The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise (14 page)

The first time we visited, the nurses crowded around me and made a big fuss. Amber looked dead sick.

“It's like you get off on being the Golden Boy,” she said sourly once Mum had gifted us with a few unsupervised moments and gone to fetch some teas. I couldn't help it, though. Often my natural charm prevailed despite myself. Also it might have had something to do with Mum. She'd paid for all the nurses to have a spa day in town as a thank-you present. When we arrived Amy and Jackie both had long, colorful nails with jewels stuck to them. I voiced my concern with regard to Health and Safety to Amber, but she just swore at me.

“Is Paul still staging a prisoner's dirty protest?” Amber asked as she washed down her tablets with one deep gulp of water. Paul wasn't on the ward that day. Apparently he'd spent most of the night throwing up and worse.

“He's doing okay,” Marc said. “And go easy on him. Last thing he needs is your smart mouth when he gets back.”

“I can't help it. It's just the way I spit my lines,” she said as Marc took her empty cup and left us to it.

Amber said that it was boring on the unit without me. I smiled. I had come to realize that relationships were all about reading between the lines. So when she said it was
boring without me, it meant that she missed me. When she told me I was being a creep, it meant that she found my behavior adorable but was frightened to render herself vulnerable by acknowledging the attraction she felt. It was probably my ability to analyze such subtle quirks that made me such an ideal boyfriend.

“You look like you're having a stroke,” she said, punching me in the arm as I beamed out the window. I had obviously underestimated the effect I had on her. Amber was smitten. I was her drug of choice.

When it was time for me to leave I gave her a ten-pound phone card that I'd used some of my savings to buy and told her to text me whenever she could. She said she would, and then, out of nowhere, added, “You are coming back, though, aren't you?”

I told her I would, and saw a strange look on her face then, somewhere between gratitude and relief, neither of which were expressions Amber wore frequently (or well).

“She's not as tough as she acts, that one,” Mum said proudly, like her hypothesis had been proved, as we made our way out of the unit after saying good-bye.

Before we made it into the car park my phone buzzed and I opened the message. It was from Amber.

Not that I care or anything. x x

I kept it to myself, even though showing it to Mum would have proved her to be wrong.

CHAPTER TEN

During my visits to the
unit I would watch Amber peak and trough like a human roller coaster. Sometimes she'd be sprightly and responsive, her cheeks flushed with color, like she was crawling out of the cocoon of her own disease. Other times she'd be silent, sallow and sickly, and barely able to lift her head without every muscle in her body shuddering in pain.

I'd try to keep her upbeat with my many interesting stories and lesser-known facts about eighties teen films and seventies rock bands. But such was the extent of her suffering that sometimes even this would make little difference to her mood.

The one constant that seemed to keep her going—other than tormenting Kelly and making snoring sounds whenever I had been talking for too long—was the oft-postponed promise of her homecoming. The idea was that she would spend some time back at Colette's house, in her own bed, and receive daily visits from a nurse while she took her treatment in a more familiar environment.

“They just can't get enough of me here,” she'd say when the plan was shelved yet again.

“They're like the Spice Girls and I'm Geri. Without me they're just a joke.”

“It's not that bad here,” I'd say, frantically seeking out positives. “At least they've got satellite TV. And meat. At least it's not all tofu and herbal tea. You never know, all the protein might shock your system into getting better.”

“Somehow I think it's going to take more than a Philly Steak and Cheese Hot Pocket to do the trick,” she'd say dourly, teasing the Magic 8 ball without asking it any questions (which must be bad luck, confusing the cosmos as it would).

Sometimes I think she noticed just how sad she could make me, and to try and lessen the damage she'd pick up her mood like a weighted backpack and start making jokes again.

What she didn't realize was that this was worse again. The whole time I'd known Amber on the ward I had never known her to put on a front for anyone. She was like a human emoticon; she wore her mood like a T-shirt slogan, no matter how it jarred with the rest of the ward. I myself was quite adept at hiding my true feelings, and consequently people often overlooked just how burdened I felt, what with having cancer and being in love all at once. But not Amber. She was an open book.

Except on those days. Those awful days when she'd joke for me but her eyes looked like they belonged to someone else, looked like they knew something the rest of her body wasn't yet willing to acknowledge.

One day I woke just after eleven and made my way downstairs, shakily.

“You all right, darling?” Mum said, helping me onto the couch.

“Yes. Just dizzy.”

Mum went into a flap and dropped my medicine box twice while she was looking for the right tablets. She threw the pills down me and began pressing her hands against my throat and head.

“Have you got a temperature? Can you see me okay? Do you feel right? Shall we get the nurse just to check you over?” she asked without pausing for breath.

“No . . . get off,” I said, pulling her hands away from my face. “You're just going to have to help me get ready, that's all. I said I'd go in at one o'clock today.”

“Oh, no,” Mum said, shaking her head and covering me with a blanket. I kicked it off but she threw it back over me and pinned the corners down, afterward kissing me on the head. “You can hate me all you like, but you're staying here today. No discussions.”

“You got the first bit right,” I mumbled cruelly as she
went to make me breakfast. I felt bad as soon as I'd said it but she deserved to be punished for standing in the way of true love.

“She's certainly bringing you out of yourself, I'll give her that,” Mum said as she screwed the cap back on to my medicine bottle.

I spent the entire day on the sofa, Amber's lock of hair hidden in the pocket of my pajamas, watching
Titanic
and other films about love against the odds.

Fiona tried to perk me up by showing me clips of sickening films on her phone. Even the ones that I found amusing, I refused to respond to. I would turn my head away like I was on hunger strike, making it clear to all and sundry that I was lovesick; there was no cure for my ailment.

“Give it up, Frankie. You and I both know you'll be back there tomorrow. It's no drama. It's just one day,” Chris said.

“It feels like a lifetime,” I replied, sliding further down the couch until I could only just make out the top of Kate Winslet's nipple. “And anyway, you'd be miserable if Mum was ruining your entire life and any possibility of future happiness.”

“Yes,” Chris said, “yes, I would. But I hope I'd have the good grace to come out with a bit of banter. My personality would shine through even the deepest caverns of despair.”

“Well then, you
obviously
have never been as miserable as I am. Because even breathing hurts when I'm not with
her,” I said, and he laughed. Sometimes I wonder how I ever endured such an upbringing. I was like the solitary flower sprouting from an endless stretch of cold, hard concrete. Perhaps my biggest problem was that I bore the burden of emotion for the whole family. Like all great poets my downfall was that I simply felt too much. “Oooooooh,” I groaned when Fiona and Chris began a conversation between themselves, paying no further heed to my plight.

“Frankie, pull your thumb out and get up,” Fiona said eventually, slapping my legs. “I've shown you all my best films and relayed both my best stories and, to be honest, I'm starting to take it personally. We all know you love Amber but the whole injured dog routine's getting you nowhere.”

“I don't know what you mean,” I said, sitting up grudgingly. I have never responded well to tough love. I take better to cosseting, and sometimes Grandma was the only one who could step up to that particular challenge.

“Well, for one thing, you're being a jerk. For another, absence makes the heart grow fonder, so she'll be doubly pleased to see you when you do make it, and will probably show you a boob or something in gratitude.”

“Keep talking.”

“And every time you make the sound of a yak being branded, no one knows whether it's the hysterics of a lovelorn teenager or the pained cries of a cancer patient . . . and you know it. So cut it out now.”

“Some of them were real cries of pain,” I mumbled.

“Really?”

“Well, not pain. Mild discomfort.”

“Remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf?” Fiona said. “He was eaten alive. Do you want to be eaten alive?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then stop winding everyone up.”

I perked up a bit after that but still insisted on watching maudlin films to mirror my mood, so Chris and Fiona had to endure
Romeo and Juliet
and we were halfway through
King Kong
when Mum came in with sandwiches and refreshments.

“Still the Weeping Wives Club, is it?” she said, putting the tray down on the coffee table and collecting the used tissues and candy wrappers that carpeted the floor beside where I lay curled on the sofa.

“We're having a dark day,” Chris said, and threw a heart-shaped candy across the room so that it bounced off my head.

“Leave him alone,” said Mum, biting into a sandwich. “Are you two staying for tea, because I'm getting takeout?” she asked.

Fiona answered yes for both of them just as my phone began vibrating on the coffee table.

“Beaten!” Chris said, darting across and grabbing it before I had the chance.

I yelled at him, trying to grab the phone, but he kept jerking his arm and holding it behind his back.

“Are you going to cheer up now?” he asked, switching the phone from hand to hand, passing it behind my back and holding it above my head.

“YES!” I cried, trying frantically to steal it back.

“And concede that I am the single best brother in the history of the world ever?”

“YES!” I said, becoming more frantic as Chris shook the phone in my face, then held it behind his back.

“Now, describe my hair using at least six adjectives,” he said.

“Somehow I always knew it would come to this,” Fiona said, but I was too angry to respond.

I punched him in the arm and tried to tease the phone from his grasp but he wasn't giving in.

“Mum . . . he's inhibiting my recovery!” I whined.

“Give him his phone, for God's sake, Chris. I can't take another verse of ‘My Heart Will Go On.'”

Eventually he relented, handing my phone back to me.

“This isn't over,” I muttered as my fingers stumbled over the keys, trying to open the text like it was a Christmas present I knew I was getting but urgently needed proof of.

When I finally managed to access my inbox I could feel the smile spread across my whole face.

“What does it say?” Fiona asked.

I didn't answer. Just held up the phone to Mum, allowing her to read the three most beautiful words in the English language.

I'M BACK, BITCHES!

The next day I was feeling mercifully better and after a morning of intensive negotiations with Mum, and at least three unnecessary phone calls, she finally agreed to let me spend the afternoon at Amber's house.

“I just want to make it crystal clear that I am not happy about this one bit,” Mum said in the car as we pulled onto Amber's estate.

“You mentioned that,” I said dreamily, focusing my attention on each inch of the road, trying to absorb it faster and faster so that we'd arrive as soon as possible.

“Are you wrapped up?” Mum asked as we got out of the car.

“Yes. I'm fine. Just be nice.”

“Don't push your luck,” she said as we knocked on the door.

Colette had made a tray of biscuits and the whole house was filled with balloons and streamers for Amber's return.

“We had a little party last night. Nothing too extrav
agant,” she said when she answered the door and pulled Mum into another stealth hug.

“Hello, Francis,” she said, kissing my cheek. “Aren't you looking well?”