The Last Breath Of Reggie Warrington

Chapter 9: Confessions of a Normal Teen

I awoke to the sound of kids playing outside. Not a shred of worry in their lives. I wished I could say the same about me. I must have slept for an hour, or two and didn't have a clue what time it was let alone the day. Mums duvet lay across the the settee where she'd spent the night, but Mum was nowhere to be seen.

Sitting up, mumbled voices escaped from downstairs. Slowly, I pulled off the duvet and climbed out of bed. I wrapped my shivering body in a thick grey dressing gown and left the room, closing the door behind me. As I crept further down the stairs, the louder the voices become. Deep and masculine, but completely unfamiliar to me. It wasn't my dad and Derek, as far as I knew, was still in hospital.

I opened the door into the living room. Mum and Maddison sat on the three seater settee, across on the two seater sat two police officers. As I entered the man smiled at me. Mum stood up and came towards me, her arm across my shoulders.
"Chloe, the police popped in to have a quick chat about last night." She said, her voice calm, but underneath I knew she was just as frightened as me.

I took a seat in between Mum and my sister, both looked at me with pity in their eyes, making me feel sick and uncomfortable in my own home.

"Hello Chloe," spoke the police officer woman, "I'm DS Woods and this is my colleague, PC Smith. There's nothing to worry about, you're not in any trouble, but could you tell me what happened at the party last night between you and your friend Reggie?"

Maddison left the room and returned a few seconds later with a steaming hot cup of tea, which she handed to me. I struggled to smile at even my sister, but she placed the tea on the coffee table in from of me.

I had two choices, lie, say everything was fine and hope the police were as thick as two short planks, or be entirely honest, and hope to God that they didn't arrest me.

"We had a fight, over a boy. I left the party and he followed me. He grabbed me by the hair and tried to pull me back inside. I fought back and I pushed him."

"Pushed him?"

"I pushed him over. He fell backwards and hit his head on the rockery." I didn't think, after the night before, I had anymore tears left to shed, but the more I thought about the party, the quicker they began to flow. "I should have phoned an ambulance, I know I should have phone an ambulance, but I didn't. I panicked. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted my mum!"

As I spoke, the policeman scribbled down a few notes, which I assume read; stupid girl killed boy!

The man and his colleague stood up to leave. Before Maddison showed them out, he turned to Mum and told her that I would have to go to the police station and make a formal statement later that day. The policeman handed Mum a card with his contact details on and then left. I sat and stared into space.
"He thinks I did it! He thinks I killed Reggie!" I cried.

Two loud bangs echoed upon the front door, quickly followed by two more. My whole body began to tremble. I leapt up from the settee and began to panic. I could see the look on my mum and sisters faces. They thought I'd lost the plot and I knew it!
"They've come to arrest me! They've come to arrest me!" I stammered like a frightened idiot.

Mum hurried towards the door and looked through the little spy hole. "No, it's not the police." She said, but whoever it was, by the look on my mothers face, it's wasn't Father Christmas!

"Who is it?" Maddison questioned. She tucked a stray strand of reddish-brown hair back behind her ear and brushed a crumb off her pale pink blouse.

Mum beckoned Maddison into the hallway, but another couple of bangs made us all jump. She whispered into my sister's ear, words too quiet for me to hear them.

"You'd better let her in," Maddison whispered, but that I heard loud and clear.

"Let who in? Mum, Maddie, who is it?"

Neither one answered, but mum answered the door. A huge black woman entered, mascara streaks ran down her face and eyes full of the fury of sorrow. She lunged towards me. Mum and Maddison struggled to keep her back.

"There she is! There she is!" The woman began to yell at me in a thick Jamaican accent. "How dare ya kill my child! What's the matter wit' you? Ya, homophobic?"

"I'm not homophobic! Reggie was my friend! It was an accident! I swear!"

Mum took Mrs Warrington into the dining room. I ran flew upstairs and into my room, slamming the door shut behind me. But as I lay on the bed, tears streaming down onto my favourite pillow, I heard a voice coming from behind me.

"Chloe? Are you ok Chloe?"

I turned around to see my younger sister Lilly standing in the doorway.
"I know what happened." She said, "I know it was an accident."

I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my pyjama top and for the first time that day gave my sister a faint smile. "Thank you for believing in me."

Lilly entered the room and sat on my bed. She placed her arm around my shoulder and gave me a hug. For someone of only 11 years old, she was wiser than her years. We sat like sisters talking for a while and the subject soon drifted on to the sleepover she had just been on with one of her friends from school. Sara (pronounced Zara) Warrington-Pratt.

"How was the sleepover?" I asked.

Lilly shook her head, "well it was ok for a bit and then we went into her uncles room and found all this weird stuff. Like videos and things."

"Videos? What do you mean, videos?"

"They were all on his computer. There was loads of photos of some boy who I think goes to your school on there as well. It's all in a folder marked the E files."

"How do you know all this?"

"He'd left his laptop open and Sara wanted to show me the new phone she was getting for her birthday and we found the file."

I'd known Reggie for as long as I could remember. Privacy was his middle name. Everything, his phone, laptop, tablet, was password protected and no one, absolutely no one knew what the password was. "I thought Reggie kept his laptop locked?"

My sister leaned forward and whispered something in my ear, "I know the password."

Something inside me told me that I needed to look at the laptop. I needed to know what Lilly meant by The E Files, but I couldn't do it on my own.

With his mum downstairs talking to mine, I quickly got dressed and grabbed my bag.
"I need to know what these E files are." I said, "Lilly Leighton, will you come with me?"