The Secret Place by Tana French

Author:Tana French [French, Tana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

‘Search time,’ Conway said. ‘And if we’re stuck in here . . .’ She shoved the sash window up.

A whirl of breeze shot in, carried the mess of body sprays away. Outside, the light was cooling and the sky was turning pale. It was almost evening.

‘One more second of that stink,’ Conway said, ‘I was gonna puke my ring.’

The stir-crazy was starting to needle at her. I felt it too. We’d been in those rooms a long time.

Conway pulled the wardrobe open, said ‘Fuck me,’ at the amount or the labels. Started running her hands down hanging dresses. I went for the beds, Gemma’s first. Pulled back the bedclothes, shook them out, patted down the mattress. Not just checking for big lumps of phone or old book, the way I had been the first time. This time we were after something that could be as small as a SIM card.

‘The door,’ Conway said. ‘What was up with that?’

I’d have only loved to leave that. But the way she’d been straight in there, got my back on whatever I hadn’t told her; I heard myself say, ‘When you were off talking to Alison, I thought I saw someone behind the door. Thought it could be someone trying to get up the guts to talk to us, but by the time I opened the door there was no one there. So, when I saw something behind there again . . .’

‘You went for it.’ I waited for the slagging – And you went full-on, fair play to you, you’d’ve been all ready to save the day if one of the kids had built herself a nuke in Physics class – but she said, ‘The first time, while I was out. You positive there was someone there?’

I flipped the mattress up to check the bottom. Said, ‘Nah.’

Conway squeezed her way down a puffy jacket. ‘Yeah. We had the same thing last year, a few times: thought we saw something, nothing there. Something about this place, I don’t know. Costello had this theory about the windows being different in old buildings: they’re not the same shapes and sizes as what you get now, not placed the same way. So the light comes in at different angles, and if you catch something in the corner of your eye, it’s gonna look wrong.’ She shrugged. ‘Who knows.’

I said, ‘If it’s that, it could be why people keep seeing Chris’s ghost.’

‘The kids are used to this light, but. And an actual ghost? Is that what you saw?’

‘Nah. Bit of shadow, just.’

‘Exactly. They’re seeing Chris because they want to. Feeding off each other, trying to impress each other, give each other something good.’ She shoved the jacket back into the wardrobe. ‘They need to get out more, this lot. They spend too much time together.’

Nothing down behind Gemma’s bedside table, nothing under the drawer. ‘At this age, that’s what it’s about.’

‘Yeah, they’re not gonna be this age forever. When it hits them that there’s a great big world out there, they’re gonna get the shock of their lives.

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