Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

No, that wasn’t right. Nothing about Chloe’s behaviour was remarkable. She’d been thrown out of schools before for bullying and truancy. She was only hanging by a thread at our school. But that part of the story has been rewritten now. After she died, ‘wild’ became ‘spirited’ and ‘bully’ became ‘stubborn’.

It happens while I am dozing – my eyes gritty and the muscles at the back of my neck slowly stiffening. The quiet hum of Terry’s broadcast punctuates the adverts and Emma elbows me awake.

‘Breaking news – we’re finally able to confirm the identification of the remains found here earlier this evening as Daniel Wilson, who disappeared without trace on Boxing Day, 1997, three weeks before his thirty-fourth birthday.’

Terry pauses a moment but it’s not the same – this isn’t real solemnity. He’s hardly containing himself – almost itching with glee.

Emma nudges me and I look up to see the picture of Wilson on the screen – the one of him in his Christmas hat. He is like Chloe now, and will never get any older than this. I am so absorbed by the picture, so lost in my own memories of the first time that I saw it and the way I carried the poster about in my pocket until it fell into fragments, that I don’t notice Emma is clutching the arm of the sofa and shaking her head wordlessly. She’s crying. Crying and laughing at the same time.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I say.

She didn’t know Wilson. I am sure she didn’t know him.

She tries to speak, but for the time being she can’t. She gulps, and smiles, and as she smiles her eyes brim over and tears fall from her eyes onto the front of her jacket.

‘Thank God,’ she says, ‘thank God for that.’

I’ve never seen Emma cry before. Even at Chloe’s funeral she stood next to me with her jaw set and her lips clamped together in a perfectly straight line while the rest of the girls snivelled and wailed like a chorus. I don’t understand. I wish she’d shut up so I can watch the rest of this segment – find out what they think they know, and how they know it. Wilson wasn’t likely to carry about a nice plastic non-biodegradable driving licence in his back pocket and it’s been far too quick for forensics to do anything. How do they know it is him?

‘Jesus,’ Emma says, and rests her face in her hands, sighing out the air between her fingers.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s all right now,’ she says, picks up her glass and takes a long swallow. ‘I’m all right.’ She takes a tissue – no, not a tissue but a real, environmentally friendly handkerchief – from her pocket, and rubs at her eyes, which are red, and as usual, bare of make-up. The rims look raw. I realise she’s been crying for a while – sitting here leaking while I’ve been asleep. How could I have slept?

‘Do you remember him?’ she asks.

My mouth is dry. I reach for my wine glass and my hand bumps hers. She’s handing me cold coffee, and I sip at it and rub my eyes. I’ve been dreaming.

‘I remember the news about him,’ I say carefully, ‘that Christmas when he disappeared.’

‘Yes, they did a reconstruction, didn’t they? Those two girls. Chloe was seething mad because she’d have volunteered to act in it like a shot.’ She laughs again, and coughs back her wine.

‘What’s got you so worked up?’ I say, and my voice is irritated – not sympathetic at all.

‘I had an idea,’ she says slowly, ‘as soon as I saw the mayor dig that jacket up, I had this thought. You remember those girls? The ones that got attacked when we were at school?’

‘I remember.’

‘I thought it was one of those. Someone who didn’t just get a flash or a bit of a feel. Someone who got it worse. Someone who got murdered. I thought they’d be telling us it was a young girl. Someone our age.’

‘The age we used to be.’

‘Yes.’

‘They didn’t report anyone missing,’ I say, ‘no girls disappearing. Someone our age would have been missed.’

Emma shrugs. ‘You never know. Not with some families. You were only sixteen when you went. Bet your mum’s not got a clue where you are, what you’re doing with yourself.’

‘Doesn’t mean I’m dead,’ I say, and I am still irritable. ‘Anyway, why should you be so worked up about it? It isn’t anything to do with us.’

‘I remember it,’ she says. ‘Hard not to take it personally when every week someone else got grabbed at in the bushes.’ She will not look at me, but runs her thumb up and down the stem of her glass as if she’s scraping away dirt from the surface. ‘I’m not upset, I’m relieved.’

‘Yes, so long as it’s not some pretty blonde fourteen-year-old, it doesn’t matter, does it? That man –’ I point at the screen, ‘he had parents too.’

‘It isn’t the same,’ Emma says, ‘you know it isn’t.’

For a while we don’t say anything. We watch the screen, but there’s nothing new. Emma’s breaths are ragged but she’s clamer now, and doesn’t start crying again.

‘What a time,’ she says. ‘They were on the brink of sticking us all on a curfew. And your dad…’ She tails away.

Is she remembering that afternoon outside the library when she and Chloe took Donald’s application away from me? Maybe she’s putting together the events in her head – slotting what she knows and what she’s found out tonight into the right order, and realising what Donald was doing while she and Chloe were tormenting me about how soft he was.

‘Sorry,’ she says, and coughs. I think she’s about to touch me, to put a hand on my shoulder, and I wonder what I’d do if she did. But she doesn’t. She coughs again.

‘Sorry,’ she says. She’s still giddy with relief and speaks too quickly, her words crashing into each other and slurring slightly. ‘It’s safer now though, isn’t it? Because of Chloe. People haven’t ever forgot. They don’t let the girls roam about as much as they used to. I think it’s a good thing.’ Emma smiles. ‘Do you remember how much Chloe wanted to be on the telly? She’d have gone mad if she knew her big moment was ruined by a…’ She’s about to say ‘Mong’ but she bites her lip. I can tell it is the same for her as it is for me. Time, which stuck at the point Chloe died, seems to have come unstuck and started moving again tonight. She’s realised we’re too old for talk like that anymore – it’s ten years later and no longer excusable.

Terry is in front of his van and doing an interview with a hairdresser that used to own a salon in Longton near where Wilson and his parents lived. She’s dressed up as if for a night out, and whenever she speaks to Terry she looks uncertainly towards the camera because she can’t forget she is being watched. They must have had her lined up for hours – ready to go on air as soon as the identification was confirmed. There’s lipstick on her teeth.

‘I’m glad to be here,’ she says, and laughs when Terry asks her if she’s normally up this late, and if the night isn’t a bit too nippy for her. I think about teeth and fingerprints and hair and wonder how they did it. Must have been something in his wallet or in his pocket because forensic tests take longer than a few hours – everyone who’s watched CSI knows that. I learn something new from this hairdresser though. Wilson had a job. It surprises me.

‘He was a lovely man,’ she says. ‘He’d always be round first thing in the morning with his bucket of water and his sponge. Never asked for any money – in the end we had to insist on giving him free haircuts, whenever he wanted. It wouldn’t have been right otherwise, would it?’

‘And did you ever notice anything strange? Perhaps the hours he was keeping? Late mornings? Early nights? Ever see him talking to any of your staff or customers? Lots of young ladies coming in and out of your salon, I expect.’