The Secret Place полностью

‘Deal?’ Chris asks, holding out his hand to shake on it.

‘Deal,’ Selena says, and because she can’t not, she stretches out her hand and shakes his.

When it’s time to go, he wants to walk her back to the school building, see her safe in at the window, but she won’t let him. The moment they started talking about separating, she felt the things in the shadows stir and raise themselves, hungry; felt the watchman get restless, legs twitching for a walk in the full spring air. If they take any chances, they’ll get caught.

Instead she lets him watch her up the path towards the school till she knows she’s blurred into the dapple. Then she turns and stays still, feeling the shadows thickening at her back.

He’s thrumming in the centre of the clearing, full to exploding. When he leaps, it’s head back and punching the sky, and she hears the low jubilant burst of breath. He comes down grinning, and Selena feels herself smiling back. She watches while he runs down the rise to the path, in big bounds so he won’t crush the starting hyacinths, and heads for the back gate at a jog like he can’t keep his feet on the ground.

Last time he was the one who touched her, before she knew it was coming. This time she reached out to touch him.

Selena’s ready for the punishment. She expects the others to be wide awake and sitting up when she slips into the bedroom, three pairs of eyes slamming her back against the door, but they’re so floppy asleep they’ve barely moved since she went out – it feels like nights ago. She waits all the next day to be called into McKenna’s office so the night watchman can say Yes that’s her, but the only time she sees McKenna is sailing past in a corridor with her general-purpose majestic half-smile. In a bathroom cubicle, she tries whether she can still flicker the lights, whether her silver ring will still spin above her palm. She does it on her own so the others won’t see her fail and guess why, but everything works perfectly.

After that she realises it’ll be less obvious than that, more oblique, a blow from the side when she isn’t braced. A phone call telling her that they’ve lost all their money somehow, and she’ll have to drop out of Kilda’s. Her stepdad losing his job and they all have to emigrate to Australia.

She tries to feel guilty about it, whatever it is, but there’s no space in her mind. Chris is shining into every corner. His laugh, sliding higher than you’d expect from someone with such a deep voice, turning him suddenly young and mischievous. The chop of pain, When things weren’t great at home, slicing off all his careful cheerful façade, turning his face taut and private. The narrow of his eyes against moonlight, the shift of his shoulders as he leans forward, the smell of him, he’s in every moment. She can’t believe the others don’t taste her hot and cinnamony, don’t see it spinning off her like gold dust every time she moves.

There’s no phone call. She doesn’t get hit by a lorry. Chris is texting her When? The next time Selena and the others go to the glade, she thinks up at the moon: Please do something to me. Or I’m going to meet him again.

Silence, cold. She understands that Chris is her battle; no one is going to fight it for her.

I’ll tell him we can’t meet up any more. I’ll tell him he was right and we should just text. The thought of it knocks her breath out, like icy water. If he’s not OK with that, then I’ll stop texting him.

The next time they meet, in a grassy and moonless silence between two secrets, she takes his hand.

We went to the bedroom door, watched Selena down the corridor and safe to where she was supposed to be. The sing-song was over; when Selena swung the common-room door open, the silence surged out at us, tight and brittle, thrumming.

Conway watched the door click shut. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You think Chris raped her?’

‘Not sure. Gun to my head, I’d say no.’

‘Same. But there was more to the breakup than she’s saying. Who dumps a guy because they kissed? What kind of reason is that?’

‘Once we get those texts, they might give us something.’

‘If Sophie’s guy’s gone home for his dinner, I swear I’m gonna get his address and track the little bollix down.’ A couple of hours earlier, it would’ve come out like she meant it. Now it was auto-pitbull, too tired to clamp down. She checked her watch: quarter to seven. ‘Fuck’s sake. Come on.’

I said, ‘Even if Chris didn’t rape Selena, someone could’ve thought he had.’

‘Yeah. They break up, she’s all upset, crying into her unicorns. One of her mates knows she was seeing Chris, figures he did something to her…’

I said, ‘She thinks one of her mates killed him.’