Authors: Alex Marwood
She arrives, standing awkwardly in front of Amber, who stays in her cushioned seat as though she’s been nailed there.
‘Hi,’ she says. What now? Do they shake hands? Kiss?
They do neither. She puts her bag on the Bali Teak coffee table and slides into the vacant end of Amber’s sofa. It’s a Chesterfield:
old leather, the worn spots covered by a length of woven
ikat
. A five-dish candelabrum, stalactites of melted wax depending gracefully from elaborate ironwork arms, sits unlit on the
table before them.
They stare at each other. Kirsty is struck, again, by how old Amber looks, how strained. She sits and fiddles with the cigarette
packet Kirsty scrawled her number on, turning it over and
over between her fingers and drinking her in expressionlessly. I wish she’d take those damn glasses off, thinks Kirsty.
‘I’m going to get a coffee,’ she says. ‘Do you want anything?’
Amber jerks her chin towards the counter. ‘I’ve got a tea coming,’ she says.
Kirsty subsides. ‘OK.’
They look away from each other to cover the silence. Kirsty takes in her surroundings. It’s the sort of boho bar she thought
she’d left behind when she left London, a place that would be right at home in Brighton: stripped brickwork, painted floorboards,
velvet drapes, sunburst clocks, Moroccan mirrors, gold-painted wall sconces. There are twenty tables altogether, each surrounded
by a collection of second-hand sofas and antique bucket chairs, mugs and cups and plates and glasses mismatched beautifully
in junk-shop chic, a buzz of laid-back relaxation she’s not found in this town, where pursuing the next thrill is the order
of the day. The artists have started colonising Whitmouth. I guess Whitstable’s got too expensive. Give it a few years and
a couple of gay bars, and this town will be following the rest of the coast up in the world.
Over by the steamed-up window, she sees the stringer from the
Mirror
, coffee and a roasted-pepper-and-mozzarella ciabatta by his elbow, typing frantically into his laptop. Her own deadline is
seven o’clock and she has no idea how she’s going to meet it. She barely remembers a word from the press conference. He doesn’t
see her, and she hopes it carries on that way.
Amber studies her silently, her mouth downturned. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she says.
Kirsty turns back to look at her. ‘No. It’s stupid. We’re stupid.’
‘If they ever found out …’
Kirsty knows what she’s saying. They’re violating their licence, deliberately and clearly. If someone saw them now, it would
be the end, for both of them. They’ve stepped over the line and there’s no way they could claim coincidence. ‘It’s once, Amber,’
she says. ‘Just once. And after this we’re done. They won’t find out. It’s not like we’re tagged or anything.’
‘How often do you have to report in now?’ asks Amber.
‘Once a month. Or if I change address, which I never do. If I go on holiday. Abroad. You know.’
‘How does that work? How do you fit it round your …’ She gestures at the netbook, the notebook and the mobile phone she’s
put on the table.
‘I’m freelance. Really I can say I’m anywhere, anytime, and no one would know any different.’
‘Useful,’ says Amber.
‘Mmm.’ She’s not sure how to respond. ‘How about you?’
Amber shrugs. ‘I work nights.’
‘Mmm,’ says Kirsty again, and cranes round to find a waitress.
‘I wouldn’t even know how to get a passport,’ says Amber.
‘It’s not that difficult,’ begins Kirsty. ‘You need your birth certificate and your deed poll …’
She sees that it was a rhetorical statement, clams up. She’s so used, through parenthood, through work, to being the person
with the information, the one who offers advice, that she’s forgotten that it’s not always being solicited. Amber’s lips are
pursed and she’s looking away again, over Kirsty’s shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ says Kirsty.
‘It’s OK,’ says Amber. They both fall silent again, studying each other’s features. Putting them together with the children
they both once knew.
‘So you look as though life’s treated you OK,’ Amber says pointedly.
What do you say to that? To someone for whom life has clearly not done the same? ‘Yes. Can’t complain’?
‘Yes,’ she says meekly. Vertical lines run down Amber’s upper lip, as though her mouth is pursed a lot. Two more deep verticals
divide her eyebrows. Kirsty is getting marionette lines and horizontals across her forehead, light crow’s feet at the sides
of her
eyes: the lines of interest and smiling, and none of them as deep, or as firmly etched, as Amber’s. Amber’s blond hair crackles
on her scalp like seagrass. Her hands, wrists, neck, ears are devoid of ornamentation, other than a dull, practical watch
on a waterproof band. Kirsty feels uncomfortably overdecorated, conscious of her engagement ring, which cost, by tradition,
an entire month of Jim’s salary; of the fact that her necklace and earrings are not only matching, but are set with real emeralds,
even if they are small ones.
Amber’s nails are cut short, the cuticles dry and ragged against work-roughened skin. Kirsty, though she spends too much time
at a keyboard to maintain a manicure, nonetheless keeps hers shaped, and protected with a coat of Hard as Nails, the skin
regularly fed from the tube of cream she keeps in her bag. Nothing speaks more about the contrast in our lives, she thinks.
‘So you’re a journalist, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘You could barely read when I knew you.’
Kirsty blushes, feeling ashamed at the memory. Remembering posh Bel Oldacre back on a summer’s day and feeling ashamed again.
‘Well, you know – I was lucky at Exmouth … I wasn’t allowed to just hide at the back of the class and fulfil expectations
…’
Amber goes pale, sits back. She seems – scandalised. Angry. Wow, thinks Kirsty. I’ve hit a nerve.
‘Exmouth? They sent you to Exmouth?’
Everyone in juvenile facilities knows about the other ones; the big ones, at least. They are discussed – constantly, fearfully,
enviously – as inmates come and go, are transferred and given licence. Kirsty knows how lucky she was, being sent to Exmouth.
Knows every day, is reminded every time she has to do a story on any related subject, how lucky she was. ‘Uh … yes,’ she says
carefully, still feeling out the land.
‘Do you know where they sent me?’ asks Amber. The words are more accusation than question.
‘No,’ says Kirsty. ‘No, of course I don’t, Amber. You know I don’t.’
‘Blackdown Hills,’ she says.
‘Jesus.’ Once again, she’s stuck for words. Feels sick with shock.
‘Heard of it then?’ Amber glares, the accusatory tone back again. ‘It’s closed down now, of course.’
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘Of course. I covered the closure.’
‘Yeah,’ says Amber bitterly. ‘And I’ve heard of Exmouth too.’
Kirsty shakes her head, feels a strange urge to apologise, as though her own escape from the world of lock-down and pin-down
and short, sharp shock is the source of Amber’s misfortune. But Blackdown Hills … they used to use Blackdown Hills as a threat,
at Exmouth. It was where they sent you if they thought you were never coming out.
‘Yes. God knows. Luck of the draw, I guess,’ she says, uselessly.
‘Yes,’ says Amber, ‘I
guess
.’
Amber looks at Kirsty and feels a stab of heartache. Of course I thought you’d got the same punishment as me, she thinks.
Of course I did. And now look at us. We’re the diametrical opposite of what anyone would have said would happen if they’d
seen us that first day, sitting on the Bench. I feel like a lab rat in a bloody psych experiment.
Kirsty is looking down and away, her cheeks touched with pink. She looks ashamed, as though Amber’s fate is her fault. They’re
both lost for words, both briefly adrift in memory.
‘So have you got kids?’ Amber changes the subject abruptly. She doesn’t know why this is the first question that comes into
her head, but it is.
‘Yes,’ says Kirsty. ‘Two. Luke and Sophie. She’s eleven, he’s eight.’
Instinctively she starts to reach for her bag to find the photos she keeps in her wallet, changes her mind, puts her hands
back on the table.
‘Good for you,’ says Amber dully.
‘You?’ asks Kirsty, timidly. Please let her have
something
good. I don’t know if I can bear the guilt.
Amber shakes her head. ‘No. No, nothing like that.’
Kirsty wonders, as she always does when this issue comes up, how she is supposed to respond. Is she supposed to commiserate?
Gloss over it? Spout one of those lucky-old-you palliatives parents often seem to feel obliged to come up with, which everyone
knows are insincere?
‘Would you have liked that?’ she asks. ‘To have had children?’
‘Of course,’ replies Amber, and meets her eyes. ‘But there you go. Luck of the draw again, eh?’
‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ says Kirsty, and looks ashamed again.
‘We’ve got two dogs,’ says Amber. ‘Well, me mostly. I don’t think he gives two hoots either way. Mary-Kate and Ashley. Papillons.’
Kirsty laughs. ‘Good names.’
‘I know. It’s a bit mean, but …’ Her expression softens suddenly, and her face takes on a glow. She looks pretty, for a moment.
Younger. Kind. ‘It’s not the same, of course, but it’s – I love them. Stupid amounts.’
‘They’re great, animals,’ says Kirsty inconsequentially.
‘Have you got any?’
‘A cat. The thickest cat in the world. He just sits there, mostly.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘Barney.’
‘Right,’ says Amber, and Kirsty can’t tell what she’s drawn from the name. By God, she’s unreadable, she thinks. Apart from
that flash of anger, I’m getting just about nothing from her. A normal person would be spilling tells all over the place.
I know I am.
The waitress arrives, bearing Amber’s tea. It comes in an earthenware mug the size of a dog-bowl. ‘There you go,’ she says.
‘Nice and hot.’
Amber takes it, barely thanks her.
‘Can I get a latte?’ asks Kirsty.
‘Sure.’
‘Ta,’ says Kirsty. Her first latte in Whitmouth. It comes as a relief.
‘Back in a tick,’ says the waitress. Kirsty turns back to Amber, sees that the unreadable has become eye-rollingly amused.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘We
do
do latte in Whitmouth,’ she says pointedly. Tears the tops off four sachets of sugar and dumps them into her mug. Sees Kirsty
looking and gives a small, mirthless laugh.
‘Habit,’ she says. ‘All the energy of a biscuit, and it’s free.’ She eyes Kirsty as she stirs her tea. ‘So you live in London,
I suppose?’
Kirsty lets out a small laugh. ‘No. Why would you think that?’
‘Oh, you know. Lattes and that.’
Kirsty hears her own false-sounding laugh again, wishes fervently that she didn’t always do that when she’s nervous. ‘No.
Farnham.’
‘Surrey? Nice.’
‘Yeah,’ says Kirsty, and experiences a jolt of annoyance. She’s putting me into a box. Now she knows I drew the long straw
at the beginning, nothing I’ve done is going to be anything other than luck, to her. ‘Well, we had to work hard to get there,
but yes.’
‘I’m sure,’ says Amber, the unpleasant edge back in her voice. ‘And what does he do, your husband?’
Kirsty had never thought that Jim’s disaster might ever stand as validation of herself. Grabs it anyway and waves it in front
of her former friend like a badge of honour. ‘He doesn’t, at the moment. The recession’s got us. It’s been a year. I don’t
know where the time went. We’re … well, I’m doing everything I can, you know?’
Amber softens slightly. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. That’s tough.’
Yes, thinks Kirsty. It is. It
is
tough. It’s scary and fretful, juggling the debts, robbing Peter to pay Paul, sacrificing everything
to avoid the bank that sacked him getting wind that we can’t actually cover the mortgage we hold with them as a consequence.
But, yeah, it’s middle-class tough. I know that. No pressure groups weeping for us.
She knows she needs to ask some questions; that this might be the only opportunity she ever gets. Doesn’t know where to start.
‘And you? You mentioned someone?’
‘Yes,’ says Amber. ‘You – your husband, I guess – spoke to him the other day. Vic. We live together. Six years now.’
‘Good … I … good,’ she says lamely, aware as she says it how condescending the comment must sound. ‘How did you meet?’
‘Work. We work together. Well, not together, but he works at Funnland too. You?’
‘Oh,’ says Kirsty, ‘the usual. Mutual friends. We just … you know. Talked to each other a few times at parties, and … you
know.’
Parties, thinks Amber. Another thing I’ve missed out on. At least the sort of parties you’re talking about: ones where people
mix over the taramasalata and ask each other to dance. Why do I feel like she’s rubbing my nose in it?
‘So does he know?’ she asks. ‘Your husband? About you?’
‘Jim?’ Kirsty feels the prickle of hair on her arms at the thought. ‘God, no. Not a thing. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t know how
…’
Amber’s tone turns harsh, interrogatory. ‘So what do you tell him? What’s your cover story?’
‘I … bad parents. Care system. Don’t want to go back there. You know.’
‘And he accepts it?’
‘He … At first I think he used to have a fantasy that he could bring about some sort of miracle reunion, you know? But he
gave up a long time ago. I think he just accepts it now. Just thinks of it as being what makes me
me
. That I don’t want to go back there and I don’t want to be reminded.’
‘I’ll bet you don’t,’ says Amber.
Kirsty gulps. This isn’t going well, she knows. Though she’d had few expectations that it would. ‘What about your … Vic? Does
he know?’
‘He doesn’t ask,’ says Amber. ‘I guess maybe that’s why I’m with him. He never asks. Not about anything, really. He’s the
most uncurious person I’ve ever met.’
In
curious, says Kirsty’s mental editor. She slaps him down. But God, that sounds so – empty.
Amber sees the thought cross her face. ‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for
me
,’ she snaps. ‘I don’t need your pity. It’s how I like it, trust me.’