The Secret Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

with laughter, clutching at each other, faces practically down on the table. ‘My God, you’re totally disgusting,’ Joanne says, lofty lip curling, as she turns away – her gang, well trained, promptly match the turn and the lip-curl. They just make the laughing fit worse. Julia gets meatball down her nose and turns bright red and has to try and blow it noisily into a paper napkin, and the others almost fall out of their seats.
    When the laughter finally fades, their own daring sinks in. They’ve always got on fine with Joanne and her gang. Which is a very smart thing to do.
    ‘What was that about?’ Holly asks Julia, low.
    ‘What? If she didn’t quit yowling about her stupid skin thing, my eardrums were going to melt. And hello: it worked.’ The Daleks are huddled over their trays, shooting suspicious glances around and keeping their voices ostentatiously low.
    ‘But you’re going to piss her off,’ Becca whispers, big-eyed.
    Julia shrugs. ‘So? What’s she going to do, execute me? Did I miss where someone made me her bitch?’
    ‘Just take it easy, is all,’ Selena says. ‘If you want a fight with Joanne, you’ve got all year. It doesn’t have to be tonight.’
    ‘What’s the big deal? We’ve never been best buddies.’
    ‘We’ve never been enemies . And now you have to live with her.’
    ‘Exactly,’ Julia says, spinning her tray around so she can reach her fruit salad. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this year.’
     
    A high wall and a stretch of leafy street and another high wall away, the Colm’s boarders are back too. Chris Harper has thrown his red duvet onto his bed, his clothes into his strip of wardrobe, singing the dirty version of the school song in his new rough-edged deep voice, grinning when his roommates join in and add the gestures. He’s stuck a couple of posters over his bed, put the new framed family photo on his bedside table; he’s wrapped that packed-with-promise plastic bag in a ratty old towel and tucked it deep in his suitcase, shoved the case far back on top of the wardrobe. He’s checked the swoop of his fringe in their mirror and he’s galloping down to dinner with Finn Carroll and Harry Bailey, the three of them all shouts and extra-loud laughs and taking up the whole corridor, dead-arming and wrestling experimentally to find out who’s got strongest over the summer. Chris Harper is all ready for this year, he can’t wait; he’s got plans.
    He has eight months and two weeks left to live.
     
    ‘Now what?’ Julia asks, when they’ve finished their fruit salad and put their trays on the rack. From the mysterious inner kitchen comes the clatter of washing up, and an argument in some language that might be Polish.
    ‘Whatever we want,’ Selena says, ‘till study time. Sometimes the shopping centre, or if the Colm’s guys have a rugby match we can go watch that, but we can’t leave the grounds till next weekend. So we can go to the common room, or . . .’
    She’s already drifting towards the outside door, with Becca beside her. Holly and Julia follow them.
    It’s still bright out. The grounds are layers of green, unrolling on and on. Up until now they’ve been a zone Holly and Julia aren’t really supposed to enter; not off limits, not exactly, but the only chance day-girls get is during lunch hour and there’s never time. Now it feels like a sheet of foggy glass has fallen away from in front of them: every colour is leaping, every birdcall is separate and vivid on Holly’s ear, the furls of shadow between branches look deep and cool as wells. ‘Come on,’ Selena says, and takes off running down the back lawn like she owns it. Becca is already after her. Julia and Holly run, throwing themselves into the whirl of green and whistle, to catch up.
    Past the curly iron gate and into the trees, and all of a sudden the grounds are a swirl of little paths that Holly never knew about, paths that don’t belong just a corner away from a main road: sunspots,