Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘What is it?’ I said. I looked at Emma, who shook her head.

‘Let her tell you herself.’

‘Give me a minute,’ Chloe said, and I saw that she was pleased with herself: almost smiling and showing all the other signs that she was carrying a secret she couldn’t wait to be rid of. Something ‘confidential’ that she was desperate for me to ask her about.

‘I knew I was coming round to yours,’ she said, ‘so I decided to set off early and walk. I couldn’t remember if I was still grounded or not, and if I’d asked for a lift, or some money, it’d have reminded them. So I just came out the back way.’

‘What happened?’ I said.

This was Chloe’s soap opera and I knew the part I was supposed to play. She fed me my lines and I cooperated, halfamused at the state of her, and more curious than I wanted to be.

‘Did they catch you?’

‘You won’t believe it,’ she said and laughed helplessly. Emma smiled mechanically. Her mouth was dark and tacky with lipstick.

‘Let me get a grip of myself.’

It was a short walk between Chloe’s house and mine. I lived in a poky row of terraces in a warren of streets tucked into the north bank of the Ribble and quietly subsiding. Chloe lived on the south side of the river, at the top of the hill and around the corner from our school. Her house had a conservatory and a greenhouse. The road bridged the river and carried on in both directions – past Chloe’s house and out of the the City towards Southport, and past my house where it turned into Fishergate Hill and led you towards the train station, into town and the shopping centres. The walk might have taken her half an hour, but that day, Chloe said, she’d taken a detour that involved walking along the Ribble, over the tram bridge and through Avenham Park. She’d have come out of the park at the end of a long street about fifteen minutes’ walk from my house, and added an hour onto her journey.

‘Why did you take the long way round?’ I said. It was something we did sometimes – for fun, or to kill time – but not unless we really couldn’t think of anything else to do and hardly ever since the summer.

‘I wanted to smoke,’ Chloe replied. ‘I was hardly going to march down the hill with a fag hanging out of my mouth, was I?’

‘Long way to go for a fag,’ I said, and Chloe shrugged.

‘Walking’s good for you. You should try it next time you feel like a plate of chips, you porker.’

‘Fuck off.’

Chloe gave me the finger.

Emma giggled and I realised she’d been drinking. I couldn’t smell booze on Chloe so they hadn’t been out together, which was something. I never had Emma down as the type to hang about the park with a bottle though. ‘It’s not that far,’ she chipped in, ‘not if you’re fit. I’ve walked that way loads of times.’

I tried to stare at Emma coolly, keeping my eyes steady and without moving my mouth at all. She was wearing make-up – a lot of it – and I’d never seen her that way before. The thick mascara and brown eye-shadow made her look ill and bruised.

‘Not to my house, you haven’t,’ I said.

Chloe broke in. ‘Pack it in, you two. I was walking along that big line of trees to the side of the river, you know the path that goes behind the bandstand, yeah? I was going along there, and I heard something crackle. I thought it was a bird or a squirrel or something. I took my headphones off,’ she was still wearing them around her neck, the wire snaking down under her cardigan to the black box at the waistband of her jeans, ‘and I carry on walking. I’m not scared or anything, it isn’t like it’s the middle of the night, right?’

‘Okay,’ I said. Her eyes were bright and wet with amusement.

‘This guy steps out from the bushes,’ she laughed again, a strange, sobbing sound. ‘He didn’t jump out or shout or anything – just stepped out. If I hadn’t have heard the crackle first, and I only heard that because my tape was between tracks, I probably wouldn’t have noticed him. But I did notice him just step out. And you know what the first thing I noticed was?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘He was wearing a mask –’ she paused, and leaned forward, ‘and that’s not even the worst thing.’

I imagined the man in the cape from The Phantom of the Opera .

‘What sort of mask?’

‘Halloween,’ she waved her hands around her face, ‘bright green, flat head. Bolts. What did you say it was, Emma?’

‘Frankenstein,’ Emma said quietly.

‘Frankenstein’s Monster, actually. Frankenstein was the—’

‘Whatever he had a mask on. Every Spar in the City is selling them. Brown hair poking out the top. Jeans. Boots. Nothing special.’

I was getting impatient.

‘You tell her this bit, Em,’ Chloe said. I looked at Emma, who cringed. Chloe tapped her knee gently, and I’ve been there – I know it’s her way of dishing out her commands.

‘Well,’ Emma started eventually. Maybe she was feeling shy because Chloe and I were staring at her so hard. ‘He came out from the bushes, wearing his mask, and Chloe stopped and stared at him – like you would, you know? And then he gets a bit closer to her and says, Trick or Treat? And Chloe, she says, are you not a bit old for that, still walking over to him because she’s convinced it’s someone that she knows.’

‘One of the Year Elevens,’ Chloe interrupted, ‘pissing about.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t,’ Emma said. She didn’t look at me, and spoke too quickly, the words running into each other as the blush spread up the sides of her neck. ‘Because when she got right close to him, he opened the front of his jeans and showed her his cock.’

Chloe leaned over her knees and sobbed with laughter. ‘Right out there,’ she said, ‘right in the park! It was just hanging out!’

Emma nodded urgently, as if I was about to accuse the pair of them of making it up.

‘Just lying there, like he expected me to do something with it. Why do they do that? Do you know why they get cheap thrills from that? I mean, it wasn’t a big deal to me.’

‘What did it look like?’ I said.

‘Just like you’d expect,’ she said, ‘only bigger.’ She stood up. ‘It was massive !’

‘What did you do?’

‘I told him,’ she said lightly, ‘it looked just like a cock, only smaller. Then I kicked a pile of leaves at him, and walked round the other way.’

She winked, stagily.

‘Did you see this?’

Emma was sitting on the bed, her hands pressed together and held between her knees. She jumped, as if she wasn’t expecting to be spoken to. When she looked at me she opened her eyes wide and I noticed her pupils – huge and glassy.

‘No,’ Chloe said quickly. ‘I ran into Emma afterwards.’

‘And was it – you know?’

Chloe grinned. ‘Was it what?’

‘Erect?’ I was whispering.

Chloe fell back over her knees and howled with laughter. ‘You perv!’ she squealed. Emma swayed slightly, and smiled a little too late.

I moved towards the desk, hurt.

‘You should tell the police,’ I said. ‘It’s that pest, isn’t it?’

‘He didn’t try anything,’ Emma said. She had her hair up – something complicated with Kirby grips and half a tin of Elnett. When she moved her head, her fringe stayed flat and stiff over her forehead. What was she doing dressed up like that and wandering around the park on her own?

‘No, I’m not going to bother.’

Chloe went and sat next to Emma. The divan rocked on its wheels. ‘He probably expected me to scream or something, but I didn’t. It was hilarious.’

‘What did he do? How did you get rid of him?’

Chloe glanced at Emma. ‘He just went away, back into the bushes. I didn’t follow him. I put my earphones back in, and carried on walking. Prick.’