Freya Harte is not a Puzzle by Méabh Collins

Author:Méabh Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: O’Brien Press
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mr Regan’s car is cold and smells of mucky football boots. I sit in the front seat and point him in the direction of the hill. Shannon sits silently in the back.

‘Up there?’ Mr Regan asks, pointing to the ruin at the top of the hill.

I nod lamely.

‘OK. Now, tell me honestly, Freya, was there any drink involved tonight?’

I screw my eyes shut and nod again.

Mr Regan sucks in his breath. ‘Right,’ he says, parking the car at the foot of the hill. ‘You two wait here while I go up.’ He shuts the door behind him and we watch as he marches purposefully up the hill.

Shannon shakes my shoulder from the backseat. ‘What the hell, Freya? You guys were drinking? Do you realise how serious this is?’

‘Izzo,’ is all I can manage to say, before welling up again.

Shannon groans. ‘No, don’t cry. Look, they’re going to come down and they’re going to be fuming. They’ll think we ratted on them. We have to say it was Jackie, that she woke up and checked the room and there was nothing we could do about it. That’s the truth anyway.’

Four figures come into view. I hold my breath as they inch closer. Keep it together, keep it together. Mr Regan’s face is taut with anger and the fear in both Orla and Chloe’s faces is illuminated by the car lights. Izzo, meanwhile, looks mildly inconvenienced by the whole affair.

‘In. Now,’ Mr Regan orders, opening the back door.

Shannon scoots over and they file in obediently.

The few minutes we spend in the car on the way back to the house are unbearably tense, with not even Mr Regan speaking. When we pull into the drive, we are met with a stone-faced Jackie at the front door. She leads us into the kitchen.

‘I can’t believe you girls,’ Mr Regan says. He and Jackie are standing side by side, arms crossed, like two guards. We all stand in a line in front of them, heads down, silent. ‘Sneaking out like that, meeting strangers, taking drink. You’re a disgrace to Leslie Park. Have you any idea the danger you put yourselves in tonight? And the fright you gave poor Jackie? Anything could’ve happened to you. Now, tell me, when did you meet these boys?’

‘And which ones were they, so I can call their mothers in the morning,’ Jackie puts in.

We all instinctively look at Izzo. ‘We were just talking one night and one of them asked for my number,’ she says innocently. ‘It wasn’t a big deal.’

‘Isabella,’ Mr Regan says sternly.

Izzo sighs and begins to relay the story. Mr Regan has to interrupt regularly to glean more information from her.

‘This one’s awfully quiet,’ Jackie says, nodding at me. ‘What part had you in all this, I wonder?’

My mouth moves to speak, but nothing comes out.

‘Freya basically instigated the whole thing,’ Izzo says, filling my silence. ‘She wanted to see Rory Burns.’

My stomach lurches at the accusation.

‘No, she didn’t,’ Chloe says firmly, looking disgustedly at Izzo. ‘Of all of us, Freya wanted to be there the least.

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