by Jenny Oliver
Around the same time Julia had taken a job at the corporate giant TPX Consumer Healthcare that had a great salary, pension and excellent maternity package. Her dad had been one of the management consultants who had, a few years previously, raised profits by 40 per cent and was very friendly with the board of directors. It had felt like the secure, grown-up thing to do, especially with Charlie wavering, and she was good at it. The salary was such that it might give Charlie a bit of slack, perhaps be able to drop down marginally if he did want to change profession. Then the boiler blew up and the builder muttered about asbestos and the guttering collapsed. The unexpected bills mounted.
Charlie had stuck at his job because they simply couldn’t afford for him to leave. But he retreated into renovations, ripping up half the carpets but with no money he ran out of energy to do more, and then in the spring he went out into the garden to his precious tomatoes like he could escape his work by feigning retirement.
When Julia had mentioned the possibility of her applying for the promotion at work, the extra money that might buy them some slack, he’d paused his digging of the vegetable patch to say wearily, ‘We can’t both hate our jobs, Julia.’
Julia stared at the Instagram picture of the champagne she’d hashtagged #excitingtimes. She realised it was one of the last she’d posted of the two of them together. It had been the start of their divergence. That afternoon their new neighbour, Lexi Warrington – all tanned and gorgeous fresh from a week in the Maldives – knocked on the door to deliver a vegan cheesecake and slip into casual conversation that she was an Instagram influencer, while beckoning them into a photo. The dormant FOMO had sparked again in Julia’s eyes and she’d been consumed.
Julia stared at the champagne photo. Then she turned off Instagram. She was tempted to delete the app but couldn’t quite bring herself to. The only thing she really wanted to do was talk to Charlie.
Chapter Fifteen
Amber sat on the hard blue prison bench. Inside the small cell it was hot and stuffy and smelt of public toilets. The walls were bare concrete bricks, their surface rough to the touch. The ceiling was dappled with black spots of mould and the old linoleum floor was speckled with various coloured stains. The harsh electric lighting flickered like a twitch. Opposite Amber, leaning against the chipped white bars, was a skinny girl with bad skin who sat scratching furiously at her arm. In the far corner was an angry old purple-haired woman who reeked of booze and was clearly sleeping off a heavy night, the police officers seemed to know her well. Every now and then she opened one eye and shouted to the skinny girl to stop scratching, more out of annoyance than care.
Amber tried to sit as still and silent as possible. She needed the loo but there was no way she was using the stainless steel toilet in the corner. Instead she focused on trying to control her cortisol levels that if left to spin into overdrive would have her screaming at the bars in frustration to be let out.
How dare Julia have said all that stuff about her. She didn’t owe Lovejoy anything. He was untrustworthy and selfish and always had been.
Amber glared angrily at nothing.
But then Julia had helped her with the passport. She could easily have handed it over as a fake. It had surprised her, the fact she hadn’t. It had probably surprised Julia, too, she thought.
The purple-haired woman in the corner smelt like Amber’s mother. The pervading sweet stench of rotten red wine.
Amber didn’t want to think of her mother.
She could suddenly imagine her peering through the bars, feet crammed into gold stilettos, old raggedy fur coat pulled tight up round her neck. ‘Oh Amber, how have you ended up like this? No I can’t help you, honey. Keith’s in the car waiting. You’ll work out what to do, you always do. So resourceful. Not like your mother.’ Amber could hear her self-deprecating titter. See the lipstick on her teeth. She doubted she was still with Keith, but there would be some bloke in the car waiting with bad teeth and shiny skin.
Amber couldn’t sit any longer. She stood up and went to lean against the bars. To try and breathe in some fresh air.
The old purple-haired woman watched her.
Touching the bars of the cell was like the cool hardness of her mother’s hand as she thrust her a wodge of cash, and with a quick hug, said, ‘You’re on your own now, honey. I’m sorry, it’s Keith, he doesn’t want children. Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m hopeless on my own. It’s not my fault, honey, blame your father. Why he gets to be the saint just cos he’s dead? Blame him for his cholesterol. No one says that do they? No one says the stupid fool thought more about a bacon sandwich than he did about us.’
And suddenly there was her father, collapsed behind his stall at Newark Antique Fair while she was queuing to get them both their usual sneaky bacon sandwich – banned from his diet a couple of months before by the doctor. She heard the holler of teenage Lovejoy, who was manning the stall next door, shouting her name. She remembered leaving the sandwiches unpaid for at the burger van. She remembered mundane snapshots, of bumping into an old man with a stick as she ran, a snatch of a song on the radio. And then her dad, the huge bulk of him lying prostrate on the floor. Comical, almost embarrassing. Too big to be vulnerable. She remembered the strange feel like squeezing a rubber ball of pressing down on his chest.
She leant her head now against the cool metal of the prison bars.
She could still remember the taste of his breath as she pressed her mouth to his. The overwhelming helplessness. People told her a nurse who’d been browsing antiques had taken over from her within minutes but to Amber it had felt like hours.
She wondered what he’d say now if he saw her like this. His large hands on the cell bars. His smile and his crooked teeth. His belly wobbling as he chuckled. ‘Fine mess you’re in, kiddo,’ he’d say, as if the whole world were just a joke.
Amber turned her back on the bars and the harsh electric light, trying to keep her face impassive. The stagnant heat pressing down and engulfing her senses.
She used to wonder all the time what life would have been like if he hadn’t died. Had she not had to pause her own existence to support her grieving wreck of a mother who cracked the moment she heard the news. She wondered what it would have been like to finish school rather than pick up her dad’s business, unloading the stall in the ice-cold darkness, fingertips blue. Getting completely shafted by wily dealers taking advantage of her age. Hauling great pieces of furniture on her own. Getting muscles where once had been puppy fat. Panicking about whether between her and her mother, they’d scraped enough together to pay the month’s rent. Living for those moments when occasionally her mum was some semblance of the woman she was before her dad died, and they had some semblance of family. But it never lasted long.
In the cell, the woman with the purple hair caught her eye, head tipped, intrigued. She grimaced, her teeth the same wine-stain of Amber’s mother’s.
Amber closed her eyes to make it go away. But it wouldn’t. She remembered the boyfriends. The one who’d chased Amber round the living room swearing that he’d break every bone in her body because she’d found him smashing her mother’s head into a door, and then, when she’d grabbed one of her father’s antique samurai swords mounted on the wall and pressed the tip to his throat he’d called her an effing psycho and sloped off back to the pub. She remembered the one who climbed into Amber’s bed, unaware that she slept with that same samurai sword. And then the ones who broke her mother’s heart, making her curl up, cool and bony beside Amber, smelling of Nivea cold cream and stale wine, while Amber stroked her brittle hair. Then her mother had met Keith, another of the identikit idiots, and once again she handed herself over to him and this time he stuck.
The prison cell was getting hotter, stuffier. The sun glaring in through the dirty windows along the corridor. Amber pressed herself back against the bars. She stared at the old purple-haired woman crumpled in the corner in matted fake fur and laddered flesh-coloured tights.
For the first ti
me in Amber’s life she wondered suddenly if she was like her mother. When she’d asked Ned for help, had she too picked a man to save her and never looked back. Had she made herself a victim. A user.
She put her hand to her chest. Her heart was beating faster. The purple-haired woman grinned, it felt like a victory for her mother, whispering at the bars, ‘Oh Amber, we’re the same you and me, you’ve always known that.’
‘No!’ said Amber out loud. Making the young, scratching girl jump and the purple-haired woman scoff.
Amber turned round to grip the bars and shout for the police officer, ‘Hey! What’s going on? How long am I in here?’
The response was a hard bang on the wall.
Chapter Sixteen
Julia took a deep breath and rang Charlie’s number. The sunlight flickered on the screen. Her palm was sweating. She sat back while it rang and stared up at the big green leaves dancing above her.
‘Hello,’ he said, his tone clearly showing that he was still unimpressed with her.
‘Hi, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I know you’re annoyed.’
‘I am annoyed,’ he replied.
‘I’m sorry about what I said about my mother and Suzy Maynard’s son. I should have stuck up for you, I don’t know why I didn’t,’ she said, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping, praying that he was in the mood for listening. She went on, ‘And I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. And made you feel like a fool about Hamish. It was just stupid texts, Charlie, I promise. Not reality.’
He didn’t say anything.
Julia sat biting her lip, waiting. ‘Are you going to reply?’ she asked.
‘I shrugged,’ he said.
Julia nodded.
‘Are you going to reply?’ he asked.
‘I nodded,’ she said.
He half-laughed.
She could hear birds singing and knew he was in the garden.
‘So what’s going on there?’ he asked.
Julia watched the sparrows pecking the dust around her bench. She told him everything about Amber’s arrest, tone hushed in case somehow they might hear at the police station, and finished with, ‘And now I’m supposed to be bloody thirty-eight-year-old Christine Miller.’
Charlie blew out a breath. She heard the noise of the garden bench creaking as he sat down. ‘You don’t look thirty-eight,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Thanks.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.
There was a wariness between them. Both sticking to their corners. Charlie especially.
Julia scuffed the sandy floor with her foot. ‘Don’t know. Hope they don’t keep Amber in overnight. Where would I stay?’ She looked around the square, there was no visible sign of a hotel.
Charlie said, ‘Tell me the name of the town and I’ll google somewhere for you.’ She heard him go in the back door, probably to get his laptop.
‘Thanks,’ she said, feeling a sense of relief at the kind normality of the offer.
‘Blimey,’ Charlie said, voice distracted from whatever was on his screen, ‘there’s not much. A couple of Airbnb rooms and that’s it. You’d better hope she gets out.’
Although Julia knew he was probably sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by all the mess, it was nice to hear his voice detached from the image of the falling-down house and the mountains of debt. She felt for the first time in ages that she was talking to just him rather than the angry, tired, stressed face he had become. To pass so easily as thirty-eight-year-old Christine Miller she figured her face must look the same.
‘It all sounds quite exciting though,’ he said.
Julia rolled her eyes. ‘Like I’m in The Wire.’
He snorted. ‘More like The Bill.’
‘I could have been arrested, Charlie.’
‘Nah,’ he said, ‘they’re playing you. They’re teaching Amber a lesson. Either that or they’re really bored and have nothing better to do.’
At the other end of the square three men and a woman were now playing chess, sipping bright green glasses of créme de menthe and creamy pastis brought out by the waiter.
Charlie said, ‘What was the name of the dude, the other dad?’
‘Richard Shepherd,’ said Julia. ‘Why?’
‘I’m looking him up,’ Charlie replied. Then he laughed. ‘He has a website. You can hire him for events, to sing. He still has the porkpie hat.’
‘I want to see,’ said Julia.
Charlie chortled like he was quite pleased he could and she couldn’t. ‘Oh and according to Facebook, he is currently on holiday, sunning himself in Noirmoutier. That’s quite near you, actually. I went on holiday there once as a kid. Lots of oysters, salt and potatoes. Nice place.’
‘Do you think that’s where Billy’s headed?’
Charlie thought for a second. ‘Maybe. I would if I was him.’ Then he said, ‘What will you do if Amber wants to go after him?’
Julia shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve got work on Tuesday.’
‘You should go,’ he said.
‘Why? So I’m not at home?’ she asked, half joking, half testing for a response.
Charlie said, ‘No, not because of that, because it’s an adventure. Better than being here. It’s exciting. I’m jealous.’
‘You are?’
‘A bit,’ he said.
Julia’s phone beeped to say she was low on battery. ‘My phone’s running out, that battery pack was a complete swindle.’
‘Where did you buy it?’
‘Off a market stall.’
Charlie didn’t need to reply.
‘I need to find a plug. I’d better go.’ She stood up, kicking some scraps of tree bark with her foot. ‘I’ll keep you updated.’
‘Yeah, do that,’ he said, their tones friendlier. ‘If you need any help tracking Billy down let me know.’
‘Why, what are you going to do?’
‘I have no idea,’ Charlie said. ‘But it’s fun. Like I said, I’m jealous.’
Julia smiled.
She heard Charlie open the fridge then the hiss and crack of a beer can ring-pull. ‘Don’t forget about the girlfriend. Pandora, is that her name?’
‘Why?’ Julia frowned.
‘Because if this was Columbo, she’d be the extra everyone’s forgotten about,’ Charlie replied. And Julia had a flash of the hours they used to spend curled up watching crap TV at the weekend, wanting to be physically pressed together rather than as separate as could be after too many crossed-wired, badly explained, tired conversations about money and rewiring and debt and the spreadsheet that mapped out their next ten years’ income.
‘That’s very true,’ she said.
‘Follow her on Instagram,’ Charlie said, ‘less suspicious than following Billy, she’ll never know who you are.’
‘You’re a genius,’ Julia laughed.
‘I have my strengths,’ he said. ‘I may not be Hamish Warrington but—’
Julia cut him off, ‘I don’t want you to be Hamish Warrington.’
‘No?’ Charlie laughed like who was she kidding.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I really don’t.’ And it was the first time it felt like the truth.
Chapter Seventeen
Amber went and lay back down on the hard prison bench. Something resembling a cockroach scuttled across the floor. She lifted her feet up. The room was getting stuffier. Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled down her temples into her hair. Closing her eyes, she thought about when she’d come back home, pregnant and broke, and Lovejoy was in the States, gallivanting with a new beautiful blonde every week according to his mates and then later well-documented on Facebook, and lovely, reliable Ned was there, happy to take care of her, adore her, reliably support her, always having loved her from afar. No questions just acceptance. At the back of her mind though, if she was honest, she’d known a Marcia or similar would come along in the end. Eighteen years she’d lived with the fear. It was almost a relief that the truth was out.
She lay
staring at the dark multicolours of her eyelids, thought about how, while Billy was growing up, she had never once brought a man home when Billy was home. She had lived a life of unemotional, anonymous dates the weekends Billy was with Ned. She had lived to make her son happy, to make his life free from the itching, impotent disgust of having a parade of arsehole boyfriends troupe through the shitty living room and demand whatever they wanted from her and her mother.
She hadn’t done it for herself.
Her eyes flew open. The cracked tiles of the prison ceiling above her.
Billy was it for Amber. She remembered the first time when, as a little boy, he told her he loved her – it was like a juggernaut, like her heart was laughing at her, ‘You wanted love, family, ha ha, well here you go, try this on for size.’ Like everything before that was a game. He was hers. And she wasn’t going to jeopardise it. She had found a man good enough for Billy to call a father but weak enough not to encroach on Amber’s way of doing things after they’d split. Whether that was morally right or wrong, fine, Amber thought, Julia, have it your way, fight me on that. But she hadn’t done any of this for herself.
The strip light flickered.
Amber sat up and found herself staring at the purple-haired woman – the image of her mother. No, I’m not like you, she thought. I put my kid first. No. She shook her head. I didn’t tell Lovejoy, I didn’t want to get hurt again, WTF, too right, I’d been clobbered by all of you. And yes I’m angry. I’m angry with Dad for dying, and angry with you for being so weak and angry with Lovejoy for leaving and always being completely selfish and I’m angry at myself. I’m not perfect. I made mistakes but I put my kid first. So go! Leave me the hell alone.
She was right forward in her seat, glaring.
The old purple-haired woman looked away.