‘Whose idea was it to spend the extra time up here?’

More blank. ‘That wasn’t me either.’ I believed her. I got the feeling most ideas weren’t Orla.

‘No problem,’ I said. More smile. ‘Talk me through it. One of you got the key to the connecting door off Miss Arnold . . .’

‘I did. Right before first study period. And then we came up here. Me and Joanne and Gemma and Alison.’

‘And then?’

‘We just worked on this project we have. It has to be art and another subject, like mixed – ours is art and Computer Studies. That’s it over there.’

She pointed. Propped in a corner, five foot high, a portrait of a woman – a pre-Raphaelite I’d seen before, somewhere, but I couldn’t place her. She was only half-made, out of small glossy squares of coloured paper; the other half was still an empty grid, tiny code in each square to tell them what colour to stick on. The change had twisted the woman’s dreamy gaze, turned her wall-eyed and twitchy-looking, dangerous.

Orla said, ‘It’s about, like, how people see themselves differently because of the media and the internet? Or something; it wasn’t my idea. We turned the picture into squares on the computer, and now we’re cutting up photos from magazines to stick in the squares – it takes forever, that’s why we needed to use the study period. And then at the end of first study we went back to the boarders’ wing and I gave the key back to Miss Arnold.’

‘Did any of you leave the room, while you were up here?’

Orla tried to remember, which took some mouth-breathing. ‘I went to the toilet,’ she said, after a bit. ‘And Joanne did. And Gemma went into the corridor because she rang someone and she wanted to talk in private.’ Snigger. A guy. ‘And Alison went out for a phone call too, only hers was her mum.’

Every one of them. ‘In that order?’

Blank. ‘What?’

Sweet Jesus. ‘Do you remember who went out first?’

Think, think, mouth-breathe. ‘Maybe Gemma? And then me, and then Alison, and then Joanne – maybe, I’m not sure.’

Conway moved. I snapped my mouth shut, but she didn’t open hers; just pulled a photo of the postcard out of her pocket, handed it to me. Sat back on the table again, foot up on a chair, went back to her notebook.

I flipped the photo back and forth against my finger. ‘On your way here, you passed the Secret Place. You passed it again on your way to the toilet and back. And again when you left at the end of the evening. Right?’

Orla nodded. ‘Yeah.’ Hardly a glance at the photo. Not making any connection.

‘Did you stop for a look, any of those times?’

‘Yeah. When I was coming back from the toilet. Just to see if there was anything new. I didn’t touch anything.’

‘And was there? Anything new?’

‘Uh-uh. Nothing.’