The Secret Place полностью

Another whisper. The footsteps stopped; the phone stilled. Shapes came into focus.

Tall trees, black around a pale clearing. Even in blurry dark, I recognised the place. The cypress grove where Chris Harper had died.

In the moonlit heart of it, two figures, pressed so close they looked like one. Dark jumpers, dark jeans. Brown head bent over a flood of fair hair.

A branch bobbed across the screen. Joanne shifted the phone out of its way, zoomed in tight.

Night smudged the faces. I glanced at Conway; tiny dip of her chin. Chris and Selena.

They moved apart like they could hardly bear to move at all. Pressed their palms together, shoulders rising and falling with their quick breathing. They were amazed by each other, stunned silent, all in the circle of stirring cypresses and night wind. The world outside was gone, nothing. Inside that circle the air was unfurling new colours, it was changing to something that cascaded and fountained pure gold and dazzle, and every breath changed them too.

I used to dream of that, when I was a young fella. Never had it. Even when I was sixteen years old and ninety per cent dick, I kept away from the girls in my school; scared that if I went beyond the odd snog and grope, I’d wake up the next morning a daddy in a council flat, stuck to the sticky linoleum forever. Dreamed of it instead. Dreams I can still taste.

By the time I got away and found other girls, it was too late. When you stop being a kid, you lose your one chance at that too-tender-to-touch gold, that breathtaken everything and forever. Once you start growing up and getting sense, the outside world turns real, and your own private world is never everything again.

Chris wove his fingers in Selena’s hair, lifted it so that it fell strand by strand. She turned her head to touch her lips to his arm. They were like underwater dancers, like time was holding still just for them and every minute gave them a million years. They were beautiful.

Close to the phone, Joanne or Gemma snickered. The other one made a tiny gagging noise. Something like that in front of them, feet away, the real thing, and they couldn’t even see it.

Selena raised her fingers to Chris’s cheek, and his eyes closed. Moonlight ran down her arm like water. They moved closer, faces tilting together, lips opening.

Beep, end of the video.

‘So,’ Joanne said. ‘Is that, like, enough evidence that Selena and all of them had a key? And that she was doing it with Chris?’

Conway took the phone off me and messed with it, hitting buttons. Joanne flipped out a palm. ‘Excuse me, that’s mine?’

‘You’ll get it back when I’m done.’ Joanne tsked and threw herself back against the wall. Conway ignored her. To me: ‘Twenty-third of April. Ten to one in the morning.’

Three and a half weeks before Chris died. I said, ‘So you and Gemma saw Selena leaving her room, and you followed her?’

‘Gemma saw them out in the grounds by accident the first time, like a week before – she was meeting some guy, I don’t even remember who. After that, we took turns watching the corridor at night.’ Grim project-manager voice on Joanne; I could picture her going for the jugular if one of the others had the nerve to doze off at her post. ‘This night, Alison saw Selena sneak out of their room, so she woke me up and I followed Selena.’

‘You brought Gemma along?’

‘Um, I wasn’t exactly about to go out there by myself? And anyway, I needed Gemma to show me where they were having their little makeout sessions. By the time we got dressed, Selena was well gone. She couldn’t wait to get the action started. Some people are just sluts.’

More midnight traffic than a train station, these grounds. McKenna was in for a coronary if she ever heard this. ‘So you tracked them down,’ I said, ‘and you filmed this clip. Just the one?’

‘Yeah. That’s not enough for you?’

‘What happened after you stopped filming?’

Joanne prissed up her mouth. ‘We went back in. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch them do it. I’m not a perv.’

Conway’s phone buzzed. ‘Sent myself the video,’ she told me. To Joanne: ‘Here.’ She tossed the mobile over.

Joanne made a big deal of wiping off the working-class germs on her duvet. I asked, ‘What were you planning to do with this clip?’

Shrug. ‘I hadn’t decided yet.’

Conway said, ‘Wild guess. You used it to blackmail Selena into dumping Chris. “Stay away from him, or this goes to McKenna.”’

Joanne’s top lip pulled up, that near-animal snarl. ‘Um, excuse me, no I didn’t?’

I said – leaning forward, move her off Conway – ‘It would’ve been for Selena’s own good if you had. That there, that wasn’t the healthiest way for her to be spending her nights.’

Joanne thought that over, decided she liked it. Did something with her face that was meant to look virtuous, came out looking stuffed. ‘Well. I would’ve if I’d had to. But I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’ – Joanne flicked a finger at the phone – ‘that was the last time Selena and Chris met up. I’d already had a chat with Julia, and after this she sorted it out. End of.’