Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘Are you sure he’s going to be there, Chloe?’ Emma said. ‘If I’m not home by three my dad’ll murder me.’

Chloe smiled. ‘He’ll be there,’ she said. ‘He’s never let us down before, has he?’

‘He better not.’

‘Who cares about your dad anyway? I’m going to stay out all night.’

‘Your mum’ll have kittens if you do,’ I said. ‘You’ll never get let out at the weekend again.’

‘She sent me to stay with my grandma,’ Chloe said, ‘told me to telephone and make the arrangements myself.’

‘Why? Are they going away?’ Emma asked, and at the same time I thought about the empty house, the lockable drinks cabinet Chloe could get into with a Kirby grip, her father’s computer and her mother’s expensive, strictly-not-allowed-to-be-taken-outof-the-box, massaging foot spa.

‘Nah,’ Chloe said, and the lift moved upwards slowly, leaving my stomach behind it, ‘they’re having marital problems .’

Emma frowned. ‘Are they going to split up?’

‘I doubt it. She’s found out about him and his fancy piece. She chucked the wedding teapot at him.’ She looked at us slyly, as if checking how we were going to react. I looked at Emma, who had drawn her face into a picture of mature concern. Panhead.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

Chloe laughed. ‘I think it’s disgusting, him shagging a primary school teacher. He should be past it, at his age. He’s got hair in his ears and he cuts his toenails in the bath and pokes the bits down the plughole. I’m going to go to her school and tell her that,’ she started pointing at the air in front of her, the tip of her finger stabbing in time with her words, ‘right in front of her class. Say he’s a dirty old man with sweat marks on his work shirts and he said “goodness gracious” when some prick ran into the back of us at the traffic lights. Then she won’t want to shag him,’ she clicked her tongue against her teeth and winked, ‘problem solved!’

I giggled. Chloe was amazing. The thing was, something crazy like that was always a possibility with her.

‘How did your mum find out?’ Emma said.

‘Yeah, did she catch them at it? In your parents’ bed?’

‘Nothing like that.’ Chloe shook her head. ‘I heard him talking to her on the phone on the upstairs extension. Smooch-smoochy talk. He sounded like a right penis. He pissed me off so I told her myself.’

Emma looked uncertain and as if she was about to tell Chloe what a bad idea that had been when the lift doors juddered open and Chloe darted through the doors first.

‘Come on, lardy-guts!’ she called.

The car park was dim and windy and Carl had parked his car at the front. He was sitting on the curved concrete ledge looking out over the main road and the shops. He had dark hair three months away from its last cut and it fell shaggily over his ears and the collar of his jacket. When he turned, I noticed he’d got rid of the moustache and I smiled but I didn’t say anything.

‘All right, my girls!’ he said, grinned, and jumped down jauntily as we approached. Chloe and Emma, and then me, started to run, and the sound of our shoes bounced around the metal and concrete. A car came around the corner and had to brake hard to avoid Emma and Chloe. The driver beeped her horn and Chloe stuck out her tongue. Emma held onto the edge of her coat and pulled her back when she tried to run out in front of it again. She was always like that when Carl was around.

‘You been busy?’

‘It was packed, Carl, just like you said.’ Chloe was using the special, older voice she always put on to talk to him. Carl put his arm around her shoulders, brought her in to him and kissed the top of her head. Then he moved around his car and popped open the boot.

‘Stick it all in there then, will you?’

Emma leaned over the boot, untied the blue cardigan and let several yellow and black boxes of camera film fall out. Chloe giggled, and held Emma’s coat while she took the cardigan off and gave it back to her.

‘There’s a knack to it,’ Emma explained. ‘You need to choose what you’re wearing better. That jumper’s no good. Too baggy. Everything’ll drop out the bottom.’

‘Right,’ I said, realising too late that this was some sort of competition.

‘Or you could do it like Chloe does,’ Emma went on.

Chloe winked and took an elastic band off her wrist. Carl laughed as she pulled at the cuff of her jacket that had been tucked into it, and shook little boxes of screws and nails out of her sleeve.

‘You’re a genius,’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought of that. A real Bobby Dazzler!’

Bobby Dazzler! That was the sort of thing dinner ladies, or your granny would say to you. Sometimes Carl spoke English like he didn’t understand it.

‘What do you want with those screws?’ I asked.

‘Carl’s doing a darkroom in his house,’ Chloe said. Carl nudged her shoulder. ‘It’s all right. She won’t say anything.’

I frowned. Who cares about his darkroom?

‘He needs to black out the windows,’ she explained. ‘You can’t develop pictures in daylight. It won’t work.’

Emma had walked away from the car and was staring over the edge of the concrete lip, looking down at the buses going in and out of the station below. People jumped off here, and the gap was supposed to be netted off to stop them, but no one could agree on whose job it was to pay for it. The inside of the lip was covered in graffiti – not the good, interesting kind you got on the trains in big cities, but hearts and pairs of breasts and erect penises spraying cum into the air.

‘Emma, get back over here. I thought you were in a rush to go?’

Emma didn’t react for a few seconds – as if she didn’t hear him – and he blinked slowly and opened his mouth to call her again when she turned and looked at him as if she was waking up from a long sleep.

‘All right,’ she said, and headed towards the car – but in her own time, not walking, not sauntering, but shuffling. Chloe didn’t hurry her.

I didn’t understand why Carl would want them to get such small, insignificant things for him. He had a job – surely he could afford stuff like this? And I didn’t know Emma was in on the secret of Chloe’s boyfriend – someone too old for school, too old for Chloe. I was under strict instructions to say nothing to anyone about him. When had she confided in Emma?

‘What did you get, Lola?’ Chloe said.

I shrugged, and showed her a handful of chocolate eclairs I’d snagged from the pick ’n’ mix bins in Woolworths.

‘You want one?’ My teeth and fingers were already sticky with chocolate. It was a comforting, disgusting feeling – my molars tacky and clamping together when I spoke.

‘Nah.’ She shook her head. ‘Stuff like that’s really bad for your skin, you know? I’m avoiding it. Detoxifying so I can have what I want over Christmas and New Year without breaking out.’

I didn’t bother asking if Carl wanted me to put my things in the boot too. He was giving us all a lift home, apparently, because the sky had turned white and snow was expected any minute. He wasn’t going to have his girls trudge through town in the sleet getting their feet wet and giving themselves pneumonia.

‘You coming in the car as well, Lola?’ Carl said. He usually ignored me, and because I wasn’t expecting to be spoken to I flustered over my answer, and Chloe and Emma laughed as I tripped over a dangling loop of seatbelt and stumbled into the back.

‘Can Emma sit in the front this time?’ Chloe said, and Carl shrugged and said why not, and Emma looked pleased with herself and I was pleased too because that meant I got to sit in the back with Chloe – but she leaned forward and talked to Carl all the way back.