The Secret Place

Chapter 12

In a way they were right: it’s not the same the second time they sneak out, or the third. It turns out that doesn’t matter. The glade where they lie and talk always has that other one behind it, a promise waiting for the right moment to be kept. It colours everything.

I never thought I’d have friends like you guys, Becca says, deep inside the third night. Never. You’re my miracles.

Not even Julia bats that away. Their four hands are twined together on the grass, loose and warm.

Late in January, half past ten at night. Fifteen minutes till lights-out, for third-years and fourth-years at Kilda’s and at Colm’s. Chris Harper – brushing his teeth, half-thinking about the cold soaking into his feet from the tiled floor of the bathroom, half-listening to a couple of guys giving a first-year hassle in a toilet cubicle and wondering whether he can be arsed stopping them – has just under four months left to live.

A breadth of darkness away in Kilda’s, snow brushes at the dorm-room window, small fitful flakes, not sticking. Winter has clamped down hard: early sunsets, petty sleet and the streaming cold that’s been going around mean it’s been a week since Julia and Holly and Selena and Becca felt daylight, and they’re jiggly with confinement and leftover sniffles. They’re arguing about the Valentine’s dance.

‘I’m not going,’ Becca says.

Holly is lying on her bed in her pyjamas, copying Julia’s maths as fast as she can, throwing in the odd minor mistake for authenticity. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d rather burn off my own fingernails with a lighter than wiggle myself into some stupid dress with a stupid micro-mini skirt and a stupid stuck-on low-cut top, even if I owned that kind of crap, which I don’t and I’m not going to ever. Is why.’

‘You have to go,’ Julia says, from her bed, where she’s face-down reading.

‘No I don’t.’

‘If you don’t, you’ll get sent to Sister Ignatius and she’ll ask if you don’t want to go because you were abused when you were little, and when you tell her you weren’t, she’ll say you need to learn self-esteem.’

Becca is sitting on her bed with her arms around her knees, clenched into a furious red knot. ‘I have self-esteem. I have enough self-esteem that I’m not going to wear something stupid just because everyone else is.’

‘Well, fuck you very much. My dress isn’t stupid.’ Julia has a shimmy of a dress, black with scarlet polka dots, that she spent months saving for and bought in the sales just a couple of weeks ago. It’s the tightest thing she’s ever owned, and she actually kind of likes the look of herself in it.

‘Your dress isn’t. Me in your dress would be. Because I’d hate it.’

Selena says, through the pyjama top she’s pulling over her head, ‘Why don’t you wear whatever you like best?’

‘I like jeans best.’

‘So wear jeans.’

‘Yeah, right. Are you going to?’

‘I’m wearing that blue dress that was my granny’s. The one I already showed you.’ It’s a sky-blue minidress that Selena’s granny wore back in the sixties, when she was a shopgirl in cool parts of London. It’s tight on Selena’s chest, but she’s wearing it anyway.

‘Exactly,’ Becca says. ‘Hol, are you wearing jeans?’

‘Ah, bugger,’ Holly says, scrubbing at a mistake that turned out bigger than she expected. ‘My mum bought me this purple dress for Christmas. It’s actually OK. I might wear that.’

‘So I’d be the only loser in jeans, or else I have to go buy some stupid dress I hate and be a total compromise coward liar. No thanks.’

‘Do the dress,’ says Julia, turning a page. ‘Give us all a laugh.’

Becca gives her the finger. Julia grins and gives it right back. She approves of the new feisty Becca.

‘It’s not funny. You’re going to let me sit here by myself that night doing Sister Ignatius’s stupid self-esteem exercises, while you’re all wiggling in stupid dresses for–’

‘So come, for fuck’s sake–’

‘I don’t want to!’

‘Then what do you want? You want the rest of us to stay home just because you don’t feel like wearing a dress?’ Julia has ditched her book and is sitting up. Holly and Selena have stopped what they’re doing at the snap in her voice. ‘Because yeah, no: fuck that.’

‘I thought the whole point was we don’t have to do stuff just because everyone else does–’

‘I’m not going because everyone else is, genius, I’m going because I actually want to. Because it’s fun, you’ve heard of that, right? If you’d rather sit here doing self-esteem exercises, knock yourself out. I’m going.’

‘Oh, thanks, thanks a lot – you’re supposed to be my friend–’

‘Right, which doesn’t mean being your bitch–’

Becca is up on her knees on the bed, fists clenched and hair crackling with fury. ‘I never fucking asked you to–’

The light bulb spits a furious sizzle, pops and goes out. They all scream.

‘Shut up!’ the second-floor prefects both yell from down the corridor. A breathless ‘Jesus–’ from Julia, a thump and ‘Ow!’ as Selena knocks her shin off something, and then the light flicks back on.

‘What the hell,’ Holly says. ‘What happened?’

The bulb is burning innocently, not a flicker.

‘It’s a sign, Becs,’ Julia says, with that breathless note almost under control. ‘The universe wants you to quit whinging and go to the dance.’

‘Ha ha, so very funny,’ Becca says. Her voice isn’t under control at all; it sounds like a kid’s, high and wobbly. ‘Or the universe doesn’t want you going, and it’s annoyed because you said you were.’

Selena says, to Becca, ‘Did you do that?’

‘You are shitting me,’ Julia says. ‘Right?’

‘Becsie?’

‘Oh, please,’ Julia says. ‘Come on. Don’t even go there.’

Selena is still looking at Becca. So is Holly. In the end Becca says, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says. ‘I can’t even.’ She falls flat on her stomach on her bed and slams her pillow over her head.

Selena says, ‘Do it again.’

‘How?’

‘However you did it before.’

Becca is staring at the light bulb like it might leap at her. ‘I didn’t. I don’t think. I don’t know.’

Julia groans, under her pillow. ‘Better do it fast,’ Holly says. ‘Before she suffocates.’

‘I just…’ Becca holds up one thin palm, wavering. ‘I was upset. Because of… And I just…’ She closes her fist. The light goes out.

This time none of them scream.

‘Turn it back on?’ Selena’s voice says, quietly, in the darkness.

The light comes back on. Julia has taken the pillow off her head and is sitting up.

‘Oh,’ Becca says. She has her back pressed against the wall and a knuckle in her mouth. ‘Did I…?’

‘No, you fucking didn’t,’ Julia says. ‘It’s some kind of electrical thing. Probably the snow.’

Selena says, ‘Do it again.’

Becca does it again.

This time Julia doesn’t say anything. All around them the air is shivering, bending the light.

‘Yesterday morning,’ Selena says. ‘When we were getting ready, and I was getting something off my bedside table. My hand went up against my reading light, and it turned on. When I stopped touching it, it went off.’

‘Cheapo piece of crap malfunctions,’ Julia says. ‘News at nine.’

‘I did it a bunch of times. To check.’

They all remember Selena’s light blinking on and off. The bad weather was already on the way, tarnished sky clashing with the electric lights to give the school a tense battened-down feel: they thought it was just that, if they thought about it at all.

‘So how come you didn’t say anything?’

‘We were in a hurry. And I wanted to think about it. And I wanted to wait and see…’

If it happened to anyone else. Becca remembers to breathe out, in a quick burst.

Holly says, almost unwillingly, ‘This afternoon. When I went to the jacks, during Maths? The lights in the corridor: they turned off when I went under them, and then they turned back on again once I was past. Like, all of them. I thought it was just a thing. The snow, or whatever.’

Selena lifts her eyebrows at Holly, and glances up at the light bulb.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Julia.

‘It won’t work,’ Holly says.

Nobody answers her. The air still has that waver to it: heat over sand, mirage-ready.

Holly holds up her palm and makes a fist like Becca did. The light goes out. ‘Jesus!’ she yelps, and it comes on again.

Silence, and the thrumming air. They don’t have ways to talk about this.

‘I’m not psychic,’ Holly says, too loudly. ‘Or whatever. I’m not. That thing in Science, remember, guessing the shapes on the cards? I was crap.’

Becca says, ‘Me too. This is because of… you know. The glade. That’s what’s changed.’ Julia flops back down on her bed and bashes her forehead off her pillow a few times. ‘OK, so what do you think just happened, smarty?’

‘I told you. There’s snow in some transponster somewhere in Ballybumcrack. Now can we go back to fighting about how I’m not your real friend? Please?’

Selena does the light bulb. ‘Stop!’ Julia snaps. ‘I’m trying to read.’

‘I thought you thought it was snow,’ Selena says, grinning. ‘Why are you telling me to stop it?’

‘Shut up. I’m reading.’

‘You try it.’

‘Uh-huh, right.’

‘I dare you.’

Julia gives Selena a withering look. ‘Scared?’ Selena asks.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. That’s my whole point.’

‘Then…?’

Julia is crap at turning down a dare. She sits up again, reluctantly. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she says. Lifts her hand, sighing noisily, and closes it. Nothing happens.

‘Ta-da,’ Julia says. To her huge irritation, a part of her is viciously, painfully disappointed.

Selena says, ‘Doesn’t count. You weren’t concentrating.’

‘When the lights in the corridor did it,’ Holly says. ‘This afternoon. Naughton had been giving out to me, remember? Cliona was talking and she thought it was me? I was well pissed off. And…’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Julia says. She focuses on Becca being a contrary cow about the dance, and tries again. It works.

Silence, again. Reality feels strange against their skin: it’s rippling and bubbling around them, it’s spinning little whirlpools and shooting up geysers in unexpected places just for fun. They don’t want to move, in case it responds in ways they’re not expecting.

‘Too bad it’s not something useful,’ Holly says, as casually as she can – she feels like making a big deal of this would be a bad idea; like it might draw attention, she’s not sure whose. ‘X-ray vision. We could read the exam papers the night before.’

‘Or not even bother,’ Becca says. She wants to giggle; everything feels like she’s being tickled. ‘If we could just change our marks when the results came in – like, whee, all A’s! – that would be useful.’

‘I don’t think it’s like that,’ Selena says. She’s snuggled down in bed, wearing a huge contented grin. She wants to hug all three of them. ‘It’s not for anything. It’s just there. Like, it was there all along; we just didn’t know how to get to it. Till now.’

‘Well,’ Julia says. She’s still not at all happy about this. It seems to her for some reason that they should have put up more of a fight, collectively: run screaming, refused to believe this was happening, changed the subject and kept it changed. Just not acted like this is something they can look at, go Oh, wow, totally weird! and keep bouncing cheerfully along. Even if that didn’t make a difference in the long run, it would have said they weren’t complete pushovers. ‘At least that settles the Valentine’s dance bullshit. Someone with superpowers had better not be too much of a wimp to wear jeans.’

Becca starts to answer, but she gets hit by a flood of giggles. She falls backwards on her bed, arms spread, and lets the laughter jiggle her whole body like popcorn popping inside her.

‘Nice to see you quit bitching,’ Julia says. ‘So are you going to the dance?’

‘Course I am,’ Becca says. ‘You want me to go in my swimsuit? ’Cause I’ll do it.’

‘Lights out!’ one of the prefects yells, slamming her hand against the door. They all turn the light off at once.

They practise in the glade. Selena brings her little battery-powered reading light, Holly has a torch, Julia brings a lighter. The night is thick with clouds and cold; they have to grope their way down the paths to the grove, wincing each time a branch twangs or a clump of leaves crunches. Even when they come out into the clearing they’re nothing but outlines, distorted and unreadable. They sit cross-legged in a circle on the grass and pass the lights around.

It works. Uncertainly at first: just small tentative flickers, half a second long, vanishing when they startle. As they get better the flickers strengthen and leap, snatching their faces out of the dark like gold masks – a little wondering sound, between a laugh and a gasp, from someone – and then dropping them again. Gradually they stop being flickers at all; rays of light arrow up into the high cypresses, circle and flitter among the branches like fireflies. Becca would swear she sees their trails scribbled across the clouds.

‘And to celebrate…’ Julia says, and pulls a pack of smokes out of her coat pocket – it’s been years since anyone asked Julia if she’s sixteen. ‘Who was saying this wouldn’t come in useful?’ She holds up the lighter between thumb and finger, brings up a tall stream of flame, and leans in sideways to light a cigarette without singeing her eyebrows.

They get comfortable and smoke, more or less. Selena’s left her reading light on; it sets a vivid circle of bowed winter grass soaring in mid-darkness, bounces off to catch folds of jeans and slivers of faces. Holly finishes her smoke and lies on her stomach with an unlit one in the palm of her hand, focusing hard.

‘What’re you doing?’ Becca asks, scooting closer to watch.

‘Trying to light it. Shh.’

‘I don’t think it works like that,’ Becca says. ‘We can’t just set random stuff on fire. Can we?’

‘Shut up or I’ll set you on fire. I’m concentrating.’

Holly hears herself and tightens, thinking she’s gone too far, but Becca rolls sideways and pokes her in the ribs with a toe. ‘Concentrate on this,’ she says.

Holly drops the cigarette and grabs her foot; Becca’s boot comes off, and Holly scrambles up and runs with it. Becca hop-gallops after her, giggling helplessly and yelping under her breath when her sock comes down on something cold.

Selena and Julia watch them. In the darkness they’re just a trail of rustle and laughter, sweeping a circle round the edge of the clearing. ‘Is this still bothering you?’ Selena asks.

‘Nah,’ Julia says, and blows a line of smoke rings; they wander through stripes of light and shadow, vanishing and reappearing like odd little night creatures. She can’t remember exactly why it bothered her to begin with. ‘I was just being a wimp. It’s all good.’

‘It is,’ Selena says. ‘Honest to God, it is. You’re not a wimp, though.’

Julia turns her head towards her, the slice she can see, a soft eyebrow and a soft hank of hair and the dreamy sheen of one eye. ‘I thought you thought I was. Like, Here’s this supercool thing happening, why’s she going off on some big emo-fest and fucking it all up?’

‘No,’ Selena says. ‘I got why: it could feel dangerous. I mean, it doesn’t to me. But I get how it could.’

‘I wasn’t scared.’

‘I know that.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘I know,’ Selena says. ‘I’m just glad you decided to try it. I don’t know what we’d’ve done if you hadn’t.’

‘Gone for it anyway.’

‘We wouldn’t, not without you. There’d be no point.’

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?’

It means weeks months years of smiling meekly when Joanne flicks bits of bitchiness their way, of asking pretty-please with a cherry on top can we have our key now, of watching her cock her head and consider whether they deserve it and decide regretfully that they don’t. It means the end of these nights; the end of everything. They want to wrap the dark air around her neck and pull. Selena’s fingers open.

Joanne touches the key and her hand leaps. The key skids and whirls away from her down the floor of the corridor and she’s squawking like she doesn’t have enough breath for a shriek, ‘Ow! OhmyGod, it burned me, owowow it burned what did you do–’

Holly and Julia are in her face and hissing violently, ‘Shut up shut up!’ but not fast enough: at the end of the corridor one of the prefects calls, drowsy and annoyed, ‘What do you want?’

Joanne whips around to scream for her. ‘No!’ Julia whispers, grabbing her arm. ‘Go; get in your room. We’ll give you the key tomorrow. I swear.’

‘Get off me,’ Joanne snarls, terrified into pure fury. ‘You’re going to be so sorry for this. Look at my hand, look what you did–’

Her hand looks totally fine, not even a mark on it, but the light is streaky and Joanne is moving; they can’t tell for sure. Down the corridor, less drowsy and more annoyed: ‘If I have to come out there, I swear to God–’

Joanne’s mouth opens again. ‘Listen!’ Julia hisses, with all the force she can cram into it. ‘If we get caught, then nobody’ll have the key. Get it? Go to bed; we’ll sort it tomorrow. Just go.’

‘You are total freaks,’ Joanne spits. ‘Normal people shouldn’t have to be in the same school as you. If my hand’s scarred, I’m going to sue you.’ And she whirls back into her room in a nightie-flounce of gaping lip-prints.

Julia grabs Becca’s arm and runs for their door, feeling the others behind them silent and speedy as down the paths to the glade, Selena barely breaking stride to scoop up the key. In, door closed, Holly presses her ear to it; but the prefect can’t be arsed hauling herself out of bed, now that the sounds have stopped. They’re safe.

Selena and Becca are giggling, wild and breathless, into their sleeves. ‘Her face – ohmyGod, did you see her face, I almost died–’

‘Let me feel it,’ Becca whispers, ‘come here, let me feel–’

‘It’s not hot now,’ Selena says. ‘It’s fine.’

They find her, in the darkness, and sift among one another’s reaching fingers to touch the key in her open hand. It’s palm-warm; nothing more.

‘Did you see it jump?’ Becca says. She’s almost dizzy with delight. ‘Zooming down the corridor, away from that cow–’

‘Or it bounced,’ Julia says. ‘Because she dropped it.’

‘It jumped. Her face, that was beautiful, I’d give anything for a photo–’

‘Who even did that?’ Holly wants to know, switching on her reading light half-hidden under her pillow so they can change without knocking anything over. ‘Was that you, Becs?’

‘I think it was me,’ Selena says. She tosses Julia the key, its glint like a tiny meteor streaking between them. ‘It doesn’t actually matter, though. If I can do it, you guys can too.’

‘Ah, cool,’ Becca says, wriggling out of all her layers at once and kicking them under her bed. She throws on her pyjamas and bounces into bed, where she balances the cap off her water bottle on edge on her bedside locker and starts trying to knock it over without touching it.

Julia is stashing the key back inside her phone cover. She says, ‘Next time, could you save that stuff for when it’s not going to get us into huge amounts of shit? Like, please?’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Selena says, muffled in the hoodie she’s pulling over her head. ‘It just happened, because I was getting all wound up. And if it hadn’t, Joanne would’ve have taken the key.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not like she’s going to forget the whole thing. We’ll have to deal with it tomorrow instead, is all. And now she’s raging with us.’

That cools the air. ‘Her hand’s fine,’ Selena says. ‘She’s just being a drama queen.’

‘Right. So she’s a total drama-queen bitch who’s raging with us. How is that better?’

‘What do we do?’ Becca asks, glancing up from her bottle cap.

‘What do you think we do?’ Holly says, tossing jumpers into the wardrobe. ‘We make her a copy of the key. Unless you actually want to get expelled.’

‘Why would we get expelled? She can’t prove we did anything.’

‘OK: unless you want to never go out again. Because if we do, Joanne can go running to Matron and be all, “Oo Matron I just happened to see them going downstairs and I’m so worried about them,” and then Matron waits and catches us coming back in and then we get expelled.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Julia says, kicking into her pyjama bottoms. ‘I’ll talk to her. I think the hardware place beside the Court does keys.’

‘She’s going to be a total bitch about it,’ Holly says.

‘Yeah, no shit. I’m going to have to apologise to her for what you said, smartarse.’ She means Becca. ‘You think I’m looking forward to grovelling for that ass-faced cow?’

‘You won’t have to,’ Becca says. ‘She’s scared of us now.’

‘For the next ten seconds, she is. Then she’ll turn the whole thing into some drama in her head, like she’s the heroine and we’re the evil witches who tried to burn her to death but she was just too special. And I’ll have to apologise for that, too. And convince her that the key just felt hot because Lenie’d been holding it and her hand was hot from running or whatever.’ Julia climbs into bed and throws herself hard onto her pillow. ‘Fun fun fun.’

Selena says, ‘At least this way we get to keep our key.’

‘We would’ve anyway. We’d have talked her out of it, or just robbed another one. You didn’t need to go all fucking poltergeist on her.’

Becca says, and her voice is tightening up, ‘Better than going all Yes Joanne no Joanne three bags full Joanne, letting that stupid cow be the boss of us–’

The bottle cap hops on the bedside locker and tumbles over. ‘Look!’ Becca yelps, and claps a hand over her mouth as the others hiss ‘Shhh!’ at her. ‘No, look! I did it!’

‘Awesomesauce,’ Holly says. ‘I’m gonna try in the morning.’

‘What are we doing?’ Julia demands, suddenly and vehemently. ‘All this shit; this, and the lights. What are we getting into here?’

The others look at her. In that light she’s the unreadable silhouette from the glade again, propped on her elbows, a tense arc.

‘I’m getting happy,’ Becca says. ‘That’s what I’m getting into.’

Holly says, ‘We’re not blowing stuff up. It’s not like it’s about to go all horrible.’

‘You don’t know. I’m not saying OMG we’re going to unleash demons; I’m just saying this is weird shit. If it only worked in the glade, then fine: it’s something separate, with its own separate place. But it’s here.’

Holly says, ‘So? If it gets too weird, we just stop doing it. What’s the big deal?’

‘Yeah? Just stop? Lenie, you didn’t even want the key to get hot: it just happened, because you were stressing. Same with Becs, the first time she turned the light off: that was because we were fighting. So if Sister Cornelius gives me hassle about something, do I just go ahead and zoom a book into her fat face, which yeah would be lots of fun but probably not the greatest idea ever? Or do I have to watch myself the whole time to make sure I’m totally zen, man, so I can live like a normal person?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Holly says, through a yawn, as she wriggles down in her bed. ‘Me, I am normal.’

‘I’m not,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to be.’

Selena says gently, ‘It just takes getting used to. You didn’t like the lights thing at first, right? And then tonight you said that was fine.’

‘Yeah,’ Julia says, after a moment. The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; if it weren’t for Joanne, she’d get back into all her jumpers and get back out there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs. ‘That’s probably it.’

‘We’ll go out again tomorrow night. You’ll see. It’ll be fine then.’

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says on a groan, flopping backwards. ‘If we want to do tomorrow, I’ll have to sort that bint Heffernan. I was trying to forget about her.’

‘If she gives you any hassle,’ Holly says, ‘just get her own hand and smack her in the face with it. What’s she going to do, tell on you?’ and they’re falling asleep before they finish laughing.

When the others are asleep, Becca reaches one arm out of bed into the cold air and eases her bedside locker open. She takes out, one by one, her phone, a little bottle of blue ink, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, and a tissue.

She stole the ink and the pin from the art room, the day after they made the vow. Under the covers, she pulls up her pyjama top and angles the phone to light the pale skin just below her ribs. She holds her breath – to make sure she doesn’t move, not to brace herself against the pain; pain doesn’t bother her – while she pricks the dot into the skin, just deep enough, and rubs in the ink. She’s getting better at it. There are six dots now, arcing downwards and inwards from the bottom right edge of her rib cage, too small to notice unless someone was closer than anyone’s going to get: one for each perfect moment. The vow; the first three escapes; the lights; and tonight.

What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

She blots the extra ink from around the dot, spits on the tissue and dabs again. The dot throbs, a warm satisfying pain.

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.