Jenn Ashworth - Cold Light

I have the scarf Emma lifted from Debenhams that day. I keep it in my sock drawer, under the bad socks I only keep to punish myself with if I’ve been too lazy to keep up with the laundry. It still has the tags on.

I wonder if she did it on purpose? She wouldn’t answer my question about Chloe. Wouldn’t tell me what she remembered. But she’d steal in front of me: show me the knack of it just to remind me that there was plenty I didn’t know about the things she and Chloe did together.

Emma will ask me about this scarf one of these days. Will laugh at me still never going back into Debenhams, laugh if she knew I wear my hair the way it is and choose the glasses I do because, after our months of being secondhand celebrities, I don’t want anyone else to look at me.

Christmas might have been dull, but I hadn’t expected anything better. I’d grown out of it. I’d grown out of everything. Everything was boring except for the endless trips around the park with Chloe. Wandering aimlessly, waiting for the boys to turn up, and lately, waiting for Chloe and Carl to be finished in the back of his car.

When I was out with Chloe I felt on the brink of things. She was going to get Carl to drive us to Manchester and get us into a real nightclub, where famous people went. Footballers. People out of Kerrang! She said he was going to take us to buy dresses and let us wear them in a place where we could have cocktails and sushi and no one would bother asking us for ID because they all knew Carl and if we were with him, we’d be all right. It was going to happen; any day now. She hadn’t asked him when yet; she was waiting for the right time. But when the right time happened we’d be going, the three of us.

I’d been looking forward to Boxing Day, when I’d be allowed out again. Chloe and I had arranged to meet in Avenham Park, the place with the rose garden and the fountain and the Victorian promenade along the river. That was the place we went. It was good – near to town and the shops and the Spar that didn’t want ID, and friends from our year were always there. That was where we were going. That’s what the plan was. Chloe was going to sneak out a bottle. But Carl had arrived, picked us up in his car and driven us to Cuerden Valley Park. Not really a park, but a nature reserve – a large woodland with a man-made lake and paths and red bins for the dog crap and hides for the birdwatchers. We couldn’t have walked there.

‘Why’ve we got to come all this way?’ I said.

‘Every man and his dog are out walking off their Christmas dinner,’ Carl said irritably. ‘I wanted a bit of peace.’

It was always parks. Parks, or the industrial land around the docks, or nature reserves, or the train station at night, or the back of the bus station, parked on the dark bit of the empty aprons while the buses were all safe and away at the depot. Never the cinema or the fairground or ten-pin bowling.

‘Peace and goodwill to all men,’ I said. I don’t know why. It was the sort of meaningless playing with words and phrases that Chloe and I did when we were alone together – chattering into each other’s ears across linked arms as we walked. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything; it was just a way of touching each other when we were out and about. Automatic. Chloe laughed. Carl stopped, turned off the engine, and looked between the front seats at me.

‘Go on then, get out of it, will you?’

He was more abrupt than usual. He didn’t tell us jokes, hadn’t brought any sweets or magazines or fags for me. He rushed me out of the car: he must have missed Chloe.

‘Go and stand guard.’

He actually said that, and pointed out of the car window with his thumb. If he was chocolate he’d go on and eat himself, and I was about to tell him that, looking towards Chloe for moral support. She had a charm bracelet tinkling on her tiny wrist, and big gold hoops in her ears. He’d passed them to her, still in their Elizabeth Duke bag, and she’d ripped into them that eagerly she didn’t notice he hadn’t bothered wrapping them and hadn’t brought anything for me.

‘Chloe?’

But Chloe was looking at him, her lips pursed.

I nearly said: she practises that in the mirror, she read about it in Just Seventeen .

She pushed her tongue up behind her front teeth and pointed her wet lips at him because she’d read an article that said it looked sexy. Her hair was scraped back into a scrunchie, apart from two long strands at the front. She’d wet those with spit and curled them around her finger while she was waiting for him to come and get us. You got near her, and those curled ribbons of hair smelled like her morning breath. I wanted to tell him that, too.

‘Chop chop, then,’ Carl said, and reached back to pull the catch on the door. Chloe didn’t say anything so I had to get out.

I walked away quickly, before I had the chance to go off on one. I didn’t trust myself, but I didn’t much feel like walking home either. Carl would have been a prick about it, would have driven off laughing and left me to make my own way home. I knew that and I knew Chloe wouldn’t stick up for me while he was there so I did as I was told. I stood guard, waiting a little way away from the car by the edge of the car park. It was cold and I pulled the sleeves of my cardigan down over my hands. I stamped my feet on the earth, shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

It was just a car park; there wasn’t anywhere to walk but I walked anyway, a tiny circle in front of the sign with the map of the reserve on it, the drawings of cowslips and stoats and other rare things to look out for. Someone had put a lighter to the plastic over the map and burned it in places. The plastic had dripped down and blackened. The drips obscured some of the writing.

This is shit , I thought, and glanced at the shapes in the car, hunched and indistinct except for the alarming flash of Chloe’s new white jumper. I put my hands inside the sleeves of my coat and held them in front of me like a muff. I should have brought gloves. I should have stayed at home. Carl was saying something to Chloe. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I could see Chloe tugging at the fluff around the hood of her coat, laughing carefully, nodding her head.

I don’t know why everything Chloe wore or owned had to be white or pastel pink or baby blue. Why it all had to be cashmere or feathers, fluffy or baby-soft. It was like a trademark she had. A kind of ‘thing’ that she was known for. People could go into shops and see white cross-over cardigans with fluff around the cuffs and nod and say, ‘That’s so Chloe.’ It meant she had personality. She was easy to buy presents for.

I knew I didn’t have a thing. I’m nondescript. I’d never even tried to have a thing. Harder to get presents for. The gifts under the tree were a total washout. Donald and Barbara had bought me book tokens and a new black coat. It was plain, perfect for school. It wasn’t really a present. It just proved it: I had no personality. Even Barbara could tell, otherwise she’d have bought me something decent. I stood there in the cold and tried to think about presents; really good presents I could ask for in the summer when it was my birthday. I couldn’t even think of anything. It was something I needed to talk to Chloe about. She had the best ideas.

Chloe and Carl were still talking in the car. I carried on pacing. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be looking out for anyway. Keeping guard. What a prick. We were in the visitors’ car park on the edge of a nature reserve – a pretend wilderness with regimented trees, a man-made lake and a bit of conserved woodland that backed onto a fucking Asda. You could see the letters from the big green sign through the trees, some angles.