The Secret Place полностью

Becca has managed to wrestle her boot back and is hopping about, trying to get it on before Holly can shove her off balance. Both of them are panting and laughing. Julia leans her shoulder up against Selena’s – Julia doesn’t do touchy-feely crap, but just every now and then she props her elbow on Selena’s shoulder while they’re looking at something, or leans back-to-back with her on the fountain edge in the Court. ‘You sap,’ she says, ‘you total sappy sap, get a grip,’ and feels Selena meet the weight of her so they balance each other, solid and warm.

They’re moving down the corridor towards their room, boots in their hands, when:

‘Uh-oh,’ someone singsongs in the shadows. ‘You’re going to get in trouble.’

They leap and whirl, hearts pummelling their chests, Selena clenching the key deep in her fist, but the shadows are deep and they don’t see her till she steps out into the corridor. Joanne Heffernan, monochrome in the low lights left on in case someone needs to go to the toilet, just folded arms and a smirk and a babydoll nightie with big lips all over it.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Julia hisses – Joanne swaps her smirk for her pious face, to show she disapproves of Language. ‘What are you doing, trying to give us heart attacks?’

Joanne dials up the holiness. ‘I was worried about you. Orla was going to the ladies’ and she saw you heading downstairs, and she thought you might be going to do something dangerous. Like, involving drugs or drink or something.’

A puff of laughter bursts out of Becca. Joanne’s holy look freezes for a second, but she gets it back.

‘We were in the Needlework room,’ Holly explains. ‘Sewing blankets for orphans in Africa.’

Holly always looks like she’s telling the truth; for a second, Joanne’s eyes pop. Julia says, ‘I had a vision of Saint Fucktardius telling me the orphans needed our help,’ and her face goes lemon-sucking pious again.

‘If you were indoors,’ she says, moving forward, ‘then what’s this?’ She makes a grab at Selena’s hair – ‘Ow!’ from Selena, jumping back – and holds something out in the palm of her hand. It’s a sprig of cypress, rich green, still wrapped in frosty outside air.

‘It’s a miracle!’ Julia says. ‘Praise Saint Fucktardius, patron of indoor gardening.’

Joanne drops the twig and wipes her hand on her nightie. ‘Ew,’ she says, wrinkling her nose. ‘You smell of cigarettes.’

‘Sewing-machine fumes,’ Holly says. ‘Lethal.’

Joanne ignores that. ‘So,’ she says. ‘You guys have a key to the outside door.’

‘No we don’t. The outside door’s alarmed at night,’ Julia says. ‘Genius.’

Which Joanne may not be, but she’s not thick either. ‘Then the door to the school, and you went out a window. Same difference.’

‘So?’ Holly wants to know. ‘If we did, which we didn’t, what do you care?’

Joanne is still being holy – some nun along the way must have told her she looks like some saint – which turns her faintly bug-eyed. ‘That’s dangerous. Something could happen to you out there. You could get attacked.’

That gets another stifled pop of laughter out of Becca. ‘Like you’d care,’ Julia says. They’ve all drawn close, so they can keep to whispers; the forced nearness prickles like they’re about to fight. ‘Skip to the part where you tell us what you want.’

Joanne drops the saint thing. ‘If you get caught this easy,’ she says, ‘you’re obviously too stupid to have the key. You should give it to someone who’s got the brains to use it.’

‘That leaves you out, then,’ says Becca.

Joanne stares at her like she’s a talking dog who’s said something revolting. ‘And you should really go back to being too pathetic to talk,’ she says. ‘At least then people felt sorry for you.’ To Julia and Holly: ‘Can you explain to that uggo why she needs to watch her nasty metal mouth?’

Julia says to Becca, ‘I’ve got this.’

‘Why bother?’ Becca wants to know. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

‘Oh. My. God,’ Joanne says, smacking her forehead. ‘How do you manage not to kill her? Hello, keep up: you need to bother because if I call Matron and she sees you dressed like that, she’s going to know you’ve been outside. Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ Julia says, standing on Becca’s foot. ‘We’d all be delighted if you could just go to bed and forget you ever saw us.’

‘Right. So if you want me to do you a massive favour like that, you should actually probably be nice to me?’

‘We can do nice.’

‘That’s great. The key, please,’ Joanne says. ‘Thanks so much.’ And she holds out her hand.

Julia says, ‘We’ll make you a copy tomorrow.’

Joanne doesn’t bother to answer. She just stands there, staring at none of them in particular and holding out her hand.

‘Come on. For fuck’s sake.’

Her stare widens a fraction. Nothing else.

The silence twists tight. After a long time Julia says, ‘Yeah. OK.’

‘We might make you a copy someday,’ Joanne says graciously, as Selena’s hand slowly comes up towards her. ‘If you remember to be nice, and if you can teach Little Miss Smarty over there what nice even means. Do you think you can manage that?’