Tana French - The Secret Place

I could feel something happening to me. A change.

Message icon on my screen. Conway, a few minutes back, while I’d been too busy to notice. She must have pulled the plug, or Mackey had. I was just in time.

Got anything yet? Stalling him long as I can but lights out is 1045 get a move on

‘What the fuck ,’ I said out loud.

The grin came on top of it, grin like my face was splitting open and every colour of light bursting out.

Idiot, me, supersize idiot and I could’ve punched myself in the head for it. For a second there I forgot all about Rebecca, didn’t care.

Go for a nice walk, admire the grounds, Conway had said to me outside the door of the art room . See if you can get Chris’s ghost to pop up for you. Meaning Get outside and talk to those girls, stir them up as hard as you can, see what you can get out of them. Clear as day, if I’d been looking. I’d been so busy staring at how Mackey could’ve used me to fuck me up, I’d missed what she was waving in front of my face.

Conway had trusted me: not just trusted me through all Mackey’s doom-peddling, but trusted me to know she would. I could’ve punched myself all over again for not doing the same for her. Made my stomach turn cold, how close I had come to too late.

I texted her back. Meet me out the front. Urgent. Don’t let Mackey come.

May comes in restless, fizzing in the warm air. Summer is almost close enough to touch and so are the exams, and the whole of third year is wound too tight, laughing too loud at nothing and exploding into ornate arguments full of slammed desks and tears in the toilets. The moon pulls strange hues out of the sky, a tinge of green you can only see from the corner of your eye, a bruised violet.

It’s the second of May. Chris Harper has two weeks left to live.

Holly can’t sleep. Selena still has her fake headache, and Julia is being a bitch; when Holly tried to talk to her about whatever’s up with Lenie, Julia blew her off so viciously that they’re still only kind of speaking. The bedroom is too hot, over-intimate heat that sends waves of itch across your skin. Things feel wrong and getting wronger, they twist and pull at the edges, drag the fabric of her all askew.

She gets up to go to the toilet, not because she needs to but because she can’t lie still another second. The corridor is dim and even hotter than their room. Holly is halfway down it and thinking cold water when the shadow of a doorway convulses, only a foot or two away. She leaps back against the wall and grabs a breath ready to yell, but then Alison Muldoon’s head shoots open-mouthed out of the shadow, vanishes in a burst of urgent squeaky noises, and pops back out again.

‘Jesus!’ Holly hisses. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack! What is your problem ?’

‘OhmyGod, it’s you , I thought- Jo! ’ And she’s gone again.

By this point Holly is getting curious. She waits and listens; the rest of the corridor is silent, everyone deep under the weight of the night.

After a minute Joanne appears in the doorway, frizz-haired and wearing pale-pink pyjamas that say ooh baby across the chest. ‘Um, that’s Holly Mackey?’ she snaps, examining Holly like something in a display case. ‘Are you retarded or what? I was asleep .’

‘Her hair ,’ Alison bleats, just above a whisper, behind her. ‘I just saw her hair, and I thought-’

‘OhmyGod, they’re both blond, so is like everybody?Holly doesn’t look anything like her. Holly’s thin .’

Which is the biggest compliment Joanne knows. She smiles at Holly, and rolls her eyes so they can share a laugh at how thick Alison is.

The thing about Joanne is you never can tell. Today she could be your snuggled-up best friend, and she’ll get all wounded if you don’t play along. It puts you at a disadvantage: she knows who she’s dealing with; you have to figure it out from scratch, every time. She makes Holly’s calf muscles go twitchy.

Holly says, ‘Who did she think I was?’

‘She came out of the right room,’ Alison whines.

‘Which meansshe was going the wrong way, duh,’ Joanne says. ‘Who cares if she goes to the loo? We care if she goes out. Which, hello, is that way?’ Alison chews a knuckle and keeps her head down.

Holly says, ‘You thought I was Selena? Going out side ?’

‘ I didn’t. Because I’m not retarded.’

Holly looks at Joanne’s tight face, too hard for the cutesy pyjamas, and it occurs to her that Joanne is kicking Alison because she’s some strange combination of relieved and disappointed. Which is crazy. She says, feeling her way, ‘Where would Selena be going?’

‘Don’t you wish you knew?’ Joanne says, tossing Alison a smirk. Alison lets out an obedient sharp giggle, too loud. ‘Shut up ! Do you actually want to get us caught?’

Holly’s heartbeat is changing, turning deeper and violent. She says, ‘Selena doesn’t go out on her own. Only when we all do.’

‘OhmyGod, you guys are so cute ,’ Joanne says, with a nose-crinkle that doesn’t thaw her eyes. ‘All this blood-sisters-tell-each-other-everything stuff; it’s like an old TV show. Did you actually do the blood-sisters thing? Because that would be so totes adorbs I could just die.’

Not bessie mates, not tonight. ‘Just give me a sec,’ Holly says. If Joanne shows you her teeth, you bite first and hard. ‘I’m trying to look like I actually care what you think about us.’

Joanne stares, hand on her hip, in the thin dirty light. Holly catches the moment when she starts seeing a more interesting football than Alison. ‘If you’re such perfect little buddies,’ she says, ‘how come you don’t know where your friend goes at night?’

Holly reminds herself that Joanne is a lying cow who would do anything for notice, while Selena is her best friend. She can’t picture Selena’s face.

‘You’ve got trust issues,’ she says. ‘If you don’t do something about them, you’re going to turn into one of those crazy women who hire private investigators to follow their boyfriends around.’

‘At least I’ll have a boyfriend. One of my own, not one I had to steal.’

‘Yay you?’ Holly says, turning away. ‘I guess everyone has to be proud of something?’

‘Hey!’ Joanne snaps. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’m talking about?’

Holly shrugs. ‘Why? It’s not like I’m going to believe you.’ She starts for the toilets.

The hiss flicks after her: ‘ Come back here. ’

If things were normal, Holly would wave over her shoulder and keep walking. But they’re not, and Joanne’s clever in her own special way, and if she actually knows any of the answers-

Holly turns. Joanne snaps her fingers at Alison. ‘Phone.’

Alison scurries back into the sleep-smelling cave of their room. Someone heaves herself over in bed and asks a drowsy question; Alison lets out a wild shush. She comes back carrying Joanne’s phone, which she hands over like an altar boy at the offertory. Part of Holly’s head is already hamming up the story for the others, snorting into her palm with laughter. The other part has a bad feeling.

Joanne takes her time pressing buttons. Then she hands the phone to Holly – the curl of her mouth is a warning, but Holly takes it anyway. The video is already playing.

It hits her in separate punches, with no room to get her breath in between. The girl is Selena. The guy is Chris Harper. That’s the glade. It’s turned into something Holly has never seen it be; something gathered and dangerous.

Joanne feels closer, licking up anything Holly lets out. Holly makes herself start breathing again and says, with no blink and her dad’s amused half-grin, ‘OMG, some blond chick is snogging some guy. Call Perez Hilton quick.’