The Secret Place

by Tana French

  Dad hands her a glass. She takes it automatically, without looking. ‘Her life, Frank, her life isn’t anything like she thought it would be. All our plans, we were going to take the world by storm . . . She never imagined this.’

  Mum doesn’t normally talk like this in front of Holly. She’s cupping one cheek and looking into air, seeing things. She’s forgotten Holly is there.

  Dad asks, ‘Going to meet up with her again?’ Holly can tell he wants to touch Mum, put his arms around her. She wants to as well, to press in against Mum’s side, but she stays back because Dad is.

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. She’s going back to America next week; back to her husband, and the temp work. She can’t stay any longer. And she’s got all her cousins to see before then. We swore we’d e-mail this time . . .’ Mum runs her fingers down her face, like she’s feeling the lines around her mouth for the first time.

  Dad says, ‘Maybe next summer we can think about taking a holiday over in that direction. If you want to.’

  ‘Oh, Frank. That’s lovely of you. But she’s not in New York or San Francisco, anywhere that . . .’ Mum looks at the wineglass in her hand, bewildered, and puts it down on the counter. ‘She’s in Minnesota, a smallish town there. That’s where her husband’s from. I don’t know if . . .’

  ‘If we headed to New York, she might come up and join us. Have a think about it.’

  ‘I will. Thank you.’ Mum takes a deep breath. She picks up her bag off the floor and tucks the photo back into it. ‘Holly,’ she says, holding out an arm and smiling. ‘Come here, darling, and give me my kiss. How was your week?’

  That night Holly can’t sleep. The house feels stuffed with heat, but when she kicks off the duvet a chill flattens itself along her back. She listens to Mum and Dad going to bed: Mum’s voice still rising faster and happier, dropping suddenly now and then when she remembers Holly; the low rhythm of Dad adding in something that makes Mum laugh out loud. After their voices stop, Holly lies there in the dark on her own, trying to stay still. She thinks about texting one of the others to see if she’s awake, but she doesn’t know which one, or what she wants to say.

  ‘Lenie,’ Holly says.

  It feels like stretched hours before Selena, face down on her bed reading, looks up. ‘Mm?’

  ‘Next year. How do we decide who shares with who?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Senior rooms. Do you know who you want to share with?’

  A thick skin of rain coats the window. They’re stuck indoors; in the common room, people are playing a nineties edition of Trivial Pursuit, trying out makeup, texting. The smell of beef stew for tea has somehow made it all the way up from the canteen. It’s making Holly feel slightly sick.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Julia says, turning a page. ‘It’s February. If you want something to worry about, how about that stupid Social Awareness Studies project?’

  ‘Lenie?’

  Senior rooms hang over the whole of fourth year. Friendships go down in flames and tears because someone picks the wrong person to share with. All the boarders spend most of the year edging carefully round the choice, trying to find some way to navigate it undamaged.

  Selena gazes, lips parted, like Holly’s asked her to fly a space shuttle. She says, ‘One of you guys.’

  A flutter of fear catches at Holly. ‘Well, yeah. Which one?’

  Nothing out of Selena; empty space, echoes. Becca has felt something in the air and taken out her earbuds.

  ‘Want to know who I’m going to share with?’ Julia asks. ‘Because if you’re going to start getting hyper about stuff that isn’t even happening yet, it’s definitely not you.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ Holly points out. ‘What’ll we do, Lenie?’ She wills Selena to sit up and think about it, come up with an idea that makes sure no one’s feelings get hurt, that’s what she’s good at; names out of a hat maybe – please Lenie please . . . ‘Lenie?’

  Selena says, ‘You do it. I don’t mind. I’m reading.’

  Holly says, feeling her voice too loud and too sharp-edged, ‘We all have to decide together. That’s how it works. You don’t get to just make the rest of us do it.’

  Selena tucks her head down tight over her book. Becca watches, sucking the cord of her earbuds.

  ‘Hol,’ Julia says, giving Holly the crinkle-nosed smile that means trouble. ‘I need something out of the common room. Come with me.’

  Holly doesn’t actually feel like letting Julia boss her around. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Come on.’ Julia slides off the bed.

  ‘Is it too heavy for you to carry by yourself?’

  ‘Hahahaha, such a comedienne. Come on.’

  The force of her makes Holly feel better. Maybe she should have said something to Jules straight off; maybe the two of them together will come up with a decent answer. She swings her legs off the bed. Becca watches them out of the room. Selena doesn’t.

  The early darkness outside turns the light in the corridor a dirty yellow. Julia leans back against the wall with her arms folded. She says, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  She doesn’t bother keeping it down; the rain battering the landing window covers their voices from any listeners. Holly says, ‘I was just asking her. What’s the big huge—’

  ‘You were hassling her. Don’t hassle her.’

  ‘Hello, how is that hassling her? We have to decide.’

  ‘It’s hassling her because if you keep going on at her, she’ll just get upset. The rest of us work it out, we tell her, she’ll be happy with whatever we think.’

  Holly matches Julia’s folded arms, and her stare. ‘What if I think Lenie should get a say too?’

  Julia rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Did you have a lobotomy for lunch? You know why not.’

  Holly says, ‘You mean because she’s not OK. That’s why not.’

  Julia’s face closes over. ‘She’s fine. She’s got shit she needs to sort out, is all. Doesn’t everyone.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing. Lenie can’t manage. Like just normal stuff: she can’t do it. What’s going to happen to her when the rest of us aren’t there every minute of every—’

  ‘You mean, like, when we’re in college? Years from now? Excuse me if I don’t have a total drama attack over that. By then she’ll be fine.’

  ‘She’s not getting better. You know she’s not.’

  It spins between them, razor-edged: she hasn’t got better since then; since that; you know what. Neither one of them reaches out to touch it.

  Holly says, ‘I think we need to make her go talk to someone.’

  Julia laughs out loud. ‘What, like Sister Ignatius? Oh, yeah, that’s totally going to make everything OK. Sister Ignatius couldn’t sort a broken fingernail—’

  ‘Not Sister Ignatius. Someone real. Like a doctor or something.’

  ‘Jesus Christ—’ Julia shoots off the wall pointing both forefingers at Holly. The angle of her neck is one degree off an attack. ‘Don’t even fucking think about it. I am serious.’

  Holly almost slaps her hands away. The rush of fury feels good. ‘Since when are you the boss of me? You don’t get to give me orders. Ever.’

  Neither of them has been in an actual fight since they were tiny kids, but they’re eye to eye, on their toes and boiling for it, hands twitching for something soft to gouge and twist. Julia is the one who finally drops back, gives Holly her shoulder and sinks against the wall.

  ‘Look,’ she says, to the landing window and the swollen streaks of rain. ‘If you care about Lenie, like even the tiniest bit, then you won’t try and get her talking to a psychologist. You’re going to have to take my word for it: that’s like the absolute worst thing you could do for her, in the whole world. OK?’

  The immensity of it is coiled tight inside every word. Holly can’t get a hold on her, amid the relentless buzz of both their circling secrets, can’t catch at what Julia k
nows or guesses. It’s nothing like Julia to back down.

  ‘I’m asking you as a favour here. Trust me. Please.’

  Holly wishes, right down into deep parts of herself that she didn’t know existed, that it were still that simple. ‘I guess,’ she says. ‘OK.’

  Julia’s face turns towards her. The layer of suspicion makes Holly want to do something, she can’t tell what: scream it right off, maybe, or give it the finger and walk out of the door and never come back. ‘Yeah?’ Julia says. ‘You won’t try and get her talking to anyone?’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m so sure.’

  ‘Then OK,’ Holly says. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Good,’ Julia says. ‘Let’s go get something out of the common room before Becs comes looking for us.’

  They head off down the corridor, in step, baffled and alone.

  Holly isn’t leaving it because Julia says so. She’s leaving it because she has an idea.

  It’s the psychologist thing that made her think of it. She got sent to a counsellor, that other time. He was kind of a moron and his nose sweated, and he kept asking questions that were none of his business so Holly just played with his stupid puzzles and ignored him, but he kept talking and he did come out with one thing that actually turned out to be true. He said it would get simpler once the trial was over and she knew exactly what was going on; either way, he said, knowing would make it easier to put the whole thing out of her head and concentrate on other stuff. Which it did.

  It takes a few days before Julia lets go of the wary look and leaves Holly and Selena alone together. But one afternoon they’re at the Court and Julia needs to get her dad a birthday card, and Becca remembers she owes her gran a thank-you card; and Selena holds up her bag from the art shop and starts drifting towards the fountain, and by the time Holly heads after her it’s too late for Julia to change anything.

  Selena arranges perfect tubes of paint in a fan on the black marble and strokes the colour bands with a fingertip. Across the fountain a gang of guys from Colm’s turn to eye her and Holly, but they won’t come over. They can tell.

  ‘Lenie,’ Holly says, and waits the long stretch till Selena thinks of looking up. ‘You know one thing that might make you better?’

  Selena watches her like she’s made of cloud-patterns, shifting gracefully and meaninglessly across a wide sky. She says, ‘Huh?’

  ‘If you found out what happened,’ Holly says. Coming this close to it makes her heart skid fast and light, no traction. ‘Last year. And if someone got arrested for it. That would help. Right? Do you think?’

  ‘Shh,’ Lenie says. She reaches over and takes Holly’s hand – hers is cold and soft, and no matter how tight Holly squeezes, it doesn’t feel solid. She lets Holly hang on to it and goes back to her paints.

  Holly learned from her dad a long time back that the difference between caught and not is taking your time. She buys the book first, in a big second-hand bookshop in town on a busy Saturday; in a couple of months’ time Mum won’t remember I have to get this book for school can I have ten euros I’ll only be a sec, no one at the till will remember some blond kid with a musty mythology book and a glossy art thing to wave at Mum. She finds a phone pic that has Chris in the background and prints it off a few weeks later, on a lunchtime dash for the computer room; in no time the others will have forgotten her taking a few minutes too long to get back from the toilet. She slices and glues on her bedroom floor that weekend, wearing gloves she stole from the chem lab, with the duvet ready to yank over the whole thing if Mum or Dad knocks; after long enough they’ll forget any comforting playschool whiff of paper glue. She dumps the book in a bin in the park near home; within a week or two it’ll be well gone. Then she slides the card down a slit in the lining of her winter coat, and waits for enough time to move past.

  She wants a sign to tell her when the right day comes. She knows she won’t get one, not for this; maybe not for anything after this, ever again.

  She makes her own. When she hears the Daleks talking about OMG this stupid project taking forever have to go up on Tuesday evening so booooring, Holly says, at the end of art class, ‘Study time again on Tuesday?’ Watches the others nod, while they pour drifts of powdered chalk into the bin and coil copper wire away.

  She is meticulous. She makes sure to chatter the others past the Secret Place, on their way into the art room and out again, so none of them see what isn’t there. Makes sure to leave her phone out of sight, on a chair pushed under the table, so no one spots it for her. Makes sure to say, ‘Oh, pants, my phone!’ after lights-out. Makes sure to run through every step, the next morning, up in the empty corridor: pin it, see it (quick gasp, hand to her mouth, like someone’s watching), get the envelope and the balsa knife, lever out the thumbtack as delicately as if there might actually be fingerprints there. When she runs back down the corridor, the sound of each footstep flies up into a high corner, slaps onto the wall like a dark handprint.

  The others believe her when she says she has a migraine – she’s had three in the past two months, matching Mum’s symptoms. Julia pulls out her iPod, to keep Holly from getting bored. Holly lies in bed and watches them leave for school like it’s the last time she’ll ever see them: already half gone, Becca flipping through pages for her Media Studies homework, Julia hauling at a sock, Selena tipping a smile and a wave over her shoulder. When the door slams behind them, there’s a minute when she thinks she’ll never be able to make herself sit up.

  The nurse gives her migraine pills, tucks her in and leaves her to sleep it off. Holly moves fast. She knows what time the next bus into town leaves.

  It hits her at the bus stop, in the cool-edged morning air. At first she thinks she actually is sick, that what she’s doing has called down some curse on her and now all her lies come true. She hasn’t felt it in so long and it tastes different now. It used to be vast and dark-bloody; this is metallic, this is alkaline, this is like scouring powder eating through your layers one by one. It’s fear. Holly is afraid.

  The bus howls up like a stampeding animal, the driver eyes her uniform, the steps sway precariously as she climbs to the top deck. Guys in hoodies are sprawled along the back seat blasting hip-hop from a radio and they eye-strip Holly bare, but her legs won’t take her back down those stairs. She sits on the edge of the front seat, stares out at the road diving under the wheels and listens to the raw laughs behind her, tensed for the surge that would mean an attack. If the guys come for her then she can push the emergency button. The driver will stop the bus and help her down the stairs, and she can get the next bus back to school and climb back into bed. Her heart punching her throat makes her want to throw up. She wants Dad. She wants Mum.

  The song starts so small, fading up through the hip-hop, it takes a minute to reach her. Then it hits her like a shock in the chest, like she’s breathed air made of something different.

  Remember oh remember back when we were young so young . . .

  It’s crystal-clear, every word. It surges away the sound of the engine, bowls away the hoodies’ hooting. It carries them over the canal and all the way into town. It soars the bus through chains of lights all flashing to green, leaps it over speed-bumps, slaloms it two-wheeled around jaywalkers. Never thought I’d lose you and I never thought I’d find you here, never thought that everything we’d lost could feel so near . . .

  Holly listens to every word of it, straight through. Chorus, chorus again, again, and she waits for the song to fade. Instead it keeps going and it rises. I’ve got so far, I’ve got so far left to travel . . .

  The bus skids towards her stop. Holly waves goodbye to the hoodies – open-mouthed and baffled, looking for an insult, too slow – and flies down the rocking stairs.

  Out on the street, the song is still going. It’s fainter and tricky, flickering between traffic sounds and student-gang shouts, but she knows what to listen for now and she keeps hold of it. It spirals out in front of her like a fine golden thread, it leads
her nimble and dancer-footed between rushing suits and lampposts and long-skirted beggarwomen, up the street towards Stephen.

  Acknowledgements

  I owe enormous thank-yous to more people every time: Ciara Considine at Hachette Books Ireland, Sue Fletcher and Nick Sayers at Hodder & Stoughton, and Clare Ferraro and Caitlin O’Shaughnessy at Viking, for the time and skill they put into making this book so much better; Breda Purdue, Ruth Shern, Ciara Doorley and everyone at Hachette Books Ireland; Swati Gamble, Kerry Hood and everyone at Hodder & Stoughton; Ben Petrone, Carolyn Coleburn, Angie Messina and everyone at Viking; Susanne Halbleib and everyone at Fischer Verlage; Rachel Burd, for another eagle-eyed copy edit; the amazing Darley Anderson and his crack squad at the agency, especially Clare, Mary, Rosanna, Andrea and Jill; Steve Fisher of APA; David Walsh, for not only answering all my questions on detective procedure but giving me the answers to questions I didn’t know I needed to ask; Dr Fearghas Ó Cochláin, as usual, for helping me kill off the victim as plausibly as possible; Oonagh ‘Better Than’ Montague, for (among many, many other things) making me laugh at all the moments when I needed it most; Ann-Marie Hardiman, Catherine Farrell, Kendra Harpster, Jessica Ryan, Karen Gillece, Jessica Bramham, Kristina Johansen, Alex French and Susan Collins, for various wonderful combinations of seriousness, silliness and every kind of support; David Ryan, for being so very and so incomparably that without his endless I would never have; my mother, Elena Lombardi, for every single day; my father, David French; and, more than I’ll ever be able to put into words, my husband, Anthony Breatnach.