The Key of My Heart Chapter 11

Chapter 11 I had enjoyed Amber’s early childhood. Once I had a little money saved, I could relax a bit, stop worrying about tomorrow so much and take pleasure in her affection for me, the way she would run into my arms and hug me. I loved the feel of her warm body snuggling up against mine, her little hands playing in my hair. Now, when I checked the post, I didn’t have to worry about whether I could pay the bills or not. I’d even been able to afford some more clothes for myself. I kept the ones I’d nearly worn out, for when I was decorating or doing something else messy, and threw away the clothes I’d brought with me from Gerda’s. They were too small anyway, and had been cheap to start with. I felt as if I was taking another step away from my past, another step into my future. I still didn’t know what it would be, mind you! I made the most of Amber’s and my time together. She’d be going to school soon, and we wouldn’t have these moments for much longer. All the librarians (and most of the regulars) at the library knew her by now, and commented favourably on her passion for reading – well, being read to! She wasn’t quite reading yet. Pretty soon, Amber was going to grow out of her cot and need a bed. It was time to pay another visit to the second-hand shop, and see what was there this time. And I spotted just what I needed, up one corner. It looked like the local barracks had been having a clear-out – but we were so short of space that bunk beds were the obvious solution. Unless we wanted the whole room to be full of beds, and not a lot else. Amber was really taken by a dolls house that was there – I wished I could have bought it for her, but we still didn’t have the money for unnecessary luxuries. The other thing I saw which we could really do with was a small table and a couple of chairs. Amber was going to need somewhere to sit to do her homework – and I quite fancied owning a table and chairs as well. The furniture belonging to the old lady had long gone – apart from the washstand. I guess no-one used washstands any more. I wasn’t quite sure what sort of people had owned this lot before it ended up here! I arranged a price for the bed, table and chairs with Sugar, who said I might get some money back on the cot if I wanted to sell it, depending on its condition.
“I can’t believe how much the kangaroo has grown,” she said, looking at Amber. “I remember her as just a bump.” And pretty soon, Amber was looking doubtfully at her new bed.
“They’re not very pretty.”
“Wait until we’ve painted them – and put our own bedding on them.”
“We? You mean I can help?”
“Definitely – but you’re wearing an old shirt of mine. I don’t want paint on your good clothes.” Amber’s little bedroom was now our “dining room”.
“So will we paint these as well?”
“Also definitely. We can make them look much better than that.” The library was still one of our favourite places to visit. Amber was reading nicely now – she took to it like a duck to water – and would sit happily in one of the big chairs, lost to the world for hours on end. On wet weekends, when we couldn’t go to the park, we’d head for the library, and she’d read, and I’d try and catch up on all the stuff I didn’t know enough about. Mostly, I was reading up about DIY: I was planning to ask Ma Woodward if I could try and improve the house a bit more. We’d had to buy a new cooker – the old one had died! It was pretty ancient: I think it must have been new when the guy who lived here before me moved in. Ma Woodward had given me the furniture he had left behind, and I was so grateful to her for that – I would have had nothing otherwise.
I was flipping pancakes for Amber one morning, and I suddenly remembered Jasper doing it for me. Most of the time, I managed to forget about him, but then he would come back into my mind, and there I was again, not quite eighteen, and so in love with him. Weekends, Amber and I got to eat breakfast together, in our little dining room! I’d fixed up a shelf for her school stuff over her bed (and under mine!) so that she had somewhere to keep her books, I’d have loved to be able to buy books for her but, failing that, there was always the library. And I needed new nightwear. This dressing gown had come from Gerda’s with me, and was going to fall apart any day now.
“What would you like to do today?”
“The park?” Amber said hopefully. “And the library?” And the park it was. Amber still enjoyed the rides there, and wasn’t too big for them yet. She liked the hopscotch grid too. I looked up at the billboard behind her, advertising Magnus Culmen’s latest album. I knew most of the songs from it – I’d heard them all at the radio at Joe’s umpteen times. The kitchen radio was always tuned to the mainstream pop station, Radio Caudex. I’d never heard any of Jasper’s songs on it though, and I sometimes wondered what had become of his singing dream.
I shook my head. Thinking about Jasper was not good for me. I wasn’t going to hanker after a man. I wasn’t going to make Gerda’s mistakes, and go from man to man, because I thought I couldn’t be complete on my own. Or couldn’t cope. I was going to succeed at bringing up Amber on my own, and I wasn’t going to put her through the hard times I’d been through, with Gerda’s procession of men in and out of our lives. Some days I was on a late shift at Joe’s place, and was working when Amber was due home from school. Those nights she’d go to the library and do her homework there, and I’d collect her when I was finished my shift. She was so well known there, I wasn’t worried about her safety – and she knew not to go off with anyone but to wait for me. We both liked it better when I was on an early shift though. “I can think better when you’re around. I think you help my brain work well.” That was such a sweet thing for her to say that it made my eyes fill up with tears – and then I had to explain that I was crying because I was happy, and not sad! David called round from time to time, and sometimes took me out for a drink and the pub at the back of the library. It was a bit quiet and slightly old-fashioned – like the rest of the area – but it suited David, and I liked it well enough too.
He was a bit lonely now that the other three had left the house. Their places had been taken by three Malaysian Ph.D. students.
“And they’re all very pleasant, and quiet, but there’s the language barrier. Their English is okay, but it’s not their first language, and they don’t use it among themselves.”
He grinned suddenly, remembering something. “I remember the first time Pierre got really fed up about something, and started swearing in French – he knew Priya and Niamh wouldn’t understand him – and he was really shocked when I answered him in French too! He’d thought I was American from my accent, not Canadian, and didn’t realise my French was as good as his!” I could tell how much he missed the others, and so I went out with him from time to time, and let him pay for the babysitter for Amber too.
“Fride, I’m a post-doc now, which means something approaching a salary, rather than a student grant. I can’t offer to take you out, and then have it costing you money. And I don’t exactly do extravagant evenings, now do I?”
I laughed at that comment, delivered in his usual deadpan style, but with a twinkle in his eye, and let him pay the babysitter. But I wasn’t going to depend on him like I’d depended on Jasper. I enjoyed our evenings though – I liked his sense of humour, and he played a mean game of shuffleboard. I tried to look intelligent when he talked to me about his work – it was all to do with terahertz imaging, and followed on nicely from his Ph. D. apparently.
“But what use is it?”
“Well, it looks as though there’s going to be some useful medical applications – looking at skin cancer, for instance. You can’t use it for deeper cancers, because…” and then it all got a bit technical again. He noticed I’d glazed over after a few sentences, stopped, and laughed at himself. He invited me out after he’d been to Santa Fe, to the International Conference on Superlattices, Nanostructures and Nano-devices. He’d been presenting a paper this time, and not just a poster – apparently, this was a big step up.
“I picked up a present for you and Amber – I hope you both like it.”
I did – it was a ceramic gecko, in just the right colours to look good on the wall.
“It’s lovely – thank you, David! How did your paper go?”
“Really well! I had a good time there. A bit hot, for a boy from Canada, but fun.” And then he entertained me with stories about the various eccentricities of some of the people he’d met there. David’s present brightened up the “dining room” no end. And Amber and I were getting brightened up too - I’d spent money on clothes for me (well, new nightwear anyway) and clothes for Amber too.

“Darling, I’ll buy you some top-label threads.
Wherever you go, you’ll turn people’s heads.
So will you be my beauty and my belle?
And will you be my dreamboat girl as well?”

I sang to her, before we went shopping. That song Jasper and I had made together was still her favourite – the one I had to sing to her when she was ill, or woke from a bad dream.

“But I do not want your designer threads.
Why do I need to turn people’s heads?
I cannot stay a beauty and a belle.
As time moves on, my looks will change as well.”

Amber sang the next verse back at me. She knew the song as well as I did now. She had a lovely voice – they’d noticed that at school, and she was already in the choir, and beginning to get small solo parts, even though she was one of the younger singers. Pierre, before he left, had suggested that I started growing some food – easy stuff like salad ingredients that were expensive to buy, and tasted so much better home-grown. I’d given Amber some packets of seeds for her last two birthdays, and she had a little flower border that she was really proud of. The kitchen that I’d inherited with the house had been getting steadily shabbier and shabbier. Joe’s end-of-year bonuses had helped me replace the decaying units, and the dying fridge, and the time I’d spent reading up on basic DIY had given me the confidence to tackle replacing the cracked tiles. Ma Woodward had given me her permission to do it.
“If you make a total mess of it, I’ll take the repair costs out of your deposit,” she said. “But my guess is that you’ll do a fine job.”
And I had! Amber had helped me, and between the two of us, we’d made the whole place look much better. We’d been so pleased with ourselves that we’d tackled the bathroom too. That looked loads better. Ma Woodward had let us put in a washbasin (I didn’t do the plumbing – we got someone in to do that, and Ma Woodward paid half), so now we didn’t have to clean our teeth at the kitchen sink any more. The house and garden were beginning to be really cosy. Sometimes I wondered about moving to somewhere a bit bigger, but that would cost me more money. Staying here meant that I could save something each month. And my savings were there for Amber, in case anything happened to me. And I liked Ma Woodward – and she liked me, and Amber too.
I was really beginning to feel settled, and successful. My job was as secure as any job ever is – I liked working at Joe’s, and had been promoted twice now. And I felt as though I was doing a good job as a mother. Amber was doing well at school, and better than that, we were happy together. I just wasn’t expecting the change that Amber becoming a teenager would make to everything.