‘So where would we find hers?’
‘Like I’d know? Even if I had a clue where they kept it, which I don’t actually pay attention to what those weirdos do, this was a year ago. They probably threw it away once the locks got changed. That’s what I told Orla to do, except she’s too useless to even get that right.’
‘Julia says they never had a key.’
Joanne’s face was starting to pinch in, turn vicious. ‘Um, hello, she would, wouldn’t she? That’s total crap.’
‘Could be,’ I admitted, shrugging. ‘But we can’t prove it. We’ve got proof that you and your mates had one, no proof that Julia and hers did. When it’s one person’s word against another’s, we’ve got to go with the evidence.’
‘Same as with Chris and Selena,’ Conway said. ‘You lot say they were going out, she says they weren’t, not one speck of evidence says they ever went near each other. What do you expect us to believe?’
The viciousness congealed into something solid, a decision. ‘OK. Fine.’
Joanne pulled out her phone, pushed buttons. Thrust it at me, arm’s length.
‘Is this proof?’
I took it. It felt hot from her hand, clammy.
A video. Dark; the rustle and bump of footsteps through grass. Someone whispering; a tiny snort of laughter, a hissed Shut up!
‘Who’s with you?’ I asked.
‘Gemma.’ Joanne was sitting back, arms folded, swinging her crossed foot and watching us. Anticipating.
Faint grey shapes, jiggling as Joanne’s movement jolted the phone. Bushes in moonlight. Clumps of small whitish flowers, folded up for the night.
Another whisper. The footsteps stopped; the phone stilled. Shapes came into focus.
Tall trees, black around a pale clearing. Even in blurry dark, I recognised the place. The cypress grove where Chris Harper had died.
In the moonlit heart of it, two figures, pressed so close they looked like one. Dark jumpers, dark jeans. Brown head bent over a flood of fair hair.
A branch bobbed across the screen. Joanne shifted the phone out of its way, zoomed in tight.
Night smudged the faces. I glanced at Conway; tiny dip of her chin. Chris and Selena.
They moved apart like they could hardly bear to move at all. Pressed their palms together, shoulders rising and falling with their quick breathing. They were amazed by each other, stunned silent, all in the circle of stirring cypresses and night wind. The world outside was gone, nothing. Inside that circle the air was unfurling new colours, it was changing to something that cascaded and fountained pure gold and dazzle, and every breath changed them too.
I used to dream of that, when I was a young fella. Never had it. Even when I was sixteen years old and ninety per cent dick, I kept away from the girls in my school; scared that if I went beyond the odd snog and grope, I’d wake up the next morning a daddy in a council flat, stuck to the sticky linoleum forever. Dreamed of it instead. Dreams I can still taste.
By the time I got away and found other girls, it was too late. When you stop being a kid, you lose your one chance at that too-tender-to-touch gold, that breathtaken everything and forever. Once you start growing up and getting sense, the outside world turns real, and your own private world is never everything again.
Chris wove his fingers in Selena’s hair, lifted it so that it fell strand by strand. She turned her head to touch her lips to his arm. They were like underwater dancers, like time was holding still just for them and every minute gave them a million years. They were beautiful.
Close to the phone, Joanne or Gemma snickered. The other one made a tiny gagging noise. Something like that in front of them, feet away, the real thing, and they couldn’t even see it.
Selena raised her fingers to Chris’s cheek, and his eyes closed. Moonlight ran down her arm like water. They moved closer, faces tilting together, lips opening.
Beep, end of the video.
‘So,’ Joanne said. ‘Is that, like, enough evidence that Selena and all of them had a key? And that she was doing it with Chris?’
Conway took the phone off me and messed with it, hitting buttons. Joanne flipped out a palm. ‘Excuse me, that’s mine?’
‘You’ll get it back when I’m done.’ Joanne tsked and threw herself back against the wall. Conway ignored her. To me: ‘Twenty-third of April. Ten to one in the morning.’
Three and a half weeks before Chris died. I said, ‘So you and Gemma saw Selena leaving her room, and you followed her?’
‘Gemma saw them out in the grounds by accident the first time, like a week before – she was meeting some guy, I don’t even remember who. After that, we took turns watching the corridor at night.’ Grim project-manager voice on Joanne; I could picture her going for the jugular if one of the others had the nerve to doze off at her post. ‘This night, Alison saw Selena sneak out of their room, so she woke me up and I followed Selena.’
‘You brought Gemma along?’
‘Um, I wasn’t exactly about to go out there by myself? And anyway, I needed Gemma to show me where they were having their little makeout sessions. By the time we got dressed, Selena was well gone. She couldn’t wait to get the action started. Some people are just sluts.’
More midnight traffic than a train station, these grounds. McKenna was in for a coronary if she ever heard this. ‘So you tracked them down,’ I said, ‘and you filmed this clip. Just the one?’
‘Yeah. That’s not enough for you?’
‘What happened after you stopped filming?’
Joanne prissed up her mouth. ‘We went back in. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch them do it. I’m not a perv.’
Conway’s phone buzzed. ‘Sent myself the video,’ she told me. To Joanne: ‘Here.’ She tossed the mobile over.
Joanne made a big deal of wiping off the working-class germs on her duvet. I asked, ‘What were you planning to do with this clip?’
Shrug. ‘I hadn’t decided yet.’
Conway said, ‘Wild guess. You used it to blackmail Selena into dumping Chris. “Stay away from him, or this goes to McKenna.”’
Joanne’s top lip pulled up, that near-animal snarl. ‘Um, excuse me, no I didn’t?’
I said – leaning forward, move her off Conway – ‘It would’ve been for Selena’s own good if you had. That there, that wasn’t the healthiest way for her to be spending her nights.’
Joanne thought that over, decided she liked it. Did something with her face that was meant to look virtuous, came out looking stuffed. ‘Well. I would’ve if I’d had to. But I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’ – Joanne flicked a finger at the phone – ‘that was the last time Selena and Chris met up. I’d already had a chat with Julia, and after this she sorted it out. End of.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Well, I didn’t, like, take Julia’s word for it, if that’s what you mean. I’m not stupid. That’s why I got the video: just in case she needed a little nudgie. We watched the corridor for weeks after, and Selena never went out on her own. The four of them still went out together, to do whatever they did out there – I heard they’re witches, so maybe they were like sacrificing a cat or something, I literally don’t even want to know?’ Exaggerated wiggle of disgust. ‘And Julia went out a couple of times – she had this thing with Finn Carroll, which, I mean, nobody actually wants to be with a ginger but I guess if you look like Julia you take whatever you can get. But Selena had stopped going. So obviously her and Chris had broken up. Like, surprise?’
‘Any idea who did the breaking?’
Shrug. ‘Do I look like I care? I mean, obviously I hoped for Chris’s sake that he’d suddenly got some standards, but . . . Guys: they only care about one thing. If Chris was getting it off Selena, and he didn’t have to, like, be seen with her, why would he dump her? So I figure it had to be Selena. Either Julia knocked some sense into her, or else Selena copped that, hello, Chris was only using her for an easy you-know-what and a pig like her was never going to be his actual girlfriend.’
Chris’s face bent over Selena’s, holy with wonder. He’d been good, but that good?
‘Why didn’t you want them going out together?’ I asked.
Joanne said coolly, ‘I don’t like her. OK? I don’t like any of them. They’re a bunch of freaks, and they act like that’s totally OK; like they’re so special, they can just do whatever they want. I thought Selena should find out that it doesn’t work like that. Like you said, I was actually doing her a favour.’
I did puzzled. ‘You were fine with Julia and Finn, but. Any particular reason why Selena and Chris was a problem?’
Shrug. ‘Finn was OK, if you go for that kind of thing, but he wasn’t a big deal. Chris was. Everyone was into him. I wasn’t going to let Selena think someone like her had a right to get someone like that. Hello, Earth calling whale: just because you do whatever disgusting stuff you did to even get Chris to look at you, that doesn’t mean you get to keep him.’
I said, ‘It wasn’t because you’d been going out with Chris, just a few months earlier.’
Joanne didn’t miss a beat. Gusty sigh, eye-roll. ‘Hello, haven’t we been over this already? Am I imagining things? Am I out of my mind? I never went out with Chris. Only in his dreams.’
Conway lifted the evidence bag with Alison’s phone, waggled it at Joanne. ‘Try again.’
Half a second where Joanne went rigid. Then she turned her head away from Conway, folded her arms deliberately.
‘Oh, ouch,’ Conway said, hand to her heart. ‘That’s put me in my place.’
‘Joanne,’ I said, leaning in. ‘I know this is none of our business, or anyway it wouldn’t be normally. But if you were close enough to Chris that he might have told you anything that could be important, then we need to know. Make sense?’
Joanne thought. I could see her trying out the star-witness seat, liking the feel.