The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(70)

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 f*ck’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.’