The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(103)



Selena said, ‘I know. He told me. He shouldn’t have done that.’

‘It’s easy to romanticise someone who’s dead, specially someone who meant a lot to you. Fact is, Chris had a cruel streak, specially when he didn’t get what he wanted.’

‘Yeah. I know that; I’m not romanticising.’

‘Then why’re you telling me he wouldn’t have hurt you?’

Selena said – not defensive, just patient – ‘That was different.’

Conway said, ‘That’s what all the other girls thought, too. Every one of them thought she had something special with Chris.’

Selena said, ‘Maybe they did have. People are complicated. When you’re a little kid, you don’t realise, you think people are just one thing; but then you get older, and you realise it’s not that simple. Chris wasn’t that simple. He was cruel and he was kind. And he didn’t like realising that. It bothered him, that he wasn’t just one thing. I think it made him feel . . .’

She drifted for long enough that I wondered if she’d left the sentence behind, but Conway kept waiting. In the end, Selena said, ‘It made him feel fragile. Like he could break into pieces any time, because he didn’t know how to hold himself together. That was why he did that with those other girls, went with them and kept it secret: so he could try out being different things and see how it felt, and he’d be safe. He could be as lovely as he wanted or as horrible as he wanted, and it wouldn’t count, because no one else would ever know. I thought, at first, maybe I could show him how to hold the different bits together; how he could be OK. But it didn’t work out that way.’

‘Right,’ Conway said. No interest in the deep and meaningfuls, but I could feel her clocking that I had been right: no short bus for Selena. She skimmed a finger over her phone, held it out again. ‘See here? After that night on the video, you ignored Chris for a few days, but then you stopped. These here, these are texts from you to him. What changed your mind?’

Selena had her head turned away from the phone, like she couldn’t look. She said, to the slowing light outside the window, ‘I knew the right thing to do was cut him off totally. Never be in touch again. I knew that. But . . . you saw that. The video.’ A bare nod towards the phone. ‘It wasn’t just that I missed him. It was because that was special. We made it together, me and Chris, it was never going to exist anywhere else in the world, and it was beautiful. Wrecking something like that, grinding it up to nothing and throwing it away: that’s evil. That’s what evil is. Isn’t it?’

Neither of us answered.

‘It felt like a terrible thing to do. Like it might even be the worst thing I’d ever done – I couldn’t tell for sure. So I thought maybe I could save just some of it. Maybe, even if we weren’t going to be together, we could still . . .’

Everyone’s thought that: maybe even if, maybe we could still, maybe small bits of precious things can be salvaged. No one with cop-on thinks it after the first try. But her voice, quiet and sad, shimmering the air into those pearly colours: for a second I believed it, all over again.

Selena said, ‘It would never have worked out like that. Probably I knew that; I think I might’ve. But I had to try. So I texted Chris a couple of times. Saying let’s stay friends. Saying I missed him, I didn’t want to lose him . . . Stuff like that.’

‘Not a couple of times,’ Conway said. ‘Seven.’

Selena’s eyebrows pulling together. ‘Not that many. Two? Three?’

‘You were texting him every few days. Including the day he died.’

Selena shook her head. ‘No.’ Anyone would’ve said that, anyone with half a brain. But the bewildered look: I would’ve nearly sworn that was real.

‘It’s right here in black and white.’ Conway’s tone was turning. Not hard, not yet, but firm. ‘Look. Text from you, no answer. Text from you, no answer. Text from you, no answer. This time Chris was ignoring you.’

Things moved in Selena’s face. She was watching the screen like a telly, like she could see it all happening in front of her, all over again.

‘That had to have hurt,’ Conway said. ‘Didn’t it?’

‘Yeah. It did.’

‘So Chris was prepared to hurt you, after all. Right?’

Selena said, ‘Like I told you. He wasn’t just one thing.’

‘Right. So is that why you broke up with him? Because he did something to hurt you?’

‘No. That, when he didn’t answer my texts, that was the first time Chris ever hurt me.’

‘Must’ve made you pretty angry.’

‘Angry,’ Selena said. Turned the word over. ‘No. I was sad; I was so sad. I couldn’t figure out why he’d do that, not at first. But angry . . .’ She shook her head. ‘No.’

Conway waited, but she was done. ‘And then? Did you figure it out in the end, yeah?’

‘Not till afterwards. When he died.’

‘Right,’ Conway said. ‘So why was it?’

Selena said, simply, ‘I was saved.’

Conway’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You mean you – what? Found God? Chris broke it off because—’

Selena laughed. The laugh startled me: fountaining up into the air, full and sweet, like laughter out of girls splashing in some tumbling river, miles from any watcher. ‘Not saved like that! God, can you imagine? I think my parents would’ve had a heart attack.’

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