Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘Chloe got off lightly compared to me. He had to work gently with her because she wasn’t scared of him. She gave him a blowjob here and there. His hand down her jeans in the back of his car while I went to the off licence for them. A few dodgy pictures, long gone now.’

‘Maybe she did like it?’

‘No. Think of the state of her,’ Emma says again. ‘She knew what it was like for me. Knew it was in the post for her, as well.’

Me too?

‘And he was doing all those other girls?’

‘Yes. It was getting worse. He’d have wound up killing someone. That girl in the swimming baths. She still doesn’t talk. At all.’

‘Maybe.’ It’s a croak.

‘You never saw him when he was in the thick of it. Spit building up in the corners of his mouth, the sweat dripping off him. Dead eyes, like you weren’t another person, like you weren’t anything. I’d not even treat a dog like that. I’d not even be able to treat a dog like that. It hurt.’

I think about Emma’s dogs, and her chapped hands buried in their fur.

‘He’s gone now,’ I say, and it sounds clichéd and useless and I am embarrassed.

‘Whatever happened to her and the others, he can’t do it anymore.’

‘I should have threatened to tell someone. Then it would have been me he’d have taken down to the water,’ Emma says quietly. ‘Chloe sacrificed herself. All this,’ she waves towards the television screen, ‘she deserves it. Water fountains, page in the paper, the lot. She did it for us. All us girls.’

I look at the screen, expecting to see the memorial that Emma gestured towards, but instead it’s showing the photograph of Wilson in his party hat again with another digital list of the victims of the pest, along with dates and ages. Terry is reading the list and it is frightening.

‘Shouldn’t someone know about it then? That it wasn’t Wilson’s fault? That he didn’t do anything wrong?’

‘What difference would it make?’

‘It would to his parents. Everyone’s saying he’s a paedo. Terry’s as good as said that someone murdered him to stop him, and that’s fair enough by him and everyone else who believes it.’

‘Listen,’ Emma says, counting on her fingers, ‘look at those dates. Carl was at it from the summer, wasn’t he? As soon as he got that new job and bought a car. Loads and loads over the winter. Stopped for a bit, over Christmas and New Year.’

‘Yes,’ I say. He stopped. Busy figuring out what to do with Wilson, I thought. A little break – didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. Had to keep Chloe in line. He was busy then – and a dead body is enough to put anyone off.

‘But then he started again, didn’t he? January, February? Two more. Tried to drag a girl into his car in the middle of the day.’

I think about Donald and nod.

‘My dad was worried sick about it,’ I say. ‘Chloe wasn’t talking to me then, but even if she had been I wouldn’t have been allowed past the front door unless it was to go to school. Barbara even thought about getting me a phone.’

‘You’re not listening,’ Emma says. ‘They’ll work it out. The timings. They’ll figure out that Wilson didn’t get very far after Boxing Day and that however he ended up dead, it happened before New Year. And the attacks were going on after that. It’ll sort it out. They’ll know it wasn’t him and they’ll have to say it –’ she points at the telly, ‘Terry will have to say it. He can’t not do.’

‘He hasn’t done so far.’

‘He’ll have to,’ she says. ‘He can’t carry it on anymore. He’s wrong and he knows he is. Why else do you think this has been on all night?’ She waves at the television. ‘No one really cares that much about Wilson. It’s Terry. He’s hanging on by a thread.’

I think about it and realise she is right.

‘So it’s done with now?’

‘Yes.’

Emma turns away from me, she doesn’t ask why I telephoned Carl that night, what was so important that I told on Chloe and demanded we meet. I think about Wilson again, and feel the old pangs of pity and guilt. And then anger.

She hasn’t noticed because she’s still looking around the room. ‘You should have a better flat than this. A better job. Friends.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You live like I do, and you’ve no excuse. No one ever hurt you .’

This is what happened to Chloe and Carl. I know, because I was there.

Freezing night, and back once again to Cuerden Valley Park, the cowslip and stoat sign with the lighter-burned plastic, and through the woods along a path that wasn’t really a path – along to the water and where it first began. Chloe led the way and we followed her as she zig-zagged down a strange route through thicker trees and undergrowth than the real path. The ground sloped sharply and the leaves had settled in black drifts. It was a detour, of course. I pretended not to notice.

Chloe’s teeth chattered and she swung her arms and strode, stamping her feet into the frosted, crunchy grass and the sugarcoated leaves. She had a bottle of fizzy white wine with her and she carried it by jamming a thumb into the neck and swinging it against her thigh as she walked. Now and again she’d stop, unplug the neck and tip her head back to drink. The foil label around the neck was in tatters, scratched off and glittering under her thumbnail.

‘Have a bit, it’s lush.’

Carl wouldn’t touch it even though he’d brought it for her, but when she offered it to me I sipped and thought about my lips touching the place she had been drinking from. It felt a bit special.

She sang too, as we walked. I remember the song – ‘Jingle Bells’ – over and over again. Carl pushed her in the shoulder and told her to shut up but she laughed and started singing louder, gesturing with her hands and opening her mouth and eyes wide as if she were on a stage. She didn’t have a bad voice, really. It carried through the cold and through the trees and didn’t make an echo. She was giddy and fragile – the embodiment of the phrase ‘highly strung’. And I was numb with the cold and with everything else too.

Maybe I should have been scared of Carl, knowing what I did about what he had done and what he was capable of. But it was still hard to look at him with anything other than contempt. And Chloe wasn’t scared of him either. Getting her to fear him wasn’t the plan – I needed her to want to save her own skin – I needed to convince her, no matter what it cost, to get him out of her life and things back to normal between us. I couldn’t do that cowering at home, so I walked behind them, following the whole way.

‘Did you bring anything for me, lover-boy?’ she said, her voice too loud because she was half drunk. There was a bruise on her throat.

Carl pointed at her hand. ‘I brought you the bottle, didn’t I?’

‘That’s not right,’ she said, and looked over her shoulder at him, pouting. ‘You’ve to send flowers, cards, chocolates.’ She held up the bottle and I thought she was offering it to me so I reached out to take it, but then she rattled her wrist and I realised she wasn’t looking at me at all, but showing Carl her charm bracelet.

‘You could get me another heart for this.’

‘You’ve already got three.’

‘And one more would make four. One for every month you’ve known me, right?’

Carl turned his head to one side and looked into the woods. We trudged. It was slow-going. He was tense. Jumpy.

‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some money. Go and get it yourself, next time you’re in town.’

‘Carl, that’s not the same…’ she started to whine. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Some girls get weekends away. They get taken out to nice places for meals. New dresses.’