The Secret Place полностью

Selena nods. ‘About getting out,’ Chris says. ‘One of my mates. He might be able to figure something out.’

‘Ask him.’

Chris says, ‘I’ll make him.’

Selena says, ‘Don’t tell him why. And till then, don’t talk to me. If we see each other around the Court or something, we’ll act like we don’t even know each other; like before. Otherwise it’ll all get ruined.’

Chris nods. He says, obscurely and out to the hall but Selena understands, ‘Thanks.’

Miss Long bangs the door open. ‘Selena! You, whatsyourname! Inside. Now.’ This time she stays there, staring.

Chris jumps up and holds out a hand to Selena. She doesn’t take it. She stands up, feeling the movement spin little eddies up into the high darkness. She smiles at Chris and says, ‘See you soon.’ Then she moves around him, carefully so not even the hem of her dress brushes up against him, and goes back into the gym. The handprint, wrapped around her arm, is still glowing.

‘Search time,’ Conway said. ‘And if we’re stuck in here…’ She shoved the sash window up.

A whirl of breeze shot in, carried the mess of body sprays away. Outside, the light was cooling and the sky was turning pale. It was almost evening.

‘One more second of that stink,’ Conway said, ‘I was gonna puke my ring.’

The stir-crazy was starting to needle at her. I felt it too. We’d been in those rooms a long time.

Conway pulled the wardrobe open, said ‘Fuck me,’ at the amount or the labels. Started running her hands down hanging dresses. I went for the beds, Gemma’s first. Pulled back the bedclothes, shook them out, patted down the mattress. Not just checking for big lumps of phone or old book, the way I had been the first time. This time we were after something that could be as small as a SIM card.

‘The door,’ Conway said. ‘What was up with that?’

I’d have only loved to leave that. But the way she’d been straight in there, got my back on whatever I hadn’t told her; I heard myself say, ‘When you were off talking to Alison, I thought I saw someone behind the door. Thought it could be someone trying to get up the guts to talk to us, but by the time I opened the door there was no one there. So, when I saw something behind there again…’

‘You went for it.’ I waited for the slagging – And you went full-on, fair play to you, you’d’ve been all ready to save the day if one of the kids had built herself a nuke in Physics class – but she said, ‘The first time, while I was out. You positive there was someone there?’

I flipped the mattress up to check the bottom. Said, ‘Nah.’

Conway squeezed her way down a puffy jacket. ‘Yeah. We had the same thing last year, a few times: thought we saw something, nothing there. Something about this place, I don’t know. Costello had this theory about the windows being different in old buildings: they’re not the same shapes and sizes as what you get now, not placed the same way. So the light comes in at different angles, and if you catch something in the corner of your eye, it’s gonna look wrong.’ She shrugged. ‘Who knows.’

I said, ‘If it’s that, it could be why people keep seeing Chris’s ghost.’

‘The kids are used to this light, but. And an actual ghost? Is that what you saw?’

‘Nah. Bit of shadow, just.’

‘Exactly. They’re seeing Chris because they want to. Feeding off each other, trying to impress each other, give each other something good.’ She shoved the jacket back into the wardrobe. ‘They need to get out more, this lot. They spend too much time together.’

Nothing down behind Gemma’s bedside table, nothing under the drawer. ‘At this age, that’s what it’s about.’

‘Yeah, they’re not gonna be this age forever. When it hits them that there’s a great big world out there, they’re gonna get the shock of their lives.’

The scraping of satisfaction on her voice, I didn’t feel that. Instead I felt the wind that would hit you from every side, raw-edged and gritty, smelling of spices and petrol, whirling hot in your hair, when you stepped out of a place like this and the door slammed behind you.

I said, ‘I’d say Chris getting murdered made the great big world hard to miss.’

‘You think? Even that was all about each other, for these. “Look, I cried harder than her, so I’m a better person.” “We all saw his ghost together, look how close we are.”’

I moved on to Orla’s bed. Conway said, ‘I remember you from training.’

Her head was in the wardrobe, I couldn’t see her face. I said – carefully, skimming back – ‘Yeah? Good or bad?’

‘You don’t remember, no?’

If I’d talked to her beyond ‘Howya’ in corridors, I’d forgotten. ‘Tell me I didn’t make you do pushups.’

‘Would you remember if you had?’

‘Ah, Jaysus. What’d I do?’

‘Relax the kacks. I’m just wrecking your head.’ I could hear the grin in Conway’s voice. ‘You never did anything on me.’

‘Thank fuck. You had me worried there.’