The Secret Place

by Tana French

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Selena says, muffled in the hoodie she’s pulling over her head. ‘It just happened, because I was getting all wound up. And if it hadn’t, Joanne would’ve have taken the key.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s not like she’s going to forget the whole thing. We’ll have to deal with it tomorrow instead, is all. And now she’s raging with us.’

  That cools the air. ‘Her hand’s fine,’ Selena says. ‘She’s just being a drama queen.’

  ‘Right. So she’s a total drama-queen bitch who’s raging with us. How is that better?’

  ‘What do we do?’ Becca asks, glancing up from her bottle cap.

  ‘What do you think we do?’ Holly says, tossing jumpers into the wardrobe. ‘We make her a copy of the key. Unless you actually want to get expelled.’

  ‘Why would we get expelled? She can’t prove we did anything.’

  ‘OK: unless you want to never go out again. Because if we do, Joanne can go running to Matron and be all, “Oo Matron I just happened to see them going downstairs and I’m so worried about them,” and then Matron waits and catches us coming back in and then we get expelled.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Julia says, kicking into her pyjama bottoms. ‘I’ll talk to her. I think the hardware place beside the Court does keys.’

  ‘She’s going to be a total bitch about it,’ Holly says.

  ‘Yeah, no shit. I’m going to have to apologise to her for what you said, smartarse.’ She means Becca. ‘You think I’m looking forward to grovelling for that ass-faced cow?’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ Becca says. ‘She’s scared of us now.’

  ‘For the next ten seconds, she is. Then she’ll turn the whole thing into some drama in her head, like she’s the heroine and we’re the evil witches who tried to burn her to death but she was just too special. And I’ll have to apologise for that, too. And convince her that the key just felt hot because Lenie’d been holding it and her hand was hot from running or whatever.’ Julia climbs into bed and throws herself hard onto her pillow. ‘Fun fun fun.’

  Selena says, ‘At least this way we get to keep our key.’

  ‘We would’ve anyway. We’d have talked her out of it, or just robbed another one. You didn’t need to go all fucking poltergeist on her.’

  Becca says, and her voice is tightening up, ‘Better than going all Yes Joanne no Joanne three bags full Joanne, letting that stupid cow be the boss of us—’

  The bottle cap hops on the bedside locker and tumbles over. ‘Look!’ Becca yelps, and claps a hand over her mouth as the others hiss ‘Shhh!’ at her. ‘No, look! I did it!’

  ‘Awesomesauce,’ Holly says. ‘I’m gonna try in the morning.’

  ‘What are we doing?’ Julia demands, suddenly and vehemently. ‘All this shit; this, and the lights. What are we getting into here?’

  The others look at her. In that light she’s the unreadable silhouette from the glade again, propped on her elbows, a tense arc.

  ‘I’m getting happy,’ Becca says. ‘That’s what I’m getting into.’

  Holly says, ‘We’re not blowing stuff up. It’s not like it’s about to go all horrible.’

  ‘You don’t know. I’m not saying OMG we’re going to unleash demons; I’m just saying this is weird shit. If it only worked in the glade, then fine: it’s something separate, with its own separate place. But it’s here.’

  Holly says, ‘So? If it gets too weird, we just stop doing it. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Yeah? Just stop? Lenie, you didn’t even want the key to get hot: it just happened, because you were stressing. Same with Becs, the first time she turned the light off: that was because we were fighting. So if Sister Cornelius gives me hassle about something, do I just go ahead and zoom a book into her fat face, which yeah would be lots of fun but probably not the greatest idea ever? Or do I have to watch myself the whole time to make sure I’m totally zen, man, so I can live like a normal person?’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Holly says, through a yawn, as she wriggles down in her bed. ‘Me, I am normal.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to be.’

  Selena says gently, ‘It just takes getting used to. You didn’t like the lights thing at first, right? And then tonight you said that was fine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Julia says, after a moment. The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; if it weren’t for Joanne, she’d get back into all her jumpers and get back out there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs. ‘That’s probably it.’

  ‘We’ll go out again tomorrow night. You’ll see. It’ll be fine then.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Julia says on a groan, flopping backwards. ‘If we want to do tomorrow, I’ll have to sort that bint Heffernan. I was trying to forget about her.’

  ‘If she gives you any hassle,’ Holly says, ‘just get her own hand and smack her in the face with it. What’s she going to do, tell on you?’ and they’re falling asleep before they finish laughing.

  When the others are asleep, Becca reaches one arm out of bed into the cold air and eases her bedside locker open. She takes out, one by one, her phone, a little bottle of blue ink, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, and a tissue.

  She stole the ink and the pin from the art room, the day after they made the vow. Under the covers, she pulls up her pyjama top and angles the phone to light the pale skin just below her ribs. She holds her breath – to make sure she doesn’t move, not to brace herself against the pain; pain doesn’t bother her – while she pricks the dot into the skin, just deep enough, and rubs in the ink. She’s getting better at it. There are six dots now, arcing downwards and inwards from the bottom right edge of her rib cage, too small to notice unless someone was closer than anyone’s going to get: one for each perfect moment. The vow; the first three escapes; the lights; and tonight.

  What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

  She blots the extra ink from around the dot, spits on the tissue and dabs again. The dot throbs, a warm satisfying pain.

  These nights in the grove aren’t degradable, they can’t be flaked away. They’ll always be there, if only Becca and the others can find their way back. The four of them backboned by their vow are stronger than anyone’s pathetic schedules and bells; in ten years, twenty, fifty, they can slip between those stakes and meet in the glade, on these nights.

  The dot tattoos are for that: signposts, in case she needs them someday, to guide her home.

  Chapter 13

  The fourth-year common room felt smaller than the third-year one, darker. Not just the colours, cool greens instead of oranges; on this side the building blocked out the afternoon sun, gave the room an underwater dimness that the ceiling lights couldn’t fight.

  The girls were clumped tight and jabbering low. Holly’s lot were the only quiet ones: Holly sitting on a windowsill, Julia leaning against it snapping a hair elastic around her wrist, Rebecca and Selena back to back on the floor below; all their eyes focused and faraway, like they were reading the same story written across the air. Joanne and Gemma and Orla were in a huddle on one of the sofas, Joanne whispering fast and ferocious.

  That was only for a flash. Then everyone spun to the door. Sentences bitten off in mid-word, blank faces staring.

  ‘Orla,’ Conway said. ‘We need a word.’

  Orla looked like she might be going pale, far as I could tell through the orange tan. ‘Me? Why me?’

  Conway held the door open till Orla got up and came, widen
ing her eyes over her shoulder at her mates. Joanne hit her with a stare like a threat.

  ‘We’ll talk in your room,’ Conway said, scanning the corridor. ‘Which one is it?’ Orla pointed: down the far end.

  No Houlihan this time. Conway was trusting me to protect her. Had to be a good sign.

  The room was big, airy. Four beds, bright-coloured duvet covers. Smell of heated hair and four clashing body sprays thickening the air. Posters of thrusting girl singers and smooth guys I half-recognised, all of them with full lips and hair that had taken three people an hour. Bedside lockers half open, bits of uniform tossed on beds, on the floor: when the screaming started, Orla and Joanne and Gemma had been changing into their civvies, getting ready to do whatever they did with their bite of freedom before teatime.

  The scattered clothes gave me that shove again, stronger: Out. No good reason, no bras on show or anything, but I still felt like a pervert, like I’d walked in on the four of them changing and wasn’t walking back out.

  ‘Nice,’ Conway said, glancing around. ‘Nicer than we had in training, am I right?’

  ‘Nicer than I’ve got now,’ I said. Only a bit true. I like my place: little apartment, half-empty still because I’d rather save for one good thing than buy four crap ones straightaway. But the high ceiling, the rose moulding, the light and green space opening wide outside the window: I can’t save for those. My place looks straight into a matching apartment block, too close for any light to squeeze in between.

  Nothing said whose bit of room was whose; it all looked the same. The only clue was the photos on the bedside lockers. Alison had a little brother, Orla had a bunch of lumpy big sisters. Gemma rode horses. Joanne’s ma was the image of her, a few fillers on.

  ‘Um,’ Orla said, hovering by the door. She’d swapped her uniform for a light-pink hoodie and pink jeans shorts over tights, looked like a marshmallow on a stick. ‘Is Alison OK?’

  We looked at each other, me and Conway. Shrugged.

  I said, ‘Could take a while. After that.’

  ‘But . . . I mean, Miss McKenna said? Like, she just needed her allergy pills?’

  Another look at each other. Orla trying to watch both of us at once.

  Conway said, ‘I reckon Alison knows what she saw better than McKenna does.’

  Orla gawped. ‘You believe in ghosts?’ Not what she’d expected; not what she’d been looking for.

  ‘Who said anything about believing?’ Conway flipped a magazine off Gemma’s bedside locker, checked out celebs. ‘Nah. We don’t believe. We know.’ To me: ‘Remember the O’Farrell case?’

  I’d never heard of the O’Farrell case. But I knew, it slid from Conway to me like a note passed in class, what she was at. She wanted Orla scared.

  I shot her a wide-eyed warning grimace, shook my head.

  ‘What? The O’Farrell case, me and Detective Moran worked that one together. The guy, right, he used to beat the shite out of his wife—’

  ‘Conway.’ I jerked my chin at Orla.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s just a kid.’

  Conway tossed the magazine onto Alison’s bed. ‘Bollix. You just a kid?’

  ‘Huh?’ Orla caught up. ‘Um, no?’

  ‘See?’ Conway said to me. ‘So. One day O’Farrell’s giving the wife the slaps, her little dog goes for him – trying to protect its mistress, yeah? The guy throws it out of the room, goes back to what he’s doing—’

  I did an exasperated sigh, rubbed my hair into a mess. Started cruising round the room, see what I could see. Handful of tissues in the bin, smudged that weird orangey-pink that doesn’t exist outside makeup. A bust Biro. No scraps of book.

  ‘But the dog’s scrabbling at the door, whining, barking, O’Farrell can’t concentrate. He opens the door, grabs the dog, smashes its brains out on the wall. Then he finishes off the wife.’

  ‘OhmyGod. Ew.’

  Gemma’s phone was on her bedside locker, Alison’s was on her bed. I couldn’t see the other two, but Joanne’s locker was an inch open. ‘OK if I have a look around?’ I asked Orla. Not a proper search, that could wait; just having a look-see, and unsettling her a little extra while I was at it.

  ‘Um, do you . . . ? Like, do you have to?’ She fumbled for a way to say no, but my hand was halfway to the locker door and her mind was halfway on Conway’s fairy tale. ‘I guess it’s OK. I mean—’

  ‘Thanks.’ Not that I needed her permission; just staying the good cop. Cheerful smile, I gave her, and straight in. Orla opened her mouth to take it back, but Conway was moving in closer.

  ‘We show up’ – Conway gestured at the two of us – ‘O’Farrell swears it was a burglar. He was good; we nearly fell for it. But then we sit him down in his kitchen, start asking questions. Every time O’Farrell gives us some crap about his imaginary burglar, or about how much he loved his wife, there’s this weird noise outside the door.’

  Joanne’s bedside locker: hair straightener, makeup, fake tan, iPod, jewellery box. No books, old or new; no phone. Had to be on her.

  ‘This noise, it’s like . . .’ Conway raked her nails down the wall by Orla’s head, sudden and violent. Orla jumped. ‘It’s exactly like a dog clawing at the door. And it’s making O’Farrell jumpy as hell. Every time he hears it, he whips round, loses his train of thought; he’s looking at us like, Did yous hear that?’

  ‘Sweating,’ I said, ‘dripping. White. Looked like he was gonna puke.’

  It was so easy, it startled me. Felt like we’d practised for months, me and Conway, slaloming round the twists and kinks of the story side by side. Smooth as velvet.

  It felt like joy, only a joy you didn’t go looking for and don’t want. That dream partner of mine, the one with the violin lessons and the red setters: this was what we were like together, him and me.

  Orla’s bedside locker: hair straightener, makeup, fake tan, iPod, jewellery box. Phone. No books. I left the door open.

  Orla didn’t even notice what I was doing. Her mouth was hanging open. ‘Wasn’t the dog dead?’ she wanted to know.

  Conway managed not to roll her eyes. ‘Yeah. It was very dead. The techs had taken it away and all. That’s the point. Detective Moran here, he says to O’Farrell, “You got another dog?” O’Farrell can’t even talk, but he shakes his head.’

  Alison’s locker: straightener, makeup, yada yada, no books, no extra phone. Gemma’s locker: same story, plus a bottle of capsules of some herbal thing swearing to make her skinny.

  ‘We go back to questioning him, but the noise keeps happening. We can’t concentrate, right? Finally Detective Moran gets pissed off. Jumps up, heads for the door. O’Farrell practically comes off his chair, roars at Moran, “Jesus God, don’t open that door!”’

  She was good, Conway. The room had changed, dark places stirring, bright ones pulsing. Orla was mesmerised.

  ‘But it’s too late: Moran’s already opening the door. Far as we can see, me and him, the hall’s empty. Nothing there. Then O’Farrell starts to scream.’

  One big wardrobe, all along one side of the room. Inside, it was split into four sections. Tangled bright things spilling out.

  ‘We look around, O’Farrell’s flying backwards off his chair, grabbing his throat. Howling like he’s being killed. First we think he’s putting it on, right, get out of being questioned? Then we see the blood.’

  Breathy whine bursting out of Orla. I tried to check drawers without touching anything girly. Wished Conway was doing this bit. There were Tampax in there.

  ‘It’s dripping out between his fingers. He’s on the floor, kicking, howling, “Get it off me! Get it off!” Me and Moran, we’re like, What the fuck? We haul him outside – we don’t know what else to do, figure maybe the fresh air’ll help. He stops screaming, but he’s still moaning, holding his throat. We get his hands away. And I swear to God’ – Conway was in close, eyes locked on Orla’s – ‘I’ve seen dog bites. That, on O’Farrell’s throat, that was a dog bite.’

  O
rla asked faintly, ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Nah. Few stitches.’

  ‘The dog was only little,’ I said. Worked around someone’s bras. ‘Couldn’t do too much damage.’

  ‘After the doctors got him cleaned up,’ Conway said, ‘O’Farrell spilled his guts. Full confession. When we took him off in cuffs, he was still screaming, “Keep it away from me! Don’t let it get me!” Grown man, begging like a kid.’

  ‘Never made it to trial,’ I said. ‘Wound up in a mental hospital instead. He’s still there.’

  Orla said, and it came from the heart, ‘OhmyGod.’

  ‘So,’ Conway said. ‘When McKenna says there’s no such thing as ghosts, excuse us if we have a laugh.’

  Nothing in the wardrobe drawers that didn’t belong there, not on a quick check. Plenty that did; these four could have started their own Abercrombie & Fitch outlet. Nothing in the pockets of the hanging clothes. ‘We’re not saying Alison actually saw Chris Harper’s ghost,’ I said, reassuring. ‘Not for definite.’

  ‘Jaysus, no,’ Conway agreed. ‘She could’ve imagined the whole thing.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, poking through shoes. ‘She didn’t imagine that arm.’ Nothing on the wardrobe floor.

  ‘Nah, not that. I guess that could’ve maybe been allergies or whatever, though; who knows?’ Shrug, unconvinced. ‘All I’m saying is, if I knew anything that had anything to do with Chris, and I kept it to myself, I wouldn’t fancy turning out the lights tonight.’

  I dialled the number that had texted me. All the phones stayed dark. No ringing coming from under a bed, from a stack of clothes I’d skimmed over.

  ‘Hate to admit it,’ I said. Glanced over my shoulder, did a shiver. ‘Me neither.’

  Orla’s eyes skimming the room, hitting the corners, the shadows. Real fear.

  Conway’s story had hit the mark. And Orla wasn’t the only one she’d been aiming at. The ghost story, or as much of it as Orla could remember, would be round the fourth-years inside half an hour.

  ‘Speaking of which.’ Conway swept up her satchel, plopped herself down nice and comfy on Joanne’s bed, right on top of her uniform – Orla’s eyes widened, like Conway had done something daring. ‘You might want to take a look at this.’