The Secret Place

Stephen goes outside to clear his head, and on the way, he encounters Gemma, Joanne, and Orla. The girls’ assertive yet flirtatious behavior troubles him, and Stephen is once again struck by how manipulative and unpleasant they are. He asks them if there is anything more they can share with him, and they tell him that they didn’t like Antoinette, so they kept a few secrets from her. Now, they reveal their suspicions that Becca was meeting up with Chris secretly and that she may even have killed him. They also state that the school’s groundskeeper used to sell drugs to the students; although he was cleared of Chris’s murder last year, he was arrested for dealing. Gemma claims that Becca was buying drugs for him. Gemma assumed that Becca was doing this on Chris’s behalf because she was infatuated with him; Becca would never have done drugs herself. Gemma recalls Becca examining the gardening tools, one of which Stephen knows to have been the murder weapon. He considers calling Becca into a solo interview but decides to text Antoinette. When he pulls out his phone, he finds that she already texted him to explain that she pretended to order him off the case in order to gain Frank’s trust.