending your afternoon hand-slapping some bratty snotty toddler that isn’t even yours. The speed of things changing makes her feel carsick.

  ‘Was it your baby brother’s?’ Julia asks. ‘Because kiddie porn is illegal.’

  ‘Man,’ says Finbar, shoving Marcus and grinning. ‘You told us it got her all wet.’

  They all sound like yammering nothing. Chris hasn’t moved. Selena wants to go home and lock herself in a toilet cubicle and cry.

  ‘Maybe he meant she wet herself laughing,’ says Holly, charitably. ‘Which she almost did.’

  Marcus can’t think of anything to do to Julia and Holly, so he launches himself onto Finbar. They wrestle and grunt through the weeds, half showing off for the girls but meaning it anyway.

  Becca, frantically jabbing buttons, is on the edge of tears. ‘Did you check if they’re on your SIM card?’ Selena asks.

  ‘I checked everywhere!’

  ‘Hey,’ says someone, and Selena feels the jolt slam through her even before she turns her head. Chris drops down to sit beside Becca and holds out his hand. ‘Give us a look.’

  Becca whips her phone out of reach and gives Chris a suspicious glare. It’s OK, Selena wants to say, you can give it to him, don’t be scared. She knows better, a whole bunch of different ways, than to say anything.

  ‘Whoa, look at that!’ Someone from Marcus’s gang, whooping across Marcus and Finbar still rolling in the weeds. ‘Harper’s into mingers!’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Holly tells Chris. ‘She doesn’t actually have tit pics.’

  ‘She doesn’t actually have tits—’

  Chris ignores them both. To Becca, gently, the way he’d coax a prickling cat: ‘I might be able to get your photos back. I used to have that phone; it does this weird thing sometimes.’

  Becca wavers. His face, clear and steady-eyed: Selena knows how it opens you. Becca’s hand comes out, her fingers uncurl on the phone.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Marcus yells, sitting up with a hand to his face and blood coming out between his fingers. ‘My fucking nose!’

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ Finbar dusts himself off, half scared, half proud, glancing over at the girls. ‘You went for me, man.’

  ‘You were asking for it!’

  ‘I started it,’ Julia points out. ‘Are you planning on punching me too? Or just sending me more mini-dick pics?’

  Marcus ignores her. He pulls himself up and heads for the fence, with his head tipped back and his hand still over his nose. ‘Ahh,’ Julia says with satisfaction, turning her back to the guys. ‘You know something? I needed that.’

  ‘Here,’ Chris says, holding out Becca’s phone. ‘Are these them?’

  ‘OhmyGod!’ Becca yelps, on a wild rush of relief. ‘Yeah, they are. That’s them. How did you . . . ?’

  ‘You just moved them to the wrong folder. I put them back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Becca says. ‘Thank you.’ She’s giving him the smile she never normally gives anyone but the three of them, a huge shining monkey-crunch. Selena knows why. It’s because if Chris can do something like that, just out of niceness, then not all guys are Marcus Wiley or James Gillen. Chris has that knack: turning the world into a different place, one that makes you want to take a running dive right into the middle.

  Chris smiles back at Becca. ‘No hassle,’ he says. ‘If it gives you any more grief, you come find me and I’ll have a look, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Becca says. She’s mesmerised, face upturned to his, radiant in his light.

  Chris gives her a tiny wink and turns away, and for a second Selena can’t breathe, but his eyes go right over her like she’s not there. ‘I like your new pet,’ he tells Julia, nodding at the front of her jumper, which has a stoned-looking fox woven into it. ‘Is he housetrained?’

  ‘He’s very well-behaved,’ Julia says. ‘Sit! Stay! See? Good boy.’

  ‘I think there’s something wrong with him,’ Chris says. ‘He’s not moving. When was the last time you fed him?’ He throws a marshmallow at the fox, out of his pick-and-mix bag.

  Julia catches the marshmallow and tosses it into her mouth. ‘He’s fussy. Try chocolate.’

  ‘Yeah, right. He can buy his own.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Julia says, ‘I think you’ve pissed him off,’ and sticks a hand up her jumper to send the fox leaping at Chris, and he mock-yells and jumps up. And then somehow he’s next to Selena and the air has turned into something you can feel on every inch of your skin, lifting you, irresistible. His smile feels like she’s known it by heart forever.

  ‘Want one?’ he says, and holds out the pick-and-mix bag.

  Something in his eyes tells Selena to pay attention. ‘OK,’ she says. She looks into the bag, and in with the powdery bonbons and the dried-out fudge is a small pink phone.

  ‘Actually,’ Chris tells her, ‘you have the rest of them. I’ve had enough.’ And he leaves the bag in her hand and turns away to ask Holly what she’s doing for Easter.

  Selena puts a sherbet lemon in her mouth, rolls the top of the bag and shoves it deep into her coat pocket. Harry has given up on her and is telling Becca how his Economics mock was a total ’mare, doing an impression of himself having a full-on cross-eyed wobbler in the middle of the exam room, and Becca is laughing. Selena looks up at the long strokes of light plummeting down between clouds straight at them all, and tastes exploding lemon and feels the insides of her wrists tingling.

  During first study period Selena goes to the toilet. On the way, she slips into their bedroom, pulls the pick-and-mix bag out of her coat and shoves it into the pocket of her hoodie.

  The phone is dusted with sugar and it’s empty: nothing in the contacts folder, nothing in the photo album, even the time and date haven’t been set. The only thing on it is one text, from a number
she doesn’t recognise. It says Hi.

  Selena sits on the toilet lid, smelling cold and disinfectant and powdered sugar. Rain blows softly against the windowpane, shifts away again; footsteps slap down the corridor and someone runs into the bathroom, grabs a handful of toilet paper, blows her nose wetly and runs out again, slamming the cubicle door behind her. Upstairs, where the fifth-years and sixth-years are allowed to study in their own rooms if they want to, someone is playing some song with a fast sweet riff that catches in your heartbeat and tugs it speeding along: Never saw you looking but I found what you were looking for, never saw you coming but I see you coming back for more . . . After a long time Selena texts back, Hi.

  By the first night they meet, the rain has stopped. No wind rattles the bedroom window to wake the others when Selena eases her way out of bed and slips the key, millimetre by millimetre, out of Julia’s phone case. No cloud blocks the moonlight as she pushes up the sash window and slides out onto the grass.

  She’s barely taken two steps when she starts to realise: outside is a different place tonight. The shadowy spots are seething with things she can almost hear, scuttles and slow-rising snarls; the patches of moonlight stake her down for the night watchman, for Joanne’s gang, for anyone or anything who happens to be on the prowl. It reaches her vividly that the usual protections aren’t in place tonight, that anyone who wants her could walk up and grab her. It’s been so long since she felt this, it takes her a moment to understand what it is: fear.

  She starts to run. As she dives off the lawn into the trees it sinks into her that she’s different tonight, too. She’s not weightless now, not skimming over the grass and jack-knifing between trees deft as a shadow; her feet snap great clusters of twigs, her arms snag branches that bounce back wildly through rustling bushes, every time she moves she’s screaming invitations to every predator out there and tonight she’s prey. Things pad and sniff behind her and are gone when she leaps around. By the time she reaches the back gate her blood is made out of white terror.

  The back gate is old wrought iron, backed with ugly sheet metal to stop anyone getting ideas about climbing, but the stone wall is rough with age, handholds and footholds everywhere. Back in first year Selena and Becca used to climb up and balance along the top, so high that sometimes passers-by on the lane outside walked right under them without ever realising they were there. Becca fell off and broke her wrist, but that didn’t stop them.

  Chris isn’t there.

  Selena presses into the shadow of the wall and waits, trying to muffle her breathing to nothing. A fresh kind of fear is rising inside her, whirling and horrible: What if none of those texts were him at all, what if he was setting me up with some friend of his and that’s who shows up – what if the whole thing was one huge big joke and they’re all waiting to jump out from somewhere and howl laughing, I’ll never live it down ever – serve me right— The sounds in the dark are still circling, the moon overhead is sharp-edged enough to slice your hands to separate bones if you dared lift them. Selena wants to run. She can’t move.

  When the shape rises over the top of the wall, black against the stars, pulling itself up to hunch above her, she can’t scream. She can’t even try to understand what it is; she only knows something has turned solid and come for her at last.

  Then it whispers, ‘Hey,’ in Chris’s voice. The sound zaps white lightning across her eyes. Then she remembers why she’s there.

  ‘Hey,’ she whispers back, shaking and hoping. The black shape rears up on top of the wall, miles high, stands tall and straight for a second and then soars.

  He lands with a thud. ‘Jesus, I’m glad it’s you! I couldn’t see you properly, I was thinking it was a watchman or a nun or—’

  He’s laughing under his breath, brushing down his jeans where the leap landed him on his knees. Selena thought she remembered what he was like, how when he’s there the world snaps into focus almost too real to bear, but he hits her like a searchlight to the face all over again. The vividness of him sends the circling things scuttling backwards into the darkness. She’s laughing too, breathless and giddy with relief. ‘No! There is a watchman, though, he checks this gate when he does his rounds – we’ve seen him. We have to move. Come on.’

  She’s already moving, backwards and beckoning down the path, with Chris bounding after her. Now that the terror’s gone she can smell the air, rich and pulsing with a thousand signs of spring.

  There are benches along the paths, and Selena’s aiming for one of those, the one shadowed under a wide oak between two open stretches of grass, so you can see anyone coming before they see you. The best thing would be one of the deepest corners of the grounds, the ones where you have to fight through bushes and clamber over awkward undergrowth to find a tiny patch of grass to sit on – she knows them all – but you would have to sit close, almost touching already. The benches are wide enough to leave an arm’s length between you. See, she says in her mind, see, I’m being safe. Nothing comes back.

  As they pass the rise to the glade, Chris’s head turns. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Let’s go up there.’

  That dark prickle hits Selena’s back again. She says, ‘There’s a place just down here that’s really nice.’

  ‘Just for a minute. It reminds me of somewhere.’

  She can’t think of a reason to say no. She climbs the slope side by side with Chris and tells herself maybe it’s on purpose to help her, maybe the glade is going to keep her untempted, but she knows: she’s not getting help tonight. As they step into the clearing the cypress branches boil and hiss. This is a bad idea.

  In the middle of the clearing, Chris turns, his face tipped up to the stars. He’s smiling, a small private smile. He says, ‘It’s good here.’

  Selena says, ‘Where does it remind you of?’

  ‘There’s this place. Near home.’ He’s still turning, looking up at the trees; it catches at Selena, the way he looks at them like they matter, like he wants to remember every detail. ‘It’s just an old house, Victorian or something, I don’t know. I found it when I was a kid, maybe seven; it was empty, like you could tell it’d been abandoned for ages – holes in the roof, the windows were all broken and boarded up . . . It’s got this big garden, and right in one corner there was a circle of trees. Not the same kind as these – I don’t know what they are, I don’t know that stuff – but still. It reminded me.’

  He catches her eye and pulls back into a shrug and a half-laugh. In texts they’ve talked about stuff Selena doesn’t even tell the others, but this is different; they’re so close they make each other’s skin fizz. ‘I mean, I don’t go there now. Someone bought it a couple of years back; they started locking the gates. I climbed up and looked over the wall once, and there were a couple of cars in the drive. I don’t know if they actually live there, or if they did it up, or what. Anyway.’ He heads over to the edge of the clearing and starts poking a foot into the undergrowth. ‘Do animals live in here? Like rabbits or foxes?’

  Selena says, ‘Did you go there when you wanted to be on your own?’

  Chris turns and looks at her. ‘Yeah,’ he says, after a moment. ‘When things weren’t great at home. Sometimes I’d get up really early, like five in the morning, and I’d go there for a couple of hours. Just to sit there. Out in the garden, if it wasn’t raining, or inside if it was. Then I’d go home, before anyone else was awake, and get back into bed. They never even knew I was gone.’

  In that instant it’s him, the same guy whose texts she’s cupped in her hands like fireflies. He says, ‘I never told anyone that before.’ He’s smiling at her, half-startled, half-shy.

  Selena wants to smile back and tell him how she and the others come to the glade, in exchange, but she can’t; not till she’s cleared away the thing pinching at her. She says, ‘The phone. The one you gave me.’

  ‘You like it?’ But he’s looked away again. He’s peering back under the cypresses, even though there’s no way he could see into that dark. ‘There could even
be badgers in here.’

  ‘Alison Muldoon’s got one exactly the same. So’s Aileen Russell, in fourth year. So’s Claire McIntyre.’

  Chris laughs, but it sounds like an attack and he doesn’t feel like the guy she knows any more. ‘So? You can’t have the same phone as any other girl? Jesus, I didn’t think you were that type.’

  Selena flinches. She can’t think of anything to say that won’t make everything even worse. She says nothing.

  He starts moving again, fast mean-dog circles round the clearing. ‘OK. I gave phones like that to some other girls. Not Alison Whatever, but the others: yeah. A couple more, too. And? You don’t own me. We’re not even going out. What do you care who else I text?’

  Selena stays very still. She wonders if this is her punishment: this, like a whipping, and then he’ll be gone and she can drag herself home through the dark and pray that nothing comes skulking to the smell of blood off her. And the whole thing will be over.

  After a moment Chris stops circling. He shakes his head, almost violently. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t’ve . . . But those other girls, they were months ago. I’m not in touch with any of them any more. I swear. OK?’

  Selena says, ‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t care about that.’ She thinks that’s true. ‘Just: when you say you’ve never told anyone something before, I don’t want to wonder if you’ve actually told the same story to a dozen other people and said “I never told anyone this before” every time.’

  He opens his mouth and she knows he’s going to rip her apart, rip this into shreds they can never put back together. Then he rubs his hands up the sides of his jaw, hard, clasps them behind his head. He says, ‘I don’t think I know how to do this.’

  Selena waits. She doesn’t know what to hope.

  ‘I should go. We can keep texting; I’d rather just do that than try seeing each other and have the whole thing go tits-up.’

  Selena says, before she knows she’s going to, ‘It’s not like this has to go tits-up.’