The Secret Place (54 page)

Holly said, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

After a moment she sighed noisily. ‘Because out there in the dark was a better place to talk, is why. And because probably you never ever broke any rules in school, but not everyone always feels like doing everything exactly like they’re supposed to. OK?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘That makes sense. I get that.’

Thumbs-up. ‘Wahey. Good for you.’

Almost four years of her teens left. I didn’t envy Mackey. I said, ‘You know Selena was sneaking out on her own to meet Chris Harper. Right?’

Holly pulled out the teenage vacant stare, bottom lip hanging. Made her look thick as pig shite, but I knew better.

‘We’ve got proof.’

‘Did you read it in your favourite gossip mag? Right under “R-Patz and K-Stew broke up again”?’

‘Behave,’ Mackey said, didn’t bother looking up. Holly rolled her eyes.

She was being a bitch because, for this reason or that one, she was scared. I leaned forward, close, till against her will she caught my eye. ‘Holly,’ I said gently. ‘This morning, you came to me for a reason. Because I was never thick enough to patronise you, and because you thought there was a chance I might understand more than most people. Right?’

Twitch of her shoulder. ‘I guess.’

‘You’re going to end up talking to someone about this stuff. I’d say you’d love to go back to your mates and pretend all this never happened – and I don’t blame you – but you don’t have that option.’

Holly was slumped in her chair, arms folded, eyes on the ceiling, like I was boring her into an actual coma here? She didn’t bother answering.

‘You know that as well as I do. You can talk to me, or you can talk to someone else. If you want to stick with me, I’ll do my best to live up to your good opinion. I don’t think I’ve let you down yet.’

Shrug.

‘So. You want to stick with me, or you want someone else?’

Mackey was watching me, under his eyelids, but he kept his mouth shut, which couldn’t be a compliment. Another shrug from Holly. ‘Whatever. Stick with you, I guess. I don’t care.’

‘Good,’ I said, and gave her a smile:
We’re a team
. Pulled my chair up closer to the table, ready for work. ‘So here’s the story. Selena’s already told us she was seeing Chris Harper. She’s told us she had a phone matching this description, which she used to text him. We have the phone records between the two of them. We have the actual texts setting up late-night meetings.’ Fast glance from Holly, before she could stop herself. She hadn’t known we could do that. ‘It’s not like I’m asking you to tell us something we don’t already know. I’m only asking for confirmation. So, one more time: did you know Selena was meeting Chris?’

Holly glanced at Mackey. He nodded.

‘Yeah,’ she said. The teen-brat shtick was gone, that fast. She sounded older. More complicated; more careful. ‘I knew.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘Last spring. Like a couple of weeks before Chris died, maybe? It was over by then, though. They weren’t meeting any more.’

‘How’d you find out?’

Holly was meeting my eyes now, cool and under control. She had her hands folded together on the table. She said, ‘Sometimes, when it’s hot, I can’t sleep. This one night, it was boiling, I was going mental trying to find cool bits of the bed; but then I thought,
OK, maybe if I stay totally still I’ll fall asleep,
right? So I made myself do it. It didn’t work, but Selena must’ve thought I’d gone to sleep. I heard her moving around and I thought,
Maybe she’s awake too and we can talk,
so I opened my eyes. She was holding a phone – I could see the screen, lit up – and she was kind of curled over it, like she didn’t want anyone to see. She wasn’t texting, or reading messages; just holding it. Like she was waiting for it to do something.’

‘And that made you curious.’

Holly said, ‘There’d been something wrong with Lenie. She’s always really calm, no matter what. Peaceful. But the last while before that night, she’d been
.
.
.’ Something rippling that cool, as she remembered. ‘She seemed like something terrible had happened to her. Half the time she looked like she’d been crying, or she was about to. We’d be talking to her and a minute later she’d go, “What?” like she hadn’t even heard us. She wasn’t OK.’

I was nodding along. ‘And you were worried about her.’

‘I was
crazy
worried. I figured nothing terrible could’ve happened at school, because we were all together all the time, we’d have known. Right?’ Wry twist to Holly’s mouth. ‘But at home, at the weekends – Selena’s parents are split up, and they’re both kind of weird. Her mum and her stepdad have these parties, and her actual dad lets weird hippie guys stay on his sofa
.
.
. I thought something could’ve happened at one of their places.’

‘Did you talk to anyone about it? See if maybe Julia or Rebecca had any ideas?’

‘Yeah. I tried talking to Julia, but she just went, “Jesus, dial down the drama, everyone gets moods; like you don’t? Give her a week or two, she’ll be fine.” And then I tried Becca, but Becca can’t really handle stuff like that – anything being wrong with any of us. She got so freaked out that in the end I told her it had just been my imagination, to get her to calm down.’

Trying to sound like it was nothing. But something was blowing across Holly’s face, just a wisp; something rain-coloured, something flavoured with sadness and with missing the long-lost. It startled me. Made her look older again, made her look like she understood things.

I said, ‘And she believed you? She hadn’t noticed anything up with Selena?’

‘Nah. Becca’s
.
.
. She’s innocent. She figures as long as we’ve got each other, we’re automatically OK. It wouldn’t’ve occurred to her that Selena might not be.’

‘So Julia and Rebecca were no help to you,’ I said. Watched that wisp flicker again. ‘Did you talk to Selena?’

Holly shook her head. ‘I tried. Lenie’s excellent at not having a conversation when she doesn’t feel like it. She just does this dreamy look, and splat, conversation’s dead. I barely even got as far as asking her what was wrong.’

‘So what did you do?’

Flash of impatience. ‘Nothing. Waited and kept an eye on her. What do you think I should’ve done?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said peaceably. ‘So when you saw that phone, you figured it had something to do with whatever was bothering Selena?’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly have to be a hotshot detective for that. I kept my eyes like this’ – slit open – ‘and watched till she put it away. I couldn’t see where she put it exactly, but it was somewhere down the side of her bed. So the next day I made up some excuse to go to our room during school, and I found it.’

‘And read the texts.’

Holly’s crossed knee was bouncing. I was pissing her off. ‘Yeah. So? So would you have, if your friend was in that state.’

I said, ‘They must’ve been a shock.’

Eye-roll. ‘You think?’

‘Chris wouldn’t be the boyfriend I’d choose for my best mate.’

‘Obviously. Not unless your best mate liked them underage.’

Mackey was grinning, not bothering to hide it. I said, ‘So what did you do about it?’

Her chin went out. ‘Um, hello, same as before: what was I supposed to do? Get her a Chris voodoo doll and some pins? I’m not actually
magic
. I couldn’t wave my wand and make her feel all better.’

Sore spot. I pressed it. ‘You could’ve texted him to leave her alone. Or arranged to meet up with him, tell him face to face.’

Holly snorted. ‘Like that would’ve done any good. Chris didn’t even like me – he could tell I didn’t fall for his cute-little-puppy thing, which meant he was never going to get up my top, which meant I was a bitch and why would he bother even talking to me, never mind doing anything I asked him to?’

‘You, young one. No one gets up your top till you’re married.’ Mackey, from the windowsill.

I said, ‘I just can’t get my head round the idea that you did nothing. This guy’s making your best mate miserable, and you just went, “Ah, well, stuff happens, it’ll toughen her up”? Seriously?’

‘I didn’t
know
what to do! I feel like crap about it already, thanks very much, I don’t need you telling me what a shit friend I was.’

I said, ‘You could’ve talked to Julia and Rebecca, see if the three of you could come up with a plan together. That’s what I’d’ve expected you to do. If yous are as close as you say.’

‘I’d already tried. Remember? Becca got upset, Julia didn’t want to know. Probably I would’ve told Jules if Selena had been any worse, but it wasn’t like I thought she was going to
kill
herself over that wanker. She was just
.
.
. unhappy. There was nothing any of us could do about that.’ Something blowing across Holly’s face again. ‘And she obviously really, like
really
didn’t want any of us knowing. If she’d found out that I knew, it would’ve just made her feel worse. So I acted like I didn’t.’

The thing was it wasn’t true, the little insomnia story, or not all the truth. I couldn’t risk a glance at Conway to see if she’d spotted the lie. There had been no name attached to Chris’s number, in Selena’s phone; no names in the texts. No way a skim through the phone could have told Holly who Selena was texting.

Maybe the lie was Mackey reflex, always keep some nugget to yourself in case it comes in useful later on. Maybe not.

Holly moved like she felt that cold-rain something fingering the back of her neck, trailing across her shoulders. Said, ‘I wasn’t just ignoring the whole thing. Back then, I thought the same as Becca: everything would be OK as long as we had each other. I thought, if we just stuck close to Lenie
.
.
.’

‘Did it work? Did she seem like she was snapping out of it?’

Holly said, quietly, ‘No.’

I said, ‘That had to be scary. You’re used to dealing with everything together with your friends, the four of yous: no secrets. All of a sudden, you’re stuck dealing with this all on your own.’

Holly shrugged. ‘I survived.’

Trying hard for ice-cool, but that veil had wrapped her round. Those few days last spring had set things shifting, in the way the world looked to her. Left her lost, stripped raw in cold wind and no one’s hands finding hers.

That was when I knew: Conway wasn’t the only one who had Holly in her sights. Not any more.

‘Course you did,’ I said. ‘You’re well able; I know that from last time. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get scared. And being out on your own where your mates can’t help, that’s one of the scariest things around.’

Slowly her eyes came up, met mine. Startled and clear, like this was more than she’d expected from me. A tiny nod.

‘Hate to break up the little chat when it’s going so nicely,’ Mackey said lazily, swinging himself off the windowsill, ‘but I’m gasping for a smoke.’

‘You told Mum you’d quit,’ Holly said.

‘It’s been a long time since I had your mum fooled about anything. See you in a few, chickadee. If these nice detectives say a word to you, you just stick your fingers in your ears and sing them something pretty.’ And he headed off, left the door swinging open behind him. We heard his footsteps down the corridor, him whistling a perky tune.

Conway and I looked at each other. Holly watched us, under those enigmatic curves of eyelid.

I said, ‘I could do with some fresh air.’

In the foyer, the heavy wooden door was swinging wide. The rectangle of cold light spilling onto the chequerboard tiles was notched with a shadow that moved, one sharp flick, when my steps echoed. Mackey.

He was at the top of the steps, leaning against a column, smoke unlit between his fingers. His back was to me and he didn’t turn. Above him, the sky was a blue aimed for night; it was gone quarter past eight. Faint and delicate, arcing somewhere in the great stretches of dimming air out there, bats’ intent shrills and girls’ intent chatter.

When I came up beside Mackey he raised the smoke to his lips, glanced at me over the click of the lighter. ‘Since when do you smoke?’

‘Just needed some air.’ I loosened my collar, took a deep breath. The air tasted sweet and warm, night flowers opening.

‘And a chat.’

‘Long time no see.’

‘Kid. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in the mood for small talk.’

‘Nah, I know. I just wanted to say
.
.
.’  The squirm was real, and the red face. ‘I know you’ve been
.
.
. you know. Putting in the odd good word for me, along the way. I just wanted a chance to say thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me. Just don’t fuck up. I don’t like looking stupid.’

‘I’m not planning on fucking up.’