The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise (13 page)

“I think that, hard as it is, I will just about cope . . . with the support of friends and professionals.” She said this with an expression so serious it must have been a joke.

“But who'll you talk to?”

“Oh, I don't need friends. And if I do there're always options. Here, Kelly . . .” she yelled across the ward. “What are the chances of you and me becoming besties? There's an unexpected vacancy.”

Kelly flipped Amber her middle finger without looking up from her magazine.

“Besides, it'll be fine. It takes up most of my time being totally unreal anyway. I've become pretty lax what
with all the
Together Time
. I'll probably just ­concentrate on getting back to my former level of ace-ness.”

“Hah!” I said.

“Hah,” she said, squeezing my hand.

I kissed her good-bye quickly when nobody was looking and left her alone before she had a chance to get too tearful at the thought of life without me. The whole morning she had done an admirable job of putting on a brave face, right down to the nap she had pretended to have when Jackie brought in the cake and juice for my somewhat paltry leaving party.

“You ready, big lad?” Mum asked as I made my way over to where they all hovered at the doorway.

“Suppose so.”

“You watch how you go, flower. Though no doubt I'll be seeing you again,” Jackie said, giving me a hug.

“Tomorrow,” I told her.

“We'll see,” Mum said. She was yet another obstacle I would have to defeat in the name of true love. In fact, she was the main obstacle. That and nausea.

“Well, you've done very well, my love. You're a good lad, Francis Wootton,” Jackie said, kissing my cheek.

When we got home Mum had put up balloons and Welcome Home cards, most of which were from her friends and seemed more for her benefit than mine.

“Did any have money in?” I asked.

“It's not Christmas, Francis; it's a goodwill gesture. It's nice that people care,” she said with an unusually nervous laugh, unpacking the various packets of pills. I glanced back over the cards. There were eight in total. Some of the handwriting looked remarkably similar, and they were signed by people whose names I didn't recognize. I think Mum might have got some of the girls in the office to write out duplicates, so that I would feel as though my health concerned more people than it actually did.

“Do you want to see anyone today?” she asked.

By “anyone” Mum could only have meant Chris and Grandma.

And she must have known my answer would be yes.

“Well, I'll cook something nice,” she said. “I bought all your favorites. I didn't know if you'd be up to food though, so it's all in the fridge just in case.”

After that we didn't say anything for a long time. There was something different about being home. It was as if it wasn't so secure anymore, not so solid as it had once seemed. Like it had been when Dad had left for good. Suddenly it felt like a mirage—like if I concentrated too hard it might suddenly disappear and I'd find myself back on the unit. I don't know why this was. I was pleased to be back. But for the first few moments it felt as if I was just visiting, as though I would now have to ask if I could help myself to a drink, or if anyone would mind whether or not I drank the last of the juice in the
fridge. It was as if I'd outgrown my old life and returning felt like a strange exercise in nostalgia, like the times I'd look up songs on the Internet that I remembered from youth club.

It was not a sensation I enjoyed.

I think Mum might have been feeling something ­similar because she was more cautious around me at first too, as if we'd just had a really huge argument that had been all her fault. Even in the car on the way back she hadn't rolled her eyes or snapped at me for being stupid when I'd talked without pausing for breath about my plans with Amber. And once we were back inside she stood at least two paces from me, whereas in the past she'd never concerned herself with the notion of personal space, no matter how often I requested that she would.

After what seemed like an impolite stretch of silence Mum looked like she was going to get upset again, which was the last thing I needed. But then she smiled, and came stomping back over to me like she always did.

“I am so happy you're home,” she said, making each word very clear, like they were being chiseled into a stone tablet. “I love you so much, Francis. Really I do. And I'm so, so proud of you,” she said, hugging me harder and harder until it began to hurt a bit.

For weeks I didn't leave the house much. Time itself became distorted and unreliable. Without the structure
of school, or hospital, and on those days when I couldn't even be bothered watching TV, I lost all concept of minutes, hours, and days. It would have made little difference to me anyway. I did the same thing whether it was six in the morning or eleven at night: I felt lousy.

My visits to see Amber were restricted to a minimum, if they were permitted at all. And on the odd day that I convinced Mum I was well enough to leave the house, Amber would be mostly unresponsive. She would just lie there, weakly attempting to spit out one-liners while the medication tore through her body like liquid sandpaper, leaving her raw and frail.

I spent most of my time in bed. I'd pick up a pen but had nothing to write. I'd pick up a book but the words just became dead weights, an extra burden on a mind that already felt overcharged and spent. And so I lay and wallowed as Mum tried to perk me up.

One day Jacob came to visit, which did more harm than good. In the months I'd been away he had been skipping through subjects along with the rest of my class, to the point where I began seriously to worry that he might be on his way to becoming my academic equal.

“What's the capital of Peru?” I asked, halfway through his description of Jenna Bowley's left boob, which he'd only seen thanks to a wardrobe malfunction during double swimming.

“What?”

“The capital of Peru. What is it?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Anyway, so it was a bit bigger than it looks in her sweater, but whiter than her face is. She looked like an upside down pint of Guinness. . . .”

Jacob went on but I stopped listening. I was just pleased that the natural order had been restored.

(It's Lima, by the way.)

Jacob also told me that in my absence he had taken to hanging around with Nick Tilley. For a while nobody would speak to Nick because we found out his big sister was really his mum and the information blew our minds. He had conducted his campaign well, though, and ended up triumphing when, that September, he'd returned to school with a tattoo and a prescription for antibiotics after having done something heroic with his foreign exchange student.

That said, I don't think his and Jacob's friendship was as solid as Jacob was making out. He talked about what they'd been up to together with a sense of urgency in his voice, like if he didn't keep saying it, then it wouldn't be true. Whereas I only mentioned Amber once or twice, which in itself was testament to how strong our bond had become.

The nurse came around once a day. For a while nothing happened. If anything I got worse. All day and all night I could hear the inhuman sounds I was making, like they
were coming from a stranger, as Mum held the bucket beneath my dribbling chin and whispered kind things about how well I was doing, that even she didn't sound convinced by. Then after a while things changed. Slowly at first, like the last days of winter. There would be moments where I'd feel okay. Then the moments became hours. Until eventually there were whole days, sometimes two in a row, where everything seemed better.

The nurse started using words that I recognized from television. At first it was that the medicine was “taking,” which made me feel like a Crazy Golf windmill with each pill being putted at my mouth. Then I was “responding well.” Which meant that I wasn't throwing up and could mostly go about my daily business without having to take naps to recover from the previous nap, or throw up every time there was a change in temperature or someone within a five-mile radius was cooking food.

Grandma would come and keep me company when Mum had to do urgent work tasks at the kitchen table. She'd sit by my bed and tell me about her day, and when I could take no more of such cruelty I'd ask her to start reading to me from one of my books. She seemed happy enough to do this at first; only halfway through the first chapter she'd go one of two ways. Either she'd nod off in her seat and slump face first onto my bed, so that I'd have to try and nap without kicking her in the eye, or else she'd
purse her lips, and suck in each intake of breath while she cleaned up the language and skipped over the good bits of some of my favorite novels. I don't think Grandma was ever open to the idea of experimental fiction. Her house was full of books with jacket artwork featuring pleasured-­looking women staring out from under floppy bangs. Almost all of them had lavender-colored backgrounds. I think she picked them to match her moulding. One afternoon I gave her a selection of books that I thought might open her mind and improve her, both academically and culturally. The next morning Mum came into my room looking furious as hell. It seemed Grandma had not taken too kindly to
Naked Lunch
.

Otherwise I spent most of my time texting Amber to apologize for the iron fist that ruled over my first few weeks at home. I tried pleading with Mum for greater liberty, but she was immovable on the subject. I told her that they had medicine for what was wrong with me, but there was no known cure for a broken heart. This only made her hyperventilate, then kiss me between giggles, while thanking me for the first proper laugh she'd had in weeks.

Once I was feeling better Mum agreed that I could visit Amber occasionally, so long as she accompanied me in case I took a turn for the worse.

“But there are doctors and nurses there if anything hap
pens,” I pleaded, I thought reasonably. But Mum wouldn't give in.

“Those are my conditions, so like it or lump it.”