Cold Light (30 page)

‘You have to write about your method,’ Chloe said. ‘You can’t fuck up on this. It isn’t possible. So long as you write about what you did, what you used, and what you thought was going to happen, you’ll get the marks, even if you end up blowing something up.’

I had stacked the big ice cubes into a tower while she was talking to me. Then I started to pour salt on the top one. The salt wore a dint into it. The dint filled with water, then overflowed. The overflowing water solidified again on its way down. It made the tower less wobbly than it had been before.

‘That’s all right,’ I said, poking at it with my finger.

‘You have to write about how you’re going to apply it. You can’t just mess about.’ Chloe’s teeth were chattering. I thought about ways to apply it, this stupid tower of ice – this useless thing that I’d made and now had to explain and assign a value to. It made me think about Donald. I wanted to kick the ice tower over, to shatter the cubes into fragments. He did it all for me, and that wasn’t fair. I didn’t ask him to. It’s too much to put on another person’s shoulders – to expect me to be happy all the time just to keep Donald on an even keel. I leaned back and kicked the tower. It hurt my foot, right through the toe of my trainer. The blocks broke apart, flew through the air and plopped onto the grass.

‘What did you do that for?’ Chloe’s shoulders were shaking, even though she was more bundled up than I was. It was because she was so thin. ‘Don’t dick about,’ she said irritably. ‘I spent ages doing this.’

The ice was harder to get out of the roasting tins because they wouldn’t bend like the plastic seed trays had. I put them upside down on the grass and stood on them with one foot. There was a sound, something between a snap and a squeak. When I pulled the metal tray away it was dented and the ice was in pieces.

‘I wonder if you can cut yourself on it,’ I said, looking at the hard edges and not wanting to touch. It looked like glass, bubbled and broken, but it wasn’t glass.

‘I’m fucking freezing,’ Chloe said, and we went in to burn her Brazil nuts.

What should I say now? I didn’t talk to her enough? I talked to her too much? I couldn’t get her to listen to me and understand that things would be much better for us both if we’d have confided in each other?

I was fourteen. She was my best friend.

And now it is Emma who I am sitting up late at night with, in something that is nowhere near a companionable silence. I want to ask her if Chloe talked to her about the things that were on her mind – the things she did not tell her mother and would not tell me. I want to ask Emma if Chloe let her listen to the message on her phone – if they laughed over it, or discussed a plan of action. I want to tell Emma that I still talk to Chloe. That I toast her in the early hours. That now I have to try all the things she should have done first, and I have to do it on my own.

I have a pink and white mug I bought for her three years ago and sometimes I bring it out of the cupboard and hold it between my hands like the stem of a posy.

‘Here,’ I say, offer it out to the dark and try to believe in ghosts. Nothing ever happens. Chloe isn’t here and Chloe has never left the City.

Later, we were standing behind the greenhouse, hiding between the wall and the panes of cloudy glass. Smoking.

‘I know you’re still seeing Carl – don’t pretend like you aren’t.’

Chloe turned her back to me quickly and shook her head so hard that her ponytail hit the sides of her neck.

‘I’m not,’ she said, in a strange, muffled voice. Usually, when she was lying, she liked you to know that she was lying. Not that there was a big secret to keep, but that something was going on and you just weren’t quite important enough to know about it. Or she’d withhold, to extend the pleasure of the questioning for as long as possible.

‘I don’t want anything to do with him,’ she said, and she sounded like she had something in her mouth.

My hands had gone past cold from playing with the ice, and past sore, and into numb. The skin on my fingers felt like rubber – like it was nothing to do with me at all. As I was wondering what it would be like to have a whole body like that – even tongue and eyes, the warmth in my blood started to prickle back into them and they began to hurt. That seemed more important – that pain in my fingers – than the conversation I was trying to have with Chloe.

‘I know you have,’ I said. ‘You’re talking shite.’

‘What?’ Chloe blew her smoke at the iced panes of glass, melting a little circle. She watched the steam and smoke bounce off the surface and didn’t look at me. Her eyes were sly, slitty. I could see her eyelashes brushing her cheeks – clumped together with cheap mascara.

‘What do you know?’ she said, but when she turned and looked at me, her face was red.

‘You’ve been staying out all night with him,’ I said. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said. It wasn’t lazy – usually she didn’t care if I believed her or not, and usually I didn’t bother so much. But this time she was shaking her head, and insisting.

‘I think you have. Out in his car at night. In the woods.’

I exhaled a cloud of my own smoke. Didn’t try for a ring.

‘No.’

‘Your mum thinks you’ve been sleeping at mine,’ I said, ‘keeping me company. Comforting me.’

I could smell her. After her shower she’d put fresh perfume and make-up on, but got back into her old clothes. She smelled yeasty and musty – dirty knickers and airing cupboards and bathmats, with a choking cover-up of White Musk. It was so weird. Chloe was obsessive about outfits, and hygiene.

‘All right,’ Chloe said, and dug the cigarette into the gravel with her toe, burying it. ‘I’ve been staying out. So what?’

I pulled the Polos out of my pocket. Only two left, both of them broken.

‘Have one of these,’ I said. ‘You can talk to me about anything.’

She shook her head. ‘They’ll make me sick,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if she smells the smoke on me.’

‘I’m your best friend, aren’t I?’ I said, still holding out the mints.

She smiled and took one just to please me, put it in her mouth and I could see the scale on her teeth and she sucked it hard, so her cheeks puckered and her eyes popped, like she was trying to make me laugh.

‘Best friends,’ she said, ‘but there’s nothing to tell.’

‘Where have you been going at night?’

‘Carl’s, of course,’ she said lightly.

‘You can’t have been,’ I said. ‘His mother. He’d never take you back to his house.’

‘His mother’s sick,’ Chloe said. ‘She doesn’t know what’s going on. Carl hammered a sheet of wood over the window in the box room and she never even noticed.’

‘The darkroom?’

Chloe smiled. ‘Nearly finished. I’ve been helping him.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

She shrugged, and smiled at me. ‘You’re going to get to see it soon. Come on,’ she said, ‘it’s too cold. Let’s go in.’

Chloe and I crossed the garden without speaking, sucking on the mints and marching past the ice – the cracked edges and triangular shapes melting into lumps where I’d put the salt on them. We went into the kitchen. She stood at the counter and started sweeping nuts and pieces of burned paper into the bin.

I tried again.

‘I want to go back to that pond,’ I said. ‘Carl’s going to have to take us in the car. I want to go and look again.’

‘Why?’ Chloe said, and shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve already been out there once.’

Her voice was high and cracked. She carried on shaking her head, in a slow thoughtful arc, even after she’d finished speaking.

‘I want you to come with me. You’re supposed to be my best friend.’

‘No point,’ she said, more quietly.

‘I want you to come. I think he’s under the ice. I can’t sleep for thinking about it.’

‘Why?’ she said again. ‘Why are you so obsessed with that idea?’ She turned her back on me to wring out a cloth aggressively under the tap. ‘You’re messed up in the head, you are.’

‘It’s like Carl said. It was me, wasn’t it? I told him people went skating on the ice,’ I said. ‘I told him it was a laugh. I said we did it all the time.’

‘We’ve never been skating on that ice,’ Chloe said. Her lips were flaking and cracked, and she licked them nervously. Where was her gloss?

‘I know,’ I said irritably. It was hard, trying to argue with her in a low voice, while Amanda was ironing in front of the television just through the archway. ‘I was just . . .’ What was I supposed to tell her? Making things up to impress a Mong? ‘. . . making conversation.’

‘So?’ Chloe shrugged.

‘So what if he did? What if he went through?’

‘It’d be his own stupid fault,’ Chloe said, decisively. ‘Just because you mentioned it doesn’t mean you forced him to do it.’

‘You’ve changed your tune.’

She was certain. I stared at her. Her eyelid twitched slightly and she took her hair from behind her ear and started to twirl it around her fingers. It found its way into her mouth, and she sucked it into a spike. She was so certain it made me doubt myself.

‘We’re not going to see anything you haven’t already seen,’ Chloe said. ‘You should just forget about it.’

‘I want to go and see.’

‘He’s not there.’ Her hands twitched towards a tea-towel on the draining board. ‘Can’t you just trust me?’ Chloe stared at me. I just shook my head and pulled the tea-towel away from her.

‘You should just trust
me
,’ I said.

‘You’ll just have to wait until the spring, won’t you? See what pops up when it thaws out.’

‘I want you and Carl to come, just to double-check. We’ll be there and back in an hour if he drives us.’

‘He’s not going to want to do that,’ Chloe said evenly. ‘He’s busy trying to get this darkroom finished.’ She pulled the teatowel gently through my fingers, spat out her hair and bent her head to scrub at the worktop.

‘It’s Valentine’s Day soon. Tell him he has to take you out, has to drive you wherever you want before you’ll shag him. Tell him you deserve a treat, and that’s the only thing you want. You can talk to him,’ I said.

I spoke more loudly than I needed to, and Amanda popped her head through the arch and smiled at us. She saw Chloe wiping the counter.

‘Good girls,’ she said, ‘but don’t waste your Saturday afternoon cleaning up in here, will you?’

Chloe ignored her and she looked hurt and went back into the living room. I wanted to tell Amanda how it worked. To ignore back. To pretend Chloe didn’t exist. She’d grow up and pack it in soon enough if we all did that. If we all did it, if everyone in the world pretended like Chloe did not exist, she’d probably die.

Amanda was watching
Countdown
and every now and again she would laugh at the programme, and the steam would come hissing out of the iron.

‘I wish you’d shut up about it,’ Chloe said, ‘you don’t know what you’re playing at.’

‘You’ll ask him though, won’t you?’ I said, and she ducked her head, and then nodded slowly.

‘I’ll ask him. I’ll get him to take us. But don’t talk to anyone else about it. There’s nothing in it. We’re only going to make you feel better.’

‘Tell him you’re humouring me, because I’m bereaved,’ I said, and Chloe looked at me, almost shocked, but saw me smiling and laughed.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ll do that. You look like shit. I
am
humouring you because you’re bereaved.’

‘I want to go home now. So you’ll ask your dad to give me a lift back?’

Chloe dropped the tea-towel into the sink and wiped her hands on the front of her jeans.

‘I’ll come in the car with you,’ she said, and her eyelid started to twitch again.

Chapter 26

It is still dark and the cameras remain with Terry. He’s standing away from the bank of the pond where the forensic tent is a pale oblong behind the shadows of the trees.

The crowd is growing as quickly and silently as dividing bacteria. They push against the yellow tape the police have strung between the trees. They are stamping their feet and puffing hot air into cupped hands. They move together, one man’s mouth at another’s ear. I stare until my eyes feel gritty. These are the hard-core fans: thirty or forty people in anoraks with their hoods up, or duffel coats, or sports jackets with bright, reflective panels. These are the people who follow Terry when he is off-duty, who think they are his friends, who appear like ghosts over and over again in the background of his on-location shots. Some of these people will be his ex-vigilantes from the late nineties and their faces are all the same: solemn, with wide, hungry eyes that track Terry as he moves up and down the tape cordon that separates him from them. He shakes hands over it like the Queen and he nods when they speak, but we at home can’t hear anything because they’re doing the voiceover bit again.

‘It was supposed to be a private ceremony. Close family only, plus media partners and business sponsors.
We
weren’t even invited.’

Emma’s outraged voice in the dim quiet of my sitting room shocks me. I look at her, but she’s frowning at the television.

‘I think it’s gone past that now,’ I say.

My glass is empty and I wedge it between my thighs, testing the pressure – not sure if I want it to shatter or not.

‘Something’s happened,’ she says. ‘Look, they’re moving.’

The wood was such a dark, quiet place the last time I was there. No one but me, Carl and Chloe wandering along the path and laughing at how often we tripped. Now it’s an outdoor studio, and the black bowl of the sky is stained with the spotlights from the camera crew.

A mortuary van rolls along the footpath, its wide tyres crushing the shrubs and scattering the undergrowth in a soft hail of snapped twigs and torn leaves. The engine thrums gently and there’s a shuffling, a ripple across the crowd of people waiting as they sigh and reorder themselves. Terry is out of shot, and the van can’t get near enough to the tent where the exhumed body is because of the trees. So it stops and two men in navy boiler suits jump out.

The pair move slowly round to the back of the van, open the double doors and bring out a plastic stretcher without a blanket. There’s a gasp, as if no one knew that they’d come to collect the body. There’s some pointing and head-shaking and the police officers move the tape and divide the onlookers to let them through. They don’t unfold the stretcher, but carry it under their arms like a ladder and move along the path cleared through the crowd and marked out by the yellow tape. Heads bowed, and towards the white tent. No rush.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel real.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who’s to say that they aren’t actors? Don’t you think it’s all just too perfect? It looks like an episode of
Silent Witness
.’

‘What would you expect it to look like?’ she says vaguely, and refuses to bring her eyes away from the screen. She chews on the cuff off her coat absently. It’s an old habit, that.

‘Do you remember when we did our interviews?’ I say. ‘They filmed us, didn’t they?’

Emma screws up her nose. ‘Not for the telly though.’

‘No, but it’s creepy to think of it, isn’t it? What we said still being on record somewhere. Some tape in an archive. Don’t you ever wonder what they’re going to do with it?’

She finally looks at me. ‘I never think about it.’

‘I do,’ I say, and swallow. ‘I wonder, sometimes, if they were asking you and me the same things, and comparing our stories.’

Emma coughs decisively and pulls her tobacco out of her pocket. The movement is enough to declare the topic of conversation closed.

‘I think it’s disgusting,’ she says, hunched over the packet, ‘all those people. This is Chloe’s night. We’re her friends, not them.’

‘It’s not that,’ I say, half-amused when it strikes me that she could just as easily be talking about party crashers at a birthday or wedding reception, ‘it’s Terry. There’s always a crowd like this when he does on-location stuff. He’s not been able to do his own shopping for years.’

‘They should be sent home,’ Emma says. ‘It’s disrespectful.’

The men carrying the stretcher disappear between the trees. The police return to move the tape back and the crowd gathers to fill the space. The shot cuts to a view from above – they’ve got the helicopter out. There’s a wide red van in the car park – as big as a tour bus, and the paintwork is so clean and glossy it is almost glowing. This van is painted with the logo of Terry’s programme on the side of it and it has a set of aerials and dishes sticking out of the top. It looks like it’s had acupuncture. They’ve set up a mobile studio, and Terry is settling in for the night.

There he is. In front of the van, in his furry hat, with bags under his eyes. He’s been there hours. Got to do something to break up the monotony.

‘We’re busy taking calls,’ Terry says. ‘We want to know what you think. The number is on the bottom of your screen right now. Dial that number and tell me what’s on your mind. We know you’re keen to share, and we’ve already got our first caller. Paul?’

‘Terry, I just wanted to say that I went out with the dog tonight, just to give him a walk, and that big poster of you on Blackpool Road – you know the one on the billboard with your thumbs sticking up?’

‘I do, Paul, yes.’

‘Well, someone’s gone and torn it down. Or it wasn’t stuck up properly in the first place. There’s bits of it all over the road.’

‘A spot of anti-Terry vandalism, or should we say, community-based direct action?’ Terry says, and smiles, right through the television screen. There’s a beat or two of silence, and then the smile turns into a slow laugh that doesn’t get to his eyes.

‘Well, whatever you want to call it, I think it’s a disgrace, and come the bit of rain we’re forecast tomorrow morning, could turn out to be a health hazard. What if some young couple skids off the road on some mashed-up paper? Do you think it’s going to be any comfort to their kids that the accident happened because of a picture of your face?’

‘Quite so, and I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ Terry says. ‘And anything else, Paul, on this evening’s main topic? What’s your opinion about the events of the past ten hours? What are your
feelings
?’ Terry touches his ear and leans into the screen. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Well, it’s just like this, isn’t it, Terry? How long’s it been there? They’re never going to find out who did it, until they find out when it was done, if you catch my drift. That’s what they’ve got to set about first, isn’t it?’

‘You’re speaking about the unfortunate – the body?’

‘Sure,’ Paul says, and his voice is warm again – amused and friendly. ‘My kids play in that park. I take the dog out there. What I want to know is, how long has it been there, and how long till they get it shifted?’

‘Forensics are working on that right now, Paul,’ Terry says. There’s a twitch in his left nostril. ‘In fact, they are
shifting it
, as we speak, and I’ll personally pass on your thanks for their sterling efforts tonight. The forensics team is very possibly the least visible and most under-appreciated echelon of our police service, and I know for a fact they’d be grateful you’re thinking of them at this time.’

He sighs, too visibly, and reads out the number at the bottom of the screen again. ‘Remember,’ he says, ‘while we want to hear from you all, we’re particularly interested in those of you who knew the deceased personally. Those of you with a story to tell about what he might have been doing with himself in these woods when he died.’

Paul is still speaking.

Suddenly, the camera snaps back to the studio. Fiona is there – working a double shift but looking as fresh as she did when she stepped out of Make-up yesterday afternoon. Not a hair out of place and her eyes are as bright as ever. She smiles and it is perfect and blinding.

‘Later,’ she says warmly, ‘we’ll be interviewing the men who run the forensics department at the hospital. Real-life
CSI
, and bringing you the facts in small words that you’ll understand.’ She squints slightly, her hand moves to her ear. I bet Terry or one of his lackeys is shouting at her. ‘But for the time being,’ she says, ‘back to Terry, who’s still on location at Cuerden. Terry?’

Terry’s red in the face and his mouth is twisted – he’s apoplectic, in fact, at the interruption. For a moment the screen is split like a Lynda La Plante adaptation and we at home can see the two of them – him outside in the mud and the cold, and her curled up on the couch in the studio wearing a suit that is perfectly coordinated with it. He does not acknowledge her on the other half of the television but makes a snapping gesture with the flat of his hand – she disappears, and he carries on as if she never existed.

‘Remember, Paul, Rome wasn’t built in a day and perfection takes patience!’ He jerks his jaw to someone off screen. ‘Next caller, please! We’ve got Peggy, here, from New Hall Lane. Peggy – what do you want to say?’

There’s a pause – too much dead air for a live broadcast, and they are seconds away from moving on to the next call when there’s a crackle on the line and Peggy starts to speak. I can’t hear what she’s saying because she’s sobbing, and the catarrh is rattling in her throat and her own telephone, as well as the equipment in the portable news studio, is amplifying the bubbling, popping sound she is making between every word.

‘Peggy,’ Terry says gently, ‘take your time. I’m listening. We’re all listening. This is a hard night for us all. Did you – do you believe you know the deceased?’

He’s hoping for an exclusive and not a lonely crackpot who’s had too many Babychams and managed to dial the studio’s number. He’s hoping she’s going to make some kind of confession, live on air – you can almost see the awards and the plaudits glittering in think-bubbles over his head.

‘When you’re ready, my love.’

He may be rehearsing the possibilities but he knows his game – he doesn’t smile, doesn’t rush her; he looks solemnly at us all through the clank of the digging machinery and the increasing tempo of her sobbing.

‘It’s just so . . . ugh ugh ugh, so
tragic
,’ Peggy splutters. ‘She was so young! Does anyone know, has anyone thought to ask, if they’re still going to be able to build the little memorial for her? I thought it was such a lovely idea.’

There’s a pause while she blows her nose, deafeningly, into the telephone. Terry does not visibly flinch.

‘A Wendy house for her friends to play in.’

I glance at Emma and she’s wet-eyed: sorrow is still as contagious as plague, and this woman is forgetting that while Chloe is still fourteen, the rest of us are knocking on twenty-five and long past playing in dens in the woods.

‘Thank God it wasn’t one of us,’ Emma says, and I ignore her.

‘Ah,’ Terry says, and bows his head for a moment, ‘a timely reminder to those of us who are caught up in the drama of the night.’ He looks piercingly at the camera. ‘This is no soap opera, friends – this is a real-life memorial to a teenage girl.’ They cut to a montage of shots taken around the City in the days leading up to Chloe’s funeral. The cards and stuffed bears. The drifts of browning flowers. Terry does not stop talking. He writes his own autocue, apparently.

‘A teenage girl who loved so deeply, and so completely, that she felt no other option but to end her life alongside her forbidden lover. Ten years has passed – which is why we’re here tonight. Let’s take a moment of silence to reflect on that and – as Peggy has reminded us – return our focus to Chloe, departed, not forgotten, and loved in death as much as she ever loved in life.’

The minute’s silence, the second of the evening, is the opportunity to show the jingle from the chocolate sponsor and cut to the adverts. Emma stands up and goes into the bathroom. She’s hunched, and the back of her shirt is darkened with sweat between the shoulder blades. I think, just for a second, about following her in there.

That is what is supposed to happen, isn’t it? Girls go to the toilets in pairs. She’s supposed to cry and I am supposed to hold her and say some comforting things, pass her loo paper and help her fix her mascara. Reassure her, before we emerge into the glare of the screen in the sitting room, that she looks fine, that it isn’t a problem, that no one thinks she’s stupid. I mute the television and listen to the water running for a few seconds, then go into the kitchenette to make coffee.

This evening is turning into another Chloe-thon. Terry asked Peggy about the body in the present tense – ‘
Do you believe you know the deceased?
’ – and I think about it, think about how Wilson is still here, not dead at all, not to his parents, not to anyone who misses him and is still waiting for him to come home. Not to Terry, who always refused to believe, despite the last two attacks, that it was not Wilson who was stalking us. I wonder, not for the first time, if Wilson’s parents were watching when the mayor started to dig. If they were feeling the sickly churning of anticipation that I’ve been feeling in my stomach all night.

The present tense is full of possibilities: a future is bolted on to it like time is a row of railway carriages flicking through a train station, one after the other after the other. Now the body has been identified that possibility has been cut off and worse than that, Wilson’s mum and dad, wherever they are, are going to know that it never really existed and didn’t all the years they were hoping for it.