He was a leering, lecherous, nasty little man. He was oily and his whole shop smelled like Dettol and curry and when we walked home from school we’d see him through the window, sitting behind the counter on a ripped and taped-up and ripped again bar-stool, the stuffing coming out behind him and dangling like droppings. He’d perch, and drink hundreds of tins of pop, and spend all day reading the plot summaries on the back of the porn videos and looking up the names of the actresses in a film encyclopaedia.
There were rumours. He had a ball missing from a childhood accident, couldn’t get a girlfriend, and lived with a blow-up doll he’d speak to and eat with, as well as everything else. He had snuff films in his back room of cows getting shot in abattoirs and swans being stolen from the canal and tortured. You had to have a fiver and you had to put the fiver on the counter in a certain way, something to do with the Queen’s head, and he’d give one of them to you.
It was probably rubbish. All of it. He never did anything to us but we thought, all of us, that he was weird and bad and sinister. The police knew that too. They knew his reputation. Knew that he scared us. I watched him leer as he caught sight of Melanie and Dawn and I realised that while Terry had chosen him because he had a passing physical resemblance to Wilson, the greatest similarity between them was in how they made us feel.
‘While the police continue to go through the motions of investigating the missing man’s sudden disappearance,’ Terry said solemnly, ‘they’ve also been tasked with countering rumours that there’s a connection between Daniel Wilson and the several recent incidents of indecent exposure that have taken place in the City’s parks and green spaces. But while it is true that the police are looking for a man of medium height and build in connection with the offences and there is, apparently, no evidence to connect the missing man to them, the offences seem to have stopped abruptly around the time Wilson was last seen.’
Donald moved the mug around, warming his hands. I looked at him but his expression was unreadable. Barbara came into the room, a corner of a tea-towel tucked into each pocket of her trousers – a make-shift apron.
‘Anything new?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ Donald said. ‘Speculation and misdirection, as always.’
She clipped his shoulder gently, as if to say, ‘What are you like?’
But Donald was right. This, I thought, was what the world was really like. We weren’t supposed to forget. Terry wasn’t trying to help Wilson and his parents at all. If he had been, he wouldn’t have chosen Video Man, who was bound to make us feel bad and remind us of why we really didn’t want Wilson to be found.
‘What kind of man approaches young girls in the park anyway, that’s what I want to know,’ Barbara said. ‘I hope they catch him soon. No wonder he’s left home and gone into hiding.’
We carried on watching. The camera-work was rough. In more than a few shots, you could see the sound-boom at the top of the frame. They’d not bothered too much with costumes – when Wilson/Video Man walked, his jacket flapped open to reveal, quite clearly, the blue and white short-sleeved tee-shirt everyone who worked at the video shop wore as part of their uniform.
Video Man staggered, half stumbling as if he was drunk, towards the two girls. They pretended not to see him at first. Dawn whispered something in Melanie’s ear, and Melanie let her hair fall over her face and laughed. I instantly wondered what it was she’d said – whether they’d been asked to pretend to whisper and giggle for the reconstruction, or if they were really whispering something about Video Man and his balls and his doll or something else, between themselves.
The yellow bottle of Advocaat was on the bench too, but away from them, and although the camera zoomed in on the label and Terry pointed out the windmill and the brand name as if it was an advert and not the news, neither of the girls touched it for the duration of the reconstruction. It was as if it was someone else’s bottle, and Melanie and Dawn had just happened to sit down next to it.
‘Who is that strange man over there?’ Dawn said woodenly, and pointed past the camera.
‘I don’t know. I have never seen him before,’ Melanie replied. ‘Maybe we’d better head on home now.’ She sounded bored. Dawn was smiling at someone off screen.
Cut then, back to Video Man who was still ambling, still tossing twigs, and making his way gradually, in an uneven zigzag, towards the bench the two girls were sitting on. Terry, shrunk to the BSL interpreter’s station in the bottom corner of the screen, gesticulated sympathetically and provided a helpful commentary.
‘The girls were in high spirits on Boxing Day morning and had left their homes and families for a breath of fresh air.’
I knew what that meant. They were pissed. They’d snuck out to drink more, to smoke, to look for boys.
‘They were laughing, and talking about the Christmas gifts they’d each received from their families when an older man neither of them had seen before approached them and tried to tempt them deeper into the park by offering them cigarettes.’
‘Listen to that!’ Barbara said, ‘smoking!’ as if girls who smoked deserved everything they got. I thought of the tab-ends in the shed and bit my lip. ‘I’m away to dish up now. Don’t be too long.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.
‘What is it?’ I whispered to Donald.
He screwed up his face. ‘Corn beef hash.’
‘Sensibly,’ Terry said, ‘the girls accepted the gifts so as not to anger their interlocutor, and after a brief conversation, the man left them and walked in the direction of the town centre. Police are still checking CCTV camera footage, but what we do know is that man – Daniel Wilson – never returned home.’
The film ended and the shot returned to the studio, where Melanie and Dawn were sitting between Terry and Fiona. Fiona leaned forward and opened her mouth but Terry leapt in before she could say anything.
‘The police refuse to be drawn on the matter and obviously there’s a limit to what I’m allowed to say on air until we’ve dug up more evidence. No such restrictions apply to you, viewers. Call us. Tell us. Do you want this man found?’
Fiona frowned and looked pleadingly at someone off screen but Terry went on: ‘These offences are not just the concern of the young girls who are at risk of becoming victims on the cusp of their womanhood,’ he swept a lavishly gesturing arm in the direction of Melanie and Dawn, who flinched out of its way. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, these offences disturb us all. I am offended.’ Terry stared hard at us out of the tiny screen and I shivered.
‘Of course,’ Fiona began, ‘there’s no actual—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Terry broke in. ‘A police spokesman reiterated that there was no evidence to implicate Wilson in any wrongdoing and that vigilante justice would not be tolerated,’ he said.
You could tell he didn’t mean it by the way he said it. You always got a good performance from Terry – he made the cold weather sound like a personal affront and something the City should be doing something about when he reported on it. It was his sense of drama. It got people stirred up. It got things done. And when he read out that part about the police saying Wilson had nothing to do with the flashings, his voice was flat and insincere. We knew what he thought, clear as anything. When Donald reached into my lap for my hand, I jumped.
‘You’re always careful at night, when you’re out with that Chloe, aren’t you?’ he said.
I nodded slowly, hardly hearing what Donald was saying because my eyes were fixed on the screen.
‘This afternoon, the missing man’s parents made an emotional appeal for any information,’ Fiona said.
Now they were showing footage of Wilson’s mum and dad. Donald noticed I wasn’t paying attention to him and used the remote to turn the sound down, but I watched the pair of them anyway – younger than I’d imagined, ordinary, red-eyed and trembling. They were sitting at a trestle table on a platform and there were photographers there. The woman jumped every time the flash went off and the man – Wilson’s dad (I thought about worms, fis
hing and the ban on smoking) – in a suit and tie, looking hot and uncomfortable, with big rough hands appearing on the table, being drawn away to his lap, and then appearing again. The camera flashes reflected off the lenses of his glasses.
‘We’re just asking, as parents, for anyone who knows what might have happened to come forward. He can’t work out the trains, and he’s not that good with buses. If he’s gone wandering, someone must have given him a lift. He’s chatty,’ the man smiled, ‘never shuts up.’ His voice broke and his wife touched his arm gently. He wiped a finger behind his glasses and drew himself up to his full height. ‘He’d stick out in the memory, if you took the time to think about it. He had a bit of money on him. Could have took a taxi. Maybe asked you for directions home.’ He shook his head, unable to continue. His wife spoke next, and her voice was clear and hard and cold.
‘We don’t care what anyone says he’s done, or not done,’ she said, ‘he’s our son. He’d never hurt or frighten anyone. Never. We want him to come home.’
She stopped and swallowed. The camera zoomed in on her until her face and hands filled the screen. She shook out a handkerchief and dabbed at her dry eyelids.
I wanted to speak then – tell Donald it was all wrong, before I either lost my nerve, or threw up. It was me, I wanted to say. Me. My fault. I did it. I wanted to be honest. I believed what people say: that telling the truth lifts a weight off your mind.
I told him to go and test the ice, and he fell through and drowned.
The words were right there, and Donald was the safest person to tell – the best person to test the theory of getting it off your chest, because he’d forget, and even if he didn’t and told someone else, they wouldn’t believe him.
But they might. And then it would be me on the television. I stiffened, trying to imagine what that would feel like. How weird would it be to see yourself on the telly? How much trouble would I really be in?
I remembered the conversation I’d had with Carl. The last time I’d seen Chloe. I was on my own – there was no way they were going to stick up for me, and tell anyone who asked that I only spoke to Wilson, that I didn’t mean it.
‘I’d make you glow in the dark, if I could,’ Donald said thoughtfully, and changed the channel.
‘What?’
He squeezed my hand, let go of it and stood up. Stared at me, smiling – although less at me than the wallpaper over my head.
‘Or the bushes in the park where you and that Chloe go,’ he said.
‘We don’t go in the bushes, Dad,’ I said.
‘You’ve not been out for a while,’ he said. ‘Is it the weather? Too cold for you?’
I shook my head.
‘Shall I get your mother to get you some new gloves?’
‘Chloe’s not been out.’
‘She’s recovered though, from her time in hospital?’
‘She’s out. It was nothing, really.’
‘You’ve been missing her, then?’ Donald said. ‘In your room after school. Sulking?’ he smiled, ‘trouble in paradise? Or is it a young man? Something else on your mind?’
I looked at him while I gathered up the cards and slotted them into the packet, making sure all the backs were facing the right way. I was surprised by how much he had noticed.
‘Chloe’s going to be hanging out with Emma from now on.’
‘And there’s no room for one more?’
I shook my head. ‘It goes like that sometimes, at our school. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Nothing your old dad can sort out for you?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, imagining him turning up at Chloe’s house and sitting in the kitchen with Nathan and Amanda, using the reasonable voice Barbara put on when she was speaking to the water board or the doctor’s surgery.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. Without noticing, I’d dropped the cards and they’d scattered over the carpet. My hands were shaking. ‘What’s up? You hungry?’
My throat closed. I wanted to tell him, but it seemed easy and impossible at the same time, so I hovered and said nothing.
‘Things like this blow over,’ he said, ‘and before you know it, you’ll be back out gallivanting with your Chloe. And this Emma too. She can’t be that bad, can she, if Chloe likes her so much?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘But when you do go out, stay away from the park. Do your dad a favour, eh? Put his mind at rest and tell him you’ll stay away from the park, all dark places, until this,’ he gestured at the television, ‘is all cleared up.’
‘I thought he’d stopped?’
‘For the time being. But where there’s one, there’s another. Creeping about. There’s all sorts out there.’ Donald touched his mouth, swallowed as if it hurt him. He closed his eyes and put his finger in the air – his signal for me to be quiet. Then he laughed.
‘Remember your Uncle Ronald? True love, or whatever stands in for it, knows no bounds.’
‘You all right, Dad?’
‘Make them glow in the dark first,’ he said, and opened his eyes. He was wearing brown trousers and a brown and green shirt with a pattern on it – repeating diamonds between narrow stripes. It was his favourite shirt and it was threadbare to the point of transparency at his elbows.
‘Dad?’
‘You could do something to their genes,’ Donald said. ‘It wouldn’t hurt them – it would,’ he was pacing, ‘prevent such a lot of—’ he caught himself and cut it short, as if he was about to say a dirty word. ‘Lola,’ he said, leaned over, grabbed my shoulders and smiled into my face, ‘it would keep you safe.’
I smelled fags then, powerfully, and Barbara was in the room, her hand on Donald’s elbow.
‘Put her down,’ she said briskly. His grip tightened and then relaxed. His smile faded. He rolled his eyes. We’ll humour her, he was saying, and didn’t need to speak the words out loud.
‘Donald? Donald? When did you last eat?’ she spoke loudly, as if he had trouble with his hearing, which he never did. ‘Come on, both of you. The plates have been on the table for five minutes now.’
She bustled him into the kitchen. I clung onto the edge of the couch as if the floor was moving, and trembled.
Chapter 19
Chloe was back at school that same week. Paler, a little bluer around the temples, perhaps, but as she assured everyone ‘basically all right’.
Except she didn’t assure me of anything at all. I arrived at the art room to find Emma sitting in my spot. I should have anticipated it – I should have got myself ready and planned how I wanted to react when I saw the pair of them talking ‘confidentially’ about Chloe’s experiences in hospital; loud enough for everybody to hear.
When she saw me, Chloe blinked, touched Emma’s arm very gently with her first finger, and said, ‘There she is.’
Emma looked at me slowly. A lazy, only half-interested sneer. She was wearing a gold chain with a heart on it over the front of her school blouse. I recognised it as Chloe’s. She looked different too. Where Chloe was pale, the open pores on her nose showing, Emma had colour in her cheeks and her hair was sleeker and glossier than I’d ever seen it before. Her shoulders slumped less and she was smiling more. She was still buck-toothed, but somehow it didn’t look quite as bad as it had done a few weeks ago.
‘So she is,’ she said, and turned her head quickly. ‘Anyway.’
I actually went and sat with them. I pretended I didn’t know what was going on. Where else would I have sat? I pulled out the stool and felt a strange mixture of things. Cold stones in my stomach and the first real grief I’d ever experienced.
‘What’s she doing?’ Emma asked Chloe. She jerked her head and paused with an open homework diary resting on her palm. I wanted to tear out the pages and screw them into balls and shove them in her mouth. Her fringe shook every time she exhaled.
‘I sit here,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘I always sit here.’
The rest of the class was at my back, staring. I could hear them, the unknown and largely h
armless bragging and racket of the boys and in between their deeper and more rumbling sounds, the high-pitched snarl and snap of the girls, gossiping, testing and comparing.
‘Come on,’ I said reasonably, and put my bag on the table, ‘there’s loads of room.’
I was going to ask Chloe how she was feeling. It was easy to get her to talk about herself. I might even have smiled – a sticky and fearful smile, forced and less grown up than I would have wanted. I’d have been Emma’s friend, and endured a threesome to avoid being thrown to the rest of the form like bloody chump from the back of a boat.
Chloe stretched her feet out under the table. Her shoes met my shins. It wasn’t a kick but more of a push that transferred the mud from the bottom of her shoes onto my socks. She yawned luxuriantly, the back of her hand over her mouth, and then leaned forward and draped herself over the pile of bags and coats on the table. Bizarrely, Emma looked at Chloe through that yawn with a kind of pride on her face. Like Chloe was a new baby or the best sort of clutch bag. There was sheer love in that look, and a kind of smug ownership too, that depended on me being there to see it. I saw myself sitting there, only last week, and understood in a terrible cringing flash of insight what people meant by the lessbefrens thing.
‘I don’t remember her sitting here before,’ Chloe said, and settled over the desk, using Emma’s bag as a kind of pillow. I could see the top of her head, her razor-sharp parting and the complication of a French plait so tight it was making her hair come out at the temples.
Emma put down the homework diary and rubbed Chloe’s back.
‘She’s still not well,’ she said, with sickly kindness, ‘probably shouldn’t be here at all, but she was desperate to get out and away from her mum.’ She licked her teeth behind her lips and stared glassily into the air between us, determined not to look at me. ‘They’ve decided she’s grounded for fucking months,’ Emma said, as if to no one.
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