Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘It’s still getting to him, isn’t it?’ Barbara said.

Fiona, by virtue of being a woman, had managed to get an exclusive interview with one of the earliest victims – a thirteenyear-old who’d been felt up behind a pub in Chorley. It was persistently rumoured that Terry wasn’t going to rest until he got one of the victims to recount her experience live on his evening broadcast, or even better, unveiled the identity of the flasher himself. That’s why he didn’t condemn the vigilante patrols – even though the police did. Barbara said they were Terry’s eyes and ears on the ground. He was determined to get to the next girl first.

‘But thankfully it has now been over ten days since that attack, and while our community action patrols continue to search the City’s dark places, it seems the rest of us can sigh with relief. Our Friends in the South may make jokes about the Lancastrian Man’s famed tolerance for the cold but it seems for the time being our girls are safe. The weather is a touch too nippy even for the most prolific pest our city has ever seen.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Barbara – suddenly grumpy. She turned the television over. A Christmas Special Cluedo was playing on the other side, and I settled in to watch it.

‘I’ve no problem with that flasher staying at home in front of his Calor Gas,’ Donald said. His hand reached through the air, bumped my shoulder, and squeezed. ‘No one with a daughter would.’

‘He’ll be at it again, come the spring. You can guarantee it. Him having a Christmas holiday isn’t the same as him being caught and having his –’ Barbara stopped, looked at me, coughed, ‘people like that – they’ve not got a choice about it. There’s something wrong with them upstairs.’

She clattered the vacuum away into its cupboard and emerged without her apron, tying her hair back with an elastic band.

‘Come on. Let’s go out. We’ve been stuck in the house for days. I’ve sucked the flowers off the carpet, and we’ll be down to boards if I can’t get out for some fresh air soon.’

‘It’s freezing out there,’ I said. ‘Were you watching something different to us just then?’ I turned my face back to the television: Leslie Grantham as Colonel Mustard accusing Mrs White of something unspeakable, but it popped and the screen went blank. Barbara was holding the remote control, and she tucked it away in its holder by the side of Donald’s chair.

‘If it’s not frost, it’s flashers,’ she said. ‘We’re entitled to get out of the house. We’re going stir crazy. Look at your father.’ Donald was twitching the antimacassar on the back of my chair. ‘And anyway,’ she raised her eyebrows, looked at me meaningfully, although whatever it was she did mean was lost on me, ‘you’ve got a little errand to do, haven’t you, Laura ? Come on. Shoes and coats. Lola, you can wear your new one. Just don’t let me see you dragging your cuffs along the railings.’

She stood Donald in front of the hall mirror to go over him with the lint roller before she would open the front door and let us out.

Even though I should have been prepared for it, the cold outside shocked my lungs, bit the insides of my nose and made my teeth ache. We were two weeks past the longest night of the year, but winter was working backwards and spring felt like it was getting further and further away. The paths and the walls of the house were scratched with frost and without saying a word to each other Barbara and I stood on either side of Donald – not touching, but hovering as he navigated the slippery, glittering pavement. We walked all the way into town like that, up Fishergate Hill and past the train station where the girl had been flashed at, three abreast under the white, freezing sky. Barbara tutted and shook her head at people who didn’t want to let us by.

It was a bright, bright day. All the smooth surfaces – car bonnets, illuminated advertisements in bus shelters, the green and gold plastic litter bins – were coated with their own thickening layer of white, and Donald’s coat was a light beige sports jacket that was dated and gleaming and wasn’t right for the weather, but it was all he would wear.

This walk to the shops felt like a special occasion. I knew that we weren’t quite like other families: I had few memories of my parents outside our house. I knew they went out walking some afternoons when I was at school, and Barbara drove them both to the supermarket twice a month, but it was always during the day so I didn’t see it. There were never any seaside holidays or weeks in Spain. I didn’t even get day trips to Windermere or Grizedale or Blackpool. Nothing like that.

The only trip away I could remember was to a Pontin’s in North Wales. I must have been five or six years old. A dim memory of a dark pub with seats upholstered with a blue plaid fabric like the seats on the City buses. It was a variety night with Orville the Duck. I was sitting between Donald’s legs under the table pouring a can of cheap supermarket bitter into an empty pint glass. Barbara had bought a pint of lemonade, made me drink it, and then kept the glass in her lap. My mouth and hair were sticky. The brown fluid turned white as it hit the glass, and it fizzed over her patent leather court shoes.

‘Tip the glass! Tip the glass!’ I remember her hissing, and kicking her feet out of the puddle.

It was because of the money. Neither of them worked. Barbara had been a cleaner, a dinner lady and an office help, but now she was nothing and Donald got money from the City to stay at home and she had an allowance of some kind for looking after him. It was also because of Donald. The more interesting and colourful Donald’s spare room became, the less he needed to leave it to go into the outside world. The things going on in his head were much more real to him, more real, even, than the documentaries and nature programmes he liked to watch on the television. Gradually I learned that if we wanted to talk to Donald, we had to go into that place with him.

Even so, we weren’t that unusual. We might have been bigger home-bodies than most, but no one we knew left the City very often. It just wasn’t done.

When we got to the shopping centre, Barbara took Donald’s arm and pulled us through the revolving doors together. The three of us were wedged into a single segment of the turning mechanism. The blast of the hot air heater was directed down at us, and Donald started to sweat heavily.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, and pointed through the glass, ‘they’ve still got the Christmas trees up.’

‘Your father isn’t a child,’ Barbara said, and I let the sigh out, very slowly between my teeth so she couldn’t hear it, and the door completed its revolution and we were spat into the warmth and twinkling lights of the shopping centre. It was still prickling with silver tinsel and the air was clogged with the dry, solvent smell of spray-on frost.

‘Where are we going?’ I said, and peered across Donald to Barbara, who was heading towards Boots and brandishing a handbag so brown and shiny it looked like it was made of wood. Brandish is right – she carried it over her wrist, held in front of her like a weapon. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to turn and melt into the crowd like a curl of steam. I knew, then, what she was going to do, but Donald was smiling and tugging me gently along, a fold of my new coat gripped between his finger and thumb.

The decorations in Boots were more subdued. When we got to the perfume counter the woman who was supposed to be serving was kneeling on the top of a short stepladder. There was another ladder on the back of her tights, disappearing up her skirt. She was winding a red ribbon around the display cases on the shelf behind her. Red, heart-shaped stickers dotted the boxes and bottles because there was a special offer for Valentine’s Day and they were putting the displays up for it already. She didn’t notice us until Barbara dropped her handbag heavily on the glass counter.