Tana French - The Secret Place

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 motorbikes 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.

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.’