The Secret Place (80 page)

‘I guess.’

Dad has a hand on Mum’s back, just lightly, between her shoulder blades. He says, ‘Need another glass of wine?’

‘Oh, God, no. Or maybe; I don’t know.’

Dad cups the back of her neck for a second and heads for the fridge.

‘So long ago,’ Mum says, touching the photo. The fizz is fading out of her voice, leaving it quiet and still. ‘I don’t know how it can possibly be so long ago.’

Holly moves back to her stool. She stirs bits of onion with the point of the knife.

Mum says, ‘Dee isn’t happy, Frank. She used to be the outgoing one, the confident one – like your Julia, Holly, always a smart answer for anything – she was going to be a politician, or the TV interviewer who asks the politicians the tough questions. But she got married young, and then her husband didn’t want her to work till the children were out of school, so now all she can get is bits of secretarial stuff. He sounds like a dreadful piece of work – I didn’t say that, of course – she’s thinking of leaving him, but she’s been with him so long she can’t imagine how she would manage without him
.
.
.’

Dad hands her a glass. She takes it automatically, without looking. ‘Her life, Frank, her life isn’t anything like she thought it would be. All our plans, we were going to take the world by storm
.
.
. She never imagined this.’

Mum doesn’t normally talk like this in front of Holly. She’s cupping one cheek and looking into air, seeing things. She’s forgotten Holly is there.

Dad asks, ‘Going to meet up with her again?’ Holly can tell he wants to touch Mum, put his arms around her. She wants to as well, to press in against Mum’s side, but she stays back because Dad is.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. She’s going back to America next week; back to her husband, and the temp work. She can’t stay any longer. And she’s got all her cousins to see before then. We swore we’d e-mail this time
.
.
.’ Mum runs her fingers down her face, like she’s feeling the lines around her mouth for the first time.

Dad says, ‘Maybe next summer we can think about taking a holiday over in that direction. If you want to.’

‘Oh, Frank. That’s lovely of you. But she’s not in New York or San Francisco, anywhere that
.
.
.’ Mum looks at the wineglass in her hand, bewildered, and puts it down on the counter. ‘She’s in Minnesota, a smallish town there. That’s where her husband’s from. I don’t know if
.
.
.’

‘If we headed to New York, she might come up and join us. Have a think about it.’

‘I will. Thank you.’ Mum takes a deep breath. She picks up her bag off the floor and tucks the photo back into it. ‘Holly,’ she says, holding out an arm and smiling. ‘Come here, darling, and give me my kiss. How was your week?’

That night Holly can’t sleep. The house feels stuffed with heat, but when she kicks off the duvet a chill flattens itself along her back. She listens to Mum and Dad going to bed: Mum’s voice still rising faster and happier, dropping suddenly now and then when she remembers Holly; the low rhythm of Dad adding in something that makes Mum laugh out loud. After their voices stop, Holly lies there in the dark on her own, trying to stay still. She thinks about texting one of the others to see if she’s awake, but she doesn’t know which one, or what she wants to say.

‘Lenie,’ Holly says.

It feels like stretched hours before Selena, face down on her bed reading, looks up. ‘Mm?’

‘Next year. How do we decide who shares with who?’

‘Huh?’

‘Senior rooms. Do you know who you want to share with?’

A thick skin of rain coats the window. They’re stuck indoors; in the common room, people are playing a nineties edition of Trivial Pursuit, trying out makeup, texting. The smell of beef stew for tea has somehow made it all the way up from the canteen. It’s making Holly feel slightly sick.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Julia says, turning a page. ‘It’s
February
. If you want something to worry about, how about that stupid Social Awareness Studies project?’

‘Lenie?’

Senior rooms hang over the whole of fourth year. Friendships go down in flames and tears because someone picks the wrong person to share with. All the boarders spend most of the year edging carefully round the choice, trying to find some way to navigate it undamaged.

Selena gazes, lips parted, like Holly’s asked her to fly a space shuttle. She says, ‘One of you guys.’

A flutter of fear catches at Holly. ‘Well, yeah. Which one?’

Nothing out of Selena; empty space, echoes. Becca has felt something in the air and taken out her earbuds.

‘Want to know who I’m going to share with?’ Julia asks. ‘Because if you’re going to start getting hyper about stuff that isn’t even happening yet, it’s definitely not you.’

‘I didn’t ask you,’ Holly points out. ‘What’ll we do, Lenie?’ She wills Selena to sit up and think about it, come up with an idea that makes sure no one’s feelings get hurt, that’s what she’s good at; names out of a hat maybe –
please Lenie please
.
.
. ‘Lenie?’

Selena says, ‘You do it. I don’t mind. I’m reading.’

Holly says, feeling her voice too loud and too sharp-edged, ‘We all have to decide together. That’s how it works. You don’t get to just make the rest of us do it.’

Selena tucks her head down tight over her book. Becca watches, sucking the cord of her earbuds.

‘Hol,’ Julia says, giving Holly the crinkle-nosed smile that means trouble. ‘I need something out of the common room. Come with me.’

Holly doesn’t actually feel like letting Julia boss her around. ‘What do you need?’

‘Come on.’ Julia slides off the bed.

‘Is it too heavy for you to carry by yourself?’

‘Hahahaha, such a comedienne. Come on.’

The force of her makes Holly feel better. Maybe she should have said something to Jules straight off; maybe the two of them together will come up with a decent answer. She swings her legs off the bed. Becca watches them out of the room. Selena doesn’t.

The early darkness outside turns the light in the corridor a dirty yellow. Julia leans back against the wall with her arms folded. She says, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

She doesn’t bother keeping it down; the rain battering the landing window covers their voices from any listeners. Holly says, ‘I was just asking her. What’s the big huge—’

‘You were hassling her. Don’t hassle her.’

‘Hello, how is that hassling her? We have to decide.’

‘It’s hassling her because if you keep going on at her, she’ll just get upset. The rest of us work it out, we tell her, she’ll be happy with whatever we think.’

Holly matches Julia’s folded arms, and her stare. ‘What if I think Lenie should get a say too?’

Julia rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Did you have a lobotomy for lunch? You know why not.’

Holly says, ‘You mean because she’s not OK. That’s why not.’

Julia’s face closes over. ‘She’s fine. She’s got shit she needs to sort out, is all. Doesn’t everyone.’

‘It’s not the same thing. Lenie can’t
manage
. Like just normal stuff: she can’t do it. What’s going to happen to her when the rest of us aren’t there every minute of every—’

‘You mean, like, when we’re in college?
Years
from now? Excuse me if I don’t have a total drama attack over that. By then she’ll be fine.’

‘She’s not getting better. You know she’s not.’

It spins between them, razor-edged: she hasn’t got better since then; since that; you know what. Neither one of them reaches out to touch it.

Holly says, ‘I think we need to make her go talk to someone.’

Julia laughs out loud. ‘What, like Sister Ig
na
tius? Oh, yeah, that’s totally going to make everything OK. Sister Ignatius couldn’t sort a broken fingernail—’

‘Not Sister Ignatius. Someone real. Like a doctor or something.’

‘Jesus
Christ
—’ Julia shoots off the wall pointing both forefingers at Holly. The angle of her neck is one degree off an attack. ‘Don’t even fucking think about it. I am serious.’

Holly almost slaps her hands away. The rush of fury feels good. ‘Since when are you the boss of me? You don’t get to give me orders. Ever.’

Neither of them has been in an actual fight since they were tiny kids, but they’re eye to eye, on their toes and boiling for it, hands twitching for something soft to gouge and twist. Julia is the one who finally drops back, gives Holly her shoulder and sinks against the wall.

‘Look,’ she says, to the landing window and the swollen streaks of rain. ‘If you care about Lenie, like even the tiniest bit, then you won’t try and get her talking to a psychologist. You’re going to have to take my word for it: that’s like the absolute worst thing you could do for her, in the whole world. OK?’

The immensity of it is coiled tight inside every word. Holly can’t get a hold on her, amid the relentless buzz of both their circling secrets, can’t catch at what Julia knows or guesses. It’s nothing like Julia to back down.

‘I’m asking you as a favour here. Trust me. Please.’

Holly wishes, right down into deep parts of herself that she didn’t know existed, that it were still that simple. ‘I guess,’ she says. ‘OK.’

Julia’s face turns towards her. The layer of suspicion makes Holly want to do something, she can’t tell what: scream it right off, maybe, or give it the finger and walk out of the door and never come back. ‘Yeah?’ Julia says. ‘You won’t try and get her talking to anyone?’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘I’m
so
sure.’

‘Then OK,’ Holly says. ‘I won’t.’

‘Good,’ Julia says. ‘Let’s go get something out of the common room before Becs comes looking for us.’

They head off down the corridor, in step, baffled and alone.

Holly isn’t leaving it because Julia says so. She’s leaving it because she has an idea.

It’s the psychologist thing that made her think of it. She got sent to a counsellor, that other time. He was kind of a moron and his nose sweated, and he kept asking questions that were none of his business so Holly just played with his stupid puzzles and ignored him, but he kept talking and he did come out with one thing that actually turned out to be true. He said it would get simpler once the trial was over and she knew exactly what was going on; either way, he said, knowing would make it easier to put the whole thing out of her head and concentrate on other stuff. Which it did.

It takes a few days before Julia lets go of the wary look and leaves Holly and Selena alone together. But one afternoon they’re at the Court and Julia needs to get her dad a birthday card, and Becca remembers she owes her gran a thank-you card; and Selena holds up her bag from the art shop and starts drifting towards the fountain, and by the time Holly heads after her it’s too late for Julia to change anything.

Selena arranges perfect tubes of paint in a fan on the black marble and strokes the colour bands with a fingertip. Across the fountain a gang of guys from Colm’s turn to eye her and Holly, but they won’t come over. They can tell.

‘Lenie,’ Holly says, and waits the long stretch till Selena thinks of looking up. ‘You know one thing that might make you better?’

Selena watches her like she’s made of cloud-patterns, shifting gracefully and meaninglessly across a wide sky. She says, ‘Huh?’

‘If you found out what happened,’ Holly says. Coming this close to it makes her heart skid fast and light, no traction. ‘Last year. And if someone got arrested for it. That would help. Right? Do you think?’

‘Shh,’ Lenie says. She reaches over and takes Holly’s hand – hers is cold and soft, and no matter how tight Holly squeezes, it doesn’t feel solid. She lets Holly hang on to it and goes back to her paints.

Holly learned from her dad a long time back that the difference between caught and not is taking your time. She buys the book first, in a big second-hand bookshop in town on a busy Saturday; in a couple of months’ time Mum won’t remember
I have to get this book for school can I have ten euros I’ll only be a sec
, no one at the till will remember some blond kid with a musty mythology book and a glossy art thing to wave at Mum. She finds a phone pic that has Chris in the background and prints it off a few weeks later, on a lunchtime dash for the computer room; in no time the others will have forgotten her taking a few minutes too long to get back from the toilet. She slices and glues on her bedroom floor that weekend, wearing gloves she stole from the chem lab, with the duvet ready to yank over the whole thing if Mum or Dad knocks; after long enough they’ll forget any comforting playschool whiff of paper glue. She dumps the book in a bin in the park near home; within a week or two it’ll be well gone. Then she slides the card down a slit in the lining of her winter coat, and waits for enough time to move past.