Cold Light (17 page)

‘Move the aerial,’ Chloe said. Nathan obeyed her. ‘It’s all your fillings, interfering with the reception.’

I ignored her because with Chloe, the sooner she had the last word, the sooner she’d stop. Nathan pushed the thin hoop of wire backwards and forwards until the picture resolved itself and the crackling stopped.

We settled on her bed. I imagined Wilson, wandering around town and introducing himself, asking questions, trying to be friendly and getting on people’s nerves.

And then dropping out of the world as if he’d never existed.

Terry outlined Wilson’s last known movements – tracing his appearance on the CCTV cameras that had tracked him on his long walk through the City. They broadcast grainy black and white footage of Wilson standing in front of a petrol station watching a man fill his tyres with air. The camera seemed to loom up on Wilson, its eye catching him in a private moment as he tenderly pulled something out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and started to eat it.

‘That,’ Terry informed us, ‘was a sausage roll left over from the Christmas Night buffet – wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll by Wilson’s mother, and very possibly his final meal.’

Chloe snorted with laughter. I started at her. She was engrossed with the pictures on the screen – staring intently. Even though she’d only seen him for a minute it just wasn’t possible that she didn’t recognise him – didn’t she realise that the three of us were probably the last people to see him?

‘While the police aren’t expressing grave concern just yet, they’d still like to speak with the individuals connected with a,’ he used his fingers to scrape a pair of speech marks in the air, ‘
vigilante gang
seen gathering in the grounds of a nature reserve across town later that afternoon. This group, made up largely of the fathers, uncles and elder brothers of the young girls who’ve been attacked recently, has vowed to scour the City’s dark and out of the way places until this man is found.’

Terry paused meaningfully. Fiona, next to him on the couch, shuffled papers reverently. ‘Our phone lines are open,’ he added, in a subdued tone.

I was sitting right next to Chloe. Could feel the lump of her knee against the small of my back. I turned my head, tried to catch her eye, but she was pulling a lock of her hair straight and examining it for split ends. When I nudged her, she hissed at me.

‘Shut up!’

Chloe laughed. I think it was nerves. When I looked at her, she looked away. Nathan stood up, and there was a chorus of chatter and complaints from the other beds and their visitors. He hunched, like he was making an exit in the cinema before the closing credits had stopped rolling.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, ‘just need to phone work. Tell them when I’m next in.’

‘Buy me some pop while you’re out there,’ Chloe demanded. Amanda looked over her shoulder at Nathan as he left, counting the coins in his palm.

‘He won’t know what to get,’ she said weakly. ‘I’d better do it. Won’t be two ticks, girls,’ she said, her heels clacking on the hard floor as she hurried after him. ‘You’ll look after her, won’t you, sweet?’

I didn’t get time to answer before she was gone.

‘No fucking way he’s ringing work,’ Chloe said bitterly. ‘Bet you any money he’s on the phone to that primary school teacher.’ Something occurred to her and she smiled. ‘I bet I’ve ruined his plans. He was supposed to be at a,’ she drew a heavy pair of quotation marks in the air, copying Terry, ‘health and safety presentation tonight.’

‘Chloe, that’s that man we saw on Boxing Day,’ I said.

‘Oh, be quiet,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘It is,’ I said. ‘I talked to him. He had a football. It was definitely him.’

‘So?’ She shrugged.

‘What if he’s dead? What if we were the last people to see him? Carl chased him off, didn’t he? You can’t let him—’

‘You heard what they said,’ she interrupted me. ‘He probably ran into those vigilante guys and got duffed up a bit. He’ll be too embarrassed to go home.’

‘Chloe . . .’

‘Not. My. Problem.’

Was it possible? Could it be that Wilson really had run away from Carl straight into that group of men and got himself into trouble that way?

I thought about them, standing around near the camper van in the Asda car park. They were cold, and lazy, and there to get their pictures taken and rant a bit to the journos, and then go home and get a pat on the back from their wives and girlfriends. I bet they’d spent more time on the sign on the side of the van than they had on the actual search. It wasn’t likely they’d actually find the flasher, not like Terry was saying.

And if they did find someone, what would they do to him? Rough him up a bit, certainly, but kill him? These were adults Terry was talking about. A community action group he’d endorsed himself. It wasn’t possible. But I knew, one way or the other, Wilson had never made it out of those woods. And I knew, and the knowledge was sneaking into my gut like cold water, that it wasn’t the group of lazy vigilantes we’d seen in the Asda car park that day who were going to be held responsible – but that it was me, Chloe and Carl.

‘We shouldn’t have to take the blame for something Carl did,’ I said.

Chloe turned her head and looked at me. ‘
I
never spoke to him.
You
were the one getting cosy with him.
You
were the one that went off into the woods with him.’

‘We were looking for his ball.’

Chloe snorted.

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘He was talking about tits, and jailbait. Course it was like that.’

‘Don’t be stupid. We’ve got to say. We saw him last. Carl scared the shit out of him. Look, I’ve got this poster.’ I pulled the hard triangle out of my pocket and started to unfold it but Chloe knocked it out of my hand.

‘Take that away,’ she said suddenly, ‘it’s nothing to do with us.’

‘If we went to the police now,’ I said, ‘you’d get to go on the television. We could say, if you like, that you talked to him last instead of me. Then they’d definitely want to interview you. You’d probably get to go on Terry’s show.’

I remembered I’d tried this with her once before when I was trying to convince her to report the flasher. She hadn’t listened to me then, but it was worth a try. Everyone knew Chloe would love to go on the telly.

‘No,’ she said.

Chloe continued to inspect the frayed ends of her hair.

‘Carl did something to him,’ I said. ‘I know he’s your boyfriend and it’s not your fault he’s done something daft, but you can’t let yourself be dragged down with him.’

‘Never mind about Carl,’ she said. She started playing with the charm bracelet on her wrist, twisting it around and around, as if she was giving herself a Chinese burn. Charm bracelet. A charmed life.

‘You just don’t want Nathan and Amanda to know about him,’ I said, and huffed, ‘that’s so selfish.’

‘Fuck off,’ Chloe said. She helped herself to another soft centre. Her eyelashes were sticky and she was chewing rapidly. ‘I told you he was a perv,’ she said, and started picking at the raw skin around her fingernails.

‘He wasn’t,’ I insisted.

Chloe laughed and looked away from me. ‘They all are,’ she said, and shook her head as if the thoughts were cobwebs clinging to her hair.

‘He just liked chatting to people.’

She shook her head again. ‘He should talk to people his own age,’ she said, and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘It’s weird. Chatting girls up.’

There was something I wanted to say – a thought or a feeling that I couldn’t grab onto quick enough. For Wilson, Chloe and me and girls like us were just the right age – the same age that he felt he was. He’d have no more wanted anything to do with girls his own age than we would have wanted to socialise with our fathers’ friends. But the idea was foggy so I said nothing, and Chloe took it for agreement.

‘I bet he was watching me and Carl in the car,’ Chloe said, ‘probably having a wank behind a hedge the whole time. He took you off into the bushes, talked about your tits.’ She lifted her thumb to her lips and bit. I’ve seen her tear strips of skin away from the flesh with her teeth, and lick away the blood without flinching. She would never dream of biting her fingernails and spoiling her nail polish, but she chewed at her skin until her school books were covered with bloody fingerprints.

‘No,’ I said, ‘no. I think we should say something. You’re just trying to keep Carl out of trouble. It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that.’

Chloe turned in the bed quickly, and tucked her knees under her. I heard her joints cracking.

‘Shut up about Carl!’ she said, too loudly. The woman in the bed opposite her stared, put a finger over her mouth and shushed. Chloe smiled back until she had her full attention and then slowly mouthed the the f-word at her.

‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in defending him all of a sudden,’ she said. ‘Why would you even care? He’s nothing to us. Not unless something did go on in the woods . . . eh?’ She giggled, and carried on in a low, regular voice that it was impossible to interrupt or ignore. When Chloe gets onto something, she won’t let it go.

‘Are you
that
desperate for a boyfriend? I knew you were jealous, but I didn’t know it was that bad. Shanks not giving you the cheap thrills anymore? I saw you, peeping through the car window to see what me and Carl were up to. Did you tell him to take you into the woods and give you a fingering? Did you like it? Did you get a Mong to pop your cherry and now you’re feeling bad about it?’

‘All right, girls?’ We heard Amanda before we saw her, clicking along the corridor and complimenting the nurses on the Christmas decorations in the ward – ‘Very festive!’ Before she took her seat beside Chloe, she leaned over the television and changed the channel. Terry had gone out in a crescendo of theme tune and left Fiona listing the schools that were closed due to the bad weather. No one complained.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Chloe said.

‘He had to go back to the office. Something there that needed dealing with.’ Amanda’s eyes were red and it embarrassed me to look at her. ‘He said he’d call by tomorrow morning, and he sent his love.’

Chloe looked at me knowingly and laughed.

‘He said he’d leave me some money for some more magazines.’

‘Did he? Oh, I don’t think—’

‘Did you get my pop?’

Chloe held her hand out, a little white paw. Amanda put a bottle of fizzy water into it.

‘That’ll have to do. You know the doctor says you’ve to lay off it – stick to water until everything’s clear.’

Chloe took a deep breath, was about to start – I could see it coming. And something came over me.

‘Oh,’ I said slowly, ‘a urinary tract infection.’ Amanda nodded.

‘Well, I bet that’s a weight off your mind,’ I said. ‘You were really scared, weren’t you?’ I turned my back on Chloe. ‘She thought she was going to get in all kinds of trouble.’

My hands, still in my lap, were trembling. Too late to stop now though. Amanda was staring at me.

‘What do you mean, trouble? She wouldn’t get in trouble for getting
ill
,’ Amanda said.

‘She thought Carl might have given her something,’ I said brightly. I remembered the word on the inside of the toilet door, and heard Chloe’s teeth grinding.

‘Chlamydia. Unwanted pregnancy. Something like that. But an infection, well, that’s nothing, is it? Did she get it from Carl, or could she not narrow it down that much?’

I stood up, pulled the collar of my jacket up against my neck and put my chair neatly at the end of the bed.

‘Who’s Carl?’ Amanda said, with a little less enthusiasm, and not looking at me. Chloe went red, and squirmed in the bed, but attached to that drip, she couldn’t go anywhere.

‘Some lad,’ I said, and edged away. ‘He’s all right. He’s got a really nice car.’

‘Car?’ Amanda said faintly. She reached up and pulled at one of her earrings. I’d forgotten to check, but I noticed them then, twirling under her fingers: black enamelled cats wearing red and white Santa hats and clutching mistletoe above their heads in the end of their tails. The berries on the mistletoe glittered. Glass, or cubic zirconia.

What made me do that? I knew better than anyone else that the game was there to be played – there was no half-time, the rules were set in stone and no one ever, ever got a second chance.

There were two full years of school before I met Chloe. Years when I was bumped and jostled. My bag thrown down the stairwells. The boys did that, and it wasn’t too bad. The girls would come up to me, concerned. Touch my arm gently, and smile. Tell me, in a hushed voice, that there was a spot of blood on the back of my skirt and did I know about it. Every day. Sometimes twice a day. You couldn’t ignore something like that. It was impossible not to put your hand up, ask to go to the toilet. Slide the bolt closed in the cubicle, pull everything down with trembling hands and check. Then the long slow trip back to the classroom – teachers asking me if I had a gastric condition amid girls’ laughter smothered only by the shining curtains of their hair.
Always Maxi
scrawled on in red felt-tip pen, and stuck to the back of my jumper by their adhesive wings.