He’s still there, in the drizzle. She studiously avoids his gaze, hurries past as though she’s not registered his presence at all. She can feel his eyes boring into her back as she strides up the road towards the launderette, bin bag in one hand, suitcase dragging behind her, the dogs’ leads hitched over her arm, but he says nothing.
5 p.m.
‘What do we do? What do we do?’
‘Shut up. Shut up. Let me think.’
They stare at the body.
‘She’s stopped bleeding.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it? She’s not bleeding. Maybe she’s…’
‘No,’ says Bel. ‘I don’t think so.’
Jade looks down at her hands, as if she’s never seen them before. As if they’ve suddenly been attached to her by magic. She wipes one – mud, blood, river weed – on her skirt, then sees that she’s just made it worse.
‘Fuck,’ she says.
It looks like someone’s stolen the scarecrow from the top field and dumped it at the water’s edge. Floppy, dirty, torn.
‘Chloe?’ says Bel, tentatively, though she knows it’s no use. She pokes at her with a toe.
‘Oh shit,’ says Jade, ‘I’m going to be in so much trouble.’
Bel’s head snaps up. ‘Shut up. Just shut up. Who cares about you? Who cares? Look at her.’
Jade looks again, then bends down and lifts a floppy arm by the wrist, watches it drop like dough into the mud when she lets go.
‘Chloe?’ She echoes Bel, as though the name were an incantation, as though it will restore life if they say it often enough. There’s a big gash in her scalp. It has barely bled. Don’t, don’t, don’t, she thinks. People don’t just die like this. Not when we hardly did anything. My nana took six months to die, up in the back bedroom; we could hear it every step of the way. How could she die so quickly? ‘Chloe?’ she says again.
The anger has drained from Bel’s face, leaving her as pale as ashes beneath her suntan. Jade notices the smattering of freckles across her nose; that ugly mole standing out like an ink blot. She goes to try the hand again. Bel grabs her wrist.
‘Don’t.’
‘We have to see,’ says Jade. ‘We can’t just leave her.’
Chloe lies like a rag doll, her legs still in the water. Bel feels as though she’s wallowing beneath the surface. Jade’s voice comes to her distantly, through the sound of rolling waves. She looks again at the small body, its face pressed into the riverbank where they turned it in a last despairing hope that the water would somehow drain out. ‘Let’s turn her over,’ she says.
It’s worse when they can see her face. They know she’s really dead now. There’s mud, got into her eyes. They lie open, unblinking, staring at the sun through a film of dirty brown. The face is a mosaic of mud and gravel, of leaves and tiny petals; a string of duckweed tangled in hair that itself resembles weeds and string.
Oh God, her eyes, thinks Jade. I will remember this. I won’t forget this, the way her eyes look, for the rest of my life.
Chapter Fifteen
He is giddy with outrage, white-hot in the head and unsteady on his feet. His brain seethes as he strides down London Road from the Wordsworth to the centre of town, his vision so impaired by the tunnelling effect of adrenalin that twice he lurches on the pavement and feels the scrape of his nylon sleeve against the plate-glass windows of sleeping shops. Amber Gordon. That fucking bitch Amber Gordon. Who does she think she is? And she pretended she didn’t even know me.
It’s all clear to him now, clear as day. Amber Gordon is the reason why Jackie has cut him off. She’s Jackie’s boss, he remembers that. And she’s Vic Cantrell’s – something. Because there’s no way that hard-faced bitch could fool anyone that a man like Vic is interested in her for anything other than what he can get from her. You just have to look at her standing next to him – the cheap dye job, the leather jacket that must be twenty years old, that fucking mole in the middle of her face – to know that they’re a mismatch.
But Jackie? He understands now; at least partially. Jackie’s weak, she’s greedy, she’s a coward – but the power behind the throne is Amber fucking Gordon.
His blood has turned to ice. He elbows his way through the queue outside DanceAttack, barely hears the cries of protest that follow in his wake. I hate her, he thinks. She’s not worthy. I don’t know why I ever thought she was.
The girls are out in force tonight: another Whitmouth party night. Blond and black and neon-red, their hair is piled up, hauled straight, built out and supplemented. They swish improbable nylon tresses into his face as he passes, clutch Primark purses to diamanté belly buttons, slip credit cards deep into their padded bras for safekeeping. And as usual he is invisible. All these girls, looking for excitement, and not one of them so much as glances at him.
Who is she? Who the fuck is she? Who the fuck does she think she is?
He despises her, now he knows. She’s not his chance at salvation: she’s a weak, greedy slag. I don’t know why I ever thought that she was different, he thinks. I need my head examining.
She has to pay, he thinks, though he’s not sure which ‘she’ he’s thinking of. I have to make her pay.
He’s too wound up, his muscles aching with adrenalin, to go home, to lock himself inside those enclosing walls and pace the cluttered floor while the party goes on outside. He feels isolated enough on a normal night; on a night like this he feels like it will drive him mad. He’s uncomfortably aware that his rage has given him a flabby, half-hearted erection. It throbs awkwardly against the front of his trousers as he walks, anorak-pocketed hands crossed in front of him to hide it from the people who are no more looking at him than they are wondering what their mothers would say if they saw them now. His temples pump with frustration, with rejection, with rage. He can’t go home. The walls won’t let him breathe.
He checks the contents of his pocket, finds fifteen pounds and a handful of change. Not enough for any of the nightclubs – even Stardust is twelve pounds to get into these days, and a glass of Coke alone costs three. I’ll get some chips, he thinks, and take them up on the war memorial. It’s quiet on Mare Street at this time of night. Maybe if I’m there long enough, the noise will have died down a bit by the time I get home. And if Tanqueray Tina is up in her usual spot, I might be able to parlay something out of my tenner.
At the death-burger van he buys a saveloy, its brazen tumescence mocking the half-formed thing inside his Y-fronts, to go with his chips, snatches up a chip fork, a little devil’s prong of plywood, and a handful of napkins and hurries off across the Corniche.
Mare Street, as he had expected, is almost silent, the sounds of the crowds behind him quickly fading away to film-soundtrack level. Now the centre of town has been pedestrianised, the road leads effectively nowhere, and no one much comes up here once the shops have closed. He idles his way along the pavement, feeling the heat of his food emanate through its polystyrene tray, and turns the corner into Fore Street, suddenly longing for the salt-and-stodge mouth-feel of fried potato. He stops by the old horse trough and pulls open an edge of the bag. He won’t unwrap it fully now; hates the sight of people eating while they walk. He just needs to get it open enough to access a morsel or two.