Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘For God’s sake, Chloe.’

I felt suddenly calm. Calmer than I’d felt in three weeks. And very far away. The ideas that had been upsetting me so much – about Donald, or Wilson, about Chloe and Emma and the way things were at school, my anger at Barbara – all melted away and I had only one, flint-hard thought left.

I’d have lied for her. I knew it – I’d have come with Carl and done this job for her, and I’d have kept it to myself forever. No trouble. Taking my turn feeling the smooth wood of the spade handle slide across my palms. Working with Carl in silence – no flinching, no whinging, no throwing up behind a tree. Working – proper work, in the dead silence of the woods, nothing but our breath to keep time. I’m stronger than I look.

How long would it take? How long had they been there? I thought about the icy ground and the rock-hard soil, the noise of the spade sounding like it was hitting concrete. Chloe was no help – I could hear her whimpering. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. Wasn’t calm enough. I could have done it. I would have done it for her.

Think of it – me, pale and bruised with dirty hair, working with Carl, sweating through the cold. And then back to her house.

Dropped off at the end of her street, and coming up to her bedroom through the back door. She’d be waiting – looking between her bedroom curtains, the night-light glowing softly. Her pink flannel pyjamas and rabbit-ear slippers. Smelling like Body Shop White Musk and the vanilla Shake n’ Vac her mum put on the carpet. When I came in, she’d take off my shoes and socks and the rest of my clothes, and sit me in the bath with the Christmas bath pearls, and wash my hair, and take the soil out from under my fingernails and rub hand-cream into the sore places on my palms. Her hands on my skin. I’d wear one of her nightdresses and she’d let me sleep in her bed. No one would ever know – not our parents, not Emma – not anyone.

I would have done all that.

I took a deep breath and backed through the twigs and branches as quietly as I could until I got far enough to think they couldn’t hear me and set off running. Tripped, once or twice. Rotting logs – an old bike frame half buried in leaves and dead brambles. Ran over a mattress and didn’t realise what it was until the ground went spongy and the wetness bubbled up from the ticking and soaked through the canvas sides of my trainers.

I got onto the main road – the warm glow of the orange streetlamps, the red and yellow illuminated signs at the petrol station. The thrum of the irregular night-time traffic. I stuck my hand out to get a lift – my thumb out, the way they do in films. I think it only really works in America.

I would have lied for her, and she never even asked me to.

Poor Wilson. He wasn’t ever going home.

I tried to imagine what had happened. Had Carl pushed him over and made him hit his head on a rock or fallen tree? Had he, frustrated at being outrun by a Mong, thrown something at him and hurt him that way? Perhaps Wilson had tripped in the leaves and Carl had caught up with him and let himself get carried away with kicking and punching. Maybe Carl hadn’t hurt him that much. He could have just stamped on his leg and made it impossible for Wilson to get out of the woods. It was so cold at night.

I’d never know what had really happened. But Carl knew. And while he might have lied to Chloe, might have wanted her to believe it was more of an accident than it was, she knew that one way or another Carl was responsible and not me. The both of them had betrayed me. I hadn’t done anything to hurt Wilson, hadn’t even teased him when it would have been easy to. And because it made things more comfortable for Carl, they’d both let me think that it was my fault.

That night I walked along the grass verge by the main road, I waited for ages on a roundabout for someone to stop and give me a lift. No one did and it was nearly five in the morning before I used my key in the back door and crept through the kitchen into the house. Barbara had got up in the night and was sleeping on the settee, an empty glass in her hand. Her mouth was open as if she was shouting at me even in her dreams. I could have got on the phone without waking her, and reported Carl right away. You can do it anonymously but how could I have put the police on to Carl without admitting that I was there too? And Chloe?

I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that if Carl ended up in a police station, he’d be quick to tell them I’d been there and blame it all on me. Chloe would do whatever he told her to, she was so under his thumb. It was hopeless, unless I could somehow get her to talk to me, get her on my side and then make plans for both of us to approach the police together. With Carl locked up, things would get back to normal. And then we’d have our own secret.

I smiled. It could work. We could cry. We could say he forced us to keep quiet, to dig a hole, to say nothing about him. Chloe could convince anyone of anything. I could tell the truth and still get myself into trouble. She could lie and we’d both get away with murder. I should have been worried, should have cried about Wilson, maybe, but that night I slept soundly because I’d already decided what I was going to do.

Now I leave Emma on the couch and walk over to the window. Look out briefly at a whole street full of lighted windows. It’s past three in the morning and we are all awake and watching these news broadcasts. Is it just this city? Glued to the glass box, and believing exactly what Terry is telling us.

Emma moves slightly in her seat and the sofa creaks. I turn to look at her and realise she is watching me. She’s still wearing her green jacket with the badges – every time she makes herself a roll-up she puts the lighter and the tobacco pouch back in her inside pocket as if she doesn’t trust me not to steal from her, or wants to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

We’ve never, ever been friends, Emma and me. We were both drawn towards Chloe’s light, and exploded outwards along the same trajectory when she burned out. Ten years I’ve been keeping an eye on Emma, trying to figure out which of Chloe’s secrets she’s carrying and which I’ve been left to nurture on my own. And it’s taken me this long to realise she’s been keeping an eye on me too. Watching me for something. What can she have done? What does she think I could possibly have on her?

Today and every day for the past decade our whole city has sat over its collective picture album and made up its memories of Chloe. Who am I, I am coming to realise, to presume that I’ve not been doing exactly the same thing – or that my version of Chloe is any more accurate than theirs?

I didn’t have to wait long. She came to me after school with the dirt still under her fingernails and a red crack at the corner of her mouth, as if her smile was slowly widening.

I opened the front door without thinking about my rank breath or the state of my hair, stood on the step, and waited for her to say something. She’d caught me still in my nightgown and relishing the tail end of my first proper hangover. She stared at me as long as she could manage, and then picked at something on the cuff of her jacket. There was old eye-liner caked in the corner of her eyes like black snot.

‘Is your mum here? Am I not allowed to come in now?’

‘She’s in,’ I said. ‘She’s watching the telly.’

‘Well, my dad said he’d pick me up in two hours, so… ?’

I turned around and went back into the house, leaving the door open behind me. It was petty, that, but at least she let me enjoy it and didn’t say anything as she fumbled the door closed and wiped her feet on the mat. I let her follow me up the stairs to my bedroom. I didn’t care if she looked through the hallway at Barbara sitting with her glass in front of the telly in the living room.