The Secret Place

by Tana French

‘Yeah? We’ve been here two seconds, and look at us. I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘That’s just being dramatic. We were fine outside the dance. All we have to do is talk to each other. Properly.’

  Chris stares at her. After a moment he says, ‘OK: I meant it. I never told anyone about the house before.’

  Selena nods. ‘See?’ she says, ‘How hard was that?’ and grins at him, and gets a startled half-laugh back. Chris blows out a long breath, and loosens.

  ‘I survived.’

  ‘So you don’t have to leave. It won’t go tits-up.’

  He says, ‘I should’ve been straight with you about the phone. Instead of . . .’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Being a prick to you, and all. That was shit. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Selena says.

  ‘Yeah? We’re OK?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘God. Phew.’ Chris does a big exaggerated forehead-swipe, but he means it. He crouches to feel the grass. ‘It’s dry,’ he says, dropping down, and touches a spot beside him.

  When Selena doesn’t move, he says, ‘I’m not going to . . . I mean, don’t worry, I know you’re not – or we’re not— Jesus. I can’t talk. I’m not going to try anything. OK?’

  Selena is laughing. ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I know what you mean,’ and she goes over and sits down next to him.

  They sit there for a while, not talking, not even looking at each other, just getting used to the shapes of them in the shape of the clearing. Selena feels the hidden things thinning away to black veils you could pop with a fingertip, puddling into harmless sleep on the ground. She’s a foot away from Chris, but that side of her is rich with the warmth off him. He has his hands clasped around his knees – they’re like a man’s hands, strong-knuckled and wide – and his head tilted back to look at the sky.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else I’ve never told anyone before,’ he says quietly, after a while. ‘You know what I’m going to do? When I’m old enough, I’m going to buy that house. I’ll fix up the whole place, and then I’ll invite all my friends round and we’ll have a party that lasts like a week. Great music, and lots of drink and hash and E, and the house is big enough that when people get tired they can just go off to one of the bedrooms and crash for a while and then come back to the party, right? Or if they want some privacy or just some quiet, there are all these empty rooms, there’s the whole garden. Whatever mood you’re in, whatever you need right then, this place will have it.’

  His face is glowing. The house flowers in the air above the clearing, every detail carved and shimmering, every corner ringing and fountaining with someday music and laughter. It’s as real as they are.

  ‘And we’ll all remember that party for the rest of our lives. Like, when we’re forty and have jobs and kids and the most exciting thing we ever do is golf, that party’s what we’ll think about when we need to remind ourselves what we used to be like.’

  It comes to Selena that Chris has never once thought it might not happen. What if when he’s old enough the people who own the house don’t want to sell it, what if it’s been knocked down to build an apartment block, what if he doesn’t have enough money to buy it: none of these have ever crossed his mind. He wants it; that makes it as simple and certain as the grass under their legs. Selena feels a shadow like a great bird’s flit across her back.

  She says, ‘It sounds incredible.’

  He turns towards her, smiling. ‘I’ll invite you,’ he says. ‘No matter what.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ she says. She hopes with every part of her that they’re both right.

  ‘Deal?’ Chris asks, holding out his hand to shake on it.

  ‘Deal,’ Selena says, and because she can’t not, she stretches out her hand and shakes his.

  When it’s time to go, he wants to walk her back to the school building, see her safe in at the window, but she won’t let him. The moment they started talking about separating, she felt the things in the shadows stir and raise themselves, hungry; felt the watchman get restless, legs twitching for a walk in the full spring air. If they take any chances, they’ll get caught.

  Instead she lets him watch her up the path towards the school till she knows she’s blurred into the dapple. Then she turns and stays still, feeling the shadows thickening at her back.

  He’s thrumming in the centre of the clearing, full to exploding. When he leaps, it’s head back and punching the sky, and she hears the low jubilant burst of breath. He comes down grinning, and Selena feels herself smiling back. She watches while he runs down the rise to the path, in big bounds so he won’t crush the starting hyacinths, and heads for the back gate at a jog like he can’t keep his feet on the ground.

  Last time he was the one who touched her, before she knew it was coming. This time she reached out to touch him.

  Selena’s ready for the punishment. She expects the others to be wide awake and sitting up when she slips into the bedroom, three pairs of eyes slamming her back against the door, but they’re so floppy asleep they’ve barely moved since she went out – it feels like nights ago. She waits all the next day to be called into McKenna’s office so the night watchman can say Yes that’s her, but the only time she sees McKenna is sailing past in a corridor with her general-purpose majestic half-smile. In a bathroom cubicle, she tries whether she can still flicker the lights, whether her silver ring will still spin above her palm. She does it on her own so the others won’t see her fail and guess why, but everything works perfectly.

  After that she realises it’ll be less obvious than that, more oblique, a blow from the side when she isn’t braced. A phone call telling her that they’ve lost all their money somehow, and she’ll have to drop out of Kilda’s. Her stepdad losing his job and they all have to emigrate to Australia.

  She tries to feel guilty about it, whatever it is, but there’s no space in her mind. Chris is shining into every corner. His laugh, sliding higher than you’d expect from someone with such a deep voice, turning him suddenly young and mischievous. The chop of pain, When things weren’t great at home, slicing off all his careful cheerful façade, turning his face taut and private. The narrow of his eyes against moonlight, the shift of his shoulders as he leans forward, the smell of him, he’s in every moment. She can’t believe the others don’t taste her hot and cinnamony, don’t see it spinning off her like gold dust every time she moves.

  There’s no phone call. She doesn’t get hit by a lorry. Chris is texting her When? The next time Selena and the others go to the glade, she thinks up at the moon: Please do something to me. Or I’m going to meet him again.

  Silence, cold. She understands that Chris is her battle; no one is going to fight it for her.

  I’ll tell him we can’t meet up any more. I’ll tell him he was right and we should just text. The thought of it knocks her breath out, like icy water. If he’s not OK with that, then I’ll stop texting him.

  The next time they meet, in a grassy and moonless silence between two secrets, she takes his hand.

  Chapter 19

  We went to the bedroom door, watched Selena down the corridor and safe to where she was supposed to be. The sing-song was over; when Selena swung the common-room door open, the silence surged out at us, tight and brittle, thrumming.

  Conway watched the door click shut. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You think Chris raped her?’

  ‘Not sure. Gun to my head, I’d say no.’

  ‘Same. But there was more to the breakup than she’s saying. Who dumps a guy because they kissed? What kind of reason is that?’

  ‘Once we get those texts, they might give us something.’

  ‘If Sophie’s guy’s gone home for his dinner, I swear I’m gonna get his address and track the little bollix down.’ A couple of hours earlier, it would’ve come out like she meant it. Now it was auto-pitbull, too tired to clamp down. She checked her watch: quarter to seven. ‘Fuck’s sake. Come on.’

  I said, ‘Even if Chris didn’t rape Selena, som
eone could’ve thought he had.’

  ‘Yeah. They break up, she’s all upset, crying into her unicorns. One of her mates knows she was seeing Chris, figures he did something to her . . .’

  I said, ‘She thinks one of her mates killed him.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s not sure, but she thinks so, yeah.’ This time Conway wasn’t pacing: slumped against the corridor wall instead, head back, trying to rub the day out of her neck. ‘Which means she’s out. Not officially, but out.’

  I said, ‘She’s not outside, but. She’s . . .’ That vortex pull of Selena, things spinning round her axis, I didn’t know how to say that. ‘When we get the story, she’ll be in it.’

  Talking like an eejit, and in front of one of the Murder squad, but Conway wasn’t sneering. Nodding. ‘If she’s right and one of her mates did the job, it was because of Chris and Selena. One way or another.’

  ‘That’s what she thinks, too. At least one of the mates knew all about her and Chris, and didn’t like it. And Selena knew they wouldn’t; that’s why she didn’t tell them to start with.’ I leaned on the wall beside Conway. Fatigue kicking in, me too, the wall felt like it was swaying. ‘Maybe they knew he was a player, thought he’d end up hurting Selena. Maybe he’d done something shite on one of them – just casually, like what Holly told us about – and he was the enemy. Maybe one of them was into him. Maybe one of them had already been with him, earlier in the year.’

  ‘OK,’ Conway said. Rolled her neck, winced. ‘Say we pull them back in, one by one. Tell them we think Selena did it, we’re getting ready to arrest her. That should shake them loose.’

  ‘You think if one of them’s our girl, she’ll come clean to get Selena off the hook?’

  ‘She might. That age, self-preservation isn’t high on their list. Like we were saying before: nothing matters as much as your friends. Not even your life. You’re practically looking for a good reason to sacrifice it.’

  Beat of pain at the base of my throat and in the crooks of my elbows, places where veins run near the surface. I said, ‘That cuts two ways. If one of them confesses, doesn’t mean she did it.’

  ‘If they all go bloody Spartacus, I swear I’ll take them up on it. Arrest the fucking lot, let the prosecutors sort it out.’ Conway pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, like she didn’t want to see the corridor any more. We’d been there long enough that the place was starting to look familiar, in a glitchy way, something you saw in a stuttering DVD or when you were too hammered to see straight. She said, ‘We’ll go at the three of them as soon as we get those full texts. I want some clue what went down between Chris and Selena – the breakup, and after. See her face, when she looked at those records? The ones for just before the murder?’

  I said, ‘Startled. Looked like the real thing to me.’

  ‘You think everything’s the real thing. How you got this far . . .’ She didn’t have the energy. ‘It did, but. She didn’t expect to see all those texts. She might’ve just flaked out and forgotten them; she’s spacy enough to start with, and she says herself she’s not too clear on those couple of weeks. Or else . . .’

  ‘Or else someone else knew about her phone. Used it to send some of those texts.’

  Conway said, ‘Yeah. Joanne must’ve figured that Selena had a special Chris phone, same as she did. Julia must’ve, too, since she knew about Joanne’s. And did you see Selena clam up when I asked about finding the phone in the wrong position? Someone was at it, all right.’

  I said, ‘We need those texts. Even if they’re not signed—’

  ‘They won’t be.’

  ‘Yeah, probably not. But there might be something that gives us a hint who wrote them.’

  ‘Yeah. And I want to ID the other girls Chris was texting, before he hooked up with Selena. If another one of our eight was in there, things are gonna get interesting – specially if she’s the one he was juggling with Joanne. Bet you anything the special phones were never registered, but we could get lucky, find a name somewhere in the texts – or there could be something in the photos they sent, if we can get them. Any girl with the brains of pet food would’ve cropped out her face, but I’m gonna bet on at least one idiot. And someone might have a mole on her tit, a scar, something identifiable.’

  I said, ‘OK if I leave that part to you?’

  Conway still had her hands on her eyes, but I saw the twitch of her mouth, what might have been a grin if she’d been less wrecked. ‘I’ll look at the girls’ pics, you look at Chris’s. No one needs brain bleach.’

  ‘We hope.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The grin was gone. ‘OK: I’ll go ask McKenna to let that lot outside for a while. Seeing as I promised Selena.’ I’d forgotten. ‘Then we’ll head down to the canteen, see if we can find something to eat while we wait for Sophie’s guy to pull his finger out. I could murder a dirty great burger.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Two. And chips.’

  We were straightening up, smoothing down, when it came: buzz from Conway’s pocket.

  She grabbed for the phone. ‘The texts.’ She was straight-backed and alert as morning, fatigue tossed away like a wet jacket. ‘Ah, yeah. Here we go. Swear to God, I’d marry Sophie.’

  This attachment was even longer than the last one. ‘Sit down for this,’ Conway said. ‘Over there,’ and jerked her chin towards the window alcove at the far end of the corridor, between the two common rooms. The window had gone a clear lit purple, dusk that looked like thunder. Fine clouds shifted, restless.

  We pulled ourselves onto the sill and sat shoulder to shoulder. Started at the beginning of the attachment and skimmed fast, trying to pay attention to the early stuff. Kids on Christmas morning, able to think about nothing but the big shiny package we were saving for last. Silence drumming at us, from the doors on both sides.

  Lots of flirting. Chris flattering, Saw u down at d court 2day, u were looking gorgeous; the girl coming back coy, OMG cant beleive u saw me looking sooo crap my hair was a total mess lol. Chris straight in there, Wasn’t looking at ur hair, not with the way ur tits looked in that top :-D. You could practically hear the girl squealing. U r so dirty!

  Bits of drama: some girl on a high-strung high horse, Don’t listen 2 what ppl r saying abt Fri evening they weren’t there! Ne1 can make up whatever shit they want but there was only the 4 of us there so if u want to know the truth then just ASK ME!!! Lots of making appointments, but all of them were legit, mostly after school at the shopping centre or in the park; no one had been sneaking out at night, not back then. One chain text: If you love your mother then text this to 20 people. A girl ignored this and 30 days later her mam died. Sorry I can’t ignore this because I love my mother!

  You forget what it was like. You’d swear on your life you never will, but year by year it falls away. How your temperature ran off the mercury, your heart galloped flat out and never needed to rest, everything was pitched on the edge of shattering glass. How wanting something was like dying of thirst. How your skin was too fine to keep out any of the million things flooding by; every colour boiled bright enough to scald you, any second of any day could send you soaring or rip you to bloody shreds.

  That was when I really believed it, not as a detective’s solid theory but right in my gut: a teenage girl could have killed Chris Harper. Had killed him.

  Conway had caught it, too. ‘Bloody hell. The energy.’

  I said, before I felt it coming out, ‘Do you ever miss that?’

  ‘Being a teenager?’ She glanced over at me, eyebrows pulling together. ‘Fuck no. All that drama, wrecking your own head over something you won’t even remember in a month? What a waste.’

  I said, ‘It’s got something, but. There’s something beautiful there.’

  Conway was still watching me. That morning’s tight hairdo was wearing out, glossy bits coming out of the bun to fall in front of her ear, and the sharp suit had wrinkles. Should’ve made her look softer, girlier, but it didn’t. Made her look like a hunter and a f
ighter, ragged from a bare-knuckle round. She said, ‘You like things to be beautiful.’

  ‘I do, yeah.’ When she waited: ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing. Good luck with that.’ She went back to the phone.

  Bits of low-level smoochy talk, back and forth: Cant wait 2 c u again. Had THE BEST TIME with u yesterday. U r something special u no that?

  ‘Gag,’ said Conway. ‘God rest, and all that shite, but what a sleaze he was.’

  I said, ‘Or he wanted to believe it. Wanted to find someone he felt that way about.’

  Conway snorted. ‘Right. Sensitive soul, our Chris. See these?’

  One girl, back in October, had been scraped raw when Chris dumped her. The other one got the message quick enough, sent Chris a fast Fuck you and moved on, but this one: avalanche of texts, begging for answers. Is it bcos of that time in the park??? . . . Is it bcos your friends don’t like me? . . . Was someone spreading rumours abt me? . . . Please please please I’ll leave you alone I just need to know . . .

  Chris never got back to her. ‘Yeah,’ Conway said. ‘Just a poor lonely heart looking for love.’

  No name, but the girl would need ID’ing. No names anywhere. OMG did you see Amy fall of the skateboard right on her ass thought I was going to get sick lauhging so hard! That was it.

  Conway had been right about the photos: not fluffy kitties.

  Chris: Send me a pic :-D

  Another girl we needed to find: U already no what I look like lol

  Chris: U no what I mean :-D So I have sthing nice to tink about til i see u again

  No way!!! + have it go round the whole of Colms?? Hello don’t tink so???

  Chris: Hey I would NEVER do that. Thought you knew me better than that. If you think I’m such an arsehole then maybe we should call it quits

  OMG I was just messing! So soooo sorry, didn’t mean that at all, I know ur not an arsehole :-(

  Chris: OK just thought you of all people would know I’m not like that. Thought you trusted me.

  I totally do!! [attachment: .jpg file]