The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(109)

Selena waits. She doesn’t know what to hope.

‘I should go. We can keep texting; I’d rather just do that than try seeing each other and have the whole thing go tits-up.’

Selena says, before she knows she’s going to, ‘It’s not like this has to go tits-up.’

‘Yeah? We’ve been here two seconds, and look at us. I shouldn’t have come.’

‘That’s just being dramatic. We were fine outside the dance. All we have to do is talk to each other. Properly.’

Chris stares at her. After a moment he says, ‘OK: I meant it. I never told anyone about the house before.’

Selena nods. ‘See?’ she says, ‘How hard was that?’ and grins at him, and gets a startled half-laugh back. Chris blows out a long breath, and loosens.

‘I survived.’

‘So you don’t have to leave. It won’t go tits-up.’

He says, ‘I should’ve been straight with you about the phone. Instead of . . .’

‘Yeah.’

‘Being a prick to you, and all. That was shit. Sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ Selena says.

‘Yeah? We’re OK?’

‘We’re fine.’

‘God. Phew.’ Chris does a big exaggerated forehead-swipe, but he means it. He crouches to feel the grass. ‘It’s dry,’ he says, dropping down, and touches a spot beside him.

When Selena doesn’t move, he says, ‘I’m not going to . . . I mean, don’t worry, I know you’re not – or we’re not— Jesus. I can’t talk. I’m not going to try anything. OK?’

Selena is laughing. ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I know what you mean,’ and she goes over and sits down next to him.

They sit there for a while, not talking, not even looking at each other, just getting used to the shapes of them in the shape of the clearing. Selena feels the hidden things thinning away to black veils you could pop with a fingertip, puddling into harmless sleep on the ground. She’s a foot away from Chris, but that side of her is rich with the warmth off him. He has his hands clasped around his knees – they’re like a man’s hands, strong-knuckled and wide – and his head tilted back to look at the sky.

‘I’ll tell you something else I’ve never told anyone before,’ he says quietly, after a while. ‘You know what I’m going to do? When I’m old enough, I’m going to buy that house. I’ll fix up the whole place, and then I’ll invite all my friends round and we’ll have a party that lasts like a week. Great music, and lots of drink and hash and E, and the house is big enough that when people get tired they can just go off to one of the bedrooms and crash for a while and then come back to the party, right? Or if they want some privacy or just some quiet, there are all these empty rooms, there’s the whole garden. Whatever mood you’re in, whatever you need right then, this place will have it.’

His face is glowing. The house flowers in the air above the clearing, every detail carved and shimmering, every corner ringing and fountaining with someday music and laughter. It’s as real as they are.

‘And we’ll all remember that party for the rest of our lives. Like, when we’re forty and have jobs and kids and the most exciting thing we ever do is golf, that party’s what we’ll think about when we need to remind ourselves what we used to be like.’

It comes to Selena that Chris has never once thought it might not happen. What if when he’s old enough the people who own the house don’t want to sell it, what if it’s been knocked down to build an apartment block, what if he doesn’t have enough money to buy it: none of these have ever crossed his mind. He wants it; that makes it as simple and certain as the grass under their legs. Selena feels a shadow like a great bird’s flit across her back.

She says, ‘It sounds incredible.’

He turns towards her, smiling. ‘I’ll invite you,’ he says. ‘No matter what.’

‘I’ll come,’ she says. She hopes with every part of her that they’re both right.

‘Deal?’ Chris asks, holding out his hand to shake on it.

‘Deal,’ Selena says, and because she can’t not, she stretches out her hand and shakes his.

When it’s time to go, he wants to walk her back to the school building, see her safe in at the window, but she won’t let him. The moment they started talking about separating, she felt the things in the shadows stir and raise themselves, hungry; felt the watchman get restless, legs twitching for a walk in the full spring air. If they take any chances, they’ll get caught.

Instead she lets him watch her up the path towards the school till she knows she’s blurred into the dapple. Then she turns and stays still, feeling the shadows thickening at her back.

He’s thrumming in the centre of the clearing, full to exploding. When he leaps, it’s head back and punching the sky, and she hears the low jubilant burst of breath. He comes down grinning, and Selena feels herself smiling back. She watches while he runs down the rise to the path, in big bounds so he won’t crush the starting hyacinths, and heads for the back gate at a jog like he can’t keep his feet on the ground.



Last time he was the one who touched her, before she knew it was coming. This time she reached out to touch him.