McKenna came out of her office all ready to wave us goodbye, wasn’t a happy camper when she found out we weren’t goodbyeing anywhere. By now we were front-page headlines all round the school. Any minute the day girls would be heading home to tell their parents the cops were back, and McKenna’s phone would start ringing. She’d been banking on being able to say this little unpleasantness was over and done with: just a few follow-up questions, Mr and Mrs, don’t worry your pretty heads, all gone now. She didn’t ask how long it would be. We pretended not to hear her wanting to know.
A nod from McKenna, and the curly secretary gave us the key to the boarders’ wing, gave us the combinations to the common rooms, gave us signed permission for us to search. Gave us everything we wanted, but the smile had gone. Tight face, now. Tense line between her eyebrows. Not looking at us.
That bell went again, as we came out of her office. ‘Come on,’ Conway said, lengthening her stride. ‘That’s the end of classes. The matron’ll be opening the connecting door, and I don’t want anyone getting in that common room before we do.’
I said, ‘Combination locks on the common rooms. Were those there last year?’
‘Yeah. Years, they’ve had those.’
‘How come?’
Behind the closed doors, the classrooms had exploded into gabble and scraping-back chairs. Conway took the stairs down to the ground floor at a run. ‘The kids leave stuff there. There’s no locks on the bedroom doors, in case of fire or lesbians; the bedside tables lock, but they’re tiny. So a lot of stuff winds up in the common rooms – CDs, books, whatever. With the combination, anything gets robbed, there’s only a dozen people who could’ve done it. Easy enough to solve.’
I said, ‘I thought no one here did stuff like that.’
Wry sideways glance from Conway. ‘“We don’t attract that type.” Right? I said that to McKenna, said had there been problems with theft? She did the face, said no, none whatsoever. I said not since the combination locks, anyway, am I right? She did the face some more, pretended she didn’t hear me.’
Through the connecting door, standing open.
The boarders’ wing felt different from the school. White-painted, cooler and silent, a bright white silence floating down the stairwell. A tinge of some scent, light and flowery. The air nudged at me like I needed to back off, let Conway go on alone. This was girls’ territory.
Up the stairs – a Virgin Mary in her nook on the landing gave me an enigmatic smile – and down a long corridor, over worn red tiles, between closed white doors. ‘Bedrooms,’ Conway said. ‘Third-and fourth-years.’
‘Any supervision at night?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. The matron’s room’s down on the ground floor, with the little kids. Two sixth-years on this floor, prefects, but they’re asleep, what’re they gonna do? Anyone who wasn’t a massive klutz could sneak out, no problem.’
Two oak doors at the end of the corridor, one on each side. Conway went for the left-hand one. Pushed buttons on the lock, no need to look at the secretary’s piece of paper.
Cosy enough to curl up in, the third-year common room. Storybook stuff. I knew better, I’d seen it on the board in black and white and every slap-sharp colour, but I still couldn’t picture bad things here: someone being bitch-whipped out of a conversation into one of those corners, someone snug in one of the sofas longing to cut herself.
Big squashy sofas in soft oranges and golds, a gas fire. Vase of freesias on the mantelpiece. Old wooden tables, for doing homework. Girls’ bits and bobs everywhere, hairbands, ice-creamy nail polish, magazines, water bottles, half-rolls of sweets. A meadow-green scarf with little white daisies hanging off the back of a chair, fine as a Communion veil, rising in the soft breeze through the window. A motion-sensor light snapped on like a warning, not a welcome: You. Watching you.
Two alcoves of built-in bookshelves. Ceiling-high, every shelf layers deep in books.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Conway. ‘They couldn’t just have a telly?’
A spill of high voices down the corridor, and the door banged open behind us. We both whipped round, but the girls were smaller than our lot: three of them, jammed in the doorway, staring at me. One of them giggled.
‘Out,’ Conway said.
‘I need my Uggs!’
The kid was pointing. Conway picked up the boots, tossed them over. ‘Out.’
They backed away. The whispering started before I got the door closed.
‘Uggs,’ Conway said, pulling out her gloves. ‘Fucking things should be banned.’
Gloves on. If that book and that key existed, the prints on them mattered.
One alcove each. Finger along the spines, skim, scoop the front row of books onto the floor and start on the back one. Fast, wanting to see something solid rise to the surface. Wanting it to be me who found it.
Conway had spotted the stare and giggle, or felt the shove in the air. She said, ‘Watch yourself. I was taking the piss out of you, before, but you want to be careful around this lot. That age, they’re dying to fancy someone; they’ll practice on any half-decent fella they can get. See that staff room? You think it’s a coincidence all the guy teachers are trolls?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s to keep the crazy level down. Few hundred girls, hormones up to ninety . . .’