Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

‘I can see it,’ Chloe said, and I imagined her at the front of the class, arm waving – always first with the right answer. She grabbed Carl’s arm and turned him towards her.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I see it. It’s a football. What are we supposed to do now?’

This last question was for me, but he didn’t bother turning his head to look at me and so I didn’t bother answering him. Chloe put her hand in his back pocket and squeezed.

‘Doesn’t prove anything, just looking,’ Chloe said, and I didn’t know who she was talking to. Suddenly I wanted to touch her. Nothing weird – just a hand on the padded sleeve of her coat, or my cheek against the fluff at her collar. She was with Carl, and miles away.

‘We could go out and look,’ I said. It was definitely me that said it. I’d been hoping Chloe would suggest it – she was the one who decided on the plans, on what was the best response to any problem. But I’d already decided, at home while I was brushing my teeth and staring at my fringe in the bathroom mirror, that if she wouldn’t, I was going to. And that was fine with me.

The ice was thick – bubbled and uneven in places where it had cracked and refrozen. Didn’t look like water. Didn’t look like ice. Put me in mind of the scorched plastic on the cowslip and stoat sign. Further out the surface was smoother. No reeds or plants to poke through it, just the six wooden stumps of the old platform. Someone had wanted to test the ice – there were branches and bottles, broken bricks and large stones – skidmarks where they’d been thrown and slid over the hard lid on the water. We stared. I imagined the Year Elevens, out here on weekends tossing stones and bottles, someone getting their nerve up to slide right out. It had been all right. No one had fallen so far. If Wilson had got this far he’d have been fine. I imagined him, dashing out onto the water and then stopping, delighted, as it held between his feet and Carl gave up the chase on the bank.

‘It’s a football,’ Carl said again, trying to turn away from the pond, but Chloe was still hanging onto his back pocket and wouldn’t let it go. ‘We’ve come, we’ve seen it, it’s a fucking football,’ he laughed, and Chloe pulled at his arm. ‘Well done, Laura, you were right. A footie.’

‘I bet we could see right through though,’ I said, but not to him, ‘like a window.’

Chloe looked at me over her shoulder, then let go of Carl’s arm and turned completely round. She smiled. I could see the back of his head, and Chloe standing in front of him, slightly to the left and facing me. I never imagined it was me she was smiling at. A private, knowing smile. She blinked a few times, and rubbed her chin against her shoulder.

‘Come on,’ she said to Carl, almost under her breath. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘We need to go out on the ice,’ I said, ‘and look through it.’

Chloe darted a look at me.

‘Not all of us,’ I said, and she frowned.

‘The lighter the better,’ I explained.

‘See if he’s down there? Looking up at us?’

She put her tongue under her bottom lip and crossed her eyes.

‘Delp ne! Delp ne!’ she said, and made her hands into fists banging at an invisible surface over her face. She’d made herself ugly and mumbly, and it was cruel and accurate and funny. I laughed breathlessly, and the air hurt my throat. Carl threw his cigarette into the grass and didn’t bother to stamp it out. I watched it as the thin coil of smoke drifted upwards and died away.

Carl looked at her, pulled the packet out of his pocket.

‘Fucking hell, Chloe,’ he said, like she’d been saying it about Donald, and right in front of me.

It could have been that Carl would have wanted to light his fag then. Patted his pockets, held out the flat of his palm to me for the lighter that wasn’t his. And I’d have pulled it out of my pocket, and he’d have seen my face as I looked at it. That could have been dangerous for me. There was a bit of luck due though. Something made a noise then – maybe a car backfiring far away or someone slamming a door closed – and Chloe jumped, strung tight and startled, and stepped backwards onto the ice.

‘Chlo—’ Carl threw his arms out towards her – it looked like he had lost his balance instead of her. The cigarette rolled away.

‘It’s solid, it’s fine,’ she said. She leaned forward – she was only one arm’s length away from Carl – and stamped one foot gently. Her fingers were touching the sleeve of his jacket. I wondered again, with more than a little admiration, what Chloe had promised to Carl to get him to bring us out here.

‘I’m going out,’ she said, and slid her feet backwards as if she was skating. ‘I’m the smallest. If someone’s going, it should be me.’

Carl reached out his hand. ‘Don’t be stupid. Get back over here.’

Chloe laughed and stuck out her tongue and pushed herself backwards.

‘Solid as anything!’ she said, and tried to balance on one foot.

It isn’t ‘tried’, not really. She didn’t fall, and she made it look like it was no trouble at all. She turned and slid gracefully, as easily as if she had been wearing blades instead of trainers.

‘I’ll go out and see if he’s there,’ Chloe said, as if she was talking about a friend waiting in the park for us. As if she was talking about someone who could, possibly, be there.

‘Go on then,’ I said, daring her out. I stared, and I wanted her to catch my eye but she didn’t. She was still smirking at Carl. Still moving, one foot to another, she reached up behind her head to pull the scrunchie out of her hair. She shook it all loose and it spread out in the air and then fell back along her shoulders. Like an advert for something. Shampoo. Vitamins. She pouted, thinking she was that sexy, and then she was moving, and Carl was nodding his head as if music was coming out of her pores, smiling back at her, dumb and slack-eyed, and she said, ‘It’s great!’ and moved faster, pushing her feet across the ice and swiping her hands through the air like she was swimming.

Even when she was quite far away from us she kept twisting and swishing her hair about and laughing.

‘Stupid cow,’ Carl said, but his eyes were stuck to her. I watched Carl, not Chloe. I noticed every time she wobbled, he flinched.

‘Get out to the middle,’ I said, and Carl took a step closer to the edge and took his hands out of his pockets but he didn’t say anything.

He could have stopped it. Either of them could have stopped it in a second. I wanted her to stop it. I wanted her to weigh up her options and realise that confiding in me about Wilson was her only and her best choice. All she needed to do was come clean and give me this secret she’d been keeping. I was her best friend. I was first. She could have trusted me with anything. All I was doing was encouraging her: I was making telling me an easier, more attractive option than not telling me. She knew she didn’t need to go out on the ice: there wasn’t any pressure. I didn’t push her; I didn’t lay a hand on her.

Chloe started to pick up speed, sliding on flat feet and making rings around the outside of the pond in a tightening spiral to the centre. The far side was in the shade of overhanging trees. When she passed underneath them all I could see of her was flashes of her white hands and trainers weaving through the air, as if disembodied. If it was me out there, I would have fallen. I would have twisted an ankle, or overbalanced and cracked the back of my head against the glassy surface or bruised my backside on a stick.

‘She thinks she’s in a film,’ I said, even though I knew Carl wasn’t listening. He jerked his shoulder and grunted slightly, hardly a response at all, and I was overcome with the urge to turn my back on Chloe. She only did these things when other people were watching. That’s what Emma was for. I wanted to tell Carl that if he was that worried about her, the quickest way to get Chloe off the ice would be for us both to turn around and go back and sit in the car.