Cold Light

by Jenn Ashworth

  Emma shakes her head.

  ‘You stupid cow,’ she says. ‘Chloe could have told you he walked on water at the weekends and you’d have believed that as well, wouldn’t you? Never feel like using your own eyes? Your own head? It’s been fucking long enough.’

  She turns away. Doesn’t talk. Pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Her jaw is rattling.

  ‘Don’t get on at me about it,’ she says, ‘don’t you dare ask me questions. This isn’t a fucking phone-in. Not an interview. Soul mates. Where did you come up with that shit? He was bad news.’

  She was scared of him. She leans forward and refills her glass. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t talk, but looks at the hem of the curtains, moving gently in the stream of hot air coming off the radiator. She contemplates them for a long time, as if they can tell her something about what to say next. I want to ask her why she’s waited this long to tell me, but I don’t dare.

  ‘He never went for you?’ she says eventually, without looking at me.

  ‘Never,’ I say, and wonder about it. I think about the photographs that Chloe took of me and where they ended up. The wondering feels dry and sour in my mouth, like tiny, powdery apples.

  ‘Don’t act jealous,’ she says. ‘It hurt – it was horrible.’

  She pauses for a long minute and says nothing. Then, ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she says and examines the knee of her jeans. ‘If someone helped get him that way, that person saved me.’

  ‘There was that one time,’ I say quickly, ‘in his car. He kissed me a bit. I didn’t like it. I thought he liked me. That he’d gone off Chloe.’

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘I told you. Chloe was in the hospital. That time she fainted.’

  Emma nods. ‘I found her, outside school. Do you remember? She was crying.’

  ‘She told me she thought she was pregnant,’ I say.

  Emma laughs. ‘She was lying to you. He wasn’t that stupid.’

  My eyes are stinging and I feel left alone and tiny – very far away. Emma laughs again – and I get it. She laughs when she’s angry and the more she laughs the angrier she is. That, I think, would have been useful to know ten years ago.

  ‘You think Carl would have let that happen? The whole world would have found out about him if he’d have knocked her up. It only worked – him seeing her regular, pretending he was her boyfriend, because she liked having a secret.’

  ‘We knew about it,’ I say.

  ‘We were his girls,’ she says darkly. ‘There was no way I could tell anyone – not unless I wanted my own dirty business spread all over the school.’

  ‘You had brothers though,’ I say, ‘they’d have helped you.’

  She shakes her head at me. ‘You’ve no idea,’ she says, and bites her bottom lip.

  I look at her, think about how she lives – alone, touching no one but her dogs – and get a glimpse of something massive and black, something I can’t catch hold of.

  It is cold, where Emma is.

  I realise I do not understand it.

  ‘Carl didn’t like you knowing,’ Emma says. ‘He went mad at her when he found out. Me as well, as if I had anything to do with it. Still, she thought you would do whatever she told you to, so long as she kept you sweet and in her good books. Pregnant? She just needed an excuse for blanking you all holidays. Something to distract you a bit from the New Year’s party. You were like a pet dog, following her around with your tongue out whenever she told you to do something.’

  ‘I was her best friend!’

  Emma laughs, and mimics me, ‘I was her best friend. I knew everything about her. No one knew Chloe like I did.’

  I am so tempted. I was with her, I want to say, I know.

  ‘Stop it,’ I say. It is all I can manage. ‘Stop it right now.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I’ll throw you out.’

  Emma stops, and sips at her drink.

  ‘She was getting heavily into things with Carl. Her parents always thought she was with me, or with you. There were things he was into, stuff you couldn’t make up.’ She shudders. ‘It was all catching up with her.’

  ‘She didn’t want me to know?’

  ‘You’d have told someone if you’d have known how bad it was. I couldn’t have told anyone. Tell on her, and I’d have been telling on myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have got into trouble.’

  Emma points at the television screen. ‘Do you think I’d want every detail of what he was doing to me – to us – up on the telly for everyone to know about?’ she snorts. ‘School was bad enough as it was. I think Chloe was just grateful there was someone to take turns with her.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘She was besotted with him. She’d have gone mad if she’d have known.’

  ‘Who do you think she sent out to meet Carl the night she was in hospital? She phoned me in a panic. Her parents knew. Thanks to you. They were going mad. She’d talked Nathan out of calling the police but she wanted me to go and warn him anyway.’

  I wonder why, if it was so horrible, the pair of them kept it all to themselves. Why they protected Carl from being found out. Emma might have been ashamed but Chloe wasn’t. Chloe liked having a boyfriend.

  ‘So I was supposed to go and meet up with him, in her place. She told me not to tell Carl she was ill. That I’d to go and meet him and come up with some kind of excuse.’

  ‘Was that the first time she sent you out to him?’

  Emma shakes her head. ‘Not by a long shot,’ she said bitterly. ‘Chloe knew all about me. She didn’t care. I think sometimes she thought it was better me than her. Gave her the night off.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. How else do you think we’d made friends? Look at her, and look at me. At us. What else would she have wanted us for? She’d have shoved you in his direction sooner or later.’

  I remember the last time Chloe brought round her camera. For once I wasn’t the photographer and just that one time, she was looking at me. For months and years afterwards I could close my eyes and recreate the cool touch of her fingers on my skin, stretching my eyelids taut so she could apply eye-liner. I had felt so loved.

  ‘Did you meet him that night?’

  ‘I was supposed to. He didn’t turn up. I waited near the swings for an hour and a half. Some guy came past and asked me if I wanted to earn some money. They’re like vampires. I ran home.’

  ‘It was that night then,’ I said, remembering my run through the dark, the car parked under the bridge near the park. Condensation from the curved underside dripping onto the roof of the car. Emma had been out too, waiting on the swings and watching the street lights warm up from pink to orange to yellow.

  ‘He was with me,’ I say. ‘I phoned him. Told him that Chloe was ill. Said we needed to talk. He drove me somewhere in his car. That’s when he tried it on.’

  ‘Were you that worried about her?’

  I look away and light a cigarette. ‘I knew she wasn’t pregnant then. I’d been to the hospital. I was annoyed.’

  ‘You went to him on your own. No one made you.’ Emma sounds irritated. ‘And he kissed you. You were in his car. Anything else?’

  I nod, thinking of his hands. Thinking that kissing was another way of hitting me, of shutting me up.

  ‘Did he get romantic with you?’ she asks. ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’ I remember the smell of his saliva on my cheek. I’d got off lightly.

  ‘He sometimes did,’ Emma says, ‘the presents and that. Now and again, when he’d done his business, he’d cry about it. Expect you to comfort him,’ she sneers incredulously. ‘And I did! As if I’d done something horrible to him, something he couldn’t stand, but had to go along with anyway. As if I was twice the size he was, and the one driving the car. Give me a drink.’

  I pour the wine into her coffee mug. She doesn’t so much smile as open her mouth slightly and show her teeth. ‘And I did like it sometimes. When he wa
s gentler, and did it properly.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it. If it was that great, Chloe wouldn’t have put you in the queue for it, would she?’

  Emma’s teeth are stained with wine.

  ‘That’s why she died. It wasn’t for love like they say it was. Carl did something to her, wanted to get rid of her and it went wrong and he ended up drowning himself as well. He forced her into the water because she was going to start talking to her parents any day. He’d have gone to jail. She’d never have killed herself just because her parents made it a bit tricky for her to see him. She’d have seen it as a challenge.’

  ‘She was depressed,’ I whisper.

  ‘She was seeing him anyway. It doesn’t add up. Carl did something to her and you and me – we helped everyone see it the wrong way. Valentine’s Day!’ she snorts.

  ‘We only told the truth,’ I say, ‘about the bracelet, his car. She did like those things.’

  Emma gestures at the television. ‘This will never be over. After she died I thought it didn’t matter anymore, not now that he was dead. We were all safe again and I didn’t want to explain what I’d been up to. It was disgusting.’

  Because she is thinking about Chloe her eyes are wet and soft. Even after all this, and everything that Chloe knew and did and allowed to happen. Even still.

  ‘What he was doing to her. The state of her. Her hair was falling out – the weight dropping off her. Do you remember her skin?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I remember it. Sulking because her parents wouldn’t let her see him! Pretending to be anorexic. On hunger strike or something.’

  No, I want to say. That is rubbish. It was Wilson she was worried about.

  I think about how long it must have taken the two of them to dig a hole deep enough in the woods. Hour after hour out there in the cold, grubbing through the earth and getting it under her fingernails. I could tell Emma, but what would be the point? It wouldn’t make her feel any better and there are so many lies around what we thought about Chloe and what she thought about us that, even now, I’m not certain what is the truth. Before I can open my mouth she speaks again and the words come out in a rush – as if she’s practised them, or it’s a burden she can’t wait to be rid of.

  ‘Chloe got off lightly compared to me. He had to work gently with her because she wasn’t scared of him. She gave him a blowjob here and there. His hand down her jeans in the back of his car while I went to the off licence for them. A few dodgy pictures, long gone now.’

  ‘Maybe she did like it?’

  ‘No. Think of the state of her,’ Emma says again. ‘She knew what it was like for me. Knew it was in the post for her, as well.’

  Me too?

  ‘And he was doing all those other girls?’

  ‘Yes. It was getting worse. He’d have wound up killing someone. That girl in the swimming baths. She still doesn’t talk. At all.’

  ‘Maybe.’ It’s a croak.

  ‘You never saw him when he was in the thick of it. Spit building up in the corners of his mouth, the sweat dripping off him. Dead eyes, like you weren’t another person, like you weren’t anything. I’d not even treat a dog like that. I’d not even be able to treat a dog like that. It hurt.’

  I think about Emma’s dogs, and her chapped hands buried in their fur.

  ‘He’s gone now,’ I say, and it sounds clichéd and useless and I am embarrassed.

  ‘Whatever happened to her and the others, he can’t do it anymore.’

  ‘I should have threatened to tell someone. Then it would have been me he’d have taken down to the water,’ Emma says quietly. ‘Chloe sacrificed herself. All this,’ she waves towards the television screen, ‘she deserves it. Water fountains, page in the paper, the lot. She did it for us. All us girls.’

  I look at the screen, expecting to see the memorial that Emma gestured towards, but instead it’s showing the photograph of Wilson in his party hat again with another digital list of the victims of the pest, along with dates and ages. Terry is reading the list and it is frightening.

  ‘Shouldn’t someone know about it then? That it wasn’t Wilson’s fault? That he didn’t do anything wrong?’

  ‘What difference would it make?’

  ‘It would to his parents. Everyone’s saying he’s a paedo. Terry’s as good as said that someone murdered him to stop him, and that’s fair enough by him and everyone else who believes it.’

  ‘Listen,’ Emma says, counting on her fingers, ‘look at those dates. Carl was at it from the summer, wasn’t he? As soon as he got that new job and bought a car. Loads and loads over the winter. Stopped for a bit, over Christmas and New Year.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. He stopped. Busy figuring out what to do with Wilson, I thought. A little break – didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. Had to keep Chloe in line. He was busy then – and a dead body is enough to put anyone off.

  ‘But then he started again, didn’t he? January, February? Two more. Tried to drag a girl into his car in the middle of the day.’

  I think about Donald and nod.

  ‘My dad was worried sick about it,’ I say. ‘Chloe wasn’t talking to me then, but even if she had been I wouldn’t have been allowed past the front door unless it was to go to school. Barbara even thought about getting me a phone.’

  ‘You’re not listening,’ Emma says. ‘They’ll work it out. The timings. They’ll figure out that Wilson didn’t get very far after Boxing Day and that however he ended up dead, it happened before New Year. And the attacks were going on after that. It’ll sort it out. They’ll know it wasn’t him and they’ll have to say it –’ she points at the telly, ‘Terry will have to say it. He can’t not do.’

  ‘He hasn’t done so far.’

  ‘He’ll have to,’ she says. ‘He can’t carry it on anymore. He’s wrong and he knows he is. Why else do you think this has been on all night?’ She waves at the television. ‘No one really cares that much about Wilson. It’s Terry. He’s hanging on by a thread.’

  I think about it and realise she is right.

  ‘So it’s done with now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emma turns away from me, she doesn’t ask why I telephoned Carl that night, what was so important that I told on Chloe and demanded we meet. I think about Wilson again, and feel the old pangs of pity and guilt. And then anger.

  She hasn’t noticed because she’s still looking around the room. ‘You should have a better flat than this. A better job. Friends.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You live like I do, and you’ve no excuse. No one ever hurt you.’

  Chapter 29

  This is what happened to Chloe and Carl. I know, because I was there.

  Freezing night, and back once again to Cuerden Valley Park, the cowslip and stoat sign with the lighter-burned plastic, and through the woods along a path that wasn’t really a path – along to the water and where it first began. Chloe led the way and we followed her as she zig-zagged down a strange route through thicker trees and undergrowth than the real path. The ground sloped sharply and the leaves had settled in black drifts. It was a detour, of course. I pretended not to notice.

  Chloe’s teeth chattered and she swung her arms and strode, stamping her feet into the frosted, crunchy grass and the sugarcoated leaves. She had a bottle of fizzy white wine with her and she carried it by jamming a thumb into the neck and swinging it against her thigh as she walked. Now and again she’d stop, unplug the neck and tip her head back to drink. The foil label around the neck was in tatters, scratched off and glittering under her thumbnail.

  ‘Have a bit, it’s lush.’

  Carl wouldn’t touch it even though he’d brought it for her, but when she offered it to me I sipped and thought about my lips touching the place she had been drinking from. It felt a bit special.

  She sang too, as we walked. I remember the song – ‘Jingle Bells’ – over and over again. Carl pushed her in the shoulder and told her to shut up but she l
aughed and started singing louder, gesturing with her hands and opening her mouth and eyes wide as if she were on a stage. She didn’t have a bad voice, really. It carried through the cold and through the trees and didn’t make an echo. She was giddy and fragile – the embodiment of the phrase ‘highly strung’. And I was numb with the cold and with everything else too.

  Maybe I should have been scared of Carl, knowing what I did about what he had done and what he was capable of. But it was still hard to look at him with anything other than contempt. And Chloe wasn’t scared of him either. Getting her to fear him wasn’t the plan – I needed her to want to save her own skin – I needed to convince her, no matter what it cost, to get him out of her life and things back to normal between us. I couldn’t do that cowering at home, so I walked behind them, following the whole way.

  ‘Did you bring anything for me, lover-boy?’ she said, her voice too loud because she was half drunk. There was a bruise on her throat.

  Carl pointed at her hand. ‘I brought you the bottle, didn’t I?’

  ‘That’s not right,’ she said, and looked over her shoulder at him, pouting. ‘You’ve to send flowers, cards, chocolates.’ She held up the bottle and I thought she was offering it to me so I reached out to take it, but then she rattled her wrist and I realised she wasn’t looking at me at all, but showing Carl her charm bracelet.

  ‘You could get me another heart for this.’

  ‘You’ve already got three.’

  ‘And one more would make four. One for every month you’ve known me, right?’

  Carl turned his head to one side and looked into the woods. We trudged. It was slow-going. He was tense. Jumpy.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some money. Go and get it yourself, next time you’re in town.’

  ‘Carl, that’s not the same…’ she started to whine. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Some girls get weekends away. They get taken out to nice places for meals. New dresses.’

  ‘Aye, all right then,’ he said, not listening to her.

  ‘I bet I won’t even see you,’ she said, and then, as if she’d decided to be cheerful anyway and not care about it, she made a show of taking another long drink from the bottle, waiting for me to catch up and then handing it back to me.