The Secret Place Page 6

  Becca despises the Court. Back at the start of first year, when the new boarders had to wait a month before they were allowed off school grounds – until they were too worn down to run away, she figures – that was all she ever heard about: oh the Court the Court the Court, everything’ll be so fab when we get to go to the Court. Glowing eyes, hands sketching pictures like it was shining castles and skating rinks and chocolate waterfalls. Older girls trailing back smug and sticky, wrapped with scents of cappuccino and tester lip gloss, one-finger-swinging bags packed with colours, still swaying to the dazing pump of glossy music. The magic place, the shimmering place to make you forget all about sour teachers, rows of dorm beds, bitchy comments you didn’t understand. Vanish it all away.

  That was before Becca knew Julia and Selena and Holly. Back then she was so miserable it astonished her every morning. She used to ring her mother sobbing, huge disgusting gulps, not caring who heard, begging to come home. Her mother would sigh and tell her how much fun she’d be having any day now, once she made friends to chat with about boys and pop stars and fashion, and Becca would get off the phone stunned all over again by how much worse she felt. So the Court sounded like the one thing to look forward to in the whole horrible world.

  And then she finally got there and it was a crap shopping centre. All the other first-years were practically drooling, and Becca looked up at this windowless nineties lump of grey concrete and wondered whether, if she just curled up on the ground right here and refused to move, they would send her home for being crazy.

  Then the blond girl next to her, Serena or something – Becca had been too busy being wretched for much to stick in her mind – Selena took a long thoughtful look up at the top of the Court and said, ‘There actually is a window, see? I bet if you could find it, you could see half of Dublin.’

  Which it turned out you could. And there it was, spread out below them: the magic world they’d been promised, neat and cosy as storybooks. There was washing billowing on lines and little kids playing swingball in a garden, there was a green park with the brightest red and yellow flowerbeds ever; an old man and an old lady had stopped to chat under a curly wrought-iron lamppost, while their perky-eared dogs wound their leads into a knot. The window was in between a parking pay-station and a huge bin, and adults paying their parking tickets kept giving Becca and Selena suspicious looks and in the end a security guard showed up and threw them out of the Court even though he didn’t seem sure exactly why, but it was a million kinds of worth it.

  Two years on, though, Becca still hates the Court. She hates the way you’re watched every second from every angle, eyes swarming over you like bugs, digging and gnawing, always a clutch of girls checking out your top or a huddle of guys checking out your whatever. No one ever stays still, at the Court, everyone’s constantly twisting and head-flicking, watching for the watchers, trying for the coolest pose. No one ever stays quiet: you have to keep talking or you’ll look like losers, but you can’t have an actual conversation because everyone’s thinking about other stuff. Fifteen minutes at the Court and Becca feels like anyone who touched her would get electrocuted.

  And at least back when they were twelve they just put on their coats and went. This year, everyone gets ready for the Court like they’re getting ready for the Oscars. The Court is where you bring your bewildering new curves and walk and self so people can tell you what they’re worth, and you can’t risk the answer being Nothing zero nothing. You like so totally have to have your hair either straightened to death or else brushed into a careful tangle, and fake tan all over and an inch of foundation on your face and half a pack of smoky eyeshadow around each eye, and supersoft superskinny jeans and Uggs or Converse, because otherwise someone might actually be able to tell you apart from everyone else and obviously that would make you a total loser. Lenie and Jules and Holly are nowhere near that bad, but they still redo their blusher four times and check the mirror from twenty angles, while Becca fidgets springy-footed in the doorway, before they can actually leave. Becca doesn’t wear makeup to the Court because she hates makeup and because the idea of spending half an hour getting ready to sit on a wall in front of a doughnut shop makes her brain short out with stupid.

  She goes because the others do. Why they want to is a total mystery to Becca. They always act like they’re having an amazing time, they’re louder and high-pitched, shoving each other and screaming with laughter at nothing. But Becca knows what they’re like when they’re happy, and that’s not it. Their faces on the way home afterwards look older and strained, smeared with the scraps of leftover expressions that were pressed on too hard and won’t lift away.

  Today she’s even more electric than usual, checking the time on her phone every two minutes, shifting like the marble hurts her bones. Julia’s already said to her twice, ‘Jesus, will you settle down?’ Becca mutters, ‘Sorry,’ but a minute later she’s shifting again.

  It’s because like two metres down from them on the fountain-edge are the Daleks. Becca hates everything about the Daleks, in detail. She hates them separately – the way Orla’s mouth hangs open, the way Gemma wiggles her bum when she walks, Alison’s poor-ickle-scared-baby look, the fact that Joanne exists – and as a unit. She hates them extra today because three of the Colm’s guys across the fountain have come over to sit with them, so the Daleks are even more everything than usual. Every time one of the guys says something, all four of them have to shriek with laughter and pretend they’re almost falling off the fountain so the guys will catch them. Alison keeps lolling her head right over to one side to look up at this blond guy, and sticking out the tip of her tongue between her teeth. She looks brain-damaged.

  ‘So,’ Julia is saying, ‘Jean-Michel points at me and Jodi and he’s all, “This is Candy Jinx. They just won the Irish X Factor!” Which was kind of smart, because since that doesn’t exist it’s not like the bouncers were going to know the actual winner, but not that smart, because I could’ve told him exactly where this was going to fucking go.’ Julia is trying out swearing. It still only sort of works. ‘And yeah, surprise, the bouncers are like, “OK, let’s hear them sing.”’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Becca says. She’s trying to ignore the Daleks and concentrate on Julia. Julia’s stories are always good, even if you have to subtract ten or twenty per cent and Becca’s never completely sure she’s subtracting enough.

  Julia’s eyebrow shoots up. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  Becca flinches. ‘No, I just meant—’

  ‘Chillax, Becs. I know I can’t sing for shit. That’s the whole point.’ Becca blushes, and goes for another handful of Skittles to hide the blush. ‘So I’m like, we’re so fucked, what are me and Jodi even supposed to sing? We both like Lady Gaga, but what are we going to do, say Candy Jinx’s first single is “Bad Romance”?’

  Selena is laughing. The Colm’s guys are looking over.

  ‘Luckily, though, Florian is smarter than Jean-Michel. He goes, “Are you joking? They’re under contract. If they sing a note, we’ll all get our arses sued off.”’

  Holly isn’t laughing. She looks like she hasn’t heard. Her head’s tucked sideways, listening to something else.

  ‘Hol?’ says Selena. ‘You OK?’

  Holly nods backwards, at the Daleks.

  Julia leaves the rest of her story for later. The four of them pretend to be fascinated by picking out exactly the right sweets from the packets, and listen.

  ‘He is,’ Joanne says, and nudges Orla’s leg with her foot.

  Orla snickers and cringes her chin down between her shoulders.

  ‘Look at him. He’s so into you, it’s pathetic.’

  ‘He is not.’

  ‘OMG, he so is? He told Dara and Dara told me.’

  ‘No way does Andrew Moore like me. Dara was just messing.’

  ‘Um, excuse me?’ Joanne’s voice has an instant cold edge that sets Becca shifting on the fountain again. She hates being this scared of Joanne, but she can’t stop. ‘You think Dara’s goi
ng to make an idiot out of me? Hello, I don’t think so?’

  ‘Jo’s right,’ Gemma says lazily. She’s lying with her head in one of the guys’ lap, with her back arched so that her chest sticks up at him. The guy is desperately trying to look like he’s not trying to look down her top. ‘Andrew’s totally drooling over you.’

  Orla squirms delightedly, bottom lip sucked in between her teeth.

  ‘He’s just too shy to tell you,’ Joanne says, sweet again. ‘That’s what Dara said. He doesn’t know what to do.’ To the tall brown-haired guy next to her: ‘Isn’t that right?’

  The guy says, ‘Yeah. Totally,’ and hopes he’s getting it right. Joanne gives him a good-boy smile.

  ‘He thinks he hasn’t got a chance with you,’ Gemma says. ‘But he does, right?’

  ‘You do like him, don’t you?’

  Orla makes some kind of mewing noise.

  ‘OMG, of course you do! It’s Andrew Moore!’

  ‘He’s, like, the biggest babe ever!’

  ‘I’m into him.’

  ‘Me too.’ Joanne nudges Alison. ‘You are too, right, Ali?’

  Alison blinks. ‘Um, yeah?’

  ‘See? I’m so jel.’

  Even Becca knows who Andrew Moore is. Over on the other side of the fountain, he’s the centre of the Colm’s guys: blond head, rugby shoulders, loudest of all, shoving. Andrew Moore’s dad flew in Pixie Geldof to DJ at his sixteenth birthday party last month.

  Orla manages to get out, ‘I guess I kind of like him. I mean—’

  ‘Course you do.’

  ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘You lucky cow.’

  Orla’s grinning from ear to ear. ‘So can you . . . ? OhmyGod. I mean, can you, like, tell Dara and then he can tell Andrew?’

  Joanne shakes her head regretfully. ‘That wouldn’t work. He’s still going to be too shy to actually come over to you. You’re going to have to say something to him.’

  That sends Orla into a paroxysm of wriggles and giggles, hands splayed over her face. ‘OhmyGod, I can’t! I just, like— OhmyGod!’

  Joanne and Gemma are all earnestness, Alison looks confused, but the guys are jaw-clamping down sniggers. Holly, with her back to them, does an eye-widening Do you believe this? grimace.

  ‘Fuck me gently,’ Julia says to the M&Ms, too low for Joanne to hear. ‘With friends like those . . .’

  It takes Becca a second. ‘You think they’re lying?’ Joanne has always been the kind of person who doesn’t even have to hate you to be horrible to you: she says vicious things out of nowhere, for no reason at all, and then smirks at your stunned face. But this is different. Orla is Joanne’s friend.

  ‘Hi. Welcome to the world. Of course they’re lying. You think Andrew Moore would go for that?’ Julia tilts her head at Orla, who is bright red and gummy with hysterical giggles and in fairness not looking her best.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Becca says. Her hand is clenched around the Skittles packet and her heart is thudding. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Yeah? Watch them.’

  ‘They’re doing it to impress them,’ Holly says, and nods at the three guys. ‘Showing off.’

  ‘And they’re impressed? Like, they want girls to do that? To their own friends?’

  Holly shrugs. ‘If they thought it was so terrible, they’d say something.’

  ‘This is the perfect chance,’ Joanne says, throwing a private smirk to the tall guy. ‘Just go over and say to him, “Yes, I like you too.” That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘I can’t, ohmyGod, I soooo can’t—’

  ‘Course you can. Hello, it’s the twenty-first century? Like, girl power? We don’t have to wait for guys to ask us out any more. Just do it. Think about how happy he’ll be.’

  ‘Then he’ll take you back behind the Court,’ Gemma says, body moving languidly on the fountain-edge, ‘and he’ll put his arms around you, and he’ll start kissing you . . .’ Orla twists herself into a knot and snorts with giggles.

  Julia says, ‘A fiver says she actually does it. Anyone on?’

  Selena says quietly, glancing over at Andrew Moore, ‘If she does, he’s going to be horrible.’

  ‘A total dick,’ Julia agrees. She throws a couple of Mentos into her mouth, like she’s at the cinema, and watches with interest.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to see this. This is awful.’

  ‘Tough. I do.’

  ‘Better hurry up,’ says Joanne, singsong, nudging Orla’s leg with her toe again. ‘He’s not going to wait forever, no matter how much he fancies you. If you don’t get in there fast, he’ll go off with someone else.’

  ‘I could use a fiver,’ Holly says. She turns around. ‘Hey! Orla!’ And when Orla unrolls herself enough to look over, red and grinning like an idiot: ‘They’re just messing with you. If Andrew Moore wants to be with someone, you think he’s too shy to chat her up? Seriously?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Joanne snaps, sitting up straight and shooting Holly a vile look. ‘I don’t actually remember asking you what you think?’

  ‘Excuse me, you’re screaming in the middle of the Court. If I have to listen to it, I get to have an opinion about it. And my opinion is, he doesn’t even know Orla exists.’

  ‘And my opinion is that you’re an ugly skanger who should be in some community school where normal people wouldn’t have to listen to your stupid opinions.’

  ‘Whoa,’ says the guy with Gemma’s head in his lap. ‘Catfight.’

  ‘Ohhh yeah,’ says the tall guy, grinning. ‘Bring it on.’

  ‘Holly’s dad’s a detective,’ Julia explains, to the guys. ‘He arrested Joanne’s mum for hooking. She’s still holding a grudge.’

  The guys start to laugh. Joanne draws herself up and opens her mouth to come back with something terrible – Becca is already flinching – when, across the fountain, the noise level goes up. Andrew and three of his mates are holding another one over the water, swinging him by his wrists and his ankles while he shouts and struggles. They all have one eye on the girls, to make sure they’re noticing.

  ‘OhmyGod!’ Joanne nudges Orla so violently she almost goes into the fountain. ‘Did you see that? He was looking straight at you!’

  Orla’s eyes go to Holly. Holly shrugs. ‘Whatever.’

  Orla stares, paralysed. Her head is obviously spinning so hard she can’t think, even by her standards.

  ‘What are you looking at me for?’ Julia wants to know. ‘I’m just here for the show.’

  Selena says gently, ‘Holly’s right, Orla. If he likes you, he’ll say something.’

  Gemma is watching, amused, from her guy’s lap. She says, ‘Or else you’re just jel.’

  ‘Um, obviously? Because Andrew Moore wouldn’t touch any of them with someone else’s,’ Joanne snaps. ‘Who are you going to believe? Us, or them?’

  Orla’s mouth is hanging open. For a second her eyes meet Becca’s, stupid and desperate. Becca knows she has to say something – Don’t do it, he’ll rip you to pieces in front of everyone . . .

  ‘Because if you trust them more than us,’ Joanne says, cold enough to freeze Orla’s face off, ‘maybe they should be your best friends from now on.’

  That snaps Orla out of her daze. Even she understands when to be scared. ‘I don’t! I mean, I don’t trust them. I trust you.’ She gives Joanne a wet smile, belly-up dog. ‘I do.’

  Joanne keeps up the cold stare for a moment, while Orla twists with anxiety; finally she smiles back, graciously, all forgiveness. She says, ‘I know you do. I mean, hello, you’re not stupid. So off you go.’ She shoves Orla’s leg with her foot, pushing her off the fountain-edge.

  Orla gives her one last agonised look. Joanne and Gemma and Alison nod encouragingly. Orla heads off around the fountain, so tentatively that her walk turns into a half-tiptoe mince.

  Joanne looks up at the tall guy, with her head dropping to one side, and smirks. He grins back. His hand slides onto the side of her waist, an
d down, as they watch Orla get closer to Andrew Moore.

  Becca lies on her back on the cold sticky marble and looks up at the domed ceiling of the Court, four high stories above them, so she won’t have to see. The people scurrying upside-down on the balconies look tiny and precarious, like any second they’re going to lose their footing and go plummeting, arms outspread, smash head first into the ceiling. From the other side of the fountain she hears the rising predator roar of laughter, the mocking shouts – Wahey Moooore scooore! – Go for it, Andy, the ugly ones give the best head – Pity fuck! Pity fuck! And, nearer, the high insane screams of laughter from Joanne and Gemma and Alison.

  ‘I’ll have my fiver now,’ Julia says.

  Becca looks up at the top floor, at the corner where the car-park pay-stations are hidden away. Next to them is a thin slice of daylight. She hopes a couple of first-years are up there, craning their necks out of the window, all of this greasy mess windblown out of their minds by the sweet wide world rolled out below them. She hopes they don’t get kicked out. She hopes as they’re leaving they light a piece of paper on fire, toss it in the bin and burn the Court to the ground.

  Chapter 5

  The front door was heavy wood, dark and battered. For a second after Conway pushed it open, the deserted stillness stayed. Empty dark-wood staircase sweeping upwards. Sun across worn chequerboard tiles.

  Then a bell went off, everywhere. Doors flew open and feet came drumming out, floods of girls in that same navy-and-green uniform, all talking at once. ‘Fucking hell,’ said Conway, raising her voice so I could hear her. ‘Timing. Come on.’