Cold Light

by Jenn Ashworth

  That day there were at least thirty people hanging around and more sitting on the low wall in front of the Spar shop. I was lost in my own thoughts – puzzling over what my next move should be when it came to Emma and Chloe and wondering what was wrong with her. When I saw the queue I walked right past – didn’t even think about it, didn’t pause for a second. I pulled the sleeves of my coat over my hands and no one paid any attention to me. It was just as easy to walk into town and get the bus from there. Could walk all the way home, if it came down to it – and the burning up of calories would probably do me good.

  I stopped in front of the Spar and felt the coins inside my pocket, just to make sure I had enough for a can of Coke before I walked in. There was a sign stuck to the inside of the glass of the front door and it said, in black capital letters, that only one child was allowed inside at any one time.

  I was looking through the window to see if there was anyone else – anyone in school uniform that is – still in there when I noticed another poster, with Wilson’s face right bang in the middle of it, and some writing underneath.

  I think my body knew what that poster was about before my brain did. Even before I was conscious of what the writing said I felt the blood going out of my face and my hands jump up to my stomach on their own as if I was expecting to be hit. I had to go and sit on the bench over the road from the bus stop and look at the toes of my shoes for a while. Deep breaths, and ducking my head so the cold zip of my coat rested under my chin. And once I was calm, I was unsure, and convinced that I was getting carried away with myself and making it all up.

  I walked back slowly in front of all those people who were still not paying any attention to me. The bus hadn’t come yet, and I stood there for longer, pretending that I was waiting for it, but drifting back towards the shop just so I could have another look, read it properly and make sure. The second time I was there outside the door the man behind the counter waved his hand at me angrily as if I was looking for something to steal. I walked away quickly in case he remembered my face.

  It was no good though. Running away from the shop wasn’t going to get rid of what I had just seen, and I wouldn’t be able to forget it either. From the shop and the bus stop the road dropped downwards and as I walked along the pavement my perspective changed and I got a clear view, right the way down the hill to the bridge over the river at the bottom, then along the flat bit past the allotments and into town. It was almost twilight and the street lights were slowly coming on pink: they looked like lollies all along the road, and I saw, very clearly, that there were more posters taped to every single lamppost the whole way along – on both sides. I was going to have to pass at least ten or fifteen of them. More if they went on into town and in the bus station.

  And they will do, I thought, because it was Wilson’s mum and dad that had made the posters. They won’t have stopped at just a few up on lampposts in the suburbs. The town centre is going to be plastered with them and wherever I go I’m going to have to look at his face, or at least, the most recent picture of him blown up and taking up almost all of the space on the paper. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed them before. I’d been so obsessed with Chloe and her New Year’s Eve party that I’d hardly left the house between Boxing Day and the start of school. My last trip into town had been to return the perfume with Barbara and Donald, and Donald had been such a handful and the whole trip so humiliating I’d hardly raised my head to look at anything. Barbara was right: I really did walk around with my head stuck up my jumper sometimes.

  The most recent picture must have been taken on Christmas Day, because Wilson was wearing a red paper party hat out of a cracker, slightly askew on his head. He looked surprised, caught in a laugh or a shout, with watery eyes and an open mouth, curved in an expression that was extraordinarily happy and oblivious to the fact that his gappy teeth were on display and his face was shiny with sweat. There were other things that I hadn’t noticed before, mainly how fine his hair was, how it fell limply over his forehead and receded at the temples, that there were lines around the corners of his eyes.

  Wilson was much older than I’d thought when I met him. But what should that matter? His mum and dad weren’t entering him for a beautiful baby contest – they’d chosen a picture they had on hand, showing not only his face, but the reason for their worry and his vulnerability, which were the same thing. And they’d put the picture on a poster and printed out hundreds of copies and spent hours and hours sticking them up all over the place like he was a priceless, irreplaceable pedigree dog that they’d lost and promised a reward to get back.

  I tore one of the posters from a lamppost, screwed it into my pocket, and ran. It was still icy outside: each day seemed to be a little colder than the last and the ground was treacherous. I turned my ankle on a frozen puddle, fell, and when I did get home I came through the back door limping. It was dark outside.

  Chapter 14

  Barbara was standing at the cooker with her lips pursed at a spoon. The kitchen was roasting: the windows running with condensation and the net curtain sticking to them. The television was on in the front room and turned up loud with the doors open so she could listen to it while she was cooking. Terry, of course, running a phone-in about the proposed curfew – should the City still go ahead with its plans to keep us in after eight o’clock, seeing as it looked like the pest had stopped for the winter?

  ‘Mum?’

  She laid the spoon down on a saucer and looked at me, eyebrows raised. Before she could speak to me and tell me to do anything, I told her Chloe was in hospital.

  ‘I need to go and see her. I want to talk to her and see if she’s all right. Can I have some money for a bus?’

  ‘Can I have some money for a bus, what?’

  ‘Please. Please can I have some money for the bus to go and see Chloe. She’s in the hospital.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her? Where have you been?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said.

  Barbara turned the radio down.

  ‘You don’t know what’s wrong with Chloe, or you don’t know where you’ve been?’ she said, and went back to the pot.

  ‘I missed the bus,’ I said.

  Barbara paused. ‘So, if you didn’t get the bus, you still have your bus fare. If you still have your bus fare, you don’t need more money to go to the hospital.’

  ‘It’s miles!’

  ‘Enough, and take your coat off. Hang it up – properly. There’s a nasty bug going about. She won’t want company if she’s got that.’

  Despite the commands, the stirring, the checking of the new coat and homework diary and the tutting about the scuffed shoes from my fall, Barbara seemed to be in an unusually good mood. She had on her best apron, which was dark in patches from the washing-up water, and her face was flushed. I didn’t need to ask why she was so happy, because she was itching to tell me herself.

  ‘I saw that Terry Best today,’ Barbara said when I came back into the kitchen after getting changed. She was smiling and stirring so vigorously her shoulders shook. Her cheeks were red, her hair crinkled with the steam.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘I popped into the garage on the way back from town for your father’s papers and a bottle of milk,’ she went on, ‘and there he was – larger than life. Pink shirt –’ she stirred the air over her head with her fingers, ‘that hair. Do you think it’s all his?’

  ‘I just need a bit of money for the bus,’ I said, ‘so I can go and see her.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Barbara said. I bit my lip. It looked like she was weighing it up.

  ‘Do you know what he was doing?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Terry.’ She dropped the spoon into the sink and started to open and close cupboards, bringing out plates and setting the table. ‘That’s your problem, Lola. You’ve no natural curiosity. You don’t care about anything unless it’s spelled out to you, letters six foot high and two inches away from your nose. Have you put your shoes awa
y?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve put them away.’

  ‘I’ll check. He was asking the man behind the counter if he could buy fifty pee’s worth of petrol,’ she said triumphantly. ‘There, isn’t that funny?’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you could do that,’ she said, and put the plates in the oven to warm up. ‘Still, your father likes to put the petrol in the car. He says if I get to drive, he gets to do the fuelling.’

  I interrupted her. ‘Can I go? I need two pounds, that’s it.’

  ‘What happened to your Christmas money?’

  I shrugged, and didn’t want to tell her I was saving it for Chloe’s prescription charge. ‘That’s my own money,’ I said, and Barbara tutted, tucked a tea-towel into the oven handle to dry, and looked at me.

  ‘I’m not sure I want you going out that far on your own at night,’ she said. ‘It’s dark. And anyway, you’d think –’ She went to the bottom of the stairs, shouted my father’s name at the top of her voice, and then used the broom she kept there to bang on the ceiling a couple of times.

  ‘What? You’d think what?’ I said. ‘You’d think on his wages, he’d be able to afford more than fifty pee’s worth.’ She shook her head, and pointed through to the front room with a pot-scourer. ‘It isn’t safe for you to be out wandering the streets.’

  ‘He’s stopped, hasn’t he?’

  ‘For the time being, perhaps. But no one’s been caught.’

  ‘If you give me the money,’ I said, ‘I can get a taxi back.’

  Barbara shook her head. She’d already decided. ‘Hanging about near the taxi rank after dark is even worse,’ she said. ‘I can’t let you do that, I’m afraid. Much too dangerous. You know, when I was your age some man offered my brother a bag of Everton mints to drop his trousers for half a minute. Didn’t lay a hand on him, just wanted to have a look. He came back with the paper bag, pleased as punch, and my father took his belt to him.’

  ‘Was it a taxi driver?’ I muttered.

  ‘That isn’t the point, and you’ll get nowhere being clever about it. I’ve said no, and that’s that.’

  She went to the stairs and shouted again, but there was no sign that Donald had heard, or was planning to come down for his tea.

  ‘I really need to see her,’ I said. That was a mistake. If you sounded like you really, really wanted something, it let her know it was something worth withholding – something to discipline you with.

  ‘We’ll see how things go tonight,’ Barbara said, turning back to her pans, ‘and maybe you can go tomorrow. Why don’t you make her a nice card?’

  I had excuses prepared – something about important homework that she needed to have, or the coursework handing-in dates. I was going to tell her that Chloe’s mother would probably give me a lift home but I gave up then and when I went upstairs I let the door slam. If I wasn’t going to be allowed to go anyway, there wasn’t any point in me tiptoeing around.

  Donald was sitting in his blue chair with a stack of papers on his knee. I could see him through the crack in the door, and because it was ajar, it was all right to go in. He acted surprised when he looked up and saw me, as if he’d been asleep. I wondered what the pair of them did all day when I was out at school – if they even spoke to each other at all without me being there to carry messages up the stairs.

  ‘Mum says tea’s nearly ready,’ I said.

  ‘What was all that about down there? Banging?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I huffed and perched on the edge of his table. It wasn’t really a desk, though he used it as one. It was the old folding table we used to eat off in the kitchen while he and Barbara were saving up for a proper one. There were scuff marks on the white Formica top and a brown ring from a hot pan left carelessly. Now it was filled with jam jars stuffed with buttons and paper clips and the pebbles Donald picked up on his walks. An old toast rack stuffed with newspapers and magazines. Stacks of hardback books with strips of torn paper hanging out of them to mark important passages he wanted to copy out later. Strange graphs and diagrams that he’d drawn with such force the paper was torn in places and the impression scored onto the surface of the table so deep that if you wanted, you could close your eyes and get the drift of Donald’s thinking through your fingertips.

  ‘Chloe’s not well and she’s gone to hospital and Barbara won’t give me the money to get the bus and go and see her.’

  Donald didn’t shake his head or look concerned and get me to tell him what was wrong with Chloe. He acted like he hadn’t heard me at all.

  ‘Do you know what I found out today?’ he said softly. He reached down the side of his chair, picked up a small green drinking glass and took a sip.

  ‘Terry Best buys petrol in tiny amounts,’ I said. ‘My Uncle Ron dropped his pants for a few toffees. I don’t know.’

  Donald laughed, as if what I’d said was the height of wit.

  ‘I never knew that about Ronald,’ he said, ‘but I’m not shocked about it, no I’m not. He looks like he lives at the mercy of his sweet tooth.’

  I sighed. Donald had got round me. Making fun of him was like making fun of Wilson. It was easy enough to do, but you only ended up making yourself feel bad. Uncle Ron was a fairer target – bloated, angrier and more opinionated than Barbara, and apt to go missing for months at a time, turning up once or twice a year for a meal and a loan of some money. Barbara always gave him whatever she had on her, and it made me glad I didn’t have any siblings.

  ‘What did you find out?’ I said, and went to sit on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I was doing some more preparation for the Sea Eye application,’ Donald said. ‘I’m close to finishing, so you’d better root out a suitcase for me, but I’ve had a brainwave. I thought I’d better add a few lines – maybe even a whole page, on why I’d be a suitable passenger.’

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t think of any response, so I kept quiet.

  ‘They do it with astronauts. Psychological evaluations. No point sending someone up there who’s claustrophobic, is there?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Well, I thought I might as well put something in about not being afraid of the water. Not being scared of drowning. Just to reassure them that if they did pick me, that wouldn’t be a limiting factor. Save them wasting their time on the head-doctors.’

  ‘You can’t swim,’ I said, and then bit my lip, hating that I sounded like Barbara.

  ‘I won’t be swimming down there,’ Donald said, settling back into his chair and resting the glass on top of the papers on his knee. ‘If all goes according to plan, I won’t even be getting wet. And if anything did go wrong with the submersible, and there was, say, a hull breach,’ he was watching me carefully, checking to see if I looked worried or not, ‘then I wouldn’t drown, either.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’ I say, imagining a zeppelinshaped metal box under the water, a tear in the side, and water pouring in.

  ‘The pressure,’ he said simply, ‘the water would rush in at such high pressure it would be more like a blade than a spray. Cut you into slices before you knew anything about it.’

  ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘I find it quite a comforting thought, actually, don’t you?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply. ‘Much rather go like that, doing something interesting, than with some nurse banging on my chest and struggling to get my false teeth out.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘You’re worried,’ he said abruptly, and I knew we weren’t talking about the Sea Eye.

  ‘She’s not that ill,’ I said, ‘but there was something I wanted to talk to her about. I wanted to do it today.’

  ‘So it can’t wait then?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘I see. And nothing you’d trust me to help you out with? Or should I not ask? Between girls only?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Donald hmmed. He tidied his papers up slowly and put them on t
he floor next to his chair. He heaved himself up. I was almost as tall as him, and with the two of us standing, the box room became tiny and I could smell glue and old books and the tea on his breath. His slippers were trodden flat on the heel.

  ‘It’s nothing bad. I’m not in trouble. Neither of us are.’

  Donald didn’t say anything. He was pulling out drawers and turning over the contents carefully. Hairbrushes, a Care Bears video I thought had been thrown away long ago. Some of my baby clothes, stained headscarves and threadbare gloves that Barbara had tried to give to charity, boxes of Lemsips, shoelaces, train tickets, chalk. I saw him bring out an old Stork tub, the writing on it faded and the lid held on by an elastic band. He held it in front of him.

  ‘You know they’ve not caught that man,’ he said.

  ‘Mum said.’

  ‘The last one was only fifteen. Christmas Eve! Her family won’t have had much fun this year,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘I bet she was being careful, too,’ he said quietly. He was still holding the tub and rubbing his fingers over the top of it absently. ‘Someone needs to do something about it. A plan. A strategy.’

  ‘The school are saying they’re going to put on extra buses, so no one needs to walk home. They were going to do it just for the girls, but Danny Towers’s mum said that was sexist, and if they were doing it for one, they’d have to do it for all.’

  ‘It’s the girls he’s after though, isn’t it?’

  ‘The pretty ones,’ I said. ‘I’m in no danger.’