McKenna launched herself out of the common room at Conway’s knock like she’d been waiting behind the door. The long day and the white light in the corridor weren’t good to her. Her hair was still set solid and the expensive suit hadn’t a crease, but the discreet makeup was wearing off, in clumps. Her wrinkles had got deeper since that morning; her pores looked the size of chicken-pox scars. She had her phone in her hand: still doing damage control, trying to patch leaking seams.
She was raging. ‘I have no idea whether your standard procedures involve sending witnesses into hysterics—’
‘We weren’t the ones who kept a dozen teenage girls cooped up all day,’ Conway said. Gave the common-room door a slap. ‘Lovely room and all, but after a few hours the most tasteful decor in the world won’t stop them going stir-crazy. If I were you, I’d make sure they get a chance to stretch their legs before bed, unless you want them going off again at midnight.’
McKenna’s eyes closed for a second on the thought. ‘Thank you for your advice, Detective, but I think you’ve done enough already. The students have been cooped up in case you needed to speak with them, and that will no longer be an issue. I would like you to leave now.’
‘Can’t be done,’ Conway said. ‘Sorry. We need a quick word with Holly Mackey. Just waiting for her da to get here.’
That sent McKenna up another notch. ‘I gave you permission to speak to our students specifically so you would not need to request parental authorisation. Involving the parents is completely unnecessary, it can only complicate the situation both for you and for the school—’
‘Holly’s da’s going to hear all about this anyway, soon as he shows up for work in the morning. Don’t worry: I wouldn’t say he’ll be straight on the phone to the mummy network to pass on the gossip.’
‘Is there any earthly reason why this needs to be done tonight? As you so cleverly pointed out, the students have already had more than enough of this pressure for one day. In the morning—’
Conway said, ‘We can talk to Holly in the main school building. Get us out of your hair, let the rest of the girls go back to the normal routine. How’s the art room?’
McKenna was all monobosom, no lips. ‘Lights-out is at a quarter to eleven. By that time I expect Holly – and all the other students – to be in their rooms and in bed. If you have further questions for any of them, I assume they can wait until tomorrow morning.’ And the common-room door shut in our faces.
‘You have to love the attitude,’ Conway said. ‘Doesn’t give a shite that we could arrest her for obstruction; this is her manor, she’s the boss.’
I said, ‘Why the art room?’
‘Keep her thinking about that postcard, remembering there’s someone out there who knows.’ Conway tugged the elastic out of what was left of her bun. Hair came down around her shoulders, straight and heavy. ‘You start us off. Good Cop, nice and gentle, don’t spook her and don’t spook Daddy. Just set up the facts: she was getting out at night, she knew about Chris and Selena, she didn’t like Chris. Try and fill in the details: why she didn’t like him, whether she discussed the relationship with the others. When you need Bad Cop, I’ll come in.’
A couple of fast twists of her wrists, a snap of hairband, and the bun was in place, smooth and glossy as marble. Her shoulders had straightened; even the scoured look had fallen away from her face. Conway was ready.
The common-room door opened. Holly in the doorway, with McKenna behind her. Ponytail, jeans, a turquoise hoodie with sleeves that hid her hands.
I’d been thinking of her all snap and sheen, but that was gone. She was white and ten years older, daze-eyed, like someone had shaken her world like a snow globe and nothing was coming down in the same places. Like she had been so confident she was doing everything right, and all of a sudden nothing looked that simple any more.
It turned me cold. I couldn’t look at Conway. Didn’t need to; I knew she’d seen it too.
Holly said, ‘What’s going on?’
I remembered her nine years old, so stiff with courage she would break your heart. I said, ‘Your dad’s on his way. I’d say he’d rather we don’t talk till he gets here.’
That burned off the daze. Holly’s head went back in exasperation. ‘You called my dad? Come on!’
I didn’t answer. Holly saw the look on me and closed her mouth. Disappeared behind the smoothness of her face, innocent and secretive all at once.
‘Thanks,’ Conway said to McKenna. To me and Holly: ‘Let’s go.’
The long corridor we’d walked down that morning, to find the Secret Place. Then it had been humming with sun and busyness; now – Conway passed the light switch without a glance – it was twilit and sizeless. Evening through the window behind us gave us faint shadows, me and Conway stretched even taller on either side of the straight slip of Holly, like guards with a hostage. Our steps echoed like marching boots.
The Secret Place. In that light it looked like it was rippling, just off the corner of your vision, but it had lost that boil and jabber. All you could almost hear off it was a long murmur made of a thousand muffled whispers, all begging you to hear. A new postcard had a photo of one of those gold living statues you get on Grafton Street; the caption said, they terrify me!
The art room. Not morning-fresh and rising with sunlight now. The overhead lights left murky corners; the green tables were smeared with shreds of clay, Conway’s balls of paper were still tumbled under chairs. McKenna must have cancelled the cleaners. Battening down the school as tight as she could, everything under control.
Outside the tall windows the moon was up, full and ripe against a dimming blue. On the table against them, that morning’s dropcloth had been pulled away, not put back. Where it had been was the whole school in miniature, in fairytale, in the finest curlicues of copper wire.
I said, ‘That. Is that the project you were working on last night?’
Holly said, ‘Yeah.’
Close up, it looked too delicate to stay standing. The walls were barely sketched, just the odd line of wire; you could look straight through them, to wire desks, ragged cloth blackboards scribbled with words too small to read, high-backed wire armchairs cosy around a fire of tissue-paper coals. It was winter; snow was piled on the gables, around the bases of the columns and the wine-jar curves of the balustrade. Behind the building, a lawn of snowdrift trailed off the edge of the baseboard into nothing.
I said, ‘That’s here, yeah?’
Holly had moved in, hovering, like I might smash it. ‘It’s Kilda’s a hundred years ago. We researched what it used to be like – we got old photos and everything – and then we built it.’
The bedrooms: tiny copper-wire beds, wisps of tissue paper for sheets. In the boarders’ wing and the nuns’, fingernail-length parchment scrolls swung in the windows, from threads fine as spiderweb. ‘What are the bits of paper?’ I asked. My breath set them spinning.
‘The names of people who were listed living here in the 1911 census. We don’t actually know who had what room, obviously, but we went on what age they were and the order they were listed in – like probably friends would be one after the other, because they would’ve been sitting together. One girl was called Hepzibah Cloade.’
Conway was spinning chairs into place around one of the long tables. One for Holly. One six feet down the table: Mackey. She brought them down hard, flat bangs on the lino.
I said, ‘Whose idea was it?’
Holly shrugged. ‘All of ours. We were talking about the girls who went to school here a hundred years ago – if they ever thought about the same things as us, stuff like that; what they did when they grew up. If any of their ghosts ever came back. Then we thought of this.’
Chair across the table from Holly, for me. Bang. Chair opposite Mackey, for Conway. Bang.
Four scrolls hanging in the air above the main staircase. I said, ‘Who’re those?’
‘Hepzibah and her friends. Elizabeth Brennan. Bridget Marley. Lillian O’Hara.’
‘Where are they going?’