The Secret Place

Chapter 10

In the middle of the Court, the fountain has been shut off and the huge Christmas tree is up, storeys high, alive with light twirling on glass and tinsel. On the speakers, a woman with a little-kid voice is chirping ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’. The air smells so good, cinnamon and pine and nutmeg, you want to bite into it, you can feel the soft crunch between your teeth.

It’s the first week of December. Chris Harper – coming out of the Jack Wills shop on the third floor in the middle of a gang of guys, bag of new T-shirts over his shoulder, arguing about Assassin’s Creed II, hair glossy as conkers under the manic white light – has five months and almost two weeks left to live.

Selena and Holly and Julia and Becca have been Christmas shopping. Now they’re sitting on the fountain-edge around the Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate and going through their bags. ‘I still don’t have anything for my dad,’ Holly says, rummaging.

‘I thought he was getting the giant chocolate stiletto,’ says Julia, stirring her drink – the coffee shop called it a Santa’s Little Helper – with a candy cane.

‘Ha ha, hashtag: lookslikehumourbutnot. The shoe’s for my aunt Jackie. My dad’s impossible.’

‘Jesus,’ Julia says, examining her drink with horror. ‘This tastes like toothpaste-flavoured ass.’

‘I’ll swap,’ Becca says, holding out her cup. ‘I like mint.’

‘What is it?’

‘Gingerbread something mocha.’

‘No, thanks. At least I know what mine is.’

‘Mine’s delish,’ Holly says. ‘What would actually make him happy is for me to get a GPS chip implanted, so he can track me every second. I know everyone’s parents are paranoid, but I swear, he’s insane.’

‘It’s because of his job,’ Selena says. ‘He sees all the bad stuff that happens, so he imagines it happening to you.’

Holly rolls her eyes. ‘Hello, he works in an office, most of the time. The worst thing he sees is forms. He’s just mental. The other week when he came to pick me up, you know the first thing he said? I come out and he’s looking up at the front of the school, and he goes, “Those windows aren’t alarmed. I could break in there in under thirty seconds.” He wanted to go findMcKenna and tell her the school wasn’t secure, and I don’t know, make her install fingerprint scanners on every window or something. I was like, “Just kill me now.”’

Selena hears it again: that single note of silver on crystal, so clean-edged it slices straight through the syrupy music and the cloud of noise. It falls into her hand: a gift, just for them.

‘I had to beg him to just take me home. I was like, “There’s a night watchman, the boarders’ wing has alarms on all night, I swear to God I am not going to get human trafficked, and anyway if you go hassling McKenna I’ll never talk to you again,” and finally he went OK, he’d leave it. I was like, “You keep asking why I always take the bus instead of letting you pick me up? This is why.”’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Julia says to Becca, making a face and wiping her mouth. ‘Swap. Yours can’t be worse than this.’

‘I should just get him a lighter,’ Holly says. ‘I’m sick of pretending I don’t know he smokes.’

Selena says, ‘I’ve been thinking about something.’

‘Ew,’ Becca says, to Julia. ‘You were right. It’s like little kids’ medicine.’

‘Minty ass. Bin it. We can share this one.’

Selena says, ‘I think we should start getting out at night.’

The others’ heads turn.

‘Out like what?’ Holly asks. ‘Like out of our room, like to the common room? Or out out?’

‘Out out.’

Julia says, eyebrows up, ‘Why?’

Selena thinks about that. She hears all the voices from when she was little, soothing, strengthening: Don’t be scared, not of monsters, not of witches, not of big dogs. And now, snapping loud from every direction: Be scared, you have to be scared, ordering like this is your one absolute duty. Be scared you’re fat, be scared your boobs are too big and be scared they’re too small. Be scared to walk on your own, specially anywhere quiet enough that you can hear yourself think. Be scared of wearing the wrong stuff, saying the wrong thing, having a stupid laugh, being uncool. Be scared of guys not fancying you; be scared of guys, they’re animals, rabid, can’t stop themselves. Be scared of girls, they’re all vicious, they’ll cut you down before you can cut them. Be scared of strangers. Be scared you won’t do well enough in your exams, be scared of getting in trouble. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl.

At the same time, in a cool untouched part of her mind, she sees the moon. She feels the shimmer of what it might look like in their own private midnight.

She says, ‘We’re different now. That was the whole point. So we need to be doing something different. Otherwise…’

She doesn’t know how to say what she sees. That moment in the glade sliding away, blurring. Them dulling slowly back to normal.

‘Otherwise it’s just about what we don’t do, and we’ll end up going back to the way things were before. There needs to be something we actually do.’

Becca says, ‘If we get caught, we’ll get expelled.’

‘I know,’ Selena says. ‘That’s part of the point. We’re too good. We always behave ourselves.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Julia says, and sucks gingerbread something mocha off her hand with a pop.

‘You do too – yeah, Jules, you do. Snogging a couple of guys and having a can or a cigarette sometimes, that doesn’t count. Everyone does that. Everyone expects us to do it; even adults, they’d be more worried about us if we didn’t do it. Nobody except Sister Cornelius actually thinks it’s a big deal, and she’s insane.’

‘So? I don’t actually want to rob banks or shoot up heroin, thanks. If that makes me a goody-goody, I’ll live with it.’

‘So,’ Selena says, ‘we only ever do stuff we’re supposed to do. Either stuff we’re supposed to do because our parents or the teachers say so, or stuff we’re supposed to do because we’re teenagers and all teenagers do it. I want to do something we’re not supposed to do.’

‘An original sin,’ Holly says, through a marshmallow. ‘I like it. I’m in.’

‘Oh, Jesus, you too? For Christmas I want friends who aren’t freaks.’

‘I feel criticised,’ Holly says, hand to her heart. ‘Should I use my D’s?’

‘Don’t be Defensive,’ Becca drones, in Sister Ignatius’s voice. ‘Don’t be Despondent. Take a Deep breath and be a Dickhead.’

‘It’s OK for you,’ Julia tells Holly. ‘If you get kicked out, your dad’ll probably give you a prize. My parents will freak. The fuck. Out. And they won’t be able to decide who was the bad influence on who, so they’ll just play it safe and never let me see any of you again.’

Becca is folding up a silk scarf that she already knows her mother will never wear. She says, ‘My parents would freak out too. I don’t care.’

Julia snorts. ‘Your mother would be delighted. If you can convince her that you were heading to a gang bang in a coke den, you’ll make her year.’ Becca is not what her parents had in mind. Usually she practically curls into a ball when they come up.

‘Yeah, but having to find me a new school would be hassle. They’d have to fly home and everything. And they hate hassle.’ Becca shoves the scarf back in her bag. ‘So they actually would completely freak out. And I still don’t care. I want to go out.’

‘Look at that,’ Julia says, amused, leaning back on one hand to examine Becca. ‘Look who’s got ballsy all of a sudden. Good for you, Becs.’ She raises the cup. Becca shrugs, embarrassed. ‘Look: I’m so on for an original sin. But could we please make it, like, a good one? Call me a pussy, but getting expelled in exchange for what, exactly? Getting a cold up my gee sitting on a lawn where I can already sit any day I want to? Not exactly my idea of a good time.’

Selena knew Julia would be the hardest to convince. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m scared of getting caught too. My dad wouldn’t care if I got expelled, but my mum would lose her mind. But I’m so sick of being scared of stuff. We need to do something we’re scared of.’

‘I’m not scared. I’m just not stupid. Can’t we just, like, dye our hair purple or–’

‘Totally original,’ Holly says, flicking an eyebrow.

‘Yeah, fuck you. Or have a twitch every time we talk to Houlihan–’

Even to Julia it sounds weaksauce. ‘That’s not scary,’ Becca says. ‘I want something scary.’

‘I liked you better before you grew a pair. Or, I don’t know, Photoshop Menopause McKenna’s head onto a still from “Gangnam Style” and stick it on the–’

‘We’ve already done stuff like that before,’ Selena points out. ‘It has to be different. See? It’s harder than it sounds.’

‘What are we even going to do out there?’

Selena shrugs. ‘I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing special. That’s not even the point.’

‘Right. “Sorry I got expelled, Mum, Dad, I actually don’t have a clue what I was even doing out there, but dyeing my hair purple wasn’t original enough-”’

‘Hi,’ says Andrew Moore. He’s grinning down at them from between two matching mates, like they were expecting him, like they beckoned him over. Becca realises: it’s the way they’re all sprawled on the fountain-edge, loose, legs outstretched, leaning back on their hands. It counts as an invitation.

And Andrew Moore answered, Andrew Moore Andrew Moore all rugby shoulders and Abercrombie and those super-blue eyes that everyone talks about. The rush comes first, the breathtaking tingling surge like sweetness and bubbles cascading onto their tongues. It’s Oh God does he could he is it me, exploding up your spine. It’s his broad hands glowing now that they could wind around yours, his hard-cut mouth electric with maybe kisses. It’s you snapping to sit just right, offering up boobs and legs and everything you have, cool and casual and heart slamming. It’s you and Andrew Moore sauntering hand in hand down the endless neon corridors, king and queen of the Court, every girl turning at once to gasp and envy. ‘Hi,’ they say up to him, dazzled, and shiver when he sits down on the fountain-edge beside Selena, when his sidekicks flank Julia and Holly. This is it, this is the trumpet-blast and all flags flying that ever since the first of first year the Court has been promising, this is its magic finally unveiled and theirs for the taking.

And then it’s gone. Andrew Moore is just some guy who actually none of them even like.

‘So,’ he says, smiling, and leans back to enjoy the adoration.

Holly says, before she knows she’s going to, ‘We’re in the middle of a conversation here. Give us a sec.’

Andrew laughs, because obviously that was a joke. His sidekicks join in. Julia says, ‘No, seriously.’

The sidekicks are still laughing, but it’s dawning on Andrew that he’s having a brand-new experience. ‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘Are you, like, telling us to get lost?’

‘Come back in five minutes,’ Selena offers. ‘We just need to work something out.’

Andrew is still smiling, but those super-blue eyes aren’t nice any more. He says, ‘Group PMS, yeah?’

‘OMG, that’s so weird,’ Holly says. ‘We were just talking about originality. You’re not into it, no?’

Julia snorts into Becca’s gingerbread drink. ‘And we were just talking about how half of Kilda’s is dykes,’ Andrew says. ‘You’re not into guys, no?’

‘Can we stay and watch?’ one of the sidekicks asks, grinning.

‘I’m so confused,’ Julia says. ‘You guys never want to actually have conversations with each other? You only hang out together so you can swap blowjobs?’

‘Hey,’ the other sidekick says. ‘Fuck off.’

‘OhmyGod, great chat-up line,’ says, of all the people in the whole world, Becca. ‘I totally fancy you now.’

Julia and Holly and Selena stare at her and start to laugh. After a stunned second, Becca does too.

‘Who gives a fuck who you fancy?’ the sidekick demands. ‘Ugly bitch.’

‘That’s rude,’ Selena says, trying so hard to be serious through the giggles that she makes the others even worse.

‘Shoo,’ says Julia, waving. ‘Bah-bye.’

‘You’re freaks,’ Andrew tells them, with finality; he’s much too secure to be wounded, but he disapproves deeply. ‘You need some serious attitude adjustment. Come on, guys.’

And he and his sidekicks get up and stride off down the Court, with guys scattering and girls gazing in their wake. Even their arses look displeased.

‘OhmyGod,’ Selena says, hand over her mouth. ‘Did you see his face?’

‘Once we finally got through to him,’ Julia says. ‘I’ve explained things to fish faster,’ which hits them all with another tornado of laughter. Becca is clutching a branch of Christmas tree to stop herself falling off the fountain-edge.

‘The walk,’ Holly manages, pointing after the guys, ‘look, look how they’re walking, it’s like Our balls are just too huge for those chicks to handle, they don’t even fit between our legs–’

Julia jumps up and does the walk, and Becca actually does fall off the fountain-edge, and they scream so loud with laughter that the security guard comes over to frown at them. Holly tells him Becca has epilepsy and if he throws her out he’ll be discriminating against the disabled, and he drifts off again, still frowning over his shoulder but without a lot of conviction.

Finally the giggles ebb. They look at each other, still grinning, amazed at themselves, shaken by their own daring.

‘Now that was original,’ Julia tells Selena. ‘You have to admit. And, let’s face it, kind of scary.’

‘Exactly,’ Selena says. ‘Do you want to keep on being able to do that? Or do you want to go back to almost wetting yourself if Andrew Moore even notices you exist?’

The heliumy woman is finishing up ‘All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth’. In the second before ‘Santa Baby’ kicks in, Holly catches a flash of another song, just half a brushstroke of it somewhere far away, maybe outside the Court: I’ve got so far, I’ve got so far left to– and gone.

Julia sighs and holds out her hand for Becca’s gingerbread thing. She says, ‘If you think I’m sliding down a bedsheet out our window like some chick in a shit movie, you are so very fucking wrong.’

‘I don’t,’ Selena says. ‘You heard what Hol’s dad said. The front windows aren’t alarmed.’

Becca does it. The others were taking for granted it would be Holly or Selena, in case the nurse notices the key gone missing; Holly is the best liar, and no one ever thinks Selena’s done anything wrong, while Julia is always one of the first people teachers think of, even for things that would never occur to her. When Becca says, ‘I want to do it,’ they’re taken aback. They try to convince her – Selena gently, Holly delicately, Julia bluntly – that this is a bad idea and she should leave it to the experts, but she digs her heels in and points out that she’s even less likely to be suspected than Selena, given that she genuinely never has done anything worse than sharing homework and everyone thinks she’s a huge goody-goody lick-arse, and that might as well be useful for once. In the end the others understand that she’s not budging.

They coach her, after lights-out. ‘You need to be sick enough that she keeps you in her office for a while,’ Julia says, ‘but not sick enough that she sends you back here. What you want is something she’ll want to keep an eye on.’

‘But not too much of an eye,’ Selena says. ‘You don’t want her hovering.’

‘Exactly,’ says Julia. ‘Maybe you think you’re going to puke, but you’re not sure. And you think probably you’ll be fine if you just lie still for a while.’

They’ve left their curtains open. Outside it’s below freezing, frost patterning the edges of the windowpane, the sky a thin sheet of ice laid over the stars. The shot of cold air hits Becca like it’s been fired straight through the glass from the huge outside, wild and magic, pungent with foxes and juniper.

Holly says, ‘But don’t act like you want to puke. That looks fake. Act like you don’t want to puke. Think about trying your hardest to hold it in.’

‘Are you sure about this?’ Selena asks. She’s propped up on one elbow, trying to see Becca’s face.

‘If you’re not,’ Holly says, ‘no probs. Just say it now.’

Becca says, ‘I’m doing it. Stop asking me.’

Julia catches a glance and the tip of a smile from Selena: See, our shy Becca, this is what I meant– ‘Good for you, Becsie,’ she says, reaching across the space between the beds to high-five Becca. ‘Make us proud.’

The next day, lying on the too-narrow bed in the nurse’s office, listening to the nurse hum Michael Bublé as she does paperwork at her desk, Becca feels the wild cold of the key strike deep into her palm, and smells running vixens and berries and icy stars.

Before lights-out they lay out their clothes on their beds and start getting dressed. Layers of tops – outside the window, the night sky is clear and frozen; sweatshirts; heavy jeans; pyjamas to go over it all, until the moment comes. They fold their coats away under their beds, so they won’t need to rattle hangers or squeak wardrobe doors. They line up their Uggs by the door so they won’t have to fumble.

Now that it’s turning real, it feels like a game, some geeky role-playing thing where someone will give them fake swords and they’ll have to run around smacking imaginary orcs. Julia is singing ‘Bad Romance’, cocking a hip and whirling a jumper by one sleeve like a stripper; Holly joins in with a pair of leggings on her head, Selena whips her hair in circles. They feel stupid, and they’re turning giddy to dodge that.

‘Is this OK?’ Becca asks, spreading her arms.

The other three stop singing and look at her: dark-blue jeans and dark-blue hoodie, the hoodie stuffed spherical with layers and the hood strings pulled so tight only the tip of her nose shows. They start to laugh.

‘What?’ Becca demands.

‘You look like the world’s fattest bank robber,’ Holly says, which makes them all worse.

‘You’re twice your size,’ Selena manages. ‘Can you even move in all that?’

‘Or see?’ says Julia. ‘That’s just what we need: if you can’t make it down the corridor without smacking into walls.’ Holly does Becca, lurching along blinded and unwieldy. The giggles have hold of all three of them, the helpless kind that keep going even after you run out of breath and your stomach muscles hurt.

Becca has gone red. She turns her back to them and tries to get the hoodie off, but the zip is stuck.

‘Becs,’ Selena says. ‘We’re only having a laugh.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Jesus,’ Julia says, rolling her eyes at Holly. ‘Chillax.’

Becca yanks at the zip till it dents her fingers. ‘If it’s just a great big joke, then why are we even bothering?’

No one answers. The laughter has faded to nothing. They glance at each other sideways on, eyes skidding away from meeting.

They’re looking for a way to ditch the whole thing. They want to throw their clothes back in the wardrobe, bin the key and never mention it again, blush when they remember how near they came to making idiots of themselves. They’re just waiting for someone to say the word.

Then one of the second-floor prefects slams their door open, snaps, ‘Stop lezzing it up and get changed, it’s lights-out in like five seconds and I will so report you,’ and bangs the door closed again before any of them can shut their mouths.

She didn’t even notice their entire outdoor wardrobes spread out on their beds, or the fact that Becca looks like an inflatable burglar. All four of them stare at each other for a second and then collapse on their beds, screaming with laughter into their duvets. And realising they’re actually going.

At lights-out they’re in their beds like good little girls – if the prefect has to come back, she might be in a more observant mood. After the bell goes, the edgy giddiness starts to fade. Something else starts to show through.

They’ve never listened to the sounds of the school falling asleep before, not this way, ears stretched like animals’. At first the flickers are constant: a burst of giggles through the wall, a faraway squeal, a patter of slippers as someone runs to the toilet. Then they drift farther apart. Then there’s silence.

When the clock at the back of the main building strikes one, Selena sits up.

They don’t talk. They don’t flick on torches, or bedside lights: anyone going down the corridor would see the flicker through the glass above the transom. In the window the moon is enormous, more than enough. They strip off their pyjamas and stuff their pillows under their sheets, pull on final jumpers and coats, deft and synchronised as if they’d been practising. When they’re ready they stand by their beds, boots dangling from their hands. They look at each other like explorers in the doorway of a long journey, all of them caught motionless in the moment before one of them takes the first step.

‘If you weirdos are serious about this,’ Julia says, ‘let’s do it.’

No one leaps out at them from a doorway, no stair creaks. On the ground floor Matron is snoring. When Becca fits the key into the door to the main building, it turns like the lock’s been oiled. By the time they reach the maths classroom and Julia reaches up to the fastening of the sash window, they already know the watchman is asleep or on the phone and will never look their way. Boots on and out of the window, one two three four quick and slick and silent, and they’re standing on the grass and it’s not a game any more.

The grounds are still as a set for a ballet, waiting for the first shivering run of notes from a flute; for the light girls to run in and stop, poised perfect and impossible, barely touching the grass. The white light comes from everywhere. The frost sings high in their ears.

They run. The great spread of grass rolls out to greet them and they skim down it, the crackle-cold air flowing like spring water into their mouths and running their hair straight out behind them when their hoods fall back and none of them can stop to pull them up again. They’re invisible, they could stream laughing past the night watchman and tweak off his cap as they went, leave him grabbing at air and gibbering at the wild unknown that’s suddenly everywhere, and they can’t stop running.

Into the shadows and down the narrow paths enclosed by dark spiky weaves of branches, past leaning trunks wrapped with years of ivy, through smells of cold earth and wet layers of leaves. When they burst out of that tunnel it’s into the white waiting glade.

They’ve never been here before. The tops of the cypresses blaze with frozen fire like great torches. There are things moving in the shadows, things that when they manage to catch a hair-thin glimpse are shaped like deer and wolves but they could be anything, circling. High in the shining column of air above the clearing, birds whirl arc-winged, long threads of savage cries trailing behind them.

The four of them open their arms and whirl too. The breath is spun out of them and the world rocks around them and they keep going. They’re spun out of themselves, spun to silver dust flying, they’re nothing but a rising arm or a curve of cheek in and out of ragged white bars of light. They dance till they collapse.

When they open their eyes they’re in the glade they know again. Darkness, and a million stars, and silence.

The silence is too big for any of them to burst, so they don’t talk. They lie on the grass and feel their own moving breath and blood. Something white and luminous is arrowing through their bones, the cold or the moonlight maybe, they can’t tell for sure; it tingles but doesn’t hurt. They lie back and let it do its work.

Selena was right: this is nothing like the thrill of necking vodka or taking the piss out of Sister Ignatius, nothing like a snog in the Field or forging your mum’s signature for ear-piercing. This has nothing to do with what anyone else in all the world would approve or forbid. This is all their own.

After a long time they straggle back to the school, dazzled and rumple-haired, heads buzzing. Forever, they say, at the threshold of the window, with their boots in their hands and the moonlight turning in their eyes. I’ll remember this forever. Yes forever. Oh forever.

In the morning they’re sprinkled with cuts and scrapes they can’t remember getting. Nothing that actually hurts; just tiny mischievous reminders, winking up from their knuckles and their shins when Joanne Heffernan flips something bitchy at Holly for taking too long in the breakfast queue, or when Miss Naughton tries to make Becca cringe for not paying attention. It takes them a while to realise it’s not just people being annoying; they actually are spacy, Holly actually was staring at the toast for like ever, and none of them have a clue what Naughton was on about. Their foothold has shifted; it’s taking them a while to get their balance back.

‘Do it again soon?’ Selena says, at break-time, through her juice straw.

For a second they’re afraid to say yes, in case it’s not the same, next time. In case that can only happen once, and they try to get it back and end up sitting in the glade getting colds up their gees and staring at each other like a pack of tossers.

They say it anyway. Something’s started; it’s too late to stop it. Becca picks a sliver of twig out of Julia’s hair and stashes it in her blazer pocket, to keep.