‘Mum.’ Amber dragged the single syllable out in exasperation. ‘I’m not anorexic or bulimic or anything. I like to eat early, that’s all.’
‘OK,’ agreed Faye, deflated.
It was mid-May, the exams were looming ever closer and it wouldn’t be fair to complain that she missed mealtimes together, the only time the two of them could really talk these days. Amber was under a lot of strain, she looked tired too from all that studying, with violet circles under eyes that looked wildly alert.
Faye had never seen her work so hard, locked in her room for hours every evening, sometimes emerging pale at ten to say she was going to sleep and not to bother going in to say goodnight.
That was what worried Faye most: her daughter not wanting to talk to her. They’d been so close for so long, had managed to bypass most of the awfulness of adolescence, only to end up with this coolness between them over Amber’s exams.
For the past few weeks, Amber had barely spoken to her and seemed lost in her own world.
Was she that worried about failing?
‘I can see your mind whirring,’ Grace warned, interpreting Faye’s look incorrectly. ‘Stop already.
She’ll like it, OK? If she doesn’t, she’s being …’
She’d nearly said rude but stopped. The childless should not criticise other people’s children; that was the eleventh commandment and came right before the twelfth, which was not to criticise how other people put their own lives on hold for the said children. When she saw how Faye had given her life over to Amber, Grace felt glad that her own biological clock had never started the fabled ticking.
She’d known Faye for ten years and among all the things she’d learned about her - like the fact that Faye was incredibly clever, yet liked hiding her light under a bushel, and was the only single woman Grace knew who genuinely had no interest in finding a man - foremost was the fact that Amber was Faye’s reason for living.
Surely that wasn’t right. Were children supposed to be the only thing in a woman’s life? Grace was sure her other friends with kids had more fulfilled lives than Faye.
‘If she doesn’t like it, it might be a fashion thing,’
Grace amended, ‘but the natural look is very chic.’ ‘I’m sure she’ll love it,’ Faye agreed, thinking that she no longer knew any such thing.
The catch on Amber’s window had finally given in and broken. She’d jemmied it so many nights when she crept in well after midnight, pushing the window up and praying it wouldn’t creak and wake her mother. Burglary must be easier than people thought: nobody had stopped her or even appeared to notice her latenight climbs in and out of her bedroom window.
‘I don’t know how you’ve got away with it,’
Ella remarked.
She and Amber walked to school together most days, although they were getting later and later, as Amber was finding it hard to drag herself out of bed.
‘Your mum must be losing it if she hasn’t noticed that you’re not in your room at night. So,’ Ella added, ‘what did Mr Luverman do with you last night? Spill.’
‘I wish you’d stop calling him that.’ Amber didn’t mind really, but she felt bad when Ella reminded her that she was deceiving her mother.
‘Mr Luverman? I call him that ‘cos he can take you places that nobody else can.’ ‘Ella, give it a rest.’
‘OK, but I’m just jealous. Being a boring old student with no boyfriend and exams on the horizon, I have no sex life and I want to hear all about yours. I don’t know how you’re doing any revision at all. Are you?’ Ella asked suspiciously.
‘Of course,’ Amber snapped.
She still hadn’t told Ella that Karl had asked her to travel to America with him and the band.
She didn’t know why; it wasn’t as if Ella would disapprove. They’d wanted to be daring, the opposite of sensible, and skipping the exams was just that. But she hadn’t managed to say it yet.
It was Thursday evening, less than a week to go to Amber’s eighteenth birthday, and less than three weeks to the exams. Faye paused in her driveway and looked across Summer Street to the park, There were no children running or scampering there now, but the evening dog walkers were out in force. She could see Christie Devlin in the distance, light and elegant as a ballerina, with those two cute little dogs skipping around her feet. Mr Coughlan, a very elderly gentleman who owned three pugs, was just in front, walking slowly with his nose in the air, just like his dogs with their squashed-up faces and airs of refinement. People did look like their dogs, Faye thought with a grin.
When Amber had been younger, Faye had spent many hours in the park, overseeing five-a-side football matches or watching racing games. They’d both loved the park then, but now, well, Faye rarely went in there. There wasn’t any time in her life for sitting in parks, she was always busy.
And yet now it was going to be ripped in half, she felt oddly angry.
Summer Street wouldn’t be the same without the rackety old pavilion surrounded by its carpet of green. Faye knew it was crazy to mourn something she never used, but just because she didn’t go into the park, didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate it.
If only she had the energy or the time to do something about it, to fight the council, to insist that they stop the deal. But that would involve going around the neighbours and getting names and signatures, drafting petitions, all sorts of work that Faye didn’t have time for. Also, that job was for people who were good at chatting to strangers and Faye had lost that ability a long time ago. No, somebody else would be bound to start a campaign and she would add her name to the signatures.
That’d be enough. Getting involved was always a mistake.
The house was quiet. Amber wasn’t home yet. Probably at Ella’s revising. Good, Faye thought.
It gave her a chance to make a special dinner for the two. of them. A pre-birthday dinner. She’d decided to give Amber the portfolio tonight instead of waiting until her birthday the following
Wednesday, half hoping that the gift would have a magical effect on the coolness between them.
And as an extra treat, she quickly rustled up some flapjacks. They used to be Amber’s favourites years ago, and although they were such a childish food, she’d suddenly felt like making them. Feeding her daughter the love that Amber didn’t seem to want any more.
Amber arrived after seven, laden down with her school books and looking, yet again, oddly alert and excited.
The portfolio lay at her place on the table, a giant package wrapped in gold paper, tied with narrow gold ribbon.
She stared at it in silence for a moment. A present? She’d planned to talk to her mother about Karl tonight, had spent ages with him to buoy herself up for this moment and now her mother had ruined it all with a gift. How could they have the conversation from hell now?
Mum, I’m not going to do my exams because my boyfriend and his band have a development deal with a New York producer and I’m going with him because he needs me and I love him. Oh yeah, and thanks for the portfolio.
‘It’s an early birthday present.’
Mum looked so thrilled with herself. And she’d made stupid flapjacks too. Kids’ biscuits. That was what was wrong with Mum, Amber thought, guilt making her angry. She still treated Amber as if she was a kid.
Don’t stay up too late: you won’t be able to get up for school.
Take a scarf in case it’s cold.
I don’t care if everyone else in the class is going, you’re not.
She meant well, but she’d never accept that Amber was an adult with adult desires and her own choices to make.
Amber knew with sudden certainty that there would be no easy way to tell her mother about Karl. The umbilical cord couldn’t be stretched only severed.
‘Open it.’ Faye couldn’t understand why Amber hadn’t launched herself on the gift and ripped it open, the way she used to do with presents.
Amber shot a tense look at her mother, then carefully opened the gift.
‘Well, do you like it?’
Amber bit her lip. The portfolio was beautiful, and had cost her mother a fortune she didn’t have.
Worse, the treacherous thought slipped into her mind of what she and Karl could have done with that money. It would have paid Amber’s ticket to America. The band’s fare would be covered by the production company but she and Karl had to come up with hers.
This present was so typical of her mother: spend what she didn’t have just so Amber could have the best. It was so unnecessary. And it made Amber feel guiltier than ever.
‘Of course I like it.’ She managed to keep the irritation out of her voice.
‘Really?’
Amber felt the tension coil in her.
‘Really,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely.’ Lovely but totally bloody useless, since she wasn’t going to art college and wouldn’t need it. Not yet, anyhow. She could study art anywhere, any time. When she and Karl were settled, she’d do it. A gift like hers couldn’t be lost.
‘I thought you’d prefer the cream but we can change it if you’d prefer a black one,’ Mum went on fondly.
The hands holding the portfolio tightened and Amber felt as if she was holding in a scream. Would her mother ever stop?
‘Thank you, it’s lovely,’ she said, forcing the words out of somewhere. She pecked her mother on the cheek. ‘I’ve so much work to do.’
‘But what about dinner?’
‘I’m not hungry. I ate at Ella’s,’ improvised Amber. ‘Amber, I know you’re worried about the exams … began Faye, desperate to get her daughter talking.
The tension in Amber finally sprang free. ‘The fucking exams aren’t what this is all about!’ she yelled. ‘You don’t understand, you don’t understand anything!’
Faye’s face was stricken. ‘Amber, please, talk to me. We’ve always talked about everything. What’s wrong?’
‘I told you,’ hissed Amber, ‘you wouldn’t understand.
You’ve never done anything with your life, you’ve never taken a single risk. I’m different from you. I need space, not you hanging over me waiting and hoping for me to live my life the way you want!’
‘I never wanted that.’ Faye could hardly speak with the hurt. How could Amber accuse her of this, of expecting too much from her, when all she’d ever wanted was for Amber to be safe and not to have to go through what she had. ‘I only ever wanted you to be happy.’
‘No,’ shot back Amber, and it was fear and guilt talking, making her say hateful things because she couldn’t bear her mother looking at her with those huge wounded eyes. ‘You wanted me to be happy in your way. The sensible, dull and boring way.
That’s not what I want. I don’t want to end up like you.’
‘Oh, darling, please, listen to me …’
‘No, I won’t listen to you any more, Mum. I’m an adult now and I’ve got my own life to lead, and so do you.’ Amber paused, flushed with emotion. ‘I can’t be responsible for being here with you, you’ve got to move on and not stay stuck in the past, stuck remembering Dad. Being a widow shouldn’t define your life.’
There, she’d said it: told her mother to move on. It wasn’t quite how she’d meant to put it but it was a start. She wouldn’t be around any more, she’d be away with Karl and even if she hadn’t
got round to saying that, she’d said the main part.
They weren’t a little family unit any more. She and Karl were the unit. Her mother had to be made to understand that.
Faye said nothing at all. She watched Amber as she tucked her present under her arm and left the kitchen, anything to be away from her mother’s anxious face and the weight of her expectations.
Alone, surrounded by flapjacks, Amber’s favourite feta and filo-pastry pie, and torn wrapping paper, Faye felt lost and unbearably hurt.
What had she done wrong?
For once, she didn’t bother to tidy up the kitchen, scrubbing with her own solution of bleach and water, eau de Faye,, as she used to joke. The dinner sat untouched on the table and she walked, sleepwalked almost, to her bedroom.
It was a pretty room, feminine, luxurious in its way, a boudoir that nobody at Little Island would easily identify as hers.
Her office, with its clean surfaces, tables and chairs set at precise right angles, and the pot plant whose leaves she cleaned every week, was a far cry from this haven of soft fabrics. There was a luscious velvet throw in antique rose on the bed, and Tiffany-style lampshades that cast a soft burnished light.
Not knowing quite what else to do, Faye sat on the edge of her bed. She felt powerless. It was so long since she’d had that feeling and it flooded back into every vein as if it had never been away.
‘What can I do now?’ she said aloud. Inner strength could get you through anything. She’d trained herself to believe that and loved to read about other women who’d gone through pain to emerge stronger, tougher, untouchable. They were proof that she was in some kind of women’s club.
The We Screwed Up But We’re Still Here Club.
But to do it, you needed that inner strength and hers was centred around one central core, Amber.
Golden, loving, talented, funny Amber. Without Amber’s love, that strength crumbled. And Amber had just cast herself off like a shard of ice shearing off an iceberg.
She sat on the bed for a long time, hearing Amber moving around upstairs, then the sound of music thumping through from the attic bedroom.
The Scissor Sisters were playing, and Faye managed a half-smile because to her they sounded like a classic seventies rock band, like one of her old vinyl records. She still had some of her old LPs.
And the photos.
They were hidden in the big bottom drawer of Faye’s 1930s wardrobe, under a bundle of spare sheets and a couple of elderly Foxford rugs. She got up and pulled open the drawer. Spare pillowcases, said the label on the box. Who’d open that?
Faye had reasoned. Not even Amber, who rooted around in her mother’s dressing table for makeup, would bother to look in there. Perhaps if Amber had known her mother had something to hide, she
might have found it. But Faye knew that she’d managed to keep her secret very well.
What had her daughter called her? Sensible, dal and boring. Seventeen years of trying to become someone she wasn’t had been very successful, it appeared.