Cold Light Read Online Free PDF

cheap vodka and onions, or unwashed knickers and yesterday’s Stella Artois.
    ‘You already got blamed,’ she said. ‘You should get something out of it.’
    That’s the way her mind works. Emma likes to go on walks and let down people’s tyres or break off their wing mirrors as a kind of revenge because she thinks cars are killing the planet. She’s got a WWF badge and an embroidered rainbow on the lapel of her jacket. She’s got a car, but she makes up for it by only driving when she’s a bit pissed, covering the rust with Greenpeace stickers, and volunteering for things. She’s shy of people but she cares about plants and animals. She hates men and she’s angry at everything.
    ‘If I get pulled in for shoplifting, I’ll get the sack,’ I said.
    When I think about work, I hear the piped music, the squeak of squeegee against the glass lift doors. See green plastic plants sunk in a pot of what looks like brown baked beans, but is really just polystyrene painted to look like pebbles. It’s not much. It’s home.
    ‘I need my job.’
    Emma shrugged. She doesn’t have a job other than the kinds of volunteering that you can’t get sacked from, so it doesn’t matter to her.
    ‘Let’s go then,’ she said, and made a clucking noise under her breath as I squeezed past her to get out of my seat. She moved and her saucer tipped, sending grains of sugar pattering to the marble-effect floor. ‘We’ll find a pub.’
    It wasn’t as easy as that. We stopped again for another look in Women’s Accessories. That was where it had happened. She insisted it was time to face up to my past.
    ‘Look,’ she said, and plucked a red and white chiffon scarf from a basket on the counter, swished it through the air like a streamer, and then wound it around her hand. She was laughing, and someone passed between us and frowned. Emma’s got brown teeth because she smokes hundreds of roll-ups a day. She stinks. My hair, when it’s not folded into a knot and covered up with the crocheted hat, is a matted dark swirl of damp and sweatsmelling curls. We don’t do make-up. I’ve got acne scars and Emma’s always running with cold sores.
    We’re not the kind of girls we used to be.
    I watched Emma twirling but I never caught the moment when she made the streamer disappear, or how it got from her pocket to mine. Some sleight of hand. A knack, a magic trick. Chloe will have shown her it. A familiar spark of jealousy. How come Emma got to know that, and not me?

Chapter 5
    A morning sometime in the winter before she died. The three of us went into town; it must have been before Christmas because the daft music was playing in all the shops and the tinsel in every window made my eyes ache. Town was so busy that I kept losing them – chasing them between racks of clothes and shoes that seemed to grow and divide and close in on me like a dream while my eyes itched with tears because I couldn’t help but feel the two of them were doing it on purpose, and really wanted me to go away.
    ‘Come on, Lola!’
    I followed them around the shopping centre – it was as if they had a list. Jessops, Superdrug, Wilkinson. Emma was wearing a cardigan that belonged to Chloe – a pale blue thing that crossed over at the front and tied at the waist with a ribbon. It was too delicate for her square, broad shoulders. She was taller than me and Chloe. I thought about how unfeminine that was and wondered if she’d stayed over at Chloe’s last night.
    ‘Are you coming, or not?’
    Carl was going to meet us in the multi-storey car park over the bus station. He was right at the top, and we went up to him in the lift. It smelled weird in there, like bleach and piss and the thin chicken soup you could buy in plastic cups from the vending machines in the bus station. The doors were painted orange and slid shut with a rickety clank that was not reassuring.
    ‘Are you sure he’s going to be there, Chloe?’ Emma said. ‘If I’m not home by three my dad’ll