Cold Light

by Jenn Ashworth

  ‘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.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  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 m
y 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.

  Stand guard. No one was going to be there: it was Boxing Day. People were at home, watching films. I hadn’t even seen a dog walker. Guard – and I was the one stood on the edge of the woods, on my own, with that flasher roaming about in the bushes. If Barbara knew, she’d have a fit. She’d bought me a rape alarm and I’d stuffed it into the back of the kitchen junk drawer, but now I was thinking it would be a useful thing to have. I imagined creeping towards the car and setting it off, making the pair of them jump out of their skins. I sighed and turned around. I was going to signal to Chloe and get her to get Carl to take us home, or take me home at least.

  Chloe was up on her knees. She was turning and climbing between the front seats. She tipped forward and fell into the back face-first. A few seconds later the driver’s side door opened. Carl got out, rubbing his mouth.

  I turned my head away quickly in case he thought I was being a perv and spying, but he didn’t look at me. He slammed the door with such force that the car rocked. He got into the back with Chloe.

  This is shit, I thought again, and turned my back on both of them. On the car, on Chloe’s new cashmere jumper. On Christmas, on the whole fucking year just gone. Fucking Carl, I thought, and walked slowly away from them around the edge of the car park where the earth turned into grass and undergrowth and hedge. I counted my steps, balanced as long as I could on one foot in the middle of a step and leaned so far forward I was falling and had to stamp my other foot down hard to keep my balance. I knew I looked stupid, like a baby, playing like that.

  It didn’t matter. The car park, probably the whole reserve, was deserted anyway, and Carl wouldn’t have been looking at me. He never looked at me.

  The man had come out from between the bushes. He’d edged sideways and cringed his face away from the dead brown brambles. The branches had sprung back after him and snagged at the sleeves of his jacket.

  ‘Oi,’ he said, but friendly. He was carrying a football, a brand new one, and there was a scratch on the back of his hand. It wasn’t deep but blood was beading in the groove and he hadn’t noticed. He came towards me, smiling, and made no move to open his coat or unzip his fly.

  ‘Oi, nothing.’ I wasn’t in the mood to be nice. ‘Oi, yourself.’

  ‘What you doing here?’ he said, as if he knew me.

  I just looked at him. His voice sounded strange. Like he was deaf, or making fun of someone who was. Like he was a child. He didn’t look like a child though. Too big. Too old to be carrying a football. The kids had been out all morning; I’d seen them on the street. Carrying kites and trying new bikes, testing the ice-rink pavements with new rollerblades. But this boy, this man, must have been older than me. Carl’s age, even – which I’d guessed was twenty-three. He’d told us he was twenty-one.

  I looked at his his hands again.

  ‘What are you doing here? Excuse me?’

  He was loud. Irritated, but extremely polite. It was strange.

  I was about to tell him to mind his own business, tell him to bugger off, when I realised what he was. One of those – I forgot the word, but I knew there was one.

  Barbara called them angels and said they weren’t like real people. More like children, or animals. According to her, they can’t do right or wrong because they don’t have souls of their own, not in the same way normal people do. They aren’t accountable for their actions, like tiny children aren’t.

  Mongs. That was it.

  That’s what they were called at school. I’d spoken to one before – its parents brought it to church one Christmas. They kept it at home the rest of the time, but it wanted to see the nativity. It was all right. I thought it was all right.

  ‘I’m just waiting,’ I said, and shrugged. I decided to speak to him like he was a real person, and nodded at his football. ‘Did you get that for Christmas?’

  ‘Yah, got it for Christmas. Brand new. Best one available in the shops. To buy,’ he said, and smiled.

  His teeth were funny. They weren’t disgusting or anything like that, there were just gaps between every single one. Made them look like baby teeth, even though they couldn’t have been, because he was taller than me and I didn’t have any baby teeth at all by then. Can’t even remember losing the last one.

  He was wearing a good waterproof jacket – an expensive one – and a purple scarf knotted under his chin and tucked in underneath it. Someone had wrapped him up before letting him out to play with his new ball. There was someone looking after him. I imagined his mum, maybe the same age as Barbara, which is older than usual. Embarrassing.

  That’s what happens when you let yourself get old before you have babies. I remembered it then, from Biology. I imagined wrinkled hands tying that scarf around his neck and tucking it in. Someone white-haired kissing him on the head before sending him out to play with his new ball. He probably got teased about how old his mum was, like I used to before I started knocking about with Chloe.

  Actually, that would probably be the last thing he’d get teased about. Would be if his school was anything like mine was, anyway. Mongs go to school all together though, don’t they? So maybe he would. Except he couldn’t have been at school anymore, by then. I couldn’t work out how old he was, but I felt protective towards him.

  ‘Santa bring you anything good?’ he said, and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. His eyes were funny too. I should have known right away. All their eyes are like that. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, about Santa. He might have been smiling, but his face didn’t have the creases in the right place so I couldn’t tell. Even dogs sometimes look like they’re smiling.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Topshop vouchers. A few albums. You like listening to music?’
>
  He didn’t answer me and I shook my head and turned away. I can’t believe, I thought, I can’t fucking believe I am standing out here in the freezing cold talking to a Mong about what Santa brought me. For fuck’s sake.

  ‘Ginger Spice!’ he said, and I realised he’d been struggling to remember. ‘I like her. I like her. I like her.’ He looked around, checking, I could tell, to see if anyone was listening.

  ‘Big titties.’

  I laughed, but in a friendly way.

  ‘Yes, she has,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that.’

  ‘That girl in the car your friend?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. There was no point asking him if he had any fags with him. He probably only got three quid a week pocket money or something. And spent it all on sherbet fountains and Monster In My Pocket.

  ‘I saw that girl’s titties.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘That girl in the car. White jumper. Saw her take it off. That her boyfriend?’

  ‘Carl’s not her boyfriend. Just a bloke.’

  ‘He was kissing her.’

  ‘Knobhead,’ I said, though I wasn’t surprised. I walked away from him, still talking, muttering under my breath.

  ‘I’ve got to hang about here in the cold until he’s finished with his jailbait. Don’t know what they expect me to do.’

  I’d finished talking before I realised he’d come with me, trotting along just beside. I stopped and turned.

  ‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound adult and reasonable. ‘You shouldn’t be hanging around watching them. Sneaking about in the bushes. It’s pervy. Carl – that man in the car – he wouldn’t like it. He’d shout at you. You should go home. Aren’t you cold?’

  He stopped just behind me. He held out his ball for me to take.

  ‘I’m not playing with you,’ I said loudly, hoping to scare him away, even though it was a bit tight. ‘Get on home, will you?’

  ‘Hold it for me a minute. I want to get into my pocket. Share with you. One to yourself, swear to God.’