Cold Light

I'm sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There s Chloe s parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It's ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they ve finally chosen a memorial a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he s started to dig.You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.This is the tale of three fourteen-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth s gripping novel captures the intensity of girls friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world is willing to let sentiment get in the way of the truth.