The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise (15 page)

The house was scorching. Mum had to take off almost everything she was wearing while she stayed for the good-­behavior cup of tea that she had promised me she would. Amber later told me it was because Colette had taken to Bikram Yoga in an attempt to strengthen both body and mind. If you looked closely you could sometimes see small scars and scalds on her ankles when her skirt rode up above her socks. She told people they were from the time she had walked across hot coals at a women's empowerment retreat. Really they were because she kept relaxing a little bit too much when she did “Corpse” and catching her feet on the three-bar fire.

“Are you sure you don't mind having him?” Mum asked as I sheep-dogged her out of the front room toward the door.

“The more the merrier. There's always room at the inn,” Colette said, and patted me on the shoulder.

“I don't like leaving him, you know, not just yet.”

“I'm fine,” I said as Amber stretched her leg across the couch and dug her foot into my stomach, making stupid faces as she pressed harder and watched me wince.

“Just make sure you are. This is my landline, and my cell number in case the line's busy,” Mum said, handing
Colette a sheet of paper. “And he's got his medicine and knows when to take it, but just make sure he does.”

“Of course. We'll be all hands on deck, eh, troops?”

“It's good to see you well, love,” Mum said to Amber, taking a small, wrapped present from her handbag and leaving it on the mantelpiece. “Just a little something in case you ever need it.”

“Well, isn't that just adorable?” Colette said, swooning over the present, which looked average at best to me.

“Thanks, Julie. And thanks for letting Francis come—I know it's a big deal,” Amber said as Mum came back into the room to kiss me good-bye once more.

“I'll be back at five,” she said before finally making her way toward the open front door.

“Well,” Colette said, coming back into the front room after waving her off, “isn't this cozy?”

“Haven't you got some puttering to do, Mum?” Amber said eventually, and Colette took the bait.

“Of course. Don't want old Mum cramping your style, do you? I'll be in the kitchen. You just call if you need anything,” she said, tucking two pillows behind Amber's back. “And, Francis, our home is your home. You just make yourself comfortable.”

Once Colette was in the kitchen and the radio had been turned on, Amber sat up and leaned close to me, pulling my face toward her and kissing me hard.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, slumping back down.

“Thanks for having me,” I said back.

“No bother, mate,” she said, turning on the television. “Do you want a drink? Tea? Coffee?”

“Whatever's easiest.”

“To be honest they're both a hassle so you might as well have what you like.”

“Tea then, I suppose.”

“Tea it is,” she said, before yelling our orders through to Colette.

We watched
The Apartment
again and it was just as good as it had been the first time.

“Have you watched the other films I was telling you about?” Amber asked as we sprawled together on the couch.

“No. Chris made me watch
Titanic
yesterday.”

“What is wrong with that man?”

“I know. He's the worst. Why do you only watch old films anyway? I mean, I like them, now you've told me to, but who made you like them?”

“Nobody
made
me like them. I just do. Dad used to put them on for us to watch after Sunday lunch.”

“Is that why you like them?” I asked, and Amber shrugged.

“I'd liked to have met your dad,” I said.

There was a long pause while she looked at me blankly. I was worried I had upset her. It was like seeing a child fall
over and that pained second when you can't work out if it's going to cry or not.

“He'd have hated you,” she said eventually, and then smiled.

“Why?”

“He'd have bashed you with his Union newsletter and made a speech about the evils of private education. And he'd have told you to get a haircut.”

“I'm bald,” I said.

“I'm working on the Dad not being dead and us not having cancer tangent. Feel free to join me at any point.”

“I'm fine where I am.”

“Coward,” she said, kissing my cheek. “He'd have loved your mum, though. She might have won him around in the end.”

“She has her uses,” I said, going to get Amber the present from the mantelpiece. “Here, open it.”

Amber didn't need telling twice. She unraveled the gift in one swift movement, like the opposite of origami, and it fell onto her lap.

“Why would you want
that
?” I asked, pointing at the manicure set. “She's already given you the nail polish. I don't think she's taken enough time to get to know you,” I said apologetically. But Amber wasn't listening. She went quiet and smiled, holding on to the small set like it was treasure.

“I love it,” she said, placing it carefully on the coffee
table. “We should get everyone A-star Christmas presents this year,” she said after some thought. “You know, to say thanks and sorry and everything.”

“We should. But what?”

“Mum's got a pottery wheel if you want to make people vases and stuff.”

I tried to explain that this wouldn't cut the mustard with Mum. I once made her a birthday fruit bowl in Art and she used it as an ashtray. When I corrected her as to its purpose she said that tobacco was a plant, but I knew she was lying because she looked dead guilty and the next day she'd washed it out and draped a bunch of grapes across the top.

“Are you a man of means then, Frankie?”

I told her no, keeping my secret savings account to myself. Something told me Amber was not the Rainy Day kind of girl, and would be as easily inclined to frivolous spending as a lottery winner or similar.

“Then it looks like the A-Team is going to have to come up with a plan,” she said.

The day was freezing but sunny, which was my favorite kind of weather. We'd gone outside to get some air when the tropical fug of the house had gotten too much.

Even though Amber's street was a bit scary and her whole house looked like it had been filled with the contents of a charity shop, Colette's garden was the sort that would
win prizes. It was in bloom even in wintertime. Flanking the lawn, right down to the greenhouse, were beds of flowers and shrubs, and Amber knew the name of each and every one, sometimes in Latin. She told me about the snowdrops that would blossom even through ice, about the witch hazel that stayed green no matter what the season. She showed me the hellebores—beautiful but poisonous—and led me into the greenhouse where rhubarb grew, kept in the dark so that it was forced to grow more quickly, stretching up in search of the light. She told me that if you listened carefully enough you could hear it grow.

I took the hint and held my ear against the black plastic sheet while I nodded, smiling, neither confirming nor denying the phenomenon, the way you do when a pregnant woman pushes your hand toward her stomach and tells you to feel the kick inside. Amber talked about the plants the way she never did about people. The way she never did about anything else, really. It was as if she truly cared but for once wasn't scared to admit it, and didn't have to ice every sentence with a snide comment so that you had no idea what she really meant.

“It's lovely,” I told her as we walked back inside.

“It's my favorite place in the world,” she said, taking her boots off at the kitchen door. “Do you want to see my bedroom?”

It felt strange being in Amber's house. Being in her
world. Hearing her talk about things she had done with her dad. About things her mum had taught her when she was a little girl, tottering around the garden with a watering can. It was sometimes hard to remember that she hadn't burst fully formed, like her own little universe, out of some cosmic explosion. That she had ever been taught anything, ever been looked after and raised into what she had become. That she had ever had a beginning.

She was different, too, in her own surroundings. Sometimes softer. Sometimes quieter. Sometimes it reminded me of the first and only time I had seen her cry. When I was at her house I loved Amber more than I had ever loved her before.

I suppose being in her house reminded me that she was human.

Up in her room Amber put on the first song of an album we had discussed at length on the unit, and started toying with the jewelry and ornaments that covered the top of her chest of drawers. On the windowsill a stack of papers and mementos, along with the card I had given her, were tied up with brown string after she'd been made to take them off the wall above her bed on the unit.

“Did it take long?” I asked.

“No. Don't know why they bothered making me anyway. I'll be back in before the weekend.”

“Don't say that.”

Amber shrugged and turned the music up.

“Did you like the garden?”

I told her I loved it, and that I loved hearing her talk about it even more.

When I said this she gave me a look she had never given me before. It was sort of the way Mum looks when she sees babies, flavored slightly with the way Chris looks when he stares at certain boys in the record shops he always drags me to on a Saturday morning.

“Are you cold?” Amber asked. I said no. Slowly she moved toward me and took off her top. She kissed me, then began to unbutton my duffle coat.

“What time's your mum coming?”

“Five,” I said, as quickly as I could. If there was one thing I could have done without at that moment it was the thought of Mum's whereabouts.

“I'm pleased you're here,” Amber said, kissing me again, bending down as I sat back on the bed.

“I'm pleased you're back,” I told her, trying my hardest not to tremble.

“I do love you, Francis,” she said, as she pressed herself closer to me. “I'm just not very good at saying it.”

We must have both nodded off, because when I woke up Amber looked as bleary-eyed as I felt.

She let out a small laugh and moved up to kiss me on
the lips. I held my arm around her, pleased that everything seemed to have stayed the same.

“Do you feel different?” I asked. “You know, like anything's changed, since . . .
before
?”

She laughed slightly and sat up in bed, reaching down to the floor to grab her sweater, which had crumpled itself into a heap inside the crotch of my jeans.

“I feel
thirstier
than I did before. Do you want a drink?”

I said yes just as the last song reached its final bars.

“Okay then, but get ready. Your mum's going to be here soon.”

Just as she was about to stand up the door handle turned and then opened.

“CHRIST!” Amber said, grabbing her sweater across her chest and standing up, perhaps quicker than any human has ever moved before.