The Last Breath Of Reggie Warrington

Chapter 12: Actions Have Consequences

I sat in the front passenger seat of Mum's little runaround, music in my ears as I tried to block out my worries about the interview. For all I knew they could arrest me. It could have been my last day of freedom before they locked me up and threw away the key. Chloe Leighton, charged with murder.

Ok, I was probably letting my worries get the better of me. Mum had tried to talk to me on the journey from home to the police station, but the last thing I wanted to do was to speak. I wanted to run and hide, get on a plane to Florida and live with Dad. At least there they wouldn't get me, right? At least there I'd be safe. I didn't know what to do, let alone what to say. What if I said the wrong thing? Would I be stuck in a cell over night while the drunks and knob-heads of the city screamed and yelled and puked in the cells next to me?

At that moment, as mum parked the car in the car park, I felt what I was, a frightened little girl who just wanted to go home. Guilty as sin, one might say, but I didn't mean to kill Reggie, to rob the world of the dramatic, histrionic diva known as Reg-Bae.

He was my friend, a fun free spirit, as gay as Drag Queen wearing green and pink and all those fabulous colours he loved. By the word gay, I didn't just mean he was a boy who was attracted to other boys, but gay as in the old fashioned word, like the songs they used to sing during the war with words like "having a gay old time." Gay hadn't always meant homosexual, but "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy", just some of the words I'd use to describe Reg. But not the Reg who was vile to me at Indie's party, the old Reg, the Barbie boy, the boy who didn't have to come out as gay as well already knew it.

Remember my Dad's twin brother, uncle Matthew. well his eldest daughter, my cousin Annabelle was a lesbian. She tried and tried so hard to cover it up. She dated boys, wore feminine clothes and makeup, even had posters of half-naked guys on her bedroom walls. Never once did she let on that it wasn't guys she fancied, but girls.

You wouldn't have known it to look at her or talk to her, not that lesbians all look the same or dress the same, but to honest, I hadn't met many, so how would I know. Just from films and tv shows, I'd think they'd be more masculine than Annabelle. She spent weeks and weeks pursuing this poor guy when she was at university.

Eventually, he asked her out and was so into her, he even asked Uncle Matthew for her hand in marriage. He'd planned a nice romantic meal and the poshest restaurant in town but accidentally left his wallet back at the flat they shared.

Poor sod, he went home, opened the bedroom door, and there she was, in bed with his sister. The wedding still went ahead, only instead of the guests being invited to the wedding of Miss Annabelle Valencia Leighton and Mr Humphrey Julian Walker, it was to the civil partnership of Miss Annabelle Valencia Leighton and Miss Lucy-Jane Walker. They're now planning to marry in the spring.

I know that little story might sound pointless, but what I was trying to explain, as it wasn't like that for Reg. We knew he was gay, probably before he knew himself. He was a great person and no one deserved to die. That was what I'd planned to tell the police. That, and how a friend became so vile, so violent, so evil, he drove his former bestie to lash out in self defence.

I stood outside the police station. Took a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. The automatic doors opened and I stepped inside. A rather smelly, trampy looking chap say on a metal seat. With one grubby finger, he scratched his head was partially hidden by a dirty green knitted hat. The other hand, wiped what appeared to be puke from his revolting beard.

Mum and I took one look of him and I knew from the expression on her face, that she wanted to go home just as much as I did, maybe even more, but we had come this way and I wanted my turn to talk, to explain again what happened on that fateful night. Make them understand what happened was an accident and only an accident. I thought he was going to attack me, kill me, rape me.