Tana French - The Secret Place

‘That’s like saying you’re never going near any guy ever,’ Holly says. ‘Colm’s guys are all we meet.’

‘So I won’t go near any guy ever, till college. I don’t care. Better than having another of those stupid pricks telling the whole school exactly what my tits feel like.’ Becca goes red.

Selena hears it like a single ding of silver on crystal, shivering the air. She sits up. She says, ‘Then me neither.’

Julia shoots her a ferocious stare. ‘I’m not just being all, “Oh, my ickle feelings are hurt so I’m giving up men forever.” I mean it.’

Selena says, unruffled and sure, ‘Me too.’

In daylight it would be different. In daylight, in indoor light, this would never come to them. Powerless and stifled, the rage would turn ingrown. The stain on their skin would burn deeper, branding them.

The clouds are gone but the moonlight is speeding faster, turning around them. Becca says, ‘Same here.’

Julia’s eyebrow flicks, half wryly. Becca can’t find how to tell her that it’s not nothing and that she wants it to be more, she would bring the biggest thing in the world to put in the middle of their circle and set it on fire if she could, so that she’d deserve this; but then Julia gives her a small smile and a private wink.

All their eyes have gone to Holly. She has a flash of her dad, his grin as he sideslips when you try to pin him to an answer: never get tied down, not till you’re beyond sure, not even then.

The others, blazing white against the dark trees, triple and waiting. The soft curve of shadow under Selena’s chin, the narrow back-bend of Becca’s wrist where she leans on her hand in the grass, the downward quirk at the corner of Julia’s mouth: things Holly will know by heart when she’s a hundred, when all the rest of the world has been scoured away from her mind. Something throbs in the palms of her hands, pulling towards them. Something shifting, the smoke-spiral ache of something like thirst but not, catching her in the throat and under the breastbone. Something is happening.

‘Same here,’ she says.

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says. ‘I can hear it now. They’re gonna say we’re some kind of lesbian orgy cult.’

‘So?’ Selena says. ‘They can say what they want. We won’t have to care.’

A breathtaken silence, as that sinks in. Their minds race wild along its trail. They see Joanne wiggling and giggling and sneering in the Court to make the Colm’s guys fancy her, they see Orla howling helpless into her sodden pillow after Andrew Moore and his friends ripped her apart, they see themselves trying desperately to stand right and dress right and say the right things under the guys’ grabbing eyes, and they think: Never, never ever, never never never again. Break that open the way superheroes burst handcuffs. Punch it in the face and watch it explode.

My body my mind the way I dress the way I walk the way I talk, mine all mine.

The power of it, buzzing inside them to be unlocked, makes their bones shake.

Becca says, ‘We’ll be like the Amazons. They didn’t touch guys, ever, and they didn’t care what people said. If a guy tried to do anything to them, he ended up…’ A second that whirls with arrows and flares of blood.

‘Whoa,’ Julia says, but the small smile is back and it’s her own smile, the one that most people never get to see. ‘Chill. This isn’t forever. It’s just till we leave school and we can meet actual human guys.’

Leaving school is years away and unimaginable, words that can never turn real. This is forever.

Selena says, ‘We need to swear it. Make a vow.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Julia says, ‘who does stuff like…’ but she’s only saying it out of reflex, it spins faint and dizzy away into the shadows, none of them hear.

Selena holds out her hand, palm down over the grass and the hidden trails of night insects. ‘I swear,’ she says.

Bats call, up in the dark air. The cypresses lean closer to watch, intent, approving. The rush and whisper of them lifts the girls, surges them on.

‘OK,’ Julia says. Her voice comes out stronger than she meant it to, so strong it startles her; her heartbeat feels like it’s going to lift her off the ground. ‘OK. Let’s do it.’

She brings her hand down on top of Selena’s. The small slap echoes across the clearing. ‘I swear.’

Becca, thin hand light as a dandelion clock on Julia’s, wishing fiercely and too late that she had looked at the photo, that she had seen what the others were seeing. ‘I swear.’

And Holly. ‘I swear.’

The four hands twist into a knot wrapped with moonlight, fingers tangling, all of them trying to stretch wide enough to tighten round all the others at once. A breathless small laugh.

The cypresses sigh, long and sated. The moon stands still.

Rebecca O’Mara, in the art-room doorway, hovering on one foot with the other wrapped round her ankle. Long dark-brown hair in a ponytail, soft and straggly, no straighteners here. Maybe an inch taller than Holly; skinny, not scary-skinny but definitely could have done with a pizza. Not pretty – face still catching up with her features – but it was coming soon. Wide brown eyes, on Conway, wary. No glance at the Secret Place.

If Rebecca was low on the old confidence, the old self-esteem, I could bring that. Give it the sweet big brother, looking for help with the important adventure and shy Little Sis is the special one who can save the day.

‘Rebecca, yeah?’ I said. Smiled, not too big, just easy and natural. ‘Thanks for coming in. Have a seat.’

She didn’t move. Houlihan had to dodge past her, scurry off to her corner. ‘It’s about Chris Harper. Isn’t it?’

Not scarlet and tangled up this time, but her voice was barely over a whisper. I said, ‘I’m Stephen Moran – maybe Holly’s mentioned me along the way, has she? She gave me a hand with some stuff, a few years back?’

Rebecca looked at me properly, for the first time. Nodded.

I held out a hand at the chair, and she pulled herself out of the doorway and came. That gangly teenage half-prance, like it was only the heavy shoes bringing her feet back to the ground. She sat down, tied her legs in a knot. Wrapped her hands in her skirt.

Sucking feeling in my chest, like water draining: let-down. From knowing Holly, from Conway saying Just something , from all that wide-eyed shite about freaks and witches, I’d been expecting these to be more than the last lot. This was just Alison over again, a bundle of fidgety fears wrapped in a grow-into-it skirt.

I let my spine go loose like a teenager’s, knees everywhere, and gave Rebecca another smile. Rueful, this one. ‘I need a hand again. I’m good at my job, I swear, but every now and then I need someone to help me out or I’ll get nowhere. I’ve got a feeling maybe you might be able to do that for me. Would you give it a shot, yeah?’

Rebecca said, ‘Is it about Chris?’

Not too shy to dig in her heels a bit. I made a face. ‘I’ve gotta tell you, I’m still trying to work out what it’s about. Why? Has something happened to do with Chris, yeah?’

She shook her head. ‘I just…’ Gesture at Conway, with the bundle of hands and skirt. Conway was picking her nails with the cap of her Biro, didn’t look up. ‘I mean, because she’s here. I thought…’

‘We’ll try and figure it out together. OK?’

I shot her the warm crinkly smile. Got a blank look back.

I said, ‘So let’s start with yesterday evening. First study period: where were you?’

After a moment Rebecca said, ‘The fourth-year common room. We have to be.’

‘And then?’

‘We get our break. Me and my friends, we went outside and sat on the grass for a while.’