The Secret Place

by Tana French

  Conway thought, pen flicking between two fingers. Nodded. ‘Fair enough. Tell you what I noticed, but. Your Holly talks like, whoever put up the card, she wanted it to get to us. She’s assuming this card wasn’t just meant to get a secret off someone’s chest; this girl wanted to tell us something, and this was the best way she could find.’

  She wasn’t my Holly. That was getting obvious, to me anyway. I didn’t say it.

  I said, ‘Holly could be feeling bad about coming to me. That age, taking something to adults is a big deal; makes you a rat, and that’s about the dirtiest thing you can be. So she’s convincing herself the girl wanted her to do it.’

  ‘Could be. Or she could know for sure.’ Conway tapped her pen up and down between her teeth. ‘If she does, what’s the odds of getting it out of her?’

  Two hopes: Bob and no. Unless Holly wanted to tell us, and was waiting for a moment we couldn’t see.

  I said, ‘I’ll get it out of her.’

  Conway’s eyebrow said We’ll see. She said, ‘I want you to see them together. I’ll do the talking this time. You just watch.’

  I leaned on a windowsill, sun warming my back through my jacket. Conway moved, back and forth across the front of the art room in an even long-legged stroll, hands in trouser pockets, while the girls filed in.

  They settled, like birds. Holly’s lot by the windows, Joanne’s lot by the door. No one looking across the gap.

  Slouched and fidgeted in their chairs; batted looks, eyebrow-lifts, whispers back and forth. They had thought we were done with them, had dumped us out of their minds. Some of them, anyway.

  Conway said, over her shoulder to Houlihan, ‘You can wait outside. Thanks for your help.’

  Houlihan opened and shut her mouth, made a small-animal noise, scuttled off. The girls had stopped whispering. Houlihan gone meant the fib of school protection gone; they were all ours.

  They looked different, a blurry streak. Like the Secret Place, the strobe of it: I couldn’t see the separate girls any more, just all those crests on blazers, all those eyes. I felt outnumbered. Outside.

  ‘So,’ Conway said. ‘One of you lot lied to us today.’

  They stilled.

  ‘At least one of you.’ She stopped moving. Pulled out the photo of the card, held it up. ‘Yesterday evening, one of you put up this card on the secrets board. Then sat here and gave us, “Oh God no, wasn’t me, never seen that before in my life.” That’s fact.’

  Alison blinking like a tic. Joanne with her arms folded, bobbing a crossed foot, sliding a glance to Gemma that said OMG can’t believe we have to listen to this. Orla sucking her lips, trying to kill a nerves-giggle.

  Holly’s lot were still. Not looking at each other. Their heads tilted inwards, like they were listening to each other, not to us. The lean of their shoulders into the centre, like they were magnetised, like it would take Superman to pull one of them away.

  Just something.

  Conway said, ‘I’m talking to you. The girl who put up this card. The girl who’s claiming to know who killed Chris Harper.’

  A twitch around the room, a shiver.

  Conway started moving again, photo balanced between her fingertips. ‘You think lying to us is the same as telling your teacher you left your homework on the bus, or telling your parents you didn’t sneak a drink at the disco. Wrong. It’s nothing like that. This isn’t small-time bullshit that’ll vanish when you leave school. This is real.’

  All their eyes following Conway. Pulled by her; hungry.

  She was their mystery. Not like me, not like guys, an alien mystery they were learning to barter and bargain with, a thing they knew to want but didn’t know why. Conway was theirs. She was a woman, grown: she knew things. How to wear what suited her, how to have sex right or how to turn it down, how to get her bills paid, how to balance through the wild world outside the school walls. The water where they were dipping their toes, she was over her head in it and swimming.

  They wanted to get closer to her, finger her sleeves. They were judging her hard, deciding did she come up to the mark. Wondering if they would, someday. Trying to see the precarious trail that led from them to her.

  ‘I’m gonna spell this out for you: if you know who murdered Chris, then you’re in serious danger. Danger like, you could get killed.’ She flicked the photo through the air, a sharp snap. ‘You think this card is gonna stay a secret? If the rest of this lot here haven’t spread it round the school already, they will by the end of today. How long is it gonna take for word to get back to the killer? How long is it gonna take him or her to work out who his problem is? And what do you think a killer does about that kind of problem?’

  Her voice was good. Straight, clipped, intent. Adult to adult: she’d been paying attention to what worked for me. ‘You’re in danger. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every second, right up until you tell us what you know. Once you’ve done that, the killer’s got no reason to go after you. But up until then . . .’

  A shiver again, a ripple. Joanne’s lot swapping those covert sideways checks. Julia scraping something off a knuckle, eyes down.

  Conway pacing faster. ‘If you made up this card for the laugh, you’re in just as much danger. The killer doesn’t know you were mucking about. He, or she, can’t afford to take risks. And as far as she’s concerned, you’re a risk.’

  She snapped the photo again. ‘If this card is bogus, probably you’re worried about coming clean in case you get in hassle, with us or with the school. Forget that. Yeah, me and Detective Moran, we’ll give you a lecture about wasting police time. Yeah, you’ll probably end up in detention. That’s a lot better than ending up dead.’

  Joanne leaned sideways to Gemma, whispered something in her ear, not even trying to hide it. Smirked.

  Conway stopped. Stared.

  Joanne still smirking. Gemma fish-faced, trying to work out whether to smile or not; work out who she was more afraid of.

  It needed to be Conway.

  Conway moved fast, right up to Joanne’s chair, leaning in. She looked ready to head-butt.

  ‘Am I talking to you?’

  Joanne staring back, slack-lipped with disdain. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  The other girls’ eyes had come up. The arena eyes you get in classrooms when trouble starts, waiting to see who bleeds.

  Joanne’s eyebrows lifting. ‘Um, I have literally no clue what it even means?’

  ‘I’m only talking to one person here. If that’s you, then you need to shut up and listen. If it’s not, then you need to shut up because no one’s talking to you.’

  Round Conway’s patch of rough and mine, someone disses you, you punch hard and fast and straight to the face, before they see weakness and sink their teeth into it. If they back off, you’re a winner. Out in the rest of the world, people back off from that punch, too, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won. It means they’ve filed you under Scumbag, under Animal, under Stay Far From.

  Conway had to know that, or she’d never have got this far. Something – this girl, this school, this case – had thrown her. She was fucking up.

  Not my problem. I swore it the day I got my acceptance to cop college: that kind of rough wasn’t my problem any more, never again, not that way. Mine to handcuff and throw in the back seat of my car; not mine to give a damn about, not mine like we had anything in common. Conway wanted to fuck up, let her.

  Joanne was still wearing that open-mouthed sneer. The others were leaning in, waiting for the kill. The sun felt like a hot iron pressed against the back of my jacket.

  I moved, on the windowsill. Conway swung round, midway through taking a breath to reef Joanne out of it. Caught my eye.

  Tiny tilt of my chin, just a fraction. Warning.

  Conway’s eyes narrowed. She turned back to Joanne, slower. Shoulders easing.

  Smile. Steady sticky voice, like talking to a stupid toddler.

  ‘Joanne. I know it’s hard for you, not being the centre of
attention. I know you’re only dying to throw a tantrum and scream, “Everybody look at me!” But I bet if you try your very best, you can hang on for just a few more minutes. And when we’re done here, your friends can explain to you why this was important. OK?’

  Joanne’s face was pure poison. She looked forty.

  ‘Can you manage that for me?’

  Joanne thumped back in her chair, rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  The circle of arena eyes, appreciative: we had a winner. Julia and Holly were both grinning. Alison looked terrified and over the moon.

  ‘Now,’ Conway said, turning back to the rest of them – Joanne was dismissed, done. ‘You; whoever you are. I know you enjoyed that, but fact is, you’ve got the same problem. You’re not taking the killer seriously. Maybe because you don’t actually know who it is, so he or she doesn’t feel real. Maybe because you do know who it is, and he or she doesn’t look all that dangerous.’

  Joanne was staring at the wall, arms twisted into a knot of sulk. The rest of the girls were all Conway’s. She had done it: come up to the mark for them.

  She held up the photo in a slash of sun, Chris laughing and radiant. ‘Probably Chris thought the same thing. I’ve seen a lot of people who didn’t take killers seriously. Mostly I saw them at their post-mortems.’

  Her voice was steady and grave again. When she stopped, no one breathed. The breeze through the open window rattled the blinds.

  ‘Me and Detective Moran, we’re going to get some lunch. After that, we’ll be in the boarders’ wing for an hour or two.’ That got a reaction. Elbows shifting on desks, spines snapping straight. ‘Then we’ve got other places to be. What I’m telling you is, you’ve got maybe three hours left where you’re safe. The killer’s not gonna come after you while we’re on the grounds. Once we leave . . .’

  Silence. Orla’s mouth was hanging open.

  ‘If you’ve got something to tell us, you can come find us any time this afternoon. Or if you’re worried someone’ll notice you going, you can ring us, even text us. You’ve all got our cards.’

  Conway’s eyes moving across the faces, coming down on each one like a stamp.

  ‘You, who I’ve been talking to: this is your chance. Grab it. And until you have, you look after yourself.’

  She tucked the photo back into her jacket pocket; tugged down her jacket, checked to make sure the line fell just right. ‘See you soon,’ she said.

  And walked out of the door, not looking back. She didn’t give me any heads-up, but I was right behind her all the same.

  Outside, Conway tilted her ear towards the door. Listened to the urgent fizz of two sets of talk behind it. Too low to hear.

  Houlihan, hovering. Conway said, ‘In you go. Supervise.’

  When the door closed behind Houlihan she said, ‘See what I meant about Holly’s gang? Something there.’

  Watching me. I said, ‘Yeah. I see it.’

  Brief nod, but I saw Conway’s neck relax: relief. ‘So. What is it?’

  ‘Not sure. Not yet. I’d have to spend more time with them.’

  Sniff of a laugh, dry. ‘Bet you would.’ She headed off down the corridor, at that fast swinging pace. ‘Let’s eat.’

  Chapter 10

  In the middle of the Court, the fountain has been shut off and the huge Christmas tree is up, storeys high, alive with light twirling on glass and tinsel. On the speakers, a woman with a little-kid voice is chirping ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’. The air smells so good, cinnamon and pine and nutmeg, you want to bite into it, you can feel the soft crunch between your teeth.

  It’s the first week of December. Chris Harper – coming out of the Jack Wills shop on the third floor in the middle of a gang of guys, bag of new T-shirts over his shoulder, arguing about Assassin’s Creed II, hair glossy as conkers under the manic white light – has five months and almost two weeks left to live.

  Selena and Holly and Julia and Becca have been Christmas shopping. Now they’re sitting on the fountain-edge around the Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate and going through their bags. ‘I still don’t have anything for my dad,’ Holly says, rummaging.

  ‘I thought he was getting the giant chocolate stiletto,’ says Julia, stirring her drink – the coffee shop called it a Santa’s Little Helper – with a candy cane.

  ‘Ha ha, hashtag: lookslikehumourbutnot. The shoe’s for my aunt Jackie. My dad’s impossible.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Julia says, examining her drink with horror. ‘This tastes like toothpaste-flavoured ass.’

  ‘I’ll swap,’ Becca says, holding out her cup. ‘I like mint.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gingerbread something mocha.’

  ‘No, thanks. At least I know what mine is.’

  ‘Mine’s delish,’ Holly says. ‘What would actually make him happy is for me to get a GPS chip implanted, so he can track me every second. I know everyone’s parents are paranoid, but I swear, he’s insane.’

  ‘It’s because of his job,’ Selena says. ‘He sees all the bad stuff that happens, so he imagines it happening to you.’

  Holly rolls her eyes. ‘Hello, he works in an office, most of the time. The worst thing he sees is forms. He’s just mental. The other week when he came to pick me up, you know the first thing he said? I come out and he’s looking up at the front of the school, and he goes, “Those windows aren’t alarmed. I could break in there in under thirty seconds.” He wanted to go find McKenna and tell her the school wasn’t secure, and I don’t know, make her install fingerprint scanners on every window or something. I was like, “Just kill me now.”’

  Selena hears it again: that single note of silver on crystal, so clean-edged it slices straight through the syrupy music and the cloud of noise. It falls into her hand: a gift, just for them.

  ‘I had to beg him to just take me home. I was like, “There’s a night watchman, the boarders’ wing has alarms on all night, I swear to God I am not going to get human trafficked, and anyway if you go hassling McKenna I’ll never talk to you again,” and finally he went OK, he’d leave it. I was like, “You keep asking why I always take the bus instead of letting you pick me up? This is why.”’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Julia says to Becca, making a face and wiping her mouth. ‘Swap. Yours can’t be worse than this.’

  ‘I should just get him a lighter,’ Holly says. ‘I’m sick of pretending I don’t know he smokes.’

  Selena says, ‘I’ve been thinking about something.’

  ‘Ew,’ Becca says, to Julia. ‘You were right. It’s like little kids’ medicine.’

  ‘Minty ass. Bin it. We can share this one.’

  Selena says, ‘I think we should start getting out at night.’

  The others’ heads turn.

  ‘Out like what?’ Holly asks. ‘Like out of our room, like to the common room? Or out out?’

  ‘Out out.’

  Julia says, eyebrows up, ‘Why?’

  Selena thinks about that. She hears all the voices from when she was little, soothing, strengthening: Don’t be scared, not of monsters, not of witches, not of big dogs. And now, snapping loud from every direction: Be scared, you have to be scared, ordering like this is your one absolute duty. Be scared you’re fat, be scared your boobs are too big and be scared they’re too small. Be scared to walk on your own, specially anywhere quiet enough that you can hear yourself think. Be scared of wearing the wrong stuff, saying the wrong thing, having a stupid laugh, being uncool. Be scared of guys not fancying you; be scared of guys, they’re animals, rabid, can’t stop themselves. Be scared of girls, they’re all vicious, they’ll cut you down before you can cut them. Be scared of strangers. Be scared you won’t do well enough in your exams, be scared of getting in trouble. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl.

  At the same time, in a cool untouched part of her mind, she sees the moon. She feels the shimmer of what it might look like in
their own private midnight.

  She says, ‘We’re different now. That was the whole point. So we need to be doing something different. Otherwise . . .’

  She doesn’t know how to say what she sees. That moment in the glade sliding away, blurring. Them dulling slowly back to normal.

  ‘Otherwise it’s just about what we don’t do, and we’ll end up going back to the way things were before. There needs to be something we actually do.’

  Becca says, ‘If we get caught, we’ll get expelled.’

  ‘I know,’ Selena says. ‘That’s part of the point. We’re too good. We always behave ourselves.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Julia says, and sucks gingerbread something mocha off her hand with a pop.

  ‘You do too – yeah, Jules, you do. Snogging a couple of guys and having a can or a cigarette sometimes, that doesn’t count. Everyone does that. Everyone expects us to do it; even adults, they’d be more worried about us if we didn’t do it. Nobody except Sister Cornelius actually thinks it’s a big deal, and she’s insane.’

  ‘So? I don’t actually want to rob banks or shoot up heroin, thanks. If that makes me a goody-goody, I’ll live with it.’

  ‘So,’ Selena says, ‘we only ever do stuff we’re supposed to do. Either stuff we’re supposed to do because our parents or the teachers say so, or stuff we’re supposed to do because we’re teenagers and all teenagers do it. I want to do something we’re not supposed to do.’

  ‘An original sin,’ Holly says, through a marshmallow. ‘I like it. I’m in.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, you too? For Christmas I want friends who aren’t freaks.’

  ‘I feel criticised,’ Holly says, hand to her heart. ‘Should I use my D’s?’

  ‘Don’t be Defensive,’ Becca drones, in Sister Ignatius’s voice. ‘Don’t be Despondent. Take a Deep breath and be a Dickhead.’