Then, it happens. Ten minutes before the end of class, there’s a knock on the classroom door. Miss Harris enters, flanked by Hot Cop and Blonde Cop.
“Hello, girls,” she says, trying to keep her voice bright. “This is Detective Garda Sarah Griffin and Inspector Matthew Ward. I know you’ll all be keen to have your morning break, but they just have a couple of questions for you before you do. It’s about Lily.”
I can feel the hovering glance of twenty-one pairs of eyes all on me. I don’t think anyone had truly noticed Lily’s absence until now, and I imagine most of them forgot about the Housekeeper card by late Friday evening. But now that they’ve heard her name, they’re starting to put it all together.
“Good morning, everyone,” says Griffin. “Unfortunately, your classmate Lily O’Callaghan has been missing since Sunday night. While we won’t go into the details here, her family are all very worried, and we would very much like anyone who knows Lily well or who spoke to her at school last week to please step forward with any information you have. I cannot express enough how even the smallest conversation could be helpful to us.”
You can literally hear the sound of a roomful of girls catching their breath at once. An inward suck of tension, of air being pulled through teeth.
Griffin’s eyes flick over the room. I can see her mentally logging this. Something to write in her notebook later. Her stare hops from girl to girl. She’s figuring out who she’s going to pull aside if no one puts their hand up.
The Garda Niamh fancies starts to talk. “Now, I don’t want any of you to panic,” he says, his voice kind. “In the vast majority of cases, girls of Lily’s age and description tend to have run away from home. Usually they come back on their own. But we want to make sure that Lily is safe, so if anyone knows about a boyfriend, or a friend – or an … organization – that Lily might have been a part of.”
Detective Griffin suddenly looks at her subordinate sharply, as if the word “organization” was not part of their agreed script.
More girls glance over their shoulder. A few nudge each other and look at me. If I don’t say something now, I’m going to be outed. Griffin is going to triangulate these stolen glances and realize that I am at the centre of them. I put my hand in the air.
Miss Harris’s eyes widen. She’s only been here a couple of years. I don’t think she actually knows that Lily and I used to be best friends.
“Maeve?”
“Hi,” I say slowly. “I think I might know something about Lily.”
All three adults blink at me and then look at each other in an expression of “huh, we didn’t think it would be that easy.”
“I think it might be my fault,” I say.
And I am led from the room, the heat of their stares molten as a dragon’s breath. Thankfully, I’m in the hallway before the tears start.
I’m led into Sister Assumpta’s office, a bright airy room where they bring rich parents and ex-alumni when they’re looking for donations to fix the roof. I’ve never been in this room before, though of course I see snatches of the lemon walls and the over-stuffed couch whenever I pass it, usually to get told off in Miss Harris’s pokier office.
Now I’m in here and I don’t know what to do with myself. No one has a directive, either. Stand up? Sit down? If I were being punished my natural instinct would be to stay standing, but the air around me is so tense with concern and gratitude that my knees feel weak. My bones have been replaced by a stack of almost-empty shampoo bottles, ready to be kicked over in the shower.
“Now, Maeve,” Miss Harris says, touching my arm as she sits down on the couch. “Why don’t you sit down next to me, grab a tissue, and just breathe for a second.”
I flop down, still streaming tears. Jesus Christ. What must she think of me? Through my tears, I can see a slight furrow emerging on her forehead. She’s confused by this. She probably has a list in her office of sensitive girls and I very much doubt my name is on it.
I take a tissue all the same, huffing the contents of my nose into it. I grab another. And another. From the corner of my eye, I see Sister Assumpta in all her ancient glory hobbling into view.
There’s a joke about Sister Assumpta that they keep her in this office with the phone unplugged because it’s cheaper than sending her to a retirement home. It’s not exactly a nice joke, but it started long before I was at St Bernadette’s and it will continue until Sister Assumpta dies. Which, it seems, she has no plans on doing. Just as every human civilization thinks that it will be the one to witness the Apocalypse, every wave of girls that comes through this school is convinced they are going to be the one to witness Assumpta’s passing.
Sister Assumpta is a tiny woman. She is somewhere between sixty-five and a hundred and three years old, depending on the weather. In winter she seems like the oldest person to ever have lived, clad in layers of knitwear and thermal socks that she straps to her hands.
During our first month of secondary school, Lily and I were hanging around in an empty classroom during lunch. Sister Assumpta suddenly flung open the door with a vigour I haven’t seen in the old woman before or since. She pointed a bent finger
