The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(72)

‘I’m getting happy,’ Becca says. ‘That’s what I’m getting into.’

Holly says, ‘We’re not blowing stuff up. It’s not like it’s about to go all horrible.’

‘You don’t know. I’m not saying OMG we’re going to unleash demons; I’m just saying this is weird shit. If it only worked in the glade, then fine: it’s something separate, with its own separate place. But it’s here.’

Holly says, ‘So? If it gets too weird, we just stop doing it. What’s the big deal?’

‘Yeah? Just stop? Lenie, you didn’t even want the key to get hot: it just happened, because you were stressing. Same with Becs, the first time she turned the light off: that was because we were fighting. So if Sister Cornelius gives me hassle about something, do I just go ahead and zoom a book into her fat face, which yeah would be lots of fun but probably not the greatest idea ever? Or do I have to watch myself the whole time to make sure I’m totally zen, man, so I can live like a normal person?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Holly says, through a yawn, as she wriggles down in her bed. ‘Me, I am normal.’

‘I’m not,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to be.’

Selena says gently, ‘It just takes getting used to. You didn’t like the lights thing at first, right? And then tonight you said that was fine.’

‘Yeah,’ Julia says, after a moment. The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; if it weren’t for Joanne, she’d get back into all her jumpers and get back out there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs. ‘That’s probably it.’

‘We’ll go out again tomorrow night. You’ll see. It’ll be fine then.’

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says on a groan, flopping backwards. ‘If we want to do tomorrow, I’ll have to sort that bint Heffernan. I was trying to forget about her.’

‘If she gives you any hassle,’ Holly says, ‘just get her own hand and smack her in the face with it. What’s she going to do, tell on you?’ and they’re falling asleep before they finish laughing.



When the others are asleep, Becca reaches one arm out of bed into the cold air and eases her bedside locker open. She takes out, one by one, her phone, a little bottle of blue ink, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, and a tissue.

She stole the ink and the pin from the art room, the day after they made the vow. Under the covers, she pulls up her pyjama top and angles the phone to light the pale skin just below her ribs. She holds her breath – to make sure she doesn’t move, not to brace herself against the pain; pain doesn’t bother her – while she pricks the dot into the skin, just deep enough, and rubs in the ink. She’s getting better at it. There are six dots now, arcing downwards and inwards from the bottom right edge of her rib cage, too small to notice unless someone was closer than anyone’s going to get: one for each perfect moment. The vow; the first three escapes; the lights; and tonight.

What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

She blots the extra ink from around the dot, spits on the tissue and dabs again. The dot throbs, a warm satisfying pain.

These nights in the grove aren’t degradable, they can’t be flaked away. They’ll always be there, if only Becca and the others can find their way back. The four of them backboned by their vow are stronger than anyone’s pathetic schedules and bells; in ten years, twenty, fifty, they can slip between those stakes and meet in the glade, on these nights.

The dot tattoos are for that: signposts, in case she needs them someday, to guide her home.





Chapter 13


The fourth-year common room felt smaller than the third-year one, darker. Not just the colours, cool greens instead of oranges; on this side the building blocked out the afternoon sun, gave the room an underwater dimness that the ceiling lights couldn’t fight.

The girls were clumped tight and jabbering low. Holly’s lot were the only quiet ones: Holly sitting on a windowsill, Julia leaning against it snapping a hair elastic around her wrist, Rebecca and Selena back to back on the floor below; all their eyes focused and faraway, like they were reading the same story written across the air. Joanne and Gemma and Orla were in a huddle on one of the sofas, Joanne whispering fast and ferocious.

That was only for a flash. Then everyone spun to the door. Sentences bitten off in mid-word, blank faces staring.

‘Orla,’ Conway said. ‘We need a word.’

Orla looked like she might be going pale, far as I could tell through the orange tan. ‘Me? Why me?’

Conway held the door open till Orla got up and came, widening her eyes over her shoulder at her mates. Joanne hit her with a stare like a threat.

‘We’ll talk in your room,’ Conway said, scanning the corridor. ‘Which one is it?’ Orla pointed: down the far end.