The Secret Place

by Tana French

  ‘Right,’ said the social worker. ‘That’s enough. We’re saying good night now.’ She grabbed Rebecca by the bicep – nasty little pinch off those stubby fingers, but Rebecca didn’t flinch – and shoved her out of the door. Their steps faded: the social worker’s pissed-off clatter, Rebecca’s runners almost too light to hear, gone.

  Conway said, ‘We’re going to head as well. We’ll be back tomorrow.’

  McKenna turned her head to look at us like her neck hurt. She said, ‘I’m sure you will.’

  ‘If her parents get back to you, you’ve got our numbers. If Holly and Julia and Selena need anything else from their room, you’ve got the key. If anyone has anything to tell us, whatever time of night, you make sure they get the chance.’

  McKenna said, ‘You have made yourselves abundantly clear. I think you can safely leave now.’

  Conway was already moving. I was slower. McKenna had turned so ordinary; just one of my ma’s mates, worn down by a drunk husband or a kid in trouble, trying to find her way through the night.

  I said, ‘You told us earlier: this school’s survived a lot.’

  ‘Indeed,’ McKenna said. She had one last punch left in her: that fisheye came up and hit me square on, showed me exactly how she smashed snotty teenagers into cringing kids. ‘And while I appreciate your belated concern, Detective, I am fairly sure that it can survive even such an impressive threat as yourselves.’

  ‘Put you in your place,’ Conway said, a safe distance down the corridor. ‘And serve you right for arse-licking.’ The dark took her face, her voice. I couldn’t tell how much she was joking.

  Us, leaving St Kilda’s. The banister-rail arching warm under my hand. The entrance hall, slants of white spilling through the fanlight onto the chequered tiles. Our footsteps, the clear bell-jingle of Conway’s car keys hanging off her finger, the faint slow toll of a great clock striking midnight somewhere, all spiralling up through still air to the invisible ceiling. For one last second, the place we’d come to that morning materialised out of the dark for me: beautiful; whorled and spired of mother-of-pearl and mist; unreachable.

  The walk to the car lasted forever. The night was wide open, full to dripping with itself, it smelled of hungry tropical flowers and animal scat and running water. The grounds had gone rogue: every flash of moonlight off a leaf looked like bared white teeth, the tree over the car looked dense with shadow-things hanging ready to drop. Every sound had me leaping around, but there was never anything to see. The place was only mocking or warning, showing me who was boss.

  By the time I slammed myself inside the car I was sweating. I thought Conway hadn’t noticed, till she said, ‘I’m only fucking delighted to get out of here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Same.’

  We should’ve been high-fiving, high-stepping, high as kites. I didn’t know how to find that. All I could find was the look on Holly’s face and Julia’s, watching the last shadow of something craved and lost; the distant blue of Selena’s eyes, watching things I couldn’t see; Rebecca’s laugh, too clear to be human. The car was cold.

  Conway turned the key, reversed out fast and hard. Pebbles flew up as she hit the drive. She said, ‘I’ll be starting the interview at nine. In Murder. I’d rather have you for backup than one of those dickheads off the squad.’

  Roche and the rest of them, putting an extra spike in their jabs now that Conway had got her big solve after all. Ought to be back-slaps and free pints, fair play to you and welcome to the club. It wouldn’t be. If I wanted to be part of the Murder guy-love someday, my best bet was to leg it back to Cold Cases as fast as my tiny toesies would carry me.

  I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘You’ve earned it. I guess.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘You managed a whole day without fucking up big-time. What do you want, a medal?’

  ‘I said thanks. What do you want, flowers?’

  The gates were closed. The night watchman had missed the long sweep of our headlights all the way down the drive; when Conway beeped, he did a double-take up from his laptop. ‘Useless bollix,’ Conway and I said, in unison.

  The gates opened on one long slow creak. The second there was an inch to spare on either side, Conway floored it, nearly took off the MG’s wing mirror. And Kilda’s was gone.

  Conway felt in her jacket pocket, tossed something on my lap. The photo of the card. Chris smiling, golden leaves. I know who killed him.

  She said, ‘Who’s your money on?’

  Even in the dimness, every line of him was packed electric enough with life that he could’ve leapt off the paper. I tilted the photo to the dashboard light, tried to read his face. Tried to see if that smile blazed with the reflection of the girl he was looking at; if it said love, brand-new and brand-fiery. It kept its secrets.

  I said, ‘Selena.’

  ‘Yeah. Same here.’

  ‘She knew it was Rebecca, from when Rebecca brought her Chris’s phone. She managed to keep it to herself for a year, but in the end it was wrecking her head so badly she couldn’t take it any more, had to get it out.’

  Conway nodded. ‘But she wasn’t about to squeal on her mate. The Secret Place was perfect: get it out of your system, blow off the pressure, without telling anyone anything that mattered. And Selena’s flaky enough, she never realised it’d bring us in. She thought it’d be a day’s worth of gossip, then gone.’

  Street lights came and went, flickered Chris in and out of existence. I said, ‘Maybe now she’ll stop seeing him.’

  I wanted to hear Conway say it. He’s gone. We dissolved him right out of her mind. Left them both free.

  ‘Nah,’ Conway said. Hand over hand on the wheel, strong and smooth, arcing us round a corner. ‘The state of her? She’s stuck with him for good.’

  The gardens we’d passed that morning were empty, deep under a thick fall of silence. We were metres from a main road, but among all that careful graceful leafiness we were the only thing moving. The MG’s smooth engine sounded rude as a raspberry.

  ‘Costello,’ Conway said, and left it, like she was deciding whether to keep talking. The people with the five-foot concrete mug-handle had it floodlit; make sure we could all appreciate it twenty-four-seven, or make sure no one nicked it to go with his eight-foot concrete mug.

  Conway said, ‘They haven’t replaced him yet.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘O’Kelly was talking about July; something about after the mid-year budget. Unless this goes tits-up, I should still be in the good books then. If you were thinking of applying, I could put in a word.’

  That meant partners. You want him, Conway, you work with him . . . Me and Conway.

  I saw it all, clear as day. The slaggings from the butch boys, the sniggers rising when I found the gimp mask on my desk. The paperwork and the witnesses that took just that bit too long to reach us; the squad pints we only heard about the next morning. Me trying to make nice, making an eejit of myself instead. Conway not trying at all.

  It means you can take whatever goes wrong, I had said to Rebecca. As long as you’ve got your friends.

  I said, ‘That’d be deadly. Thanks.’

  In the faint glow of the car lights I saw the corner of Conway’s mouth go up, just a fraction: that same ready-for-anything curl it had had when she was on the phone to Sophie, way back in the squad room. She said, ‘Should be good for a laugh, anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got a funny idea of a laugh.’

  ‘Be glad I do. Or you’d be stuck in Cold Cases for the duration, praying for some other teenage kid to bring you another ticket out.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ I said. Felt a matching curl take the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Better not,’ Conway said, and she spun the MG onto the main road and hit the pedal. Someone smacked his horn, she smacked hers back and gave him the finger, and the city fireworked alive all around us: flashing with neon signs and flaring with red and gold lights, buzzing with motorbik
es and pumping with stereos, streaming warm wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of us, it sent its deep pulse up into the hearts of our bones, it flowed on long and strong enough to last us for ever.

  Chapter 30

  They come back to school for fourth year in the rain, thick clammy rain that leaves your skin splashed with sticky residue. The summer was weird, disjointed: someone was always away on holiday with her parents, someone else always had a family barbecue or a dentist appointment or whatever, and somehow the four of them have barely seen each other since June. Selena’s mum has taken her to have her new short hair cut properly – it makes her look older and sophisticated, till you get a proper look at her face. Julia has a hickey on her neck; she doesn’t tell, and none of them ask. Becca has shot up about three inches and got her braces off. Holly feels like she’s the only one who’s still the same: a little taller, a little more shape to her legs, but basically just her. For a dizzy second, standing with her bag dragging at her shoulder in the doorway of the Windex-smelling room they’ll be sharing this year, she’s almost shy of the others.

  None of them mention the vow. None of them mention getting out at night, not to talk about how cool it was, not to suggest they could find a new way. One tiny corner of Holly starts to wonder if for the others it was one big joke, just a way of making school or themselves more interesting; if she made a tool of herself, believing it mattered.

  Chris Harper has been dead for three and a half months. No one mentions him; not them, not anyone. No one wants to be the first, and after a few days it’s too late.

  A couple of weeks into term the rain lets up a little, and on a restless afternoon the four of them can’t face another hour of the Court. They slip on their innocent faces and drift round the back, into the Field.

  The weeds are higher and stronger than last year; rock-slides have taken down the heaps of rubble where people used to perch, turned them into useless knee-high jumbles. The wind scrapes chicken wire against concrete.

  No one’s there, not even the emos. Julia kicks her way through the undergrowth and settles with her back against what’s left of a rubble-heap. The others follow her.

  Julia pulls out her phone and starts texting someone; Becca arranges pebbles in neat swirls on a patch of bare earth. Selena gazes at the sky like it’s hypnotised her. A leftover spit of rain hits her on the cheekbone, but she doesn’t blink.

  It’s chillier here than round the front, a wild countryside chill that reminds you there are mountains on the horizon, not that far away. Holly shoves her hands deep in her jacket pockets. She feels like she’s itchy, but she can’t tell where.

  ‘What was that song?’ she says suddenly. ‘It used to be on the radio all the time, last year? Some girl singer.’

  ‘What’s it go like?’ Becca asks.

  Holly tries to sing it, but it’s been months since she heard it and the words have gone; all she can find is Remember oh remember back when . . . She tries to hum the melody instead. Without that light speeding beat and the thrum of guitar, it sounds like nothing. Julia shrugs.

  ‘Lana Del Rey?’ Becca says.

  ‘No.’ It’s so totally not Lana Del Rey that even the suggestion depresses Holly. ‘Lenie. You know the one I mean.’

  Selena looks up, smiling vaguely. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘That song. In our room one time, you were humming it? And I came in from the shower and asked you what it was, but you didn’t know?’

  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.’

  Dad wiggles the fingers of one hand at her, beckoning. Holly rolls her eyes and holds up her key ring. Her personal alarm is a pretty little teardrop, black with white flowers. Dad spent a long time searching for one that looks like a normal key ring, so she won’t get embarrassed and take it off, but he still checks every single week.

  ‘That’s what I like to see,’ says Dad, going back to the potatoes. ‘I heart my paranoia.’

  ‘Nobody else has to have one.’

  ‘So you’re the only one who’ll escape the mass alien abduction. Congratulations. Need a snack?’

  ‘I’m OK.’ On Fridays they use up their leftover pocket money on chocolate and eat it sitting on the wall at the bus stop.

  ‘Perfect. Then you can give me a hand here.’

  Mum always makes dinner. ‘Where’s Mum?’ Holly asks. She pretends to focus on hanging up her coat straight, and watches Dad sideways. When Holly was little her parents split up. Dad moved back in when she was eleven, but she still keeps an eye on things, especially unusual things.

  ‘Meeting some friend from back in school. Catch.’ Dad throws Holly a head of garlic. ‘Three cloves, finely minced. Whatever that means.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Some woman called Deirdre.’ Holly can’t tell whether he knows she was looking for that, some woman. With Dad you can never tell what he knows. ‘Mince finely.’

  Holly finds a knife and pulls herself onto a stool at the breakfast bar. ‘Is she coming home?’

  ‘Course she is. I wouldn’t bet on what time, though. I said we’d make a start on dinner. If she gets back for it, great; if she’s still off having girl time, we won’t starve.’