The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(80)

‘In your dreams,’ Julia says, stepping on Joanne’s heel. ‘Oops.’

At the end of the hall is a long table of cupid-covered paper cups, arranged in rows around a big fake-glass punch bowl. The punch is a lurid baby-medicine shade of pink. Julia takes a cup. It’s squash with food colouring.

Finn Carroll is leaning against the wall by the table. Finn and Julia know each other, sort of, from debating society; when he sees her he cocks an eyebrow, lifts his cup to her and shouts something she can’t hear. Finn has bright red hair, long enough to flop into loose curls at the back of his neck, and he’s smart. These would add up to social death for most guys, but Finn has the minimum of freckles to go with the hair, he’s decent at rugby and he’s getting height and shoulders faster than most of his class, so he gets away with it.

‘What?’ Julia yells.

Finn leans down to her ear. ‘Don’t drink the punch,’ he shouts. ‘It’s shit.’

‘To go with the music,’ Julia yells back.

‘That’s just insulting. “They’re teenagers, so they must love shitty chart crap.” It never occurs to them that some of us might have taste.’

‘You should’ve hotwired the sound system,’ Julia yells. Finn is good with electronics. Last term he wired up a frog in Bio so that when Graham Quinn went to dissect it, it jumped, and Graham and his stool both went over backwards. Julia respects that. ‘Or at least brought something sharp we could stick through our eardrums.’

Finn says, close enough that he can stop shouting, ‘Want to see if we can get out?’

Finn is actually pretty sound, for a Colm’s guy; Julia likes the idea of having an honest-to-God conversation with him, she thinks there’s a decent chance he might be able to manage that without spending too much of the time trying to stick his tongue down her throat, and she can’t see him bragging to all his moron buddies that they had hot monkey sex in the bushes. Someone will notice they’re gone, though, and the hot-monkey-sex rumours will get going anyway. ‘Nah,’ she says.

‘I’ve got a naggin of whiskey out the back.’

‘I hate whiskey.’

‘So we’ll nick something else. There’s a whole offie out in those bushes. Take your pick.’

The coloured lights slide across Finn’s face, wide mouth laughing. It occurs to Julia, with a giddy rush, that she doesn’t have to give one single f*ck about hot-monkey-sex rumours.

She glances over at the other three: still dancing. Becca has her arms out and is twirling around with her head back like a little kid, laughing. Any minute she’s going to get dizzy and fall over her own feet.

‘Stick beside me,’ Julia says to Finn, and starts sauntering casually towards the hall door. ‘When I say “Go”, go fast.’

Sister Cornelius is being cuboid and grim in front of the door; Miss Long is off down the other end of the hall, unsticking Marcus Wiley from Cliona, who looks like she’s not sure which of them she hates more. Sister Cornelius gives Julia and Finn a suspicious glare. Julia smiles back. ‘The punch is lovely,’ she shouts, raising her cup. Sister Cornelius looks even more suspicious.

Julia puts her cup down on a windowsill. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Finn, who apparently catches on fast, do the same thing.

Becca falls over. Sister Cornelius gets a wild missionary look and charges off down the hall, shoving dancers out of her way right and left, to interrogate Becca and breathalyse her and run tests for Young People’s Drugs. Holly will deal with her, no problem; grown-ups believe Holly, maybe because of her dad’s job, maybe just because of the total sincere commitment she puts into lying. ‘Go,’ Julia says, and zips out of the door, hearing the slam behind her a split second later but she doesn’t look round till she’s down the corridor and into the dark maths room and the footsteps echoing behind her turn into Finn swinging around the door frame.

Moonlight stripes the room, tangles confusingly in chair-backs and desk-legs. The music has turned into a distant hysterical pounding and shrieking, like someone has a tiny Rihanna locked in a box. ‘Nice,’ Julia says. ‘Shut the door.’

‘Fuck,’ Finn says, banging his shin off a chair.

‘Shh. Anyone see us go?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Julia is unscrewing the window-bolt, moonlight slipping over her fast-moving hands. ‘They’ll have someone patrolling the grounds,’ Finn says. ‘Or anyway they do at our dances.’

‘I know. Shut up. And get back; you want to get seen?’

They wait, backs against the wall, listening to the small tinny shrieking, keeping one eye on the empty sweep of grass and one on the classroom door. Someone’s forgotten a uniform jumper, squiggled down the back of a chair seat; Julia grabs it and pulls it on, over her polka-dot dress. It’s not exactly flattering – it’s too big and it has boob dents – but it’s warm, and they can feel the outdoors cold striking through the glass. Finn zips up his hoodie.

The shadows come first, sliding around the corner of the boarders’ wing, long on the ground. Sister Veronica and Father Niall from Colm’s, marching side by side, heads whipping back and forth while they scan every inch of cover.

When they stomp out of sight, Julia counts twenty to let them get around the corner of the nuns’ wing, ten more in case they stopped to look at something, ten more just in case. Then she shoves up the window, braces her back against the frame, swings her feet around and slides out to drop on the grass: one move, smooth enough that if Finn’s mind hadn’t been occupied he would have copped this wasn’t her first time. As she hears him land behind her she takes off, running fast and easy for the cover of the trees, her ears still ringing from the music, stars jingling overhead to the beat of her footsteps.