These nights in the grove aren’t degradable, they can’t be flaked away. They’ll always be there, if only Becca and the others can find their way back. The four of them backboned by their vow are stronger than anyone’s pathetic schedules and bells; in ten years, twenty, fifty, they can slip between those stakes and meet in the glade, on these nights.
The dot tattoos are for that: signposts, in case she needs them someday, to guide her home.
The fourth-year common room felt smaller than the third-year one, darker. Not just the colours, cool greens instead of oranges; on this side the building blocked out the afternoon sun, gave the room an underwater dimness that the ceiling lights couldn’t fight.
The girls were clumped tight and jabbering low. Holly’s lot were the only quiet ones: Holly sitting on a windowsill, Julia leaning against it snapping a hair elastic around her wrist, Rebecca and Selena back to back on the floor below; all their eyes focused and faraway, like they were reading the same story written across the air. Joanne and Gemma and Orla were in a huddle on one of the sofas, Joanne whispering fast and ferocious.
That was only for a flash. Then everyone spun to the door. Sentences bitten off in mid-word, blank faces staring.
‘Orla,’ Conway said. ‘We need a word.’
Orla looked like she might be going pale, far as I could tell through the orange tan. ‘Me? Why me?’
Conway held the door open till Orla got up and came, widening her eyes over her shoulder at her mates. Joanne hit her with a stare like a threat.
‘We’ll talk in your room,’ Conway said, scanning the corridor. ‘Which one is it?’ Orla pointed: down the far end.
No Houlihan this time. Conway was trusting me to protect her. Had to be a good sign.
The room was big, airy. Four beds, bright-coloured duvet covers. Smell of heated hair and four clashing body sprays thickening the air. Posters of thrusting girl singers and smooth guys I half-recognised, all of them with full lips and hair that had taken three people an hour. Bedside lockers half open, bits of uniform tossed on beds, on the floor: when the screaming started, Orla and Joanne and Gemma had been changing into their civvies, getting ready to do whatever they did with their bite of freedom before teatime.
The scattered clothes gave me that shove again, stronger:
‘Nice,’ Conway said, glancing around. ‘Nicer than we had in training, am I right?’
‘Nicer than I’ve got now,’ I said. Only a bit true. I like my place: little apartment, half-empty still because I’d rather save for one good thing than buy four crap ones straightaway. But the high ceiling, the rose moulding, the light and green space opening wide outside the window: I can’t save for those. My place looks straight into a matching apartment block, too close for any light to squeeze in between.
Nothing said whose bit of room was whose; it all looked the same. The only clue was the photos on the bedside lockers. Alison had a little brother, Orla had a bunch of lumpy big sisters. Gemma rode horses. Joanne’s ma was the image of her, a few fillers on.
‘Um,’ Orla said, hovering by the door. She’d swapped her uniform for a light-pink hoodie and pink jeans shorts over tights, looked like a marshmallow on a stick. ‘Is Alison OK?’
We looked at each other, me and Conway. Shrugged.
I said, ‘Could take a while. After that.’
‘But… I mean, Miss McKenna said? Like, she just needed her allergy pills?’
Another look at each other. Orla trying to watch both of us at once.
Conway said, ‘I reckon Alison knows what she saw better than McKenna does.’
Orla gawped. ‘You believe in ghosts?’ Not what she’d expected; not what she’d been looking for.
‘Who said anything about believing?’ Conway flipped a magazine off Gemma’s bedside locker, checked out celebs. ‘Nah. We don’t believe. We know.’ To me: ‘Remember the O’Farrell case?’
I’d never heard of the O’Farrell case. But I knew, it slid from Conway to me like a note passed in class, what she was at. She wanted Orla scared.
I shot her a wide-eyed warning grimace, shook my head.
‘What? The O’Farrell case, me and Detective Moran worked that one together. The guy, right, he used to beat the shite out of his wife-’
‘
‘
‘She’s just a kid.’
Conway tossed the magazine onto Alison’s bed. ‘Bollix. You just a kid?’
‘Huh?’ Orla caught up. ‘Um, no?’
‘See?’ Conway said to me. ‘So. One day O’Farrell’s giving the wife the slaps, her little dog goes for him – trying to protect its mistress, yeah? The guy throws it out of the room, goes back to what he’s doing-’
I did an exasperated sigh, rubbed my hair into a mess. Started cruising round the room, see what I could see. Handful of tissues in the bin, smudged that weird orangey-pink that doesn’t exist outside makeup. A bust Biro. No scraps of book.
