We were taller than them. Over shining heads: Joanne and her lot, surrounded. Alison was the one screaming, back pressed against the wall, hands splayed in front of her face. Joanne was trying to do something, cradle her, ministering angel, who knows. Alison was too far gone even for that.
Holly, between heads, the only one not gawping at Alison. Holly was scanning faces, with eyes like her da’s. Holly was watching for someone to give something away.
Conway grabbed the nearest kid by the arm, little dark girl who leaped and screamed. ‘What’s the story?’
‘Alison saw a ghost! She saw, she said, she said she saw Chris Harper, his ghost, she saw-’
The shrieks kept coming; the kid was jumping and rattling under them. Conway said, loud, so anyone who could hear anything could hear her: ‘You know why he’s back, right?’
The kid stared, open-mouthed. Other girls were starting to look at us, baffled, tennis-heading, trying to work out through the brain-battering noise why these adults weren’t stepping in and getting control and turning everything back to sane.
‘Because someone here knows who killed him. He’s come back to make her talk. We see it all the time, on murder cases, all the time, amn’t I right?’
Conway shot me a look like a dig. I nodded. Said, ‘This is just the start. It’s gonna get worse.’
‘They know, murder victims do, they don’t like it when someone keeps them from getting justice. Chris isn’t happy. He won’t be able to rest till everyone’s told us everything they know.’
The kid made a muffled whine. Gasps around us, a girl catching her friend’s arm, ‘OhmyGod-’ High, trembling right on the edge of a scream to join Alison’s. ‘OhmyGod-’
‘Murder victims, they’re raging. Probably Chris was a lovely guy, when he was alive, but he’s not like you remember him. He’s angry now.’
A shiver swayed them. Teeth and sharp shards of bone, they saw, coming to rip the warm flesh off them. ‘OhmyGod-’
McKenna, surging through the boiling girls, massive. Conway dropped the kid’s arm like a hot snot, stepped back smooth and fast.
McKenna boomed ‘Quiet!’ and the jabber fizzled to nothing. Only Alison’s shrieks were left, exploding like fireworks into the shocked air.
McKenna didn’t look at us. She got Alison’s shoulders and spun her, face to face. ‘Alison!
Alison swallowed a shriek, choked on it. Stared up at McKenna, gulping and red-faced. Swaying, like she was hanging from McKenna’s big hands.
‘Gemma Harding,’ McKenna said, not taking her eyes off Alison. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Gemma found her jaw. ‘Miss, we were just in our room, we weren’t doing anything-’
She sounded years younger, looked years younger, a shaken little girl. McKenna said, ‘I’m not interested in what you weren’t doing. Tell me exactly what happened.’
‘Alison just went to the loo, and then we heard her screaming out here. We all ran out. She was…’
Gemma’s eyes zipping around the others, finding Joanne, grabbing for signals. McKenna said, ‘Continue. At once.’
‘She was just – she was up against the wall and she was screaming. Miss, she said, she said she saw Chris Harper.’
Alison’s head fell back. She made a high whining noise. ‘Alison,’ McKenna said sharply. ‘You will look at me.’
‘She said he grabbed her arm. Miss, there’s – there’s marks on her arm. I swear to God.’
‘Alison. Show me your arm.’
Alison scrabbled at the sleeve of her hoodie, limp-fingered. Finally managed to pull it up to her elbow. Conway swept girls out of our way.
First it looked like a grip-mark, like someone had got hold of Alison and tried to drag her away. Bright red, wrapped around her forearm: four fingers, a palm, a thumb. Bigger than a girl’s hand.
Then we got in close.
Not a grip-mark. The red skin was puffy and bubbled, thick with tiny blisters. A scald, an acid burn, a poison weed.
The press of girls rippled, necks craning. Moaned.
McKenna said acidly, ‘Were any of you unaware that Alison suffers from allergies? Please, raise your hands.’
Stillness.
‘Did any of you somehow miss the incident last term when she required medical attention after borrowing the wrong brand of tanning product?’
Nothing.
‘No one?’
Girls looking at sleeves twisted round their thumbs, at the floor, sideways at each other. They were starting to feel silly. McKenna was bringing them back.
‘Alison has been exposed to a substance that triggered her allergies. Presumably, if she has just been to the toilet, it was either a hand soap or a product used by the cleaning staff. We will investigate this and make sure the trigger is removed.’
McKenna still hadn’t looked at us. Bold kids get ignored. Talking to us too, though, or at us.
‘Alison will take an antihistamine and will be fully recovered within an hour or two. The rest of you will go to your common rooms and will write me a three-hundred-word essay on allergy triggers, to be done by tomorrow morning. I am disappointed in all of you. You are old enough and intelligent enough to deal with this kind of situation with good sense rather than silliness and hysteria.’
