Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘I find it quite a comforting thought, actually, don’t you?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply. ‘Much rather go like that, doing something interesting, than with some nurse banging on my chest and struggling to get my false teeth out.’

‘Dad!’

‘You’re worried,’ he said abruptly, and I knew we weren’t talking about the Sea Eye .

‘She’s not that ill,’ I said, ‘but there was something I wanted to talk to her about. I wanted to do it today.’

‘So it can’t wait then?’

‘No, not really.’

‘I see. And nothing you’d trust me to help you out with? Or should I not ask? Between girls only?’

‘Something like that.’

Donald hmmed. He tidied his papers up slowly and put them on the floor next to his chair. He heaved himself up. I was almost as tall as him, and with the two of us standing, the box room became tiny and I could smell glue and old books and the tea on his breath. His slippers were trodden flat on the heel.

‘It’s nothing bad. I’m not in trouble. Neither of us are.’

Donald didn’t say anything. He was pulling out drawers and turning over the contents carefully. Hairbrushes, a Care Bears video I thought had been thrown away long ago. Some of my baby clothes, stained headscarves and threadbare gloves that Barbara had tried to give to charity, boxes of Lemsips, shoelaces, train tickets, chalk. I saw him bring out an old Stork tub, the writing on it faded and the lid held on by an elastic band. He held it in front of him.

‘You know they’ve not caught that man,’ he said.

‘Mum said.’

‘The last one was only fifteen. Christmas Eve! Her family won’t have had much fun this year,’ he said.

‘I’ll be careful.’

‘I bet she was being careful, too,’ he said quietly. He was still holding the tub and rubbing his fingers over the top of it absently. ‘Someone needs to do something about it. A plan. A strategy.’

‘The school are saying they’re going to put on extra buses, so no one needs to walk home. They were going to do it just for the girls, but Danny Towers’s mum said that was sexist, and if they were doing it for one, they’d have to do it for all.’

‘It’s the girls he’s after though, isn’t it?’

‘The pretty ones,’ I said. ‘I’m in no danger.’

Donald smiled, put down the tub and came towards me. I thought he was going to touch my hair, pat my arm, but at the last minute he let his hand drop to the side.

‘I’ve got an idea. Something to sort all this out. I need to get my application finished, collect a final piece of evidence, get it typed up and sent off. Once I’m on that vessel—’

I remembered then what Barbara had told me in the shopping centre the time that he’d gone missing.

‘You know, Dad, you might not win. They’ll get loads of applications.’

‘It isn’t a lottery, sweetheart. They’re looking for quality. And once I’m on that vessel, working alongside the scientists, the biologists, the oceanographers – I’ll be able to tell them my idea. That’s why I need your help. Think of yourself as a kind of research assistant.’

I liked the sound of that. And I thought again about what Barbara had said about encouragement, and then shrugged it off. Barbara was paranoid and she took the fun out of everything. Donald’s interests weren’t doing him or anyone else any harm. And if I could get a little something out of it myself, who was that hurting?

‘Assistants get paid,’ I said, and Donald went back, picked up his tub.

‘The good ones do,’ he said, slipped the rubber band aside and opened it. ‘If I knew,’ he said, pulling out a folded ten-pound note, ‘all the ins and outs of it, the full situation, would I,’ he put the money on the table next to where I was sitting, ‘help you out?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and I put my hand over it.

‘It’s for a taxi,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you messing about waiting for a bus.’

‘All right,’ I said. Ten pounds was a fortune. There was no way I was going to waste it on a taxi.

‘I mean it,’ he said – trying to sound like Barbara.

‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘And I promise I’ll take your library books back tomorrow.’

‘And I have the draft application. It needs typing.’

‘I can do that at school. Put it under my door and I’ll take it in with me. Okay?’

We shook hands on it, Donald and I. He looked solemn and Barbara banged on the kitchen ceiling with the broom, making the boards under our feet vibrate.

After Donald had given me the money I ate tea with him and Barbara: grey mashed potatoes and tinned peas with a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie. The brown salty gravy had spilled down the sides of the tin to burn on the bottom of the oven and it made the kitchen stink. I ate quickly, the ten-pound note tucked into my sleeve. While Barbara was washing up, I lifted my coat from the hooks in the hall and snuck out the back.

The streets were empty – partly because of the ice which was thickening on the streets day by day and causing hundreds of minor bumps and slips across the City. And partly because of the flasher, of course. I don’t think anyone really believed that he’d stopped for good. We were holding our breaths, especially us girls.

The bus dropped me outside the hospital and no one spoke to me as I hurried through the corridors looking for Chloe’s ward. I was going in prepared with the advert for the Brook Advisory Centre and the poster with Wilson’s face on it. I had my action plan sorted out in my head. I was going to find out if she still needed an appointment at the clinic – and offer to arrange it all for her if she did. And I was going to show her the poster.

Carl had chased Wilson into the woods and then he’d gone missing. It looked fishy and it was down to us to tell the police, even if that meant she couldn’t see him anymore. And once Carl was out of the picture, things would go back to normal between us. Although I wasn’t going to come right out and say it like that, I reminded myself.

When I’d found the right bay, Chloe’s bed was obvious. There were four pink heart-shaped helium balloons tied to the end of it. There were three other beds in the bay, each one stuffed with a crunched-up, colourless geriatric and surrounded by a batch of visitors. I knew without having to ask that Chloe had refused to go into the children’s ward.

Nathan was sitting on the edge of her bed and scrutinising marks on a chart. He was wearing a green V-neck jumper over a blue shirt. Amanda sat in a plastic chair slowly turning the pages of a magazine. I couldn’t see Chloe because Amanda’s chair was in the way, but I could see her feet – two lumps under the waffle blanket.

‘Oh, it’s Laura come to see you. Look, it’s Laura!’

Amanda always said everything as if she was announcing the Second Coming. It must have been exhausting to be so constantly enthusiastic. Nathan looked up from the chart, and then back to it. Chloe was wearing light pink pyjamas and had her hair tied up neatly. She was leaning back on five overstuffed white pillows – so white they made her skin look sallow. But really, she looked fine. Tired, but fine.

‘Hey,’ I said, but she only rolled her eyes at me, and out of habit, I rolled mine back. There was a pink and silver Point Romance book face down on her lap. She picked it up, closed it and shoved it into her bedside locker.

‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ she said, but there wasn’t a chair.

Amanda jumped up. ‘You go, go on,’ she said, and made Nathan go and get another chair. She directed him with one hand, and with the other she opened the second layer of a box of chocolates so I could have the other strawberry creme. The bags under her eyes were purple: being Chloe’s mother must have been exhausting too.