The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(69)

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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.’