The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise (19 page)

“Good of you to make it,” he said.

“I deserved that,” Dad said. “I'd have come sooner, but . . . you know . . .
God, Frankie, you look terrible. . . .
”

As icebreakers go it was pretty far off the mark. Besides, I felt I looked quite dapper that morning. Having watched the
original
Ocean's Eleven
with Amber, I had been inspired to fashion a pocket square for my pajamas that morning. The effect was lost on Dad, who hadn't even done up the top button of his shirt. He really was unraveling.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

Chris rolled his head back and sighed.

“Give it a rest, Christopher. This isn't easy on me either.”

“Been a tough few years, has it?” Chris asked. Dad looked like he'd been winded.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, getting up to hug me. I flinched, and Dad sat back down again. “Sorry. Baby steps, eh? You're a young man now. Don't want hugs off your old dad.”

Eventually Chris did get up and leave me and Dad to it.

“I'm going to check on Mum. If you need me, then just shout,” he told me.

The whole time Dad spoke I just stared at him blankly, thinking that if there was one person who would really be able to defuse this situation it was Amber.

I also started to think that I might like to tell Dad about her. Maybe see if he was impressed by how pretty and clever she was. Having not been to school lately, I couldn't wow him with accolades received for my intellect, like I would normally have done. And I was in no physical shape to impress him with, say, sit-ups or my annual Sports Day silver medal.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe he would like to hear about Amber. Maybe he'd have laughed. Or hugged me. Or gone to the pub and told all his friends that his son had his first girlfriend. I'd been forced to wing it up to that moment, but he might have been able to give me some advice.

But then again we'd done all right, winging it. And if I needed advice, then there was Chris for that. And Mum. And to have given him the news about Amber would probably have made Dad happy. And he didn't deserve to be happy with us, because when we'd all been as miserable as we'd ever been he had left, kicking open the door to a whole new world of things for us to worry and cry about.

I felt my face shrivel into a scowl. Dad ruined things. It was what he did. He didn't fit in with the routine we'd had to build around him not being there anymore. He didn't even seem to fit in with the living room properly. He looked at odds with the wallpaper and the furniture we'd changed since he'd been gone, like the giant packages we would take in for next door when they missed their delivery—packages that just got in the way no matter where we put them. Packages that belonged somewhere else. It was at that moment I decided that he wasn't getting Amber. And he wasn't getting me either.

“You do know I made what I felt was the best decision for us all at the time?” he said at one point, and suddenly
I was glad that Chris wasn't still sitting with us. He could be quite confrontational at times. He'd interrupted conversations in restaurants before to explain to people why they were wrong.

“You and your brother, you were just . . .” Dad went on, but I had let my mind wander. He kept screwing up his face as if he wanted me to help him out by saying the hardest bits for him. Or maybe tap him on the knee and wink, telling him it was all okay. I was not prepared to do this. Part of me enjoyed seeing him squirm, trying to gloss over his own behavior.

The game was still spinning angrily in the console where Chris had left it. Dad started patting his jacket flat against his body, like he'd only just realized he'd forgotten to iron it. He really was a sorry sight.

“I brought you something for Christmas,” he said eventually, reaching into his bag.

It was a card.

“Shall I open it now?”

“If you like.”

It was a Christmas card intended for a child, with a cartoon reindeer on the front. When I took it out of the envelope a misty avalanche of glitter cascaded across the blanket I had wrapped around myself. Only two things about the card were of interest to me. Firstly, there was no money inside. Secondly, that another woman's name soiled the page.

Wishing You a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year. With Love, Dad and Barbara,
it said. There were two kisses beneath the writing. One of them I took to be from Barbara.

Dad was clearly out of the loop on matters of child rearing. And for a moment I felt the urge to dispense some valuable advice on such matters.

E.g. for the same reason my cancer diagnosis was not presented to me in a gift-wrapped box by a smiling stranger, so the name of the woman that you abandoned the family unit for should not be introduced via a Christmas card. Common sense ought to have told him as much. But then again, common sense clearly was not high on Dad's list of priorities.

I felt the foundations of our family shift an inch or two, like a tiny earthquake had rippled beneath them. We were inching ever closer to the territory where differences are aired on late-morning talk shows.

“It would be nice if you could meet her one day,” Dad was saying.

I stared at him with the chilly indifference of a psychopath.

“. . . in time,” he added, and turned to face the TV even though it was on standby.

“Tell you the truth, I didn't know what to get you,” he said, but the card had done it for me. Suddenly I didn't even
feel sorry for him anymore. He was just another visitor to our house. One who had upset Mum and made Chris go all floppy and awkward. I wanted him gone, and I wanted him gone fast. But first there was the small matter of compensation.

“Just work out how much you would have spent and give me the equivalent in cash,” I said, taking control of the situation. It was the first full sentence I'd spoken the whole time he'd been sitting there. Dad had barely let me get a word in edgewise. He'd managed to talk solidly for nearly fifteen minutes, all the while saying nothing of any worth and leaving the important stuff written in pen on the back of a reindeer's face.

“Probably what you need at your age . . . some money to go into town with. I'll write you a check,” he agreed.

“Cash would be better. There's a machine in the bottom shop now. You've got to pay one twenty-five to make a withdrawal, so Mum won't use it because she says it's robbery. But you can just deduct that from the overall amount if you feel the same way.”

“Right,” Dad said, looking a bit flustered. “If that's what you want.”

“And get exactly the same amount for Chris, too. Because I used all the colored ink in his printer and he's saving for a car, so every penny counts at the moment.”

“Right.”

I yawned and hunkered down into my nest on the couch, feeling quite pleased with the way things had panned out. Though devoted to the arts, I sometimes think I could make quite a splash in the business world.

“You feeling tired?” Dad asked. I nodded and made my eyes go all heavy so that he'd get the point doubly fast.

“Well, you take care, kid. I'll sort out your Christmas gift before I go.”

“And Chris's,” I said with my eyes closed as I heard Dad stand up and make his way out of the living room.

I must have method-acted my way through my fake nap, because when I woke up it was teatime and he had gone.

“You look worn out,” Mum said when I joined her in the kitchen. I didn't say anything. My pocket square had fallen out while I was asleep and was lost forever in the sea of blankets and old tissues that I had made my home for most of the day, so I probably did look quite unkempt.

“Well, I feel fine,” I said as she got up to put the kettle on.

She came back and gave me a big hug from behind.

“Did Dad leave any money?” I asked Chris, who nodded and pointed to the sideboard.

“How many zeroes?”

“Two,” he said.
“Just.”

While the lasagna was cooking Mum sent him upstairs to have a look at her laptop. I knew it wasn't really ­broken
because I'd been playing on it the night before, so assumed this meant she wanted A Serious Talk.

“You all right?” she asked when we were alone.

I told her I was.

“You know, Francis, the one thing you do need to understand is that your dad left
me
. Not you.”

“It doesn't work like that, though. We sort of come as a package,” I said.

Mum laughed and stroked my face.

“You're a good boy. You both are. But I made sure I got his new number. If you ever want to see him, you know, you've only got to ask.”

“I don't,” I said. Mum tried her hardest not to look relieved.

“I just don't ever want you to think you've got to do anything out of . . . oh, I don't know . . .
loyalty
to me. He's still your dad. He still loves you.”

“I know,” I said. “But at the minute I prefer him from a distance.”

“Chris feels the same way, so I suppose that's settled. Now you look okay, so you can set the table for me. It'll be ready in fifteen minutes,” Mum said, making her way upstairs to tell Chris that it was all right for him to come down.

Mrs. Babshaw from across the street had seen Dad coming into our house. She'd phoned her daughter to let her know,
and her daughter had phoned her mother-in-law, who played cards with Grandma. As a result Mum had to spend an hour after dinner on the phone to Grandma, dissuading her from making a guest appearance.

“It's sorted. The last thing we need today is another visitor,” Mum said, getting more frantic each time she had to stop Grandma from booking a taxi to come and stand guard against any more unannounced visits from ex-­husbands.

“Did you show her the card?” I asked Chris when she'd left the room.

“She knows,” he said.

So did Chris, it turned out. Everyone in the world had known except for me. I could hear Mum in the hallway still ranting to Grandma.

“. . . of course he was on his own. For God's sake, even he knows better than that!”

Normally this was the sort of thing we kept from Grandma. Her generation cannot handle the complexities of modern love. To people of Grandma's age an affair is something as rare and confusing as an en suite—the sort of thing only film stars and foreigners have.

“Are you okay?” Chris asked me.

I said I was fine.

“Well,” he said, “it's been a big month. You've lost your virginity and learned that your parents aren't as great as
you thought they were. Welcome to Big School, mate.” He poured some of his beer into my lemonade so that it made a weak shandy.

“Mum's a bit great . . .” I said, but quietly enough so that she wouldn't be able to hear, “. . . sometimes.”

Chris took another swig of beer and thought for a second. “I suppose,” he said, “she can be a
bit
great . . .
sometimes
.” He spoke even more quietly than I had done just as Mum came back into the kitchen, holding the phone like a gun.

“However bad things get, just remember . . . they could always be worse,” she said, referring to Grandma, then cocking the phone as she slid it back into its holster. “You lads all right?” She was pouring some of Chris's beer into her empty glass and taking a big gulp.

“Yeah. How you doing?” he asked.

“You two don't have to worry about me. I'm just fine. I've got my lads, I've got my house, and I've got my mother on hold until at least tomorrow,” Mum said with a smile. She bashed her glass against Chris's and then against mine, giving Chris a pretend look of disapproval when she noticed the beer scum tainting my lemonade.

“Cheers, boys,” she said. “Here's to the best Christmas yet!” And drained her drink.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Christmas got off to a
slow start.

During the week leading up to the big day I had texted Amber twenty-eight times. She had responded seven times. This worked out as a ratio of four to one, which I knew because Mum had started picking up schoolwork for me to do at home when I was feeling up to it. It was testament to Amber's lax input that I even had a spare moment in which to contemplate math course work.

On Christmas Eve morning Grandma went to turn on the bathroom light and the whole house was plunged into darkness.

She hollered for help but Mum just ignored her and told Chris to go and sort it out. I aimed the flashlight into the cupboard for him while he probed for the right fuse.

“I think it might be a sign that bad things are coming,” I said. “Like a metaphor . . .”

“It's fine, Francis,” he said sharply.

“. . . and I saw a magpie on its own, outside my ­window.
This means sorrow, in case you don't know. It's like the whole planet is heading toward certain doom. . . .”

“Just hold the bloody flashlight still, Frankie.”

In fact, I had taken to superstition in a big way. Amber's condition had been on and off more than ever during the weeks leading up to Christmas, which I took to be the reason behind her waning commitment to our love. To remedy this, I became determined to do everything in my power to make her better from afar. When Grandma came into the house I lunged at her. She thought it was for a hug, but really it was so that I could snap her umbrella shut before the universe noticed and doomed us to more bad luck. In the bathroom I'd open the cabinet as gently as if I were inspecting a child, lest the glass smash and grant us seven more terrible years. I wouldn't even walk into the conservatory, fearing that the gaps between the tiles held the same harmful power as cracked paving stones.

I was trying to explain all this to Chris when he let out a short scream. At first I thought it was from boredom. Sometimes my theories are beyond even him. But he seemed to be implying that he'd received an electric shock. I suspect this was a bid for attention because I'd got my new sneakers and he was feeling left out, even if the howl of agony he emitted was particularly believable, like a musk-ox being mounted.

“There!” he said, angrily, as every light in the house flooded back on. “You do know you're the most useless person in a disaster, Francis?”

“If they don't come I'm not getting out of bed on Christmas Day. You'll have to bring my presents and dinner to me in bed like I'm an elderly Royal,” I warned Mum as she carried on mulling every liquid at hand.

The Spratts had been penciled in to arrive on Christmas Eve and spend the night, but Colette had just rung to say that she wanted Amber to get a good night's rest so they would make their way to us on Christmas morning. It seemed that Colette's cheery facade masked a soul of pure darkness, as not only did this break my heart, it also required a major redraft of the Christmas Day Schedule I'd printed off and stuck to the fridge. I had considered every eventuality, and choreographed it to the letter. I'd even been sure to leave Subject to Change gaps, which was code for “making out with each other while everyone else is busy.”

“Maybe best they don't come then. The poor lass needs her rest. . . .” Grandma said, cutting crosses into the bottoms of Brussels sprouts. She was already in a bad mood. The night before Uncle Tommy had phoned her up at half past nine to wish her a merry Christmas. Whenever the phone rings after six o'clock at night Grandma assumes it is to inform her of a major disaster and clutches her rosary beads before answering.

Mum turned and glared at her and she shut straight up.

“I'm just saying, they've got their own house. And that funny mush you've had to get in . . .” Grandma said, pointing to the nut roast Mum was doing for Colette.

“Well, it's happening, so get used to it,” Mum said, turning up the radio with a smile as she grabbed hold of me and forced me to dance to the first bit of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

Chris had helped me to redo the tree so it was perfect, only every time I looked at the box to make sure it was just like the picture, he'd wolf down another chocolate bauble and we'd have to start all over again.

“But I'm hungry!” he kept moaning. Chris does not understand the importance of love. Mum says his idea of long-term is staying for breakfast.

“We'll be done soon. Have a mince pie,” I kept telling him while he adjusted the highest rung of lights so that they hung in three perfect lines.

Under the tree some of our lesser presents were displayed. I am naturally inquisitive, which is probably why I excel at science, so poked my finger through a parcel with the ­cheapest-looking paper on it and caught a glimpse of something purple. Past experience informed me that this could only mean an assortment box of chocolates, the most thoughtless and hateful present of them all. A box of chocolates is the wrapped equivalent of a shrug. You may as well not bother.

“Frankie, if you don't stop going at those presents like a crazed surgeon, I'm taking the whole tree down,” Chris said. His present to me was under there, too. I think he was keen not to ruin the surprise.

I apologized but explained that I was doing it for selfless reasons. The year before Grandma had got her labels mixed up, so that I'd ended up with a cat basket and one of her friends had my iPod speakers. She'd spent most of the morning crying and I'd had to lie and say that I'd always wanted a pet, so it was one step in the right direction, which just about perked her up. But then when she'd found out said friend had already returned the speakers to the store for credit she went all weepy again.

“Shut up, Frankie,” said Chris, unwrapping another chocolate bauble.

“Well, merry Christmas, you lot,” Mum said, raising her glass to us after dinner while Chris and I both unwrapped our Christmas Eve present.

It was pajamas. It was always pajamas.

“At least you might actually wear them this year,” Mum said, pointing to me. I'd become quite used to wearing nothing but night wear. Even when I visited Amber, I would just pull my jeans and sweater over whatever I had slept in. Quite apart from the cancer, this was probably why I spent three-quarters of my day napping. I made a resolution to
dress for success come the New Year. I'd have no choice but to anyway. Talk lately had been veering toward my returning to school for half days.

“Oh, there's these as well. But there are conditions so don't get too excited,” Mum said, handing me and Chris an envelope each, inside which was a ticket to Glastonbury.

“Your brother's taking you . . .” she told me as I hung from her neck like a pet monkey, “. . . and bringing you back. And you are to ring me every two hours; otherwise I will drive down there myself and drag you back, do you understand?” I agreed wholeheartedly. Grandma didn't look so sure. I'd made her watch the Glastonbury Festival with me that year on television. It took three different acts on the pyramid stage and a flash of a BBC helicopter before she would believe it wasn't a documentary about the Somme.

“YOU CAN COME DOWN NOW!” Mum yelled from the front room the next morning, after we'd opened our stockings in her bed.

“Pull the curtains, Julie, let the day in,” Grandma said while I tore through my presents.

“Let the fire warm the place up first,” Mum said, coming to sit by me on the sofa.

Chris always pretends he's not as excited by Christmas as I am, so he lets me open my presents first, but I could tell
that each time I paused to glance at instructions or scan a blurb he was getting more and more riled.

Beside the fireplace, where the important family cards were displayed, a candle was lit. Next to the candle was an unopened card with Emma's name on it, and next to that, an unopened jewelry box wrapped with a red ribbon. Since I was six, this shrine would be laid out for Christmas Day, exactly the same each year. It would be gone within a few days. Neither Chris nor I knew what happened to the offerings. We didn't ask.

Sometimes through the day if you passed the kitchen door when Mum was by herself, you could catch her talking to Em, too. Not full on conversations, just little things, like “Merry Christmas, my lovely girl” she'd say, or “I'll tell you one thing, you'd be glad you skipped this year.” Then, once, “Oh shit, sweetheart, I think I've left the giblet bag inside. . . .”

Nobody ever interrupted. Nobody even acknowledged it. It was nice, in a way. It was Mum's way of keeping something going that made her happy. Some loves, like the one Mum felt for Dad, disappear forever and are best forgotten about; some are best suspended in the amber of memory—localized to a specific time and place, like a really great dish you ate at a restaurant on holiday; and other loves carry on forever, no matter how distant their nucleus becomes. Like Mum's love for Emma. It didn't matter that it didn't have
anywhere to go anymore; it was too much a part of her simply to no longer be. She could no more lose its active presence than she could stop loving me and Chris. It trumped everything, swallowing the sadness of Em's absence. A love like that only stops if you let it.

Mum had outdone herself this year. Every item of clothing I had ever coveted, she had bought for me. She'd come up with books I hadn't even mentioned to her, and a DVD of every film Amber and I had ever watched together.

On the table stood a jug of mimosas that she and Chris polished off in pretty much one gulp.

“Pace yourself, big lad. It's going to be a long day,” Mum said as he downed his third glass just as I unwrapped the biggest present—a record player—and a stack of my favorite albums on vinyl.

“My turn!” Chris said when I was finished. He had fewer boxes than I did. But they were all bigger.

He opened the first one and there was nothing inside.

“Um, Mum . . .” he said.

“Oops!” she said, swallowing a mince pie whole without chewing.

Chris opened the second and the third box and each held just more and more wrapping.