Alison’s head fell back. She made a high whining noise. ‘Alison,’ McKenna said sharply. ‘You will look at me.’
‘She said he grabbed her arm. Miss, there’s – there’s marks on her arm. I swear to God.’
‘Alison. Show me your arm.’
Alison scrabbled at the sleeve of her hoodie, limp-fingered. Finally managed to pull it up to her elbow. Conway swept girls out of our way.
First it looked like a grip-mark, like someone had got hold of Alison and tried to drag her away. Bright red, wrapped around her forearm: four fingers, a palm, a thumb. Bigger than a girl’s hand.
Then we got in close.
Not a grip-mark. The red skin was puffy and bubbled, thick with tiny blisters. A scald, an acid burn, a poison weed.
The press of girls rippled, necks craning. Moaned.
McKenna said acidly, ‘Were any of you unaware that Alison suffers from allergies? Please, raise your hands.’
Stillness.
‘Did any of you somehow miss the incident last term when she required medical attention after borrowing the wrong brand of tanning product?’
Nothing.
‘No one?’
Girls looking at sleeves twisted round their thumbs, at the floor, sideways at each other. They were starting to feel silly. McKenna was bringing them back.
‘Alison has been exposed to a substance that triggered her allergies. Presumably, if she has just been to the toilet, it was either a hand soap or a product used by the cleaning staff. We will investigate this and make sure the trigger is removed.’
McKenna still hadn’t looked at us. Bold kids get ignored. Talking to us too, though, or at us.
‘Alison will take an antihistamine and will be fully recovered within an hour or two. The rest of you will go to your common rooms and will write me a three-hundred-word essay on allergy triggers, to be done by tomorrow morning. I am disappointed in all of you. You are old enough and intelligent enough to deal with this kind of situation with good sense rather than silliness and hysteria.’
McKenna took one hand off Alison’s shoulder – Alison slumped against the wall – and pointed down the corridor. ‘You may go now. Unless any of you have anything useful to share?’
‘Miss,’ Joanne said. ‘One of us should stay with her. In case—’
‘No, thank you. Common rooms, please.’
They went pressed together in clumps, arm-linking and whispering, throwing back glances. McKenna stared them out of sight.
Said to us, ‘I assume you realise what caused this.’
‘Haven’t a notion,’ said Conway. She moved in, between McKenna and Alison, till McKenna let go. ‘Alison. Did anyone say something about Chris Harper’s ghost, before you went to the toilet?’
Alison was white and purple-shadowed. She said faintly, ‘He was in that door. Doing pull-ups off the top of the frame. His legs were waving.’
Always doing something, Selena had said. I don’t believe in ghosts. Felt the shiver rise up between my shoulder blades anyway.
‘I think maybe I screamed. Anyway he saw me. He jumped down and came running down the corridor, really fast, and he grabbed me. He was laughing right into my face. I screamed more and I kicked him, and he disappeared.’
She sounded almost peaceful. She was wrung out, like a little kid after puking its guts.
‘That will do,’ McKenna said, in a voice that could have scared grizzlies. ‘Whatever allergy trigger you touched, it caused a brief hallucination. Ghosts do not exist.’
I said, ‘Is your arm sore?’
Alison gazed at her arm. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s really sore.’
‘Unsurprisingly,’ McKenna said coldly. ‘And will continue to be until it is treated. On which note, Detectives, please excuse us.’
‘He smelled like Vicks,’ Alison told me, over her shoulder as McKenna marched her off. ‘I don’t know if he used to smell like Vicks before.’
Conway watched them go. Said, ‘What’s the betting the Ugg kids spread the word we were in their common room?’
‘No takers. And it had plenty of time to get round.’
‘To Joanne. Who had to guess what we were after.’
I nodded after Alison. Footsteps rattling around the stairwell, echoing; her and McKenna were taking the stairs at a snappy old pace. ‘That wasn’t put on.’
‘Nah. Alison’s suggestible, but. And she was half hysterical to start with, after the interview and all.’ Conway was keeping her voice down, head tilted backwards to listen to the popcorn crackle of voices from the common rooms. ‘She’s headed for the jacks, Joanne gives it loads about Chris’s ghost being all stirred up – she knows Alison inside out, remember, knows exactly how to get her going. Then she sticks fake tan on her hand, gives Alison’s arm a squeeze. It’s a decent bet Alison’ll go mental over one thing or the other. Joanne’s hoping there’ll be enough chaos that we’ll leg it out of the common room, leave the door open, she’ll have a chance to nip in there and swipe the book.’
Sixteen-year-old kid, I almost said: would she be up to that? Copped myself on in time. Said, instead, ‘Alison’s wearing long sleeves.’
‘So Joanne got her before she put on the hoodie.’
It could work; maybe, just about, with plenty of luck. I said, ‘Joanne didn’t try to go for the common room, but. She stayed right here, in the middle of the action.’
‘Maybe she was betting we’d take Alison away, she could take her time.’
‘Or Joanne had nothing to do with it. The ghost was Alison’s imagination and the arm’s accidental, like McKenna said.’
‘Could be. Maybe.’
The footsteps had faded out of the stairwell. That white silence was sifting down again, filling the air with corner-of-the-eye shapes, making it hard to believe that anything in here was as simple as imagination and accident.
I said, ‘Does McKenna live here?’
‘Nah. Got more sense. But she’s not going home till we do.’
We. ‘Hope she likes canteen food.’
Conway flipped her bag open, checked the book tucked away inside. ‘Things happening,’ she said. Didn’t even try to hide the blaze of satisfaction. ‘Told you.’