The Opposite of Amber

by Gillian Philip

  Still, I didn’t want to turn my back on him. It was like last night, but a little bit different. As I hesitated, and shivered, I thought about what people say: that it’s not so bad, freezing. That once the cold bites deep enough, you only feel warm. You only want to sleep.

  I thought about other things too. I thought of flies preserved in amber, in blue ribbon, in a shoebox, in a safe house.

  I thought about dogs that didn’t bark. I couldn’t remember why, for a moment, the famous dog was silent; and then of course it came to me, the whole story, and I remembered why the dog didn’t bark in the night.

  I flipped my phone open and scrolled down the contact list, frowning and biting the corner of my lip. I let my forefinger hover for a moment.

  And then I called Foley, to let him know I was fine, that it was OK and I wasn’t scared, and that Nathan Baird lay dead in my garden.

  Twenty-six

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ said Foley. ‘It was him that killed her.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t have killed that second girl. He was in Manchester.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t – doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Jinn,’ he said softly, as if to a hyper-sensitive idiot.

  I licked my lips. I cleared my throat. ‘He didn’t. I know he didn’t.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just do. And anyway.’ I had to swallow and frown, because I still didn’t quite believe it myself. ‘They arrested Tom Jerrold.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  I gave him a Ruby look.

  He blushed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’ll see on the news tonight. They found her DNA all over his car. Hairs and that.’

  We walked on. I stared at the ground, trying hard not to think.

  ‘Ruby . . .’

  ‘You know those other girls? They were killed when Tom was living down south. He was in all the right places. And Jinn – I saw Jinn in his car. He acted so odd. He was obsessed with Jinn, and he was always so jealous of Nathan. It all makes sense.’ My brain was dizzy with the amount of sense it made. I felt high, and angry, and righteous, and wildly sad. But mostly high.

  ‘I thought you said Tom was cool about Nathan.’

  ‘He pretended to be cool. That’s different. Probably worse.’

  Foley fell silent again, and he didn’t say any more for a while. We walked as far along the bay as we could, and then some. My heart was racing and my breath came fast and shallow, and not because of the walk. The sea was a shining sheet of metal, but alive and moving. We walked to the end of the tarmac track and struck out into the wilderness of seagrass and sand by the golf course, where there were still tracks of people who walked their dogs through the roughest of rough. I wore jeans but I could feel the prick of salty stalks through the denim, and my trainers felt gritty from sinking in dry sand. I had to concentrate, and I was glad.

  Also, round this headland Breakness was out of sight, and that was an advantage too.

  Foley didn’t hold my hand, didn’t need to. When the lacework of paths started climbing the cliffs the way was narrower, more of a scramble, though we didn’t want to climb right up to the car-park field at the top. We wanted the beach, and cold silence, and being alone.

  We didn’t speak as we negotiated the path, hugging the jutting lumps of headland and clambering across the rocks that spilled towards the sea. We scrambled down at last on to a flat and pebbled shoreline, hidden and private. There were dry flat rocks to sit on, even though they were rimed with ice and the seagrass at our backs was frosted. That’s how cold it was: ice and frost on the sea edge, holding salt spray and the Gulf stream in contempt.

  Poor Nathan.

  Foley was reading my thoughts. ‘What made you realise it wasn’t him?’

  I opened my mouth, then chewed on a fingernail instead of talking. I released the fingernail, seized my knuckle in my teeth, chewed hard on that. It was going to take a bit of explaining and I had to take a few deep breaths.

  ‘He never once said he didn’t kill her. All that night. He sat outside my door and tried everything to get me to let him in. But he never once said he didn’t kill her.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It never even occurred to him. It wouldn’t cross his mind. He didn’t have anything to protest about. See? He ran away because he’d lost her. Not because he was guilty. He didn’t once think anyone could think it was him.’

  Foley didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what you think. Or me, even. It was Tom.’

  I locked my arms round my knees, barely able to contain my raging elation. Such a weird, disorienting feeling. I was stunned by Tom’s arrest and his guilt, and yet I wasn’t. He’d come back and hung round Breakness and made me feel even worse than I did before, and I realised that for quite a long time I’d wanted to hate him. Now I could, and with a ferocious justice. In some barmy way, everything had come right.

  Foley wrung his gloved hands, slapped them together as if he was trying to get warm. Coward. His cheeks were pink with the effort of the walk. He just didn’t want to talk about this any more.

  Obviously, that was fine with me.

  Twenty-seven

  The Fu Ling sign had been vandalised again. That was the first thing I noticed as I came out of the Co-op with my newspaper and a bag of crisps. A metal paint-spattered stepladder was in my way and Mr Fu Ling was at the top of it with a bucket and a brush. Seeing me, he gave me a smile and a silent nod.

  I paused for a second to smile back. And then I started to walk past his doorway, but I had to stop because someone was coming out.

  Tom Jerrold let the door swing shut on Mrs Fu Ling’s screech of farewell. He was carrying his takeaway in a paper bag, which smelt familiarly of Szechuan chicken and egg fried rice. It was such a regular smell, and such a regular sight, I didn’t even react for a while. ‘A while’ felt like an hour, but really it was only a few seconds.

  I stopped. I didn’t have any option because my legs wouldn’t move.

  Staring at Tom Jerrold, I felt blood rise in my face as he watched me. He’d stopped too, of course. But after a moment he simply walked on, shifting his takeaway into the other hand and tucking his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. He didn’t nod or smile. He cut me dead.

  He cut me dead.

  Mr Fu Ling, unaware of the operatic drama unfolding beneath his feet, went on scrubbing at his sign. After a while of listening to the rasp of his brush and the tune-free whistle hissing between his teeth, my limbs jerked back into motion and I walked on as if I’d never stopped. Like a real-life CCTV image, like I’d just been on pause. Like I was a ghost.

  You never see CCTV images unless somebody’s dead. I’ve noticed that. If your CCTV image is played you’re already a ghost, jumping forward in time in jerky increments, forever on repeat on the ten o’clock news. It’s not the privacy thing that bothers me with those cameras, it’s the way they foretell your violent death. They’re recording you in case you’re never seen again. It’s those cameras I can feel walking over my grave; little Terminator machines. It’s that shutter I can hear: Click. Click. Click. And you’re gone.

  The police had let him go.

  How had he got away with it?

  The cameras lost me at the corner of the road and I felt as if I was dead. I don’t remember unlocking the house and going in, but I do recall locking the door behind me and crawling fully clothed under the duvet, and wanting to cry, and not being able to.

  I didn’t sleep much. I didn’t answer my phone any of the times it rang. I wanted desperately to talk to Foley, but every time I looked at his number, shining in the darkness under the quilt, I remembered I didn’t know what to say to him. He’d say, see, he was right; and I couldn’t explain why he was wrong, and why it was so much worse now. In the end I turned the phone off, hugged it against my neck, and curled tighter under the duvet.

  I probably saw daylight later than I should have, but I’m sure I was awake. At
last, even in the hot darkness, it got through to me that the outside world was lightening, and I peeked out then pushed the duvet off my body, which was wet with sweat and fuzzy from insomnia.

  Dawn was insipid and gloomy, but I was glad to see it. I crawled out of my cave, fumbled Jinn’s iPod into the dock in the kitchen and turned the volume up to full blast. The bassline of Good Vibrations jumped in my breastbone. Sod the G.O.B., I needed noise, full and enveloping and defensive.

  I switched on the kettle, but the hissing growl of it unnerved me and I flicked it off halfway to the boil. As soon as I did that, sod’s law dictated that Good Vibrations hit its quiet bridge, and someone rapped hard on the door. I jumped about a foot.

  The Beach Boys chimed in once more with the chorus, and I answered the familiar knock, practically falling into Foley’s astonished arms.

  ‘Ur,’ he said. His arms tightened round me and I felt his ribcage swell. ‘What’s up?’

  For long moments I couldn’t answer him; then I gulped air like a baby gearing up.

  ‘I HATE being on my own!’ I howled.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah. Course.’ And his arms squeezed my ribs.

  Suddenly I remembered why I liked him. It was the psychic thing. He knew what I needed before I did.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

  I wasn’t feeling too fit after my sleepless night and a half-drunk mug of tepid coffee, so as we climbed the cliff path beyond the headland he simply had to hold my hand and pull me up after him. I focused on the roughness of the track, the stones that jutted and the spiky stealthy branches that grew at ankle height. I had to try hard not to trip and fall off the cliff. It was something to think about, and a reason to grip Foley’s hand hard, indulging my inner needy-girlie.

  It had been so very cold the night Nathan died, and that was only a few days ago. Now spring sun glittered off the water and there were already clusters of daffodils and primroses clinging to the slope and white fulmars like thin kites on the breeze. I wished I was more in the mood. As we climbed higher we could see further into the sea where it lay in rocky lagoons, we could make out every stone and every strand of green weed. The water was that clear, that calm, and out towards the horizon and the far cliffs of the firth it was as silky and smooth as watercolour.

  We halted near the top car park to get our breath. At this distance, the single white triangle of sail didn’t disturb the painted surface. Fulmars catapulted out from the cliff beneath us and vanished back under again. They must have been nesting in their thousands.

  ‘I warned you, Jinn’s DNA didn’t prove a thing,’ said Foley, out of absolutely nowhere. ‘You told them yourself, she got into his car. She did that a few times. He never denied it.’

  Cool. He never denied it. Standing there between the earth and the sky, I wished I could launch myself out with the fulmars, because I almost couldn’t bear the rage – the brimming, bottom-of-my-guts fury, contorting in a gigantic knot inside me.

  I could hardly breathe by the time we got to the top, and that had little to do with the climb. I stumbled up behind Foley into the car park, unfenced, stony and wind-cropped. The sun glinted off the only two cars: a four-by-four people carrier, back window plastered in stickers from Blair Drummond Wildlife Park and Alton Towers, child seats shabby and stained with sick and dried chocolate; and parked parallel to it, pointing towards the cliff, a bright yellow Toyota, soft top down.

  Staring at it, I shook Foley off and fumbled in my pockets. House keys. Would that do? I played them through my fingers, jangled them glinting in the sunlight. I dug the sharp ends into my palms. That would murder the paintwork.

  But it seemed so petty. Truly petty and not nearly enough. Why on earth didn’t I carry something more useful, like a jerrycan of petrol?

  Foley was eyeing me.

  ‘Ruby?’ He sounded only slightly alarmed. ‘Ruby, what are you thinking?’

  The advantage of silence. Nobody knows what you’re thinking.

  ‘Ruby . . .’

  I was getting tired of the sound of my name on his lips. ‘Come on,’ I said.

  Foley wasn’t entirely happy about it, but he followed me. When I leaned on the door of the little convertible, I looked up and saw him on the other side of the car, leaning on the other door.

  The car park was on a slight slope. It was almost asking for trouble, really. You could tell that from the big sign that said PLEASE CHECK YOUR HANDBRAKE! The cropped grass petered out at the edge, into slightly longer grass and a few stunted daffodils. A little rough ground wouldn’t stop rolling wheels if you gave them enough impetus.

  I smiled at Foley, not feeling anything. He didn’t look at all certain.

  I didn’t care.

  Gulls screeched and wailed overhead, rooks cawed, and for a minute I was on pause. My hand was on the door, and it was metallic and sharp, sun-warmed. It was like touching something alive, but all the same I didn’t have any qualms.

  I took in everything. The baseball cap discarded on the back seat. The gym bag beside it, one compartment unzipped and a sports water bottle sticking out. Sweet wrappers crammed into the ashtray (so he wasn’t too OCD after all). A zipped pouch of CDs on the passenger seat, but I wasn’t even remotely tempted to steal them. His music could go with his car. Maybe Jinn had listened to it.

  There was the other thing in that car: Jinn’s DNA, tangible. The whole vehicle reeked of her. No blood, of course, but Essence of Jinn. I wondered if she’d run from the car, or if she’d trusted him for longer than that and so never got the chance. Maybe he’d pulled it to a halt, and creaked on the handbrake, and turned to smile into her laughing, flirting eyes and her sparkling face. And lunged.

  Before I could change my mind, I climbed into the driver’s seat and tugged the handbrake. It jerked up smoothly and I eased it flat. There was no give, no slight roll. I frowned and turned to Foley.

  ‘It’s in reverse.’ He pointed at one of the pedals. ‘That one. Push that one.’ When I pressed it with my foot, he leaned across me and shoogled the gearstick into neutral.

  I smiled. Everything was so polished and smooth and oiled.

  Tom loved this car.

  Glancing up at Foley, I smiled again. He wasn’t trying to stop me. He was just watching, careful, uncommitted. For now.

  I opened the car door and got out the traditional way. Facing the cliff, I leaned my weight forward against the still-open door. It was absurdly easy. The front wheels gave, the little car rolled forward a metre, then stopped.

  Foley still wasn’t arguing. And he’d already contributed. I took that as a signal not from him but from the Almighty. I was the Arm of God, actually. Quite a responsibility.

  If the car rolled over the edge, I decided, it was meant to be. If it stopped – well, there you go, Tom was off scot-free. But I didn’t think it would stop. I was in the hands of the avenging gods now, and so was Tom Jerrold’s car. It wasn’t me at all.

  I caught a glimpse of a face in the wing mirror, twice as old as mine, grim and intent, crowned with dark salon-red hair that spiked into her eyes. The wickedest elf. I liked her. She had no voice but she didn’t need one. There was script across her throat: Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. I grinned at her, and she grinned right back.

  I gave Foley the same grin. It was like I could read his mind. He didn’t want to do this but he didn’t want to disappoint me, didn’t want to act like he wasn’t on my side.

  ‘We shouldn’t,’ was all he said. A final plea. ‘Ruby.’

  It was out of my hands. ‘It’s only a car,’ I said.

  We heaved hard on our respective doors, not looking at one another but at the rim of the cliff and the glittering panel of sea. We didn’t have to look at each other. We pushed as one, and it was shockingly easy. The car really wanted to go with us, it wanted a magnificent suicidal leap all of its own. Easily and more easily, it rolled with us down the gentle slope of the field. I began to jog, and my twin cat pendants swung free
of my shirt, banging my breastbone.

  As if from a parallel world, I heard an engine. I didn’t care. I heard it cut out, heard a door slam, then another. A shrill yell, a shout of protest. Still I shoved, harder, determined.

  It was Foley who hesitated. So much for commitment. I was relying on his effort and our perfect teamwork, so when he slackened I was taken by surprise, and the car resisted its fate for the first time. Under the momentum we’d built, it rolled a little further, bumped, rolled.

  Then it stopped, dead.

  I gave my own shriek of frustration and spun round to face the interlopers, but I didn’t have to. Wide Bertha was in my face, standing there in her flip-flops, all seven or eight square metres of her. She must have been out for a romantic drive with Inflatable George, because he was there too, shouting angrily at Foley, words I couldn’t make out. Bertha didn’t yell, she just glared at me. I met her glower just as long as I could, then jerked my head aside, breathing furiously, like all I wanted to do was give the Evil Eye to some fulmars.

  Bertha’s silence was worse than any yelling, and now Inflatable George had fallen quiet too. Foley’s shamefaced expression was a picture. I wanted to laugh, and I would have, if he’d met my eyes.

  But he didn’t. I found I was twisting his silver cat pendant between my fingers.

  ‘It’s only a car,’ I said at last. I shoved the silver cat inside my shirt, and the Cyclops cat too.

  Watching me, unsmiling, Inflatable George walked past me to the cliff edge. He peered down for a few seconds, shaking his head, then glanced over his shoulder at Bertha. So they were psychic too? Unexpected, and unwelcome. I fidgeted, hating the silence. I was the master of silence; in others it scared me.

  Bertha shook her head too, and sighed. I couldn’t help but turn in George’s direction, and as I did so I saw heads bob up above the line of the cliff. A toddler was the tallest of them, sitting astride its father’s shoulders. Two older girls came up next, single-file in front of their pregnant mother.