The Secret Place полностью

‘Gemma, I realise that it took a lot of courage for you to give me this information. And Joanne, I realise that Gemma probably wouldn’t have plucked up that courage without your support – and yours, Orla. So, after you’ve gone to considerable trouble to bring me this potentially valuable material, I’m not inclined to waste it.’

They were looking at me like I’d gone flash-bang and turned two-headed. Joanne’s finger had stopped moving.

‘If I don’t have an opportunity to interview Rebecca O’Mara before all of you students are called inside, then I’ll have to liaise with Detective Conway, and I’ll have no option but to bring her into the loop. I assume you gave me this information because you wanted me to utilise it. Not because you wanted to hand the credit for any results to Detective Conway. Am I correct?’

Three identical pairs of eyes, staring. Not a move, not a blink.

‘Orla? Am I correct?’

‘What? Um, yeah? I guess?’

‘Very good. Gemma?’

Nod.

‘Joanne?’

Finally, finally, a shrug, and her hand came off my leg. Conway’s smackdown, way back in the art room, was paying off. ‘Whatever.’

‘Then I think we’re all agreed.’ I handed out a thin smile for each of them. ‘Our top priority is for me to speak to Rebecca. Our chat will have to wait.’

Nothing. Just those eyes, still staring.

I stood up, evenly, no sudden moves. Brushed myself down, straightened my jacket. Then I turned around and walked away.

It was like turning my back on jaguars. Every inch of me was waiting for the claws, but nothing came. Behind me I heard Joanne say, pompous and pitched just loud enough for me to hear, ‘Potentially valuable material,’ and a triple spurt of giggles. Then I was out, on the endless white-green lawn.

My heart was going like bongos. That drunken dizzy rushed up and over me; I wanted to let my knees fold, sink down on the cool grass.

I didn’t do it. Not just the watchers all round. What I had told the three of them was true: somewhere out there, in the dapple of black and white and murmurs, was Rebecca. She was now or never.

It was exactly what Conway would expect out of me. It was what Mackey would put money on.

The white glare of the art room, staring down at me. Laughter, joyful, somewhere far away among the trees.

I owed Conway fuck-all. I’d brought her the key to her make-or-break case, she’d used me while I was useful and then kicked me out of the car going ninety.

The moon pinwheeling above the school. I felt like I was dissolving, fingers and toes sifting away.

She was everything Mackey had warned me about. She was the lifetime kibosh on my daydream partner, the one with the red setters and the violin lessons. She was edge and trouble, everything I had always wanted far from.

I know my shot when I see it. I saw it bright as day.

I found my phone.

Text, not ring. If Conway saw my number come up, she’d think I wanted to whinge about the wait; she’d let it ring out.

I could feel something happening to me. A change.

Message icon on my screen. Conway, a few minutes back, while I’d been too busy to notice. She must have pulled the plug, or Mackey had. I was just in time.

Got anything yet? Stalling him long as I can but lights out is 1045 get a move on

‘What the fuck,’ I said out loud.

The grin came on top of it, grin like my face was splitting open and every colour of light bursting out.

Idiot, me, supersize idiot and I could’ve punched myself in the head for it. For a second there I forgot all about Rebecca, didn’t care.

Go for a nice walk, admire the grounds, Conway had said to me outside the door of the art room. See if you can get Chris’s ghost to pop up for you. Meaning Get outside and talk to those girls, stir them up as hard as you can, see what you can get out of them. Clear as day, if I’d been looking. I’d been so busy staring at how Mackey could’ve used me to fuck me up, I’d missed what she was waving in front of my face.

Conway had trusted me: not just trusted me through all Mackey’s doom-peddling, but trusted me to know she would. I could’ve punched myself all over again for not doing the same for her. Made my stomach turn cold, how close I had come to too late.

I texted her back. Meet me out the front. Urgent. Don’t let Mackey come.

May comes in restless, fizzing in the warm air. Summer is almost close enough to touch and so are the exams, and the whole of third year is wound too tight, laughing too loud at nothing and exploding into ornate arguments full of slammed desks and tears in the toilets. The moon pulls strange hues out of the sky, a tinge of green you can only see from the corner of your eye, a bruised violet.