The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(108)

There are benches along the paths, and Selena’s aiming for one of those, the one shadowed under a wide oak between two open stretches of grass, so you can see anyone coming before they see you. The best thing would be one of the deepest corners of the grounds, the ones where you have to fight through bushes and clamber over awkward undergrowth to find a tiny patch of grass to sit on – she knows them all – but you would have to sit close, almost touching already. The benches are wide enough to leave an arm’s length between you. See, she says in her mind, see, I’m being safe. Nothing comes back.

As they pass the rise to the glade, Chris’s head turns. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Let’s go up there.’

That dark prickle hits Selena’s back again. She says, ‘There’s a place just down here that’s really nice.’

‘Just for a minute. It reminds me of somewhere.’

She can’t think of a reason to say no. She climbs the slope side by side with Chris and tells herself maybe it’s on purpose to help her, maybe the glade is going to keep her untempted, but she knows: she’s not getting help tonight. As they step into the clearing the cypress branches boil and hiss. This is a bad idea.

In the middle of the clearing, Chris turns, his face tipped up to the stars. He’s smiling, a small private smile. He says, ‘It’s good here.’

Selena says, ‘Where does it remind you of?’

‘There’s this place. Near home.’ He’s still turning, looking up at the trees; it catches at Selena, the way he looks at them like they matter, like he wants to remember every detail. ‘It’s just an old house, Victorian or something, I don’t know. I found it when I was a kid, maybe seven; it was empty, like you could tell it’d been abandoned for ages – holes in the roof, the windows were all broken and boarded up . . . It’s got this big garden, and right in one corner there was a circle of trees. Not the same kind as these – I don’t know what they are, I don’t know that stuff – but still. It reminded me.’

He catches her eye and pulls back into a shrug and a half-laugh. In texts they’ve talked about stuff Selena doesn’t even tell the others, but this is different; they’re so close they make each other’s skin fizz. ‘I mean, I don’t go there now. Someone bought it a couple of years back; they started locking the gates. I climbed up and looked over the wall once, and there were a couple of cars in the drive. I don’t know if they actually live there, or if they did it up, or what. Anyway.’ He heads over to the edge of the clearing and starts poking a foot into the undergrowth. ‘Do animals live in here? Like rabbits or foxes?’

Selena says, ‘Did you go there when you wanted to be on your own?’

Chris turns and looks at her. ‘Yeah,’ he says, after a moment. ‘When things weren’t great at home. Sometimes I’d get up really early, like five in the morning, and I’d go there for a couple of hours. Just to sit there. Out in the garden, if it wasn’t raining, or inside if it was. Then I’d go home, before anyone else was awake, and get back into bed. They never even knew I was gone.’

In that instant it’s him, the same guy whose texts she’s cupped in her hands like fireflies. He says, ‘I never told anyone that before.’ He’s smiling at her, half-startled, half-shy.

Selena wants to smile back and tell him how she and the others come to the glade, in exchange, but she can’t; not till she’s cleared away the thing pinching at her. She says, ‘The phone. The one you gave me.’

‘You like it?’ But he’s looked away again. He’s peering back under the cypresses, even though there’s no way he could see into that dark. ‘There could even be badgers in here.’

‘Alison Muldoon’s got one exactly the same. So’s Aileen Russell, in fourth year. So’s Claire McIntyre.’

Chris laughs, but it sounds like an attack and he doesn’t feel like the guy she knows any more. ‘So? You can’t have the same phone as any other girl? Jesus, I didn’t think you were that type.’

Selena flinches. She can’t think of anything to say that won’t make everything even worse. She says nothing.

He starts moving again, fast mean-dog circles round the clearing. ‘OK. I gave phones like that to some other girls. Not Alison Whatever, but the others: yeah. A couple more, too. And? You don’t own me. We’re not even going out. What do you care who else I text?’

Selena stays very still. She wonders if this is her punishment: this, like a whipping, and then he’ll be gone and she can drag herself home through the dark and pray that nothing comes skulking to the smell of blood off her. And the whole thing will be over.

After a moment Chris stops circling. He shakes his head, almost violently. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t’ve . . . But those other girls, they were months ago. I’m not in touch with any of them any more. I swear. OK?’

Selena says, ‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t care about that.’ She thinks that’s true. ‘Just: when you say you’ve never told anyone something before, I don’t want to wonder if you’ve actually told the same story to a dozen other people and said “I never told anyone this before” every time.’

He opens his mouth and she knows he’s going to rip her apart, rip this into shreds they can never put back together. Then he rubs his hands up the sides of his jaw, hard, clasps them behind his head. He says, ‘I don’t think I know how to do this.’