‘But I started thinking. Like, “OhmyGod, what if they actually did look at my phone, they’d totally think I’d been with Chris!” And then I thought about that phone I saw Holly with. And I went, like, “What if she was getting rid of it because she was scared of the same thing?” And then I was like, “OhmyGod, what if she actually
I said, ‘Did you talk about it to Holly? Or anyone else?’
‘OhmyGod, no way, not to Holly! I said it to Gemma. I thought she’d know what to do.’
‘Gemma’s smart, all right.’ Which she was. Alison hadn’t worked out that the phone might have been Selena’s. Gemma would have. ‘What’d she say?’
Alison squirmed. Down to her lap: ‘She said it was none of our business. To just shut up and forget the whole thing.’
Conway shaking her head, jaw clenched. I said, ‘And you tried. But you couldn’t manage.’
Head-shake.
I said, ‘So you made that card. Put it up on the Secret Place.’
Alison stared, bewildered. Shook her head.
‘Nothing wrong with that. It was a good idea.’
‘But I didn’t! I swear to God, I didn’t!’
I believed her. No reason she would lie, not now. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK.’
Conway said, ‘Well done, Alison. Probably you were right to begin with and it’s nothing to do with Chris, but Detective Moran and I will have a chat with Holly, clear it up. First we’ll take you back down to Miss Arnold. You’re looking a bit pale.’
Keep her isolated, so she couldn’t spread the story. I stood up, kept my smile nailed in place. One of my feet had gone to sleep.
Alison pulled herself up by the banister rail, but she stayed there, holding onto it with both thin hands. In the white air her face looked greenish. She said, to Conway, ‘Orla told us about that case you did. With the-’ A shudder twisted her. ‘The, the dog. The ghost dog.’
‘Yeah,’ Conway said. More hair had come out of her bun. ‘Nasty one, that was.’
‘Once the guy confessed. Did the dog – did it keep coming back for him?’
Conway examined her. Said, ‘Why?’
Alison’s face looked bonier, fallen in. ‘Chris,’ she said. ‘In there, in the common room. He was there. In the window.’
Her certainty hooked me in the spine, pulled a shiver. The hysteria rising up again, somewhere behind the air: gone for now, not for good.
‘Yeah,’ Conway said. ‘I got that.’
‘Yeah, but… he was there because of me. Earlier, too, out here in the corridor. He came to get me, because I hadn’t told you about Holly with the phone. In the common room’ – she swallowed – ‘he was looking right at me. Grinning at-’ Another shudder, rougher, wrenching at her breath. ‘If you hadn’t come in then, if you hadn’t… Is he… is he going to come back for me?’
Conway said, stern, ‘Have you told us everything? Every single thing you know?’
‘I swear. I
‘Then Chris won’t be coming back for you. He might hang around the school, all right, because there’s plenty of other people keeping secrets that he wants them to tell us. But he won’t be back for you. You probably won’t even be able to see him any more.’
Alison’s mouth opened and a little rush of breath came out. She looked relieved, right to the bone, and she looked disappointed.
Far away down the corridor, through the silence, a long soft wail. For a second I thought it was coming from a girl, or something worse, but it was only the creak of the common-room door opening.
McKenna said, and I know a deeply fucked-off woman when I hear one, ‘Detectives. If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to speak with you. Now.’
‘We’ll be there in ten minutes,’ Conway said. To McKenna, but she was looking at me. Those dark eyes, and the silence falling like snow between us, so thick I couldn’t read them.
To me: ‘Time to go.’
An April afternoon, finishing up after-school volleyball. It’s spring, the grounds are exploding with bluebells and daffodils in every corner, but the sky is thick and grey, and it’s airless without actually being warm; the sweat won’t dry off their skins. Julia flips her ponytail up to cool the back of her neck. Chris Harper has just under a month left to live.
They’re picking up the volleyballs, taking their time because the showers will be full anyway by the time they get inside. Behind them, the Daleks are taking down the nets, slowly, bitching about something – Gemma calls, ‘…thighs like two walruses shagging,
Julia calls, ‘Saturday night. We’re going, yeah?’ It’s the social evening at Colm’s.
‘Can’t,’ Holly yells back, from a corner of the courts. ‘I asked. Family time blah blah.’
‘Same,’ Becca says, tossing a ball into the bag. ‘My mum’s home. Although she’d actually probably be delighted if I put on an entire makeup counter and a miniskirt and went.’
‘Make her day,’ Julia says. ‘Come home drunk, E’d up and pregnant.’
‘I’m saving those for her birthday.’
‘Lenie?’
‘I’m at my dad’s.’
‘Well, fuck,’ Julia says. ‘Finn Carroll owes me that tenner, and I need it. My earbuds are going.’
