The Secret Place полностью

Holly glanced at Mackey. He nodded.

‘Yeah,’ she said. The teen-brat shtick was gone, that fast. She sounded older. More complicated; more careful. ‘I knew.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘Last spring. Like a couple of weeks before Chris died, maybe? It was over by then, though. They weren’t meeting any more.’

‘How’d you find out?’

Holly was meeting my eyes now, cool and under control. She had her hands folded together on the table. She said, ‘Sometimes, when it’s hot, I can’t sleep. This one night, it was boiling, I was going mental trying to find cool bits of the bed; but then I thought, OK, maybe if I stay totally still I’ll fall asleep, right? So I made myself do it. It didn’t work, but Selena must’ve thought I’d gone to sleep. I heard her moving around and I thought, Maybe she’s awake too and we can talk, so I opened my eyes. She was holding a phone – I could see the screen, lit up – and she was kind of curled over it, like she didn’t want anyone to see. She wasn’t texting, or reading messages; just holding it. Like she was waiting for it to do something.’

‘And that made you curious.’

Holly said, ‘There’d been something wrong with Lenie. She’s always really calm, no matter what. Peaceful. But the last while before that night, she’d been…’ Something rippling that cool, as she remembered. ‘She seemed like something terrible had happened to her. Half the time she looked like she’d been crying, or she was about to. We’d be talking to her and a minute later she’d go, “What?” like she hadn’t even heard us. She wasn’t OK.’

I was nodding along. ‘And you were worried about her.’

‘I was crazy worried. I figured nothing terrible could’ve happened at school, because we were all together all the time, we’d have known. Right?’ Wry twist to Holly’s mouth. ‘But at home, at the weekends – Selena’s parents are split up, and they’re both kind of weird. Her mum and her stepdad have these parties, and her actual dad lets weird hippie guys stay on his sofa… I thought something could’ve happened at one of their places.’

‘Did you talk to anyone about it? See if maybe Julia or Rebecca had any ideas?’

‘Yeah. I tried talking to Julia, but she just went, “Jesus, dial down the drama, everyone gets moods; like you don’t? Give her a week or two, she’ll be fine.” And then I tried Becca, but Becca can’t really handle stuff like that – anything being wrong with any of us. She got so freaked out that in the end I told her it had just been my imagination, to get her to calm down.’

Trying to sound like it was nothing. But something was blowing across Holly’s face, just a wisp; something rain-coloured, something flavoured with sadness and with missing the long-lost. It startled me. Made her look older again, made her look like she understood things.

I said, ‘And she believed you? She hadn’t noticed anything up with Selena?’

‘Nah. Becca’s… She’s innocent. She figures as long as we’ve got each other, we’re automatically OK. It wouldn’t’ve occurred to her that Selena might not be.’

‘So Julia and Rebecca were no help to you,’ I said. Watched that wisp flicker again. ‘Did you talk to Selena?’

Holly shook her head. ‘I tried. Lenie’s excellent at not having a conversation when she doesn’t feel like it. She just does this dreamy look, and splat, conversation’s dead. I barely even got as far as asking her what was wrong.’

‘So what did you do?’

Flash of impatience. ‘Nothing. Waited and kept an eye on her. What do you think I should’ve done?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said peaceably. ‘So when you saw that phone, you figured it had something to do with whatever was bothering Selena?’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly have to be a hotshot detective for that. I kept my eyes like this’ – slit open – ‘and watched till she put it away. I couldn’t see where she put it exactly, but it was somewhere down the side of her bed. So the next day I made up some excuse to go to our room during school, and I found it.’

‘And read the texts.’

Holly’s crossed knee was bouncing. I was pissing her off. ‘Yeah. So? So would you have, if your friend was in that state.’

I said, ‘They must’ve been a shock.’

Eye-roll. ‘You think?’

‘Chris wouldn’t be the boyfriend I’d choose for my best mate.’

‘Obviously. Not unless your best mate liked them underage.’

Mackey was grinning, not bothering to hide it. I said, ‘So what did you do about it?’

Her chin went out. ‘Um, hello, same as before: what was I supposed to do? Get her a Chris voodoo doll and some pins? I’m not actually magic. I couldn’t wave my wand and make her feel all better.’

Sore spot. I pressed it. ‘You could’ve texted him to leave her alone. Or arranged to meet up with him, tell him face to face.’