In the morning they’re sprinkled with cuts and scrapes they can’t remember getting. Nothing that actually hurts; just tiny mischievous reminders, winking up from their knuckles and their shins when Joanne Heffernan flips something bitchy at Holly for taking too long in the breakfast queue, or when Miss Naughton tries to make Becca cringe for not paying attention. It takes them a while to realise it’s not just people being annoying; they actually are spacy, Holly actually was staring at the toast for like ever, and none of them have a clue what Naughton was on about. Their foothold has shifted; it’s taking them a while to get their balance back.

‘Do it again soon?’ Selena says, at break-time, through her juice straw.

For a second they’re afraid to say yes, in case it’s not the same, next time. In case that can only happen once, and they try to get it back and end up sitting in the glade getting colds up their gees and staring at each other like a pack of tossers.

They say it anyway. Something’s started; it’s too late to stop it. Becca picks a sliver of twig out of Julia’s hair and stashes it in her blazer pocket, to keep.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

It was gone three o’clock. Conway knew where the canteen was, poked around till she found some drudge scrubbing spotless steel, told him to make us food. He tried a hairy look but Conway’s beat his. I kept an eye on him while he slapped together ham and cheese sandwiches, make sure he didn’t spit in them. Conway went to a coffee machine, hit buttons. Snagged apples out of a crate.

We took the food outside. Conway led, to a low wall off to one side of the grounds, overlooking the playing field and the gardens below it. On the playing field little girls were running around swinging hockey sticks, PE teacher keeping up a string of motivational shouts. Trees threw down shadows that stopped them spotting us. Between the branch-stripes, the sun heated my hair.

‘Eat fast,’ Conway said, parking herself on the wall. ‘After this, we search their rooms for whatever book those words got cut out of.’

Meaning she wasn’t packing me back to Cold Cases, not yet. And she wasn’t heading back to base either. A look at the noticeboard, a few chats, we’d come for. Somewhere along the line it had turned into more. Those glimpses of something peeking out at us from behind what we were being told: neither of us wanted to leave without pulling it out into the open, getting a proper look.