Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘We were his girls ,’ she says darkly. ‘There was no way I could tell anyone – not unless I wanted my own dirty business spread all over the school.’

‘You had brothers though,’ I say, ‘they’d have helped you.’

She shakes her head at me. ‘You’ve no idea,’ she says, and bites her bottom lip.

I look at her, think about how she lives – alone, touching no one but her dogs – and get a glimpse of something massive and black, something I can’t catch hold of.

It is cold, where Emma is.

I realise I do not understand it.

‘Carl didn’t like you knowing,’ Emma says. ‘He went mad at her when he found out. Me as well, as if I had anything to do with it. Still, she thought you would do whatever she told you to, so long as she kept you sweet and in her good books. Pregnant? She just needed an excuse for blanking you all holidays. Something to distract you a bit from the New Year’s party. You were like a pet dog, following her around with your tongue out whenever she told you to do something.’

‘I was her best friend!’

Emma laughs, and mimics me, ‘ I was her best friend. I knew everything about her. No one knew Chloe like I did .’

I am so tempted. I was with her , I want to say, I know .

‘Stop it,’ I say. It is all I can manage. ‘Stop it right now.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll throw you out.’

Emma stops, and sips at her drink.

‘She was getting heavily into things with Carl. Her parents always thought she was with me, or with you. There were things he was into, stuff you couldn’t make up.’ She shudders. ‘It was all catching up with her.’

‘She didn’t want me to know?’

‘You’d have told someone if you’d have known how bad it was. I couldn’t have told anyone. Tell on her, and I’d have been telling on myself.’

‘You wouldn’t have got into trouble.’

Emma points at the television screen. ‘Do you think I’d want every detail of what he was doing to me – to us – up on the telly for everyone to know about?’ she snorts. ‘School was bad enough as it was. I think Chloe was just grateful there was someone to take turns with her.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘She was besotted with him. She’d have gone mad if she’d have known.’

‘Who do you think she sent out to meet Carl the night she was in hospital? She phoned me in a panic. Her parents knew. Thanks to you. They were going mad. She’d talked Nathan out of calling the police but she wanted me to go and warn him anyway.’

I wonder why, if it was so horrible, the pair of them kept it all to themselves. Why they protected Carl from being found out. Emma might have been ashamed but Chloe wasn’t. Chloe liked having a boyfriend.

‘So I was supposed to go and meet up with him, in her place. She told me not to tell Carl she was ill. That I’d to go and meet him and come up with some kind of excuse.’

‘Was that the first time she sent you out to him?’

Emma shakes her head. ‘Not by a long shot,’ she said bitterly. ‘Chloe knew all about me. She didn’t care. I think sometimes she thought it was better me than her. Gave her the night off.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Of course. How else do you think we’d made friends? Look at her, and look at me. At us. What else would she have wanted us for? She’d have shoved you in his direction sooner or later.’

I remember the last time Chloe brought round her camera. For once I wasn’t the photographer and just that one time, she was looking at me. For months and years afterwards I could close my eyes and recreate the cool touch of her fingers on my skin, stretching my eyelids taut so she could apply eye-liner. I had felt so loved.

‘Did you meet him that night?’

‘I was supposed to. He didn’t turn up. I waited near the swings for an hour and a half. Some guy came past and asked me if I wanted to earn some money. They’re like vampires. I ran home.’

‘It was that night then,’ I said, remembering my run through the dark, the car parked under the bridge near the park. Condensation from the curved underside dripping onto the roof of the car. Emma had been out too, waiting on the swings and watching the street lights warm up from pink to orange to yellow.

‘He was with me ,’ I say. ‘I phoned him. Told him that Chloe was ill. Said we needed to talk. He drove me somewhere in his car. That’s when he tried it on.’

‘Were you that worried about her?’

I look away and light a cigarette. ‘I knew she wasn’t pregnant then. I’d been to the hospital. I was annoyed.’

‘You went to him on your own. No one made you.’ Emma sounds irritated. ‘And he kissed you. You were in his car. Anything else?’

I nod, thinking of his hands. Thinking that kissing was another way of hitting me, of shutting me up.

‘Did he get romantic with you?’ she asks. ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’ I remember the smell of his saliva on my cheek. I’d got off lightly.

‘He sometimes did,’ Emma says, ‘the presents and that. Now and again, when he’d done his business, he’d cry about it. Expect you to comfort him,’ she sneers incredulously. ‘And I did! As if I’d done something horrible to him, something he couldn’t stand, but had to go along with anyway. As if I was twice the size he was, and the one driving the car. Give me a drink.’

I pour the wine into her coffee mug. She doesn’t so much smile as open her mouth slightly and show her teeth. ‘And I did like it sometimes. When he was gentler, and did it properly.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it. If it was that great, Chloe wouldn’t have put you in the queue for it, would she?’

Emma’s teeth are stained with wine.

‘That’s why she died. It wasn’t for love like they say it was. Carl did something to her, wanted to get rid of her and it went wrong and he ended up drowning himself as well. He forced her into the water because she was going to start talking to her parents any day. He’d have gone to jail. She’d never have killed herself just because her parents made it a bit tricky for her to see him. She’d have seen it as a challenge.’

‘She was depressed,’ I whisper.

‘She was seeing him anyway. It doesn’t add up. Carl did something to her and you and me – we helped everyone see it the wrong way. Valentine’s Day!’ she snorts.

‘We only told the truth,’ I say, ‘about the bracelet, his car. She did like those things.’

Emma gestures at the television. ‘This will never be over. After she died I thought it didn’t matter anymore, not now that he was dead. We were all safe again and I didn’t want to explain what I’d been up to. It was disgusting.’

Because she is thinking about Chloe her eyes are wet and soft. Even after all this, and everything that Chloe knew and did and allowed to happen. Even still.

‘What he was doing to her. The state of her. Her hair was falling out – the weight dropping off her. Do you remember her skin?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I remember it. Sulking because her parents wouldn’t let her see him! Pretending to be anorexic. On hunger strike or something.’

No , I want to say. That is rubbish. It was Wilson she was worried about .

I think about how long it must have taken the two of them to dig a hole deep enough in the woods. Hour after hour out there in the cold, grubbing through the earth and getting it under her fingernails. I could tell Emma, but what would be the point? It wouldn’t make her feel any better and there are so many lies around what we thought about Chloe and what she thought about us that, even now, I’m not certain what is the truth. Before I can open my mouth she speaks again and the words come out in a rush – as if she’s practised them, or it’s a burden she can’t wait to be rid of.