‘Could be. Or she could know for sure.’ Conway tapped her pen up and down between her teeth. ‘If she does, what’s the odds of getting it out of her?’

Two hopes: Bob and no. Unless Holly wanted to tell us, and was waiting for a moment we couldn’t see.

I said, ‘I’ll get it out of her.’

Conway’s eyebrow said We’ll see. She said, ‘I want you to see them together. I’ll do the talking this time. You just watch.’

I leaned on a windowsill, sun warming my back through my jacket. Conway moved, back and forth across the front of the art room in an even long-legged stroll, hands in trouser pockets, while the girls filed in.

They settled, like birds. Holly’s lot by the windows, Joanne’s lot by the door. No one looking across the gap.

Slouched and fidgeted in their chairs; batted looks, eyebrow-lifts, whispers back and forth. They had thought we were done with them, had dumped us out of their minds. Some of them, anyway.

Conway said, over her shoulder to Houlihan, ‘You can wait outside. Thanks for your help.’

Houlihan opened and shut her mouth, made a small-animal noise, scuttled off. The girls had stopped whispering. Houlihan gone meant the fib of school protection gone; they were all ours.

They looked different, a blurry streak. Like the Secret Place, the strobe of it: I couldn’t see the separate girls any more, just all those crests on blazers, all those eyes. I felt outnumbered. Outside.

‘So,’ Conway said. ‘One of you lot lied to us today.’

They stilled.

‘At least one of you.’ She stopped moving. Pulled out the photo of the card, held it up. ‘Yesterday evening, one of you put up this card on the secrets board. Then sat here and gave us, “Oh God no, wasn’t me, never seen that before in my life.” That’s fact.’

Alison blinking like a tic. Joanne with her arms folded, bobbing a crossed foot, sliding a glance to Gemma that said OMG can’t believe we have to listen to this. Orla sucking her lips, trying to kill a nerves-giggle.

Holly’s lot were still. Not looking at each other. Their heads tilted inwards, like they were listening to each other, not to us. The lean of their shoulders into the centre, like they were magnetised, like it would take Superman to pull one of them away.

Just something.

Conway said, ‘I’m talking to you. The girl who put up this card. The girl who’s claiming to know who killed Chris Harper.’

A twitch around the room, a shiver.