The Opposite of Amber

by Gillian Philip

  ‘Do if I want to.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘When I’ve got anything to say. Worth saying. I mean. Like. You know.’

  And there was me trying to be cool, and screwing up again. I thought he was a twat anyway, so I don’t know why I wanted to look cool. I suppose I just wanted somebody to think I was cool. Even Alex Jerrold. Who was two years older than me, and a dick already. Irredeemable. By the time you were twelve you’d had your chance. I shivered and hoped I’d achieve effortless verbal elegance in the next twelve months or so.

  ‘Do you not think it’s easier to talk if you’re walking?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah . . . ’

  ‘Also, it’s easier to not talk.’

  ‘Yeah . . . ’

  ‘I just think it’s easier when you’re walking. Everything.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘So do you not want to go for a walk?’

  Which is how I ended up tramping around scrubby hills with Alex Jerrold for ten days, trying to give Jinn and Tom space while not giving Alex the wrong idea. I was so not Alex’s girlfriend. For God’s sake, I was still in Primary Seven. Which was no doubt why we got dragged around with Jinn and Tom anyway. They never left us to our own devices, so my devious matchmaking never had a chance of success.

  Of course Tom and Alex were occasionally required to do family holiday stuff, parental bike rides, seal watching boat trips, that stuff. But when they were released from duty they’d come and find us – or rather, Tom would come and find Jinn and Alex would tag along – which was how they found us scoffing Magnums on the beach that day.

  Jinn jumped down off her rock and smiled openly at Tom. ‘We’ll get you one.’

  ‘We will?’ I gave her a dark look. We were nearly out of cash.

  ‘Yup. C’mon, Rubes. Watch this, boys.’

  When we crossed the single-track road and went round the back of the cottage, the car was there, and so was Lara. Pretty obviously she was not expecting us. I was just about to kick open the back door and barge into the kitchen when Jinn grabbed me by the sleeve.

  ‘Shush!’ she told me, flapping her hand to keep back Tom and Alex. Tom ducked behind a big rock, dragging Alex with him.

  Jinn had that secretive, sly look that promised fun, so I did what I was told. We crept round to the window of Lara’s room and peered in, and sure enough, there on the sagging bed lay a butt-naked Highlander (maybe, or maybe he was from Bethnal Green or Croxteth). Something lay underneath him: something that on closer inspection proved to be our mother.

  When I say ‘lay’, of course, it was not quite so passive; the pair of them were bouncing up and down in a unison of rhythm and creaking springs that nearly made us combust. At first I thought I’d die of shock, but Jinn was just about killing herself trying to laugh silently. She bit her lip so hard she made marks on it. When I tried to slink away, afraid we’d gone too far, Jinn seized me by the arm and dragged me back. We watched in awe as the rhythm grew faster and more violent, and I was so fascinated I even stopped nibbling slivers of chocolate off my melting choc ice.

  Jinn could stay silent no longer. She nudged me. ‘That’s a very fine arse indeed.’

  ‘Jinn!’ I gasped.

  ‘Very fine,’ she murmured again. ‘He’s probably a mountaineer or something.’ She paused, and there was choked hilarity in her throat. ‘Or a caber t-t-tosser.’

  This time we both exploded. Loudly. The putative Highlander lost his rhythm, turned slightly to look over his shoulder, and leaped off Lara, starkers, with a scream that sounded like ‘Fecking FECK!’ It might have been Gaelic, but I don’t think so.

  Lara pulled an unfamiliar blue anorak across her front, stalked across to the window and opened it, wiggling it where it stuck in the frame.

  Jinn smiled at her. ‘We need more money. For the shop.’

  Lara peered down at the pair of us. ‘What’s that you’re eating, then? Looks like Magnums to me.’

  ‘They’re finished. They make Ruby thirsty.’ That’s right, Jinn, blame me. ‘We need Coke. Lots of Coke.’

  So Lara fumbled around in a pile of clothes and found her bag and scrabbled for coins and a tenner and pushed the lot into Jinn’s expectant hand, and all the while I watched the Highlander with the nice arse. He was half-huddled behind a cane chair, desperately pulling clothes around his lower torso and goggling at me with mortified panic. Lara gave Jinn a slightly disapproving, tight-lipped smile and went back to him, but not before yanking down the blinds.

  ‘That was excellent,’ said Jinn, counting our haul. ‘This could be a strategy.’

  We stuffed ourselves on Magnums that holiday. It’s possible to have too many. I haven’t looked at one since.

  My plans for Jinn and Tom were almost too successful; I was delighted with the romantic way things were going, but at the same time I was jealous, sulking at the loss of Jinn’s time and attention. The two of them went hunting in rock pools, scrambling on cliffs, drawing their names with sticks on the white sand beaches – all the Famous Five things Jinn and I used to do together. And all I had to compensate was bloody Alex.

  It’s not often it’s me that has to start conversations. But we were crammed in the gash between rock faces one day, backs against one quartz-veined slab and feet propped up on the other, when I finally gave up. I sighed and said, ‘So how’s the high school?’

  He shrugged, shifted his position, walked his feet along the opposite rock. ‘You going next year?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I walked my feet towards his, just because it seemed like an entertaining diversion.

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine. It’s probably fine.’

  ‘What, you don’t like it?’

  ‘It’s all right.’ He walked his feet the other way.

  Mine followed them. ‘You don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like it.’

  ‘What, then?’

  He picked lichen out of his fingernails. ‘I don’t like the people. I don’t like the place.’

  ‘Right. So you don’t like it.’

  ‘I like school. I just don’t like . . . it. I don’t want to go back. There’s nobody like me there.’

  I considered telling him to get his head out of his arse, but it would have involved some verbal bravery. ‘Well, you’ve got to. Go back. What, are you scared of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It isn’t any worse than being scared of talking.’

  Even as I blushed, I was pleased with myself for getting an upfront normal human sneer out of him. But he’d pulled his head back into his shell, like a tortoise, except that a tortoise didn’t have such delicate bones, such a sharp scared face.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I agreed. That was good politics. ‘So what’s scary?’

  Obviously I had my own motives for asking this. I was kind of looking forward to high school, but I’d like to be forearmed. He didn’t help a lot though.

  ‘I’m just not very good at it.’

  I sighed and took a stab in the dark. ‘Maths?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘What then?’

  He gave me a narrow-eyed glance, sizing me up. He must have decided I was the Girl Least Likely to Blab.

  ‘Life. People and stuff. I’m just not good at it.’

  ‘It’s only a few years,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s school and then it’s university and then I’ll have to get a job and get married and have kids – all that. I can’t do that, I know I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t be mad. Everybody does.’

  ‘I’m not everybody,’ he said truculently.

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re just like everybody else. Get over yourself.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m different.’

  ‘That’s your own fault.’

  ‘Well, maybe it is. But I’m still not good at it. Being normal.’

  ‘Being human,’ I said.

  I was annoyed with him, and we didn’t speak f
or about half an hour, but then we did. I decided I just wouldn’t get into the heavy stuff with him again. Don’t encourage him, I told myself. He does it for effect. Everybody knows that.

  Later, once we were back at school, I’d get his point a little better. Back at school Nathan mocked Alex and scoffed at Tom and enchanted Jinn back to himself with relative ease, and Tom didn’t put up a fight: he just oozed ‘Whatever.’ (I was furious. All my scheming and sacrifice over the holidays had come to nothing.) So Tom retained his savoir-faire, but it didn’t set Alex much of an example. If his cool brother couldn’t keep Jinn, who clearly liked him a lot, what earthly chance did Alex have of getting the hang of Life?

  Should have seen it coming, really.

  After the drowned mermaid rolled up in the rock pools, I wasn’t afraid, the way Jinn was. Like I said, I knew it wouldn’t happen to me. I liked that Jinn was worried about me all over again, that she’d forgotten Nathan for a few days. It was like having my big sister again, all to myself: like when she’d go out of her way to offend the semi-locals, morally blackmail the biological mother, and get me ice lollies. There’d been a time lately when I found her maternal fussing a bit of a pain, but since she’d discovered Nathan and her own needs, I’d found I missed it. So I didn’t even mind that she wouldn’t let me walk over to Foley’s on my own for a while, or stay out after dark. There was a frisson of fear across the town for a while, an electric crackle of risk, but I felt safe. I was Ruby, and immortal.

  I wish it hadn’t got personal, that’s all. I wish I hadn’t rapped on Jinn’s bedroom door a few nights after they found the anonymous mermaid on the beach, and gone in to find her crying on her bed. I wish I’d never asked why, and what was wrong.

  She rubbed her eyes on the corner of the duvet and said, ‘The girl, the girl. The girl in the sea.’

  And not being entirely obtuse all the time, I knew what she was on about, and I felt very bad very suddenly. I said, ‘Was it somebody we know?’

  ‘It’s Marley,’ said Jinn, and started sobbing again. ‘It was Marley Ryan! Why would anybody want to kill Marley?’

  Eight

  I didn’t really know Marley Ryan; I’d only met her the once. All I knew about Marley was that it wasn’t her real name – her real name was Roberta, and what is it with all these people whose names won’t stick to them? – and that she had my necklace. She didn’t nick it or anything; Jinn gave it to her. Not that it was valuable, but I was upset because of what it represented.

  Bear with me.

  It was all down to Jinn being so responsible, so efficient. She’d been picking through Lara’s few books, and she’d found this rather beautiful hardback that I doubt Lara had ever opened, but when Jinn did, it turned out to belong to the mother of one of Lara’s old teachers. So of course we couldn’t just give it to the Oxfam shop like anyone normal would; Jinn had to send me to the thirteenth floor of some tower block in Glassford to return it to the teacher who was the mother of a teacher who had taught someone who never seemed to learn.

  Anyway, up I climbed (and that was no mean feat, because of course the lift was broken). The old dear hobbled to the door on her Zimmer frame and invited me in (she’d been warned so she knew I wasn’t there to mug her) and I gave her back the book, and she was delighted about that, and terribly sorry about Lara, and far too polite to ask if she’d ever read the book. And she gave me a cup of tea and a Penguin I couldn’t refuse, and we talked, except that talking isn’t so much my thing, so she did all the talking.

  She was incredibly interesting and smart for such a fossil. I liked her. And she must have thought I was great, nodding and smiling and being interested (which I was). She offered me a loan of a different book, and I very nearly took it. I must know myself too well, because I said no, maybe next time when I haven’t got exams, and she must have thought that was as good a reason as any.

  In lieu of the book, she gave me other things before I left: half a packet of Starburst and a little pendant. The pendant wasn’t worth anything; she’d got it free out of a magazine, I think, but she said it was too young for her, so why didn’t I have it? It was made of cheap metal: a little cat with an arched back and red glittery eyes. ‘Ruby,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what you said your name was? Well, there you are, it has ruby eyes; it must be meant for you.’

  I didn’t much like the necklace, but I thought it would be rude to refuse. Besides, it was sweet of her and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And she said, ‘Come again! It’s been lovely; we’ve had a nice chat.’

  I lost the necklace almost as soon as I was down the stairs. No idea what I did with it. Well, that’s not quite true. I must have had it long enough to damage it, because when Jinn found it caught in the bathroom door jamb, it was missing one ruby eye and its paw was twisted.

  As for going back to the old teacher lady in the tower block, the funny thing is that I meant to. At the time I really did. I said, ‘Course, yeah, that’d be great,’ and I thought I was telling the truth. Because I liked the old girl, and making her day made me feel kind of good.

  But I never did go back. Life got in the way. Life, and going to the shops, and flirting with Foley, and watching TV. I never went back and it’s too late now: maybe she’s dead for all I know, and I’m afraid to find out. I’ll never go back. I’ll never know how well we might have got on or what might have happened. It’s like Aslan in those Narnia books, who’s so lovely in some ways and so bloody annoying in others. All his nobody is ever told what would have happened. Well, why not? What was such a big deal? What was it to him?

  It seemed like nothing at the time and I didn’t know how bad I’d feel later. But there’s no atonement, ever. There’s nothing you can do or undo once you’ve done it. It doesn’t seem like such a demand but it’s the most impossible thing in the world: going back even five minutes to change what’s happened. Just not doing what you did. Even Doctor Who can’t do that. If the old girl turned out to be dead I’d feel even worse; if she was alive I’d be mortified and what was worse I’d be committed. I’d be committed to her and no doubt doomed to make the same mistake again. So the best thing to do was stay in my antisocial limbo with my head down.

  Jinn, of course, was better than Aslan; Jinn knew what would have happened and she bloody told me, too. I’d have been a better person, that’s what. She was angry with me for not going back, she was angry that I hadn’t taken care of the pendant, and she was even more furious when I mumbled that it wasn’t worth anything. I glowered at the TV while she got out the pliers and twisted the cat’s cheap metal paw back into place, and painstakingly untangled the knotted chain, and bitched at me about getting my head out of my own backside.

  When she’d finished fixing the cat pendant I told her I still didn’t want it, and she said that was fine, because she didn’t have any plans to give it back to me, she was keeping it herself. God knows why. It can’t have been that she liked it herself, or why would she give it away to Marley?

  It was the same night I got vomiting drunk for the first and (so far) only time in my whole life. I got that way because I had no idea. It was an accident; it was one of those things I didn’t think could happen to me. (I also did it because I was so hurt and angry. That’s why I remember it was the same night she gave away the stupid cat.)

  I’d just turned fourteen and Jinn and I were at a party down at the harbour, in somebody’s sister’s flat – embarrassingly, I don’t even remember whose. Jinn was wearing the cat, its chain wrapped several times round her wrist; I remember being quite pleased, because it suited her and I was glad she was treating it better than I had, glad that she was such a moral and ethical paragon compared to me. I had a vague unformed notion that this let me off the hook.

  I didn’t know Roberta Ryan from a slice of cheese at this point. I do remember her arriving at the party, mingled with a crowd of disreputable boys from Glassford Academy. You couldn’t miss her, she had such a striking look. Her hair was in dreadlocks, pulled back int
o a ponytail – presumably that was why she called herself Marley; it was nothing to do with Labradors. One of the locks had escaped, and stuck out to the side. She wore baggy khakis and a combat jacket, a bright red T-shirt and a gleaming nose stud. Funnily enough, none of this was what you noticed first, because she had the most sweetly pretty face you could imagine. She looked like an angel.

  She walked in with that kind of swagger that tells you instantly she was terrified. She kidded around with some of the boys and tossed back glasses of punch like a cowboy and didn’t meet the eyes of anyone else, ever. Still, her eyes flickered across to people when they weren’t looking at her, as if she wanted to make sure she wasn’t making an arse of herself, that she was doing this right.

  She must have set off my sister’s maternal satnav, because Jinn went over to her after five minutes, and they hit it off straight away. I was hanging back at this point, dipping my lips in a plastic cup of punch, studying everyone else and hoping no one would try to talk to me. I’d have liked to go over and talk to the dreadlocked girl myself, but that was a ridiculous idea. Me! Introduce myself to a stranger!

  Jinn and the girl weren’t giggling away and swapping sweet nothings, the way you might expect. They talked very intently about something serious, and for nearly an hour. I hung about on the edge of conversations, nodding like I cared, practising for adult life. A few times I made like I was dancing, till I felt too daft moving my body self-consciously at the edge of what passed for a dance floor. When the heat in the flat got too much, I went downstairs and stood in the street, happily watching the moonlight glint on rocking yachts. I watched people go in and out of the Fu Ling takeaway a hundred metres up the road. I took lovely breaths of night air and listened to the party sounds from the open window above me. Eventually I wandered up to the takeaway myself, and coaxed a bag of oily chips out of Mr Fu Ling while his wife wasn’t looking.

  This was my kind of party. Nobody bothered me, and I liked to watch people, and I liked fresh air. A couple stumbled down the stairs behind me and lurched round the corner, her supporting him. Finding a quiet place, either for sex or for vomiting. The latter more likely, by the look of him. I tilted my head back and watched the orange glow of the sky, and the stars just visible over the skerries; I listened to the slap of the tide in the harbour and the metal ting of masts, blending with the thud of music. Closing my eyes, I chewed the last of my chips and felt the breath of night air on my skin, and thought I should go back upstairs for a while.