The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise (11 page)

The next morning I sent Chris an urgent text message asking for immediate emergency chats. When they say you'll lose your hair you can just about contemplate the thought of going bald. You picture Vin Diesel, and think that with the right military uniform or camouflage gear you too could carry off the look, if absolutely necessary.

What you don't realize is that they mean you will go bald everywhere.

Everywhere.

I spent most of the morning with the sheets pulled up over my head, looking mournfully beneath the covers and remembering what used to be, like the bleak first morning when the snow starts to melt.

“You got something exciting under there?” Marc asked as he did the rounds. I didn't answer. I just sniveled and pulled the blankets farther above my head as I tried to get a better look.

Chris laughed at first when I called him, then tried to be sympathetic. He made a joke about me being more aerodynamic, and I made him promise me that it would all grow back. To put my mind at ease he Googled it for me while I was still on the phone. He even held the mouthpiece to the keyboard so that I could hear him typing.

“Yes, Frankie, the Internet says you've got nothing to worry about.”

“What exactly does it say?”

“That within the month it'll look like you're growing an Afro down there.”

I think he might have been embellishing this point.

“Do you promise? Because I'd rather know if I'm going to have to get used to this.”

“Frankie, relax. It's going to grow back. You've got nothing to worry about. You'll be back to your virile old self in no time.”

This was a joke. And a bad one at that. What Chris singularly failed to realize was that, given the circumstances, I might very well soon be displaying myself proudly, like a lion attempting to mate with the best female in the pack. The thought of having to do so while bald as a baby made me want to sob.

“Well, if it doesn't, I'll blame you,” I said.

“I take full responsibility for all your bodily hair, ­Francis,” my brother said. “But I am starting to get looks, so I've got to go. I'll be in tomorrow to see you. Just relax, and say hi to Amber for me.”

Mum spent most of her visit moaning about Grandma.

“It's like she deliberately tries to annoy me, Francis. Thank God you've got me, eh?”

I didn't say anything. Sometimes I didn't know if Mum was joking or not. This was one of those times.

“You've got a delivery,” Jackie said, popping her head around the curtain.

“Who from?” Mum said, and blanched. She hadn't said anything about it to me but the whole time I'd been in the unit I'd known she was nervous about Dad making an uninvited appearance. The last time he'd visited she'd ended up throwing my birthday cake at him before I'd even had a chance to blow out the candles. He'd brought me a card with the wrong age on it, and that had sent her into a frenzied rage. Dad left covered in frosting, and Mum ended up sticking a tea light on top of a muffin as a replacement cake.

“The brother left it,” Jackie said, and Mum relaxed.

“Said he'd be in to see you tomorrow, Francis, but until then this was in case of emergencies.”

The box had been wrapped but bore no tag.

“Open it then,” Mum said.

I did so quickly, holding my hands close to my chest so that she couldn't see the contents.

I was pleased I had done.

It was a long pack from the joke shop behind the bus station in town. Inside was a perfect triangle of crinkly hair. “Instant Pubes” it said on the box. “Suitable for Age 12 Up.”

“Let's have a look,” Mum said, going to take the packet from me.

“NO!” I yelled, trying to hold it to my chest. I wrestled her for a while but Mum quickly had the upper hand. I think she would probably beat me in a fight if it ever came to it.

“Oh my God, is that a merkin?” she asked.

“Let's see!” Amber said from her bed, trying to lean over to get a better look.

“It's absolutely disgusting. . . .”

“It's just a joke,” I said, trying to pull the sheets back over my head.

“Here,” Mum said, passing the packet to Amber.

“I honestly don't understand you two sometimes,” she continued saying to me. I don't know whether she meant Chris or Amber because I couldn't see her. The sheets had mercifully come loose, and though my feet and ankles were sticking out I had managed to shroud my head, cocooning myself from further embarrassment.

I heard a packet being torn open and Amber laughing to herself.

“What are you up to?” I heard Mum ask. I was suddenly becoming claustrophobic in my place of safety, and tried to make a peephole with my finger so that I could steal occasional breaths of fresh air, and also spy on those around me.

“Just a bit of decorating,” Amber said.

“Oh, nice,” Mum said, trying to pull the blanket off my head.

I relented, eventually, and slowly peeled it down so that I could see the whole room again.

“Here, Kelly,” Amber shouted across the room, “get your laughing gear around that, love!”

Amber had pulled the sheets around her as tightly as they would go so that only her head was sticking out at the top. In pride of place, right where it anatomically belonged, the merkin perched like a dead animal.

“Gross!” Kelly said.

Mum tutted but I knew she wanted to laugh.

“What do you think of my new do, Marc? Chic,
non
?” Amber asked as he came by to sort out her tablets.

“Ignore them,” Mum said to him. “They'll tire themselves out eventually.”

“It'll keep you warm if nothing else, flower,” he said, filling Amber's pill cup.

“Practical
and
fancy,” she said, sitting up to take her tablets.

“He's bloody backward, that lad. Do you want me to take it home and bin it?” Mum suggested.

“NO!” Amber said, cradling it in her hand like a wounded kitten.

“I really don't think . . .” Mum tried, but Amber interrupted her.

“OH, IT GETS BETTER!” she said, peeling a triangle of plastic from the back of the fanny wig.

“It even sticks!” She turned around in bed and slapped the patch of wiry hair onto the wall behind her headrest, between a photograph of Einstein and a playing card with a phone number written on it.

“We'll love it like our very own,” she said, staring up proudly at her handiwork like it was a priceless work of art.

CHAPTER NINE

One morning I woke up
and Amber was quieter than usual. I tried as always to impress her with my knowledge. I asked her if she knew how many answers the Magic 8 ball beside her bed held. She didn't take the bait but I told her anyway. (It's twenty-one: ten positive, six negative, and five medium.) When this didn't work I decided that maybe it was her surroundings that were getting her down, so I attempted to broaden her horizons by demonstrating my knowledge of the wider world. I told her about the baby sharks that eat one another while they're still in the womb, so that only the strongest is still alive when it comes to the actual birthing. I told her that I always thought of her as the shark that would be born. Like Fiona had said, Amber sure as hell had balls. But she seemed wholly unmoved by this. Then I told her about Kelly, who'd spent the whole morning trying to do a crossword puzzle in one of the magazines Olivia had left behind. Again there was no response.

“Is it about your face?” I asked when she turned away from me, toward the wall beside her bed. Almost overnight Amber's mouth had become red and blotched, with sores that looked angry and blistered.

“Just leave it, Francis,” she said, without turning to look at me.

“I don't see what the problem is. . . .”

“Then there isn't one! Just go back to checking beneath the covers. You might have started sprouting by now.”

“That's not funny.”

“Life's hard.”

“I just didn't think you cared about that sort of thing.”

“It hardly seems fair, that's all,” she said, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling. As she did a single tear welled in the corner of one eye and rolled down her cheek, though she was quick to rub it away like a spelling mistake.

“I still think you're pretty.
I still wouldn't say no.
”

“What's your problem anyway?” Amber said, turning her head and staring at me so coldly I felt myself shiver. “I'm sure if you try really hard someone else will be willing to overlook you being such a total creep. Do you really think I'd have given you the time of day if I wasn't bald and rotten to the core?”

I did not quite know what to say to this. I knew I wanted to cry. No one had ever before said anything so awful to
me. . . . Actually that wasn't true. People had said plenty of bad things to me in the past. I went through a ballet phase in middle school that most of my classmates were keen to remind me of at every given opportunity. But in the past name-calling had always seemed like a waste of energy; the sting would have faded away by the time I got home, and then I'd spend the rest of the night wondering why I'd gotten so bothered by it in the first place. With Amber, though, it felt like I'd been winded and would never be able to stand upright again. I felt like I wanted to die.

“I hate you sometimes,” I said. Amber just shrugged as another tear rolled down her face.

Unfortunately that day visitors arrived en masse, and even though I made a point of looking dead dour and depressed, no one seemed to pick up on just what a difficult morning I'd had. I suppose it was my fault for being naturally so ­resilient.

Grandma sat in the corner and ordered a cup of tea like she was in a café. Her behavior was exactly the reason the National Health Service was buckling beneath its workload. While she was in the toilet I asked Chris to make her bring in a thermos during any future visits, for the sake of the nation.

“Thank you, love, you're doing a smashing job,” Grandma said to Amy when she brought her the tea and
biscuits. Grandma spoke to the nurse like she had just found out she was deaf. She needn't have bothered. Amy had a degree in nursing whereas Grandma left school at thirteen. Amy also spoke better English than Grandma, who was never averse to a double negative.

“I was thinking the white handles, don't you agree, love?” Mum said, waving a decorating magazine in front of my nose. On it there was a picture of a smiling couple in a kitchen so clean it hurt to look at it. I felt myself tearing up, mostly at the thought of how Amber and I would never now be able to pose happily for photographs in kitchen magazines, but also at the realization of how stupid this couple would feel once they'd realized just how cruel and torturous love really was.

“It looks stupid,” I said. “I like the old kitchen. I don't want it to change.”

“Oh, good, we're in
this
mood,” Mum said, flicking rapidly toward the back of the magazine.

To our left Colette was trying in vain to get a response from her daughter. She was halfway through a story about a protest march outside the battered women's shelter when Amber's eyes started watering again.

“Goodness me, what's this?” Colette said, going to wipe away the tears. “Are you feeling okay? Is it the medication?”

Amber stared up at her and seemed to be saying a million things through two tear-stained eyes.

“Well, this is exactly the sort of thing we've talked about. We must not become defined by our physical selves,” her mother said, lightly stroking the painful rash around Amber's mouth. “All that really matters is health and ­happiness.”

“They're two big asks,” Amber said quietly.

Colette looked flummoxed for a moment and started to pull some colored stones out of a bag.

“Here, let's lay some crystals, see if we can't embrace a bit of positivity. Now, to form an energy grid . . .” she said slowly, reading a small instruction booklet that was attached to the drawstring of the bag. “Arms out, darling. We should have you back to your old self in no time.”

She took Amber's arms out from under the covers and spread them flat on the sheet. It was odd, seeing her so pliable. She didn't flinch or scowl or pull in the opposite direction like she usually did. She just did as she was told. I didn't care. I was pleased she was upset, and bald, and ugly. I only wished Chris had visited me on his own, so that I could have told him about my change of circumstances and he could have informed Fiona I was once again single.

Just as Colette was placing the first stone on Amber's arm Mum breathed out loudly, which always meant she was about to go off on one.

“For God's sake!” she said, going over to stand beside Amber's bed.

“Julie!” Grandma said, half laughing the way she always does when Mum makes her nervous. “Sit yourself down.”

Mum took something out of her handbag.

“She doesn't
need
crystals. And she doesn't need her bloody energies aligning either!”

Mum turned her seat around and sat down close to the bed, placing Amber's hands on the decorating magazine that she spread out over the top sheet.

“Here . . .” Mum carefully loaded a brush with purple nail polish and dragged it over the nail of Amber's thumb. “It's been my favorite color since I was your age. A lot harder to shoplift, too, since they started tagging everything over a tenner in the drugstore. . . .” She was moving on to Amber's index finger now.

“You never used to shoplift,” Grandma said with another nervous laugh. “She never used to shoplift,” she said to me, tapping my leg for emphasis.

“. . . And whenever I was feeling grim, I'd paint it on and look down, and think that if all else failed, at least I had the nicest nails in town,” Mum said, almost in a whisper, as she dragged the brush neatly across every one of Amber's nails.

“I really don't agree with the use of cosmetics,” Colette started to say. “For one thing there's the animal testing.”

“Shut . . . up . . . Colette,” Mum said slowly, concentrating hard on the task in hand.

“And the misogyny of it all! What's on the outside doesn't matter.”

“Hmmmmm,” Mum said, teasing the brush across Amber's little finger. “There,” she said, standing back up. “At least now you know you've got the second-best nails on the ward. You'll have the best once I leave.”

Amber looked down at her hands and smiled, before quickly resuming her scowl as if she'd been caught naked and hurriedly had to cover up.

“You know,” she said to Mum, in a quiet, scratchy voice, “you're not nearly as bad as you act.”

“Is that a compliment?” Mum asked.

“Closest you're going to get.”

Mum smiled and wiped a tear from the side of Amber's face. She screwed the lid tightly back onto the bottle of nail polish and put it down on the cluttered bedside locker.

“You look lovely,” she said. “And you owe me fourteen ninety-nine.”

“Well, I can't say I'm happy about all this,” Colette was still saying when Mum sat back down. I saw her face change then. It became harder, like a rain cloud had crossed it and you just knew a storm was brewing. The last time Mum had looked like that was when Mrs. Pearson from next door came over to complain about the noise from the party Mum had held for her fortieth. ­
Mr. and Mrs. Pearson moved out not long after that.

“Life's not all crystals and chanting,” Mum said, without turning around.

“Mum . . .” Chris began. But she ignored him.

“Nor is it lipstick and interior magazines.”

Mum did turn around this time, and glared at Colette.

“Perhaps if you weren't so busy sniffing out causes like some philanthropic truffle hog you'd realize that your little girl's becoming a young woman, and needs to be made to feel good about herself every once in a while.”

“And I suppose you think painting yourself some ridiculous color is the way to enlightenment?”

“No!” Mum snapped. “But it's sure as hell fun.”

“Julie pet, just leave it,” Grandma tried, looking desperately to Chris for further help.

“Seriously, Mum, wrap it up!”

“Perhaps if you'd walked a few days in our shoes you'd realize what really matters in life,” Colette said loftily.

This was the wrong thing to say. Mum stood up like a lightning bolt in reverse. Even Chris looked scared.

“Don't you dare!” she said. “I've had to bury my own daughter before now, so you can shove the wise old widow routine. You're nothing special, you have no insight, so just get your head out your arse and realize that your little girl needs a mother . . . not some fool with a sack of sage leaves and copy of
An Idiot's Guide to Wicca
.”

“It's not a competition,” said Chris, dragging her back down into her seat.

Everyone fell silent then. That was everyone apart from Amber, who had thrown back her head and was laughing at the top of her voice.

“Well,” Colette said eventually, bending down to kiss her forehead as she settled, “if nothing else, it's good to see you smile again, darling.” Amber winked at her mum as she started collecting her things together.

“I'll be making a move,” said Colette, placing her bag of crystals inside the hessian sack she'd brought with her. “There's a bus at twenty-past. I'll see you tomorrow, my lovely girl.”

“Make it right . . . now,”
Chris hissed at Mum just as Colette was about to leave.

Mum looked sick as anything, but then glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

“For God's sake,” she muttered, standing up. “You don't have to get the bus.”

Colette stopped in the doorway and turned around. She had started crying.

“Pardon?”

“You shouldn't have to get the bus,” Mum told her. “We drive here and back every day. We can pick you up. We'll arrange it so we can come together. If you want a lift just wait. One more won't hurt.”

For some reason this really did it and Colette burst into floods of tears. She cried the way I did, all breathless and wheezy, with tears and snot rolling down her face. Mum sighed and then swore as Colette came rushing toward her, arms wide open.

“Oh, Julie . . .” she said. Mum tried to duck the hug but Colette caught her firmly in her grasp.

“Bloody hell, Colette, you really don't have to . . .”

“. . . it's so important to have friends at a time like this!”

“It's just a lift,” Mum said, trying to wriggle her way out of the hug. Colette must have been deceptively strong, though, as she was having none of it. “There's really no need to be daft about it.”

“Oh, we'll break the ice yet,” Colette said, eventually letting go of her. “You're a good woman, Julie Wootton,” she said, still gripping Mum's hand tightly. “A real inspiration.”

Even though I hated Amber and Chris couldn't stop laughing and Grandma looked mortified, I thought the scene was quite touching. Our families were breaking bread together at long last. For a while our differences seemed to cast the shadow of doom across Amber's and my love . . . back when it still existed. Ours was a family of integrity and tradition, whereas Amber's prided itself on living free. In many ways she was Princess Diana to my Prince Charles. Later, once I'd forgiven her and put this theory to Chris, he made a joke about avoiding tunnels at night and ladies
with equine charm. It seemed he had not fully grasped the magnitude of the point I was trying to make.