The Secret Place

by Tana French

  ‘Because ghosts are angry. You guys said that, remember? This afternoon.’ But the panic was taking up more and more of Rebecca’s voice. ‘And anyway, he didn’t hurt me.’

  I said, ‘This time he didn’t. What about next time?’

  ‘Who says there’ll be a next time?’

  ‘I do. Chris had something to say to you, something he wants from you, and he didn’t get through. He’ll be back. Again and again, till he gets what he wants.’

  ‘He won’t. It was because you were here, you got him all—’

  ‘Selena,’ I said. ‘You know he was there. You want to tell us whether you think he’ll be back?’

  In the slow fall of silence, I heard something. Murmur of voices, away down at the bottom of the slope. A man. A girl.

  Closer, in the cypresses behind me: a sound like the muted first breath of a roar. Conway, moving among the braches to cover the voices. ‘Selena,’ I said. ‘Is Chris going to be back?’

  Selena said, ‘He’s there the whole time. Even when I don’t see him, I can feel him. I hear him, like this humming noise right inside the backs of my ears, like when the telly’s on mute. All the time.’

  I believed her. Believed every word. I said, heard the hoarse note in my voice, ‘What does he want?’

  ‘At first I was sure he was looking for me. Oh God I tried so hard but I could never make him see me, he never heard me, I was begging him Chris I’m here I’m right here but he just looked right past me and kept doing whatever he was doing, I tried to hold him but he just dissolved before I could—’

  A high keening sound from Rebecca.

  ‘I thought it was because we weren’t allowed, like punishment, always looking for each other but we’d never be allowed to— But it’s because it isn’t me he wants. All that time—’

  Julia said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘All that time, he was never looking for—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, can you shut up?’

  Something like a sob, from Selena. Then nothing. The low roar among the cypresses wavered through the air and was gone, rock in a cold pool. The voices at the bottom of the slope sank with it.

  Rebecca said, in the empty space, ‘Lenie. What’s he want?’

  Julia said, ‘Can we please fucking please talk about it later?’

  ‘Why? I’m not scared of him.’ Me.

  ‘Then duh, start paying attention. He’s the only thing we need to be scared of. There isn’t anything else. This ghost bullshit—’

  ‘Lenie. What do you think he wants? Chris?’

  ‘OhmyGod, he doesn’t fucking exist, what do I have to do—’

  Kids fighting, they sounded like. That was all. Not like Joanne’s lot, cheap sneer-and-peck by numbers, every word and thought worn threadbare before it ever reached them, not that; but not the enchanted girls, soaring among tumbling arpeggios of gold, that I had come hoping for just that morning. What I had seen before, that triple power, that had been the last flicker of something lost a long time ago. Light from a dead star.

  ‘Lenie. Lenie. Is it me he’s after?’

  Selena said, ‘I wanted it to be me so much.’

  The rune shimmered and crumpled. One fragment snapped off that solid dark mass, found a shape of its own: Rebecca. Sliver-thin, kneeling on the grass.

  She said, to me: ‘I didn’t think it was going to be Chris.’

  I said, ‘The ghost?’

  Rebecca shook her head. She said, simply, ‘No, when I texted him to meet me here. I didn’t know who it was going to be. I’d’ve bet anything it wouldn’t be Chris.’

  ‘Oh, Becs,’ Julia said. She sounded folded over a gut-punch. ‘Oh, Becs.’

  In the cypress shadow behind me, Conway said, ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’

  Rebecca nodded. She looked frozen to the bones, too cold even to shiver.

  I said, ‘So when you got here that night, you were expecting to meet one of the dickheads.’

  ‘Yeah. Andrew Moore, maybe.’

  ‘When you saw Chris, you didn’t have second thoughts, no?’

  Rebecca said, ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to figure it out, “Oh am I right am I wrong what should I do?” I knew.’

  There it was: why she hadn’t been frightened of Conway and Costello, why she hadn’t been frightened of us. All the long way from that night until this evening – and this evening something had changed – she had known she was safe, because she had known she was right.

  I said, ‘Even when you saw it was Chris? You were still positive?’

  ‘Specially then. That’s when I got it. Up until then, I had it backwards. All those stupid slimebags, James Gillen and Marcus Wiley, it could never have been them. They’re nothing; they’re totally worthless. You can’t have a sacrifice that’s worthless. It has to be something good.’

  Even in that light I saw the flicker of Julia’s eyelids, hooding. The sad, sad smile on Selena.

  ‘Like Chris,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. He wasn’t worthless – I don’t care what you guys say’ – into the dark of Julia and Selena – ‘he wasn’t. He was something special. So when I saw him, that was when I actually properly understood: I was getting it right.’

  Those voices again, down the bottom of the slope. Building.

  I said, fast and a notch louder, ‘It didn’t bother you? Some slimebag who deserved it, that’s one thing. But a guy you liked, a good guy? That didn’t upset you?’

  Rebecca said, ‘Yeah. If I’d had the choice, I’d’ve picked someone else. But I would’ve been wrong.’

  Setting up for an insanity defence, I’d have thought, if she’d been older or savvier. If we’d been indoors, I’d’ve thought there was no setup about it, just plain insanity. But here, in the glowing spin and slipslide of her world, in the air thick with scents and stars: for a second I almost saw what she meant. Caught the edge of understanding, swung by my fingertips, before I lost hold and it soared up and away again.

  Rebecca said, ‘That’s why I left him the flowers.’

  ‘Flowers,’ I said. Nice and neutral. Like the air hadn’t leaped into a hum around me.

  ‘Those.’ Her arm rose, thin as a dark brushstroke. Pointed at the hyacinths. ‘I picked some of those. Four; one for each of us. I put them on his chest. Not to say sorry, or anything; it wasn’t like that. Just to say goodbye. To say we knew he wasn’t worthless.’

  Only the killer had known about those flowers. I felt, more than heard, a long sigh come out of Conway and spread across the clearing.

  ‘Rebecca,’ I said gently. ‘You know we have to arrest you. Right?’

  Rebecca stared, huge-eyed. She said, ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘That’s OK. We’ll walk you through everything. We’ll find someone to look after you till your parents can get here.’

  ‘I didn’t think this would happen.’

  ‘I know. Right now, all you need to do is come over here and we’ll go indoors.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Selena said, ‘Give us a minute first. Just a minute.’

  I heard Conway breathe in for the No. I said, ‘We can do that. But it’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘Becs,’ Selena said, so softly. ‘Come here.’

  Rebecca turned towards her voice, hands reaching, and her head bent back into that dark shape. Their arms folded around each other’s shoulders like wings, drawing tighter, like they were trying to meld themselves into one thing that could never be prised apart. I couldn’t tell which one of them sobbed.

  Footsteps behind me, running, and this time I could turn. Holly, hair spraying out of its ponytail, leaping up the slope in great desperate bounds.

  Behind her, and making himself take his time, was Mackey. He had seen her coming, gone down to the path to keep her there as long as he could. He had left me and Conway up here, to do whatev
er we were going to do. In the end, for his own reasons, he had decided I was worth trusting.

  Holly came past Conway like she was nothing, hit the edge of the clearing, and saw the other three. She pulled up like she’d smacked into a stone wall. Said, voice cracking wild, ‘What’s happened?’

  Conway kept her mouth shut. This was mine.

  I said quietly, ‘Rebecca’s confessed to killing Chris Harper.’

  Holly’s head moved, a blind flinch. ‘Anyone can confess to anything. She said it because she was scared you were going to arrest me.’

  I said, ‘You already knew it was her.’

  Holly didn’t deny it. She didn’t ask what would happen to Rebecca next; didn’t need to. She didn’t throw herself on the others, didn’t rush into Daddy’s arms – he managed not to go to her. She just stood there, watching her mates motionless on the grass, with one hand braced against a tree like it was holding her up.

  ‘If you’d known this morning,’ I said, ‘you’d never have brought me that card. Who did you think it was?’

  Holly said, and she sounded way too tired and hollow for sixteen, ‘I always thought it was Joanne. Probably not actually her – I thought she made someone else do it, maybe Orla; she makes Orla do all her dirty work. But I thought it was her idea. Because Chris had dumped her.’

  ‘And then you figured Alison or Gemma found out, couldn’t take the pressure, put up the card.’

  ‘I guess. Yeah. Whatever. Gemma wouldn’t, but yeah, it’s exactly the kind of hello-are-you-actually-that-thick thing Alison would do.’

  Conway asked, ‘Why didn’t you just say all this to Detective Moran, straight up? Why make us dick around jumping through hoops all day?’

  Holly looked at Conway like just the thought of all that stupid made her want to sleep for a year. She let her back slump against the tree-trunk and closed her eyes.

  I said, ‘You didn’t want to be a rat.’

  Rustle behind her, sharp and then gone, as Mackey moved.

  ‘Again,’ Holly said. Her eyes stayed closed. ‘I didn’t want to be a rat again.’

  ‘If you’d told me everything you knew, you would’ve probably ended up testifying in court, and the rest of the school would’ve found out you’d squelt. But you still wanted the killer caught. That card was the perfect chance. You didn’t have to tell me anything; just point me in the right direction, and keep your fingers crossed.’

  Holly said, ‘You weren’t stupid, last time. And you didn’t act like anyone under twenty had to be stupid. I thought if I could just get you in here . . .’

  Conway said, ‘And you were right.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Holly said. The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, would have broken your heart. I couldn’t look at Mackey. ‘Go me.’

  I asked, ‘How did you figure out it wasn’t Joanne after all? When we came to take you to the art room, you knew. What happened?’

  Holly’s chest lifted and fell. ‘When that light bulb blew up,’ she said. ‘I knew then.’

  ‘Yeah? How?’

  She didn’t answer. She was done.

  ‘Chickadee,’ Mackey said. His voice was a kind of gentle I’d never thought could come out of him. ‘It’s been a long, long day. Time to go home.’

  Holly’s eyes opened. She said to him, like no one else existed, ‘You thought it was me. You thought I killed Chris.’

  Mackey’s face closed over. He said, ‘We’ll talk about it in the car.’

  ‘What did I ever do to make you think I would kill someone? Like ever, in my whole life?’

  ‘The car, chickadee. Now.’

  Holly said, ‘You just figured if anyone annoyed me I’d bash them over the head, because I’m your daughter and it’s in our blood. I’m not just your daughter. I’m an actual person. Of my own.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And you kept me down there so they could make Becca confess. Because you knew if I got up here, I’d shut her up. You made me leave her here till she . . .’ Her throat closed.

  Mackey said, ‘I’m asking you, as a favour to me: let’s go home. Please.’

  Holly said, ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She straightened, joint by joint, moved out from under the cypresses. Mackey took a fast breath to call after her, then bit it down. Conway and I both had better sense than to look at him.

  In the centre of the clearing, Holly dropped to her knees in the grass. For a second I thought the others were going to tighten their backs against her. Then they opened like a puzzle, arms unfurling, reached out to draw her in and closed around her.

  A nightbird ghosted across the top of the glade, calling high, trailing a dark spiderweb of shadow over our heads. Somewhere a bell grated for lights-out; none of the girls moved. We left them there as long as we could.

  We waited in McKenna’s office for the social worker to come take Rebecca away. For a different crime, we could have released her into McKenna’s custody, let her have one last night at Kilda’s. Not for this. She would spend the night, at least, in a child detention school. Whispers crowding around the new girl, eyes probing for clues to where she fit in and what they could do with her: deep down, under the rough sheets and the raw smell of disinfectant, it wouldn’t be too different from what she was used to.

  McKenna and Rebecca faced each other across the desk, Conway and I stood around in empty space. None of us talked. Conway and I couldn’t, in case something came across like questioning; McKenna and Rebecca didn’t, being careful or because they had nothing to say to us. Rebecca sat with her hands folded like a nun, gazing out of the window, thinking so hard she sometimes stopped breathing. Once she shivered, all over.

  McKenna didn’t know what face to wear, for any of us, so she looked down at her hands clasped on the desk. She had layered up her makeup but she still looked ten years older than that morning. The office looked older too, or a different kind of old. The sunlight had given it a slow voluptuous glow, packed every scrape with a beckoning secret and turned every dust-mote into a whispering memory. In the stingy light off the overhead bulb, the place just looked worn out.

  The social worker – not the one from that morning; a different one, fat in floppy tiers like she was made of stacked pancakes – didn’t ask questions. You could tell from the fast sneaky glances that her job gave her more piss-sprayed blocks of flats than places like this, but she just said, ‘Well! Time we were getting some sleep. Off we go,’ and held the door open for Rebecca.

  ‘Don’t call me we,’ Rebecca said. She got up and headed for the door, not a glance at the social worker, who was clicking her tongue and tucking in her chins.

  At the door she turned. ‘It’s going to be all over the news,’ she said, to Conway. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t heard you caution her,’ the social worker said, pointing a waggy finger at Conway. ‘You can’t use anything she says.’ To Rebecca: ‘We need to be very quiet right now. Like two little mice.’

  ‘The media won’t use your name,’ Conway said. ‘You’re a minor.’

  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.’