The Secret Letter

‘You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders,’ said a voice. I looked up to see Danny Kinsella smiling at me.

To my surprise, my heart jumped at the sight of him. Just a bit.

‘School stuff,’ I said.

He sat down next to me. ‘Spill.’

‘I can’t.’

He pinched his lips together tight and made a zipping gesture. ‘I’m the soul of discretion, me,’ he said. ‘And if there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that a problem shared really is a problem halved.’

I looked at him. ‘You have to promise not to tell anyone,’ I said. ‘Not Cara and definitely not Sophie.’

‘Sophie ignores everything I say anyway.’

‘Promise,’ I said.

Danny looked at me gravely and held out his little finger. ‘Pinkie promise.’

‘Danny …’

‘It’s the most binding promise there is, according to Cara.’

Feeling faintly ridiculous, I linked my little finger with his. His hands were warm and soft.

‘There,’ he said, shaking. ‘Now you can tell me everything.’

And so I did. I told him all about Denise Deacon telling me the school would close unless we could do something to stop it, and about the ideas we’d had. It felt good to unburden.

‘Those are all great plans,’ he said. ‘Sophie’s the perfect person to run the after-school club.’

‘It’s not enough though, is it?’

He shrugged. ‘Possibly not. But it’s a start.’

‘I also had the idea of proving the school was of historical interest, so I looked up Esther Watkins, who founded it back in 1912, and discovered she was a criminal.’

‘What?’ said Danny, delighted. But I wasn’t happy.

‘I feel like I’ve hit a brick wall,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell the rest of the staff because they’ll just look for other jobs and we’ll be left with no one. Paula’s devastated. And the one thing I thought might help – our history – is a non-starter.’