Amber was such an affectionate child. “I love it when you’re in when I come home,” she said one day, running in to hug me. “I think you’re the best mummy in the whole wide world!”
I finally managed to afford another toy for her – she played with the activity table for hours in the little garden, while I weeded and watered the plants. They tasted good too – thank you, Pierre, I thought. And Dave emailed Pierre and told him about the plants. Dave was leaving very soon now – his post-doc had finished, and he was going on to another post-doc, in another university.“But one day, I’ll get a permanent contract somewhere, and then I can think about settling down, instead of having to go where the work is. Can I visit you sometimes?”
I told him, of course he could, and it wasn’t going to be the same without him next door. Amber was sorry to see him go as well.
Amber would sit and do her homework while I made dinner for us both, on my early-shift days. I was, finally, happy. Amber was having ballet lessons – I could just afford them – and we were content together. And I knew that she was having a much better childhood than I ever had, after I went to Gerda’s.
She was doing nicely at the ballet – she showed me what she could do. The teacher was pleased with her too – she said Amber was a very musical child, with a nice sense of rhythm and timing.
We would sit and talk as we ate together, and I enjoyed her confidences, and was amused by her comments on the world. I was so glad I’d defied Gerda, and run away, all those years ago.
And when Amber first became a teenager, things just got even better. She was so helpful and capable now. Things like blocked toilets she just saw as a personal challenge.“I am not going to be beaten by a piece of inanimate plumbing,” she said, through gritted teeth. She was enjoying her new school as well.
We couldn’t afford to carry on with the ballet lessons – they went up in price as you got older, and the clothes and shoes got expensive too – but she signed up for both the music club and drama club at school, as those were free. Now I was the one coming home first sometimes.
At the weekend, both of us would work together in the garden, getting the job done twice as fast, and enjoying each other’s company at the same time.
I got another promotion – I was a line cook now: I’d come a long way from washing dishes. And Joe’s end-of-year bonus, on top of my higher wages made it possible to brighten up the place a bit more. I bought new lights, and curtains, and we even bought a bookcase - and then spent far too long at weekends trawling all the second-hand bookshops in the neighbourhood! Next bonus, I was planning to update the kitchen a bit more – I really wanted a better cooker, and we could do with a bit more bench and cupboard space.
Amber had new bed-linen – she had really outgrown her ducks-and-anchors patterned stuff. We bought a second-hand bedside table and painted it, and a brand-new bedside light for her, so that she could read in bed at night.
The change in Amber began with little things – she stopped eating breakfast with me, but would eat on her own instead. And when I asked her how drama club or music club had gone that day she would just grunt, shrug, and say, “Okay.” Though when she got one of the minor-solo parts in the end of term show, she did light up with enthusiasm for a little while. But it soon faded again.
I could put a date to when things got worse yet. I was working a double shift, at the weekend - someone was ill. “Amber, can you clean the cooker please – it’s looking dreadful! See you tonight, and enjoy your day. I love you lots.”
I was not best pleased when I got home, shattered, and found Amber lying on the bed reading, and the cooker still filthy.
I made her clean it – which she did with a very bad grace – and told her that she could clean the bathroom as well.
She did that with a seriously grumpy attitude too.“Amber, we both have to help, if we’re to make things work round here. I can’t do it all, you know. You have to pull your weight too.”
“Well, that stupid picture can come down off the wall right now! I don’t know why we have it up there!”I knew why the picture was there. Amber hadn’t wanted to part with it – but had agreed with me that it didn’t really look right in the dining room. And she knew I was fond of it too. She was all set to rip it up, but I stopped her. I mean, I didn’t mind taking it down, but I did mind her ripping up something that had so many nice memories attached to it. I used to tell her stories about the picture, when she was going to sleep.
And it just went from bad to worse. Amber was always sullen, usually surly and rude, and wouldn’t talk to me about what was wrong. And I was fed up too. I’d been enjoying her company more and more – and now this! And I was lonely – David was gone, though he sent postcards from time to time, and my only company in the evening was a grumpy teenager. But I wasn’t going to do a Gerda, and go out trawling for a man, any man.
Ma Woodward came round for the rent, as usual – I was paying quarterly by now, because she knew I could be trusted to pay, though I missed seeing her each month.“You got this place looking real nice now, honey. I thought you would – you had that look about you even back then when you was just a skinny little bit of a thing.”
I thanked her. Then she asked – oh-so-casually – how I was doing, myself. I burst into tears.
When I’d mopped myself up a bit I told Ma Woodward the whole story – and showed her the garden, and gave her some tomatoes to take home with her. She listened thoughtfully, and then asked a surprising question.“What does Amber know about her father?”
“Not much. She asked me once about him when she was little. I said he’d never seen her, and started crying – I couldn’t help it. She said, “Don’t cry Mummy. I’m all right. I’ve got you.” And she never asked again. And I’ve never wanted to bring the subject up.”“Well, if she asks again, I think you should be ready to tell her more. Look, she’ll be back from school soon, won’t she? I’ll hang around: I haven’t seen her for ages, and I miss her. You go off to work as usual. I’ll talk to you later if I think there’s anything you should know.”
Amber was genuinely delighted to see Ma Woodward again. After all, they had known each other for years – and I think Amber held a special place in Ma Woodward’s heart, and Amber knew it.
But as they began to chat, Ma Woodward could tell that something was wrong. Amber was not her normal open and even-tempered self. She asked Amber how she was doing.
And Amber started sounding off about her awful life, and how I was so demanding, and no-one else’s parents asked them to clean the cooker, or the bathroom, and no-one else had to live in a tiny house, and no-one else had such a…the list went on for quite some time.
I think she was expecting sympathy. Instead, Ma Woodward said,“Before you start on ‘no-one else’s mother does this, that or the other’, I think you should know what your mother has done for you.” And she told Amber the things I’d never told her: how I’d run away from Gerda, just to save Amber’s life, the long hours washing dishes, the constant money struggles when Amber was tiny.
“Now how many of your friends’ mothers have done that for their children? And why shouldn’t you help? Is there some rule that says I don’t have to do anything; I should just be waited on, hand and foot?” Ma Woodward paused, and went on in a softer tone.
“Amber, you know you are so dear to me. I lost my only child, because I didn’t have your mother’s courage, and that’s why I helped her, all those years ago. But I want to see you growing up into a fine girl I can be proud of. You got stuff that’s bothering you, you talk to your mother about it – don’t go bottling it up. She’s done nothing to be ashamed of, and plenty to be proud of.”
I came home to a rather subdued Amber that evening, busy doing her homework, and with not a lot to say for herself – but it wasn’t the sullen silence of the previous weeks.
Then, the next weekend, Amber suddenly said, “Could we go to the park?”So we did. We sat down together for a little.
“You brought me here so often when I was little. It still looks the same now – except that the rides are tiny, and they used to be so high!”
There was a pause, which I didn’t try to break. Then she said,
“Mum. Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.” But I braced myself for what was coming next.
Instead, she started telling me things.“There’s this girl at school, in the drama club, and when I got that solo, she like totally flipped, because she thought she should have got it. And then she started going on about you all the time – we were talking about how old our mums were – and saying that you must have been sleeping around loads in your teens, and where was my dad, and did I even know who he was, and…” I listened to the whole nasty story.
So then I told her the true story – I didn’t tell her Jasper’s name: I called him Jake – including how much I had loved him, and the letter he had written when I’d told him I was pregnant, Gerda’s determination to make me have an abortion (which she’d heard about from Ma Woodward, but I didn’t know that then), and how I couldn’t bear the thought of that. She listened, thoughtful.
“Do I look like him, then?”“Yes, very much.”
“Do you still love him?”
“Amber, it was a long time ago. It’s all in the past now. I’m not eighteen any more.”
Before we left the park, she suddenly said, “Mum, I’m sorry. And thanks for everything.”
Things were happier after that. And the house got some more improvements – David called from time to time, usually after he’d been to a conference, and usually with a present for us from somewhere exotic. He was getting to be better known on the international semi-conductor circuit, and he was doing some very interesting research.
I finally got a new cooker as well – and an improved kitchen. We bought an old radio from the furniture shop, and David fiddled with it for us, and got it working very nicely indeed. Amber listened to Radio Caudex all the time (and thought Magnus Culmen was like, totally awesome) whilst I preferred plays, short stories, thrillers – anything with words. I was forever re-tuning it to my station!
Then one day, I switched the radio on, reached out to re-tune it, and then stood there, my hand dropping back to my side. The singer was Jasper.
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