The Opposite of Amber

by Gillian Philip

  The parents smiled at the four of us and nodded; the girls, the toddler and the in-utero foetus ignored us. They didn’t seem to find it odd, this frozen tableau beside Tom Jerrold’s car, but then they’d no idea how close they’d come to spectacular Death by Toyota. The father lifted the toddler down, adjusted his specs, smiled and mumbled something about the weather. Didn’t those black clouds look like rain any minute? As he creaked open the door of the people carrier he must have felt the need to make more conversation with the open-mouthed idiots.

  ‘Guess we timed it well,’ he said, smiling.

  You have no idea, I didn’t say through my rictus grin. The family had packed themselves into their Honda and bumped off down the rutted track before Bertha said a word, but luckily for me, she’d calmed down by that time.

  She gave me a squeeze that nearly killed me, and said, ‘Oh, Ruby.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Bit stupid, really.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded his car so much,’ she added comfortingly. ‘But multiple murder’s going a bit far.’

  ‘Even the car,’ said Inflatable George. ‘That wasn’t a good idea.’

  Foley said nothing. He was impossibly pale, and he didn’t look at me. Regret and remorse were painted all over his face. I decided I’d blown it with him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Bertha. ‘I don’t want you in trouble, Ruby.’

  ‘He killed Jinn,’ I said.

  It felt like a lamer excuse than it had a minute ago. I almost felt like it was Jinn I’d let down more than anybody.

  ‘I know. Course he did,’ said Bertha. ‘But you can’t do that. You can’t do stuff like that.’

  George was nudging the yellow Toyota’s back tyre with a foot. ‘It might have slipped.’ He gave me a comforting wink. ‘It might have just slipped by itself. Look, he left it in neutral. And he left the brake off, silly beggar.’

  I wanted to smile at him but I felt too much like crying.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you all home.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ said Bertha. ‘I’ve to get back to work.’

  ‘I’m sorry I spoilt your day out,’ I managed.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’m glad we were here.’ She opened the door of her little red Clio. ‘Come on, Ruby, I haven’t got all day.’

  I stepped back, shaking my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine at all.’

  ‘You’ve got to come,’ added George. ‘Come on. Foley’ll see you home. Won’t you, Foley?’

  I didn’t even look at him, because I didn’t want to see him not-looking at me.

  ‘I . . . can’t. I’ve got to pick up Mallory.’ Foley was shaking his watch, as if there was something wrong with it.

  ‘Where from?’ Bertha was suspicious.

  ‘Brownies.’

  ‘Brownies?’ Inflatable George gave a burst of disbelieving laughter, then coughed and straightened his face.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Foley. ‘I know.’

  ‘Still,’ said George. ‘We’ll see you home, Ruby. It’s not right, you being on your own.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Bertha glared at Foley.

  ‘No,’ I snapped, shutting them up. ‘No. I want to be on my own. I’m fine.’

  I wasn’t sure that was true, but other things were. Like the fact that the clogged channels in my head were about to burst their banks catastrophically. Like my absolute certainty that I was not going to be around another human being, any human being, in about five minutes’ time. Like the fact that I was not going to sit on the back seat of Bertha’s car pressed against a boy who couldn’t even look at me. I wasn’t doing that for a hundred metres, let alone two miles round the airbase to Breakness. I didn’t want to feel him shrink away from my flesh as if my vileness was contagious. Not when he couldn’t get enough of me the other night.

  I didn’t want to be near him. Any of them. I wanted them to go. NOW.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘But, Ruby –’

  ‘Go away.’

  If I had to speak again the dam would burst. Bertha must have realised that, because she avoided squeezing me again or patting my arm. She folded her bulk into the driving seat, rolled down the window and leaned out as Inflatable George got in beside her. Foley was in the back already. My, he was in a hurry.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ she warned. ‘Be careful on the cliffs.’

  ‘Uh. Huh.’

  I turned on my heel before the car was even out of sight, and ran back towards the cliff path. At the top, where it divided, I stopped. The black cloud had shifted north towards me and the first cold spring raindrops spotted my face.

  The thought of running into Tom Jerrold was unbearable. He’d be down the path to the right, and there might be other people there too, walking up the shore and along the cliffs from Breakness. Apart from his car the car park was empty now; the left-hand path led to rock pools and vertical wilderness, where the only company would be crabs and the crying fulmars. I slithered down on to it and started to walk fast.

  It took me a while to reach the big sandstone overhang about three hundred metres along; the grass that encroached on the path was wet and I had to be careful. I didn’t usually like the overhang – I’d scurry underneath and out to the other side as if it might fall at any second – but today I stopped in its shelter. I wouldn’t mind if it squashed me like a bug. The black cloud was overhead now, filling the sky, and the rain was coming in cold stinging drops. I rubbed them off my face, and slumped down with my back against the cliff face. I wanted to cry now, but the tears were all dammed up, stuck in my neck and the back of my head, and I was too angry. With myself, with Foley, with Jinn. Tom Jerrold could take a back seat for a while. It wasn’t his turn.

  I shut my eyes, and saw a yellow Toyota careering off the cliff edge and plunging through a family of five and a half. My, that would have put Alex Jerrold in the shade. He’d never have crossed my mind again. What’s more, it would have made me five-and-a-half times worse than Tom.

  I snapped my eyes open again to watch the wheeling fulmars instead, and the rain exploding over the sea and turning the translucent watercolour into a grey roiling blanket.

  And with no warning at all the stuff in my head burst out and I opened my mouth, but as-bloody-usual, no sound came out. Nothing but tears and more tears and snot, and when I thought my head must surely be empty it started all over again.

  Fine. This was a good place to get it over with. I cried the tank dry several times over before the tears stopped quite abruptly, as if I’d exhausted the reservoir.

  ‘Ruby?’

  Shit.

  Stupid, but I thought for an instant it was Foley. Stupid, because it wasn’t his voice and nothing like it.

  It was Inflatable George.

  Just as well I was running on empty. I felt like I’d been sitting there for hours, but I know it wasn’t more than ten or fifteen minutes. I know because I checked my watch, and because the rain hadn’t been long gone. Flurries still spattered into my little shelter, but the worst of the deluge was over, and that kind of hard rain never lasted long here, but blew out over the sea. Now even the black cloud, the one that had seemed to fill the world, had torn apart and dissolved, and patches of blue shone through. In fact the sky beyond my shelter was mostly blue, till George blocked it.

  He leaned in. ‘Aw, Ruby. I knew you weren’t OK.’

  Dammit. My lip trembled again, like a bad cartoon, but luckily there weren’t any more tears left in my head. I gave him a weak smile. I realised I was glad to see him. Maybe I needed company after all.

  I was embarrassed about the state of my face though. I was not a beautiful weeper. I went blotchy and puffy and my eyes receded into my head. I’d seen this in a mirror. It wasn’t good.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t say that. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He gave a slight apol
ogetic shrug. Ducking under the rock, he sat beside me with his back to the cliff.

  ‘We just got to the main road and I said to Bertha, “I’ve got to go back. We can’t leave Ruby on her own.” But she had to be at work, so I walked back myself.’

  I decided not to ask what Foley’s input had been, or rather his non-input. Instead I gave George a scornful look. ‘I just wanted to be on my own. I wasn’t about to do anything stupid.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Of course, I know that. But – well. I’d have felt bad. Us just leaving you here on your own. After – you know. Everything.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I can get you back. We can walk along the shore. It’s shorter than the road.’

  ‘I’m OK. Honest.’

  ‘Well.’ He tilted his head to give me an ironic wink. ‘It’s not like you were acting all normal.’

  I sniffed and grinned, wiped my nose with my sleeve. ‘No.’

  The air was surprisingly warm now and we sat in companionable silence, watching the fulmars swoop out. The gorse that crawled across the cliffs was clotted with yellow, the colour tropically intense, the coconut scent strong on the air. After the storm the air was a little clammy. I liked looking out from this dark shaded place into the bright day; it was like being invisible.

  ‘You shouldn’t dwell on it,’ said George. ‘On Tom and that. You can’t.’

  I shrugged. I felt terribly lethargic, almost as if I didn’t care any more, but it was nice of him to try and make me feel better. I let my head flop round and did my best to smile at him. ‘Honestly, you can go back. I’m fine. I’m not going to chuck myself in the sea.’

  ‘Course I won’t go. You need looking after. A bit.’

  Yeah. Jinn gone, and now Foley gone too. I wasn’t good at hanging on to people. A bit of a jinx myself. The thought made me massively, miserably tired, and if I could have leaned against his big bulky shoulder and fallen asleep I would have done, right there.

  But I was still Ruby. Ruby-On-Her-Own, Ruby-I-Can-Manage, Ruby-I’ll-Be-Fine. I rested my arms on my knees, hunched my shoulders, felt my two little cat pendants swing clear of my shirt once again. I rolled Foley’s one between my fingertips. Maybe I had to take it off now. Maybe I had to give it back.

  George gave it a distracted look. ‘Anyway. Don’t dwell on it,’ he said again. ‘It’d drive you mad. Wondering all the time. Getting angry. And it maybe was Nathan.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t.’

  ‘Honestly, Ruby, who’s more likely? You’d have to be pretty sick. That’s more Nathan than Tom, Ruby. You’ve got to admit.’

  ‘You can’t tell. You can’t tell if someone’s sick, just by looking.’

  And Nathan never said I didn’t kill her! The dog never barked in the night. But there was no point trying to explain that to Inflatable George. It was something I knew only in my gut.

  ‘Still . . .’

  I shook my head. ‘Nathan loved her.’

  ‘Well, but if he loved Jinx that much, maybe he was jealous. Crazy jealous.’

  It took a moment. It took a moment of thinking –

  Yes, jealous.

  If he thought about it.

  If he thought about Jinx . . .

  Only a second or two, though, and then the world ground to a halt.

  The planet stopped turning and the fulmars stopped crying and the sea stopped heaving below me.

  Nausea lurched up my gullet. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and closed my eyes.

  Not looking at Inflatable George. Couldn’t look for a moment. Was that dangerous?

  But I had to think. I wanted him gone before I opened my eyes again. If I just kept my eyes shut. Stayed here, curled beneath the sandstone outcrop, nothing in my eyes but the blood-bright glow of the sun. Nothing else here but the smell of the ocean and the sound of gulls and fulmars. He might go.

  Please.

  George took a small breath. I think, on the intake of it, he swore.

  He must have been thinking too.

  I raked up a handful of dry sandy grit, sharp under my fingernails. My fingertips found shell fragments, tiny stones.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked. My voice felt terribly small beneath the cliff; it didn’t even reach the stone overhang to echo.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Why did you call her Jinx?’

  We sat on in silence.

  Stupid me. Stupid Ruby. I hadn’t had to ask that. I could have stood up and smiled and said goodbye and walked away.

  Except I couldn’t. It wasn’t just that I needed to know his answer.

  It was that he knew fine what he’d said too. He knew as soon as he said it.

  The silence stretched for half a minute maybe, or maybe two and a half. I wouldn’t know. Time had gone rubbery and elastic. I folded my arms tighter round my knees. The sparkling sea pitted my tight-shut eyes with light. Fireworks on the inside of my lids. Shades of red and glitter. Stardust. I blinked my eyes sharply open.

  George was very still beside me.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it was in the papers, wasn’t it? When they weren’t calling her Jacintha.’

  Oh, God, yes. The relief was huge, battering through me so that I felt dizzy. I gave a huffing laugh.

  He didn’t laugh. Not at all, so I stopped too. I thought about how long it had taken him to think about it.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh, that’s fine.’ I stretched my mouth into a smile. ‘Fine. I think I want to go home now.’

  He didn’t stand up to help me. He didn’t move. He nodded at my neck and said, ‘I like your pendant, by the way. Where did you get it?’

  Surprised, I looked down at it. ‘Foley gave it to me,’ I said, holding the silver cat between finger and thumb.

  ‘No. The other one.’

  ‘Oh!’ I held out Cyclops cat, peering at its winking eye. ‘It’s a long story. I really need to go.’

  ‘I’ve seen it before,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Jinn had it.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Before Jinn.’

  No, I wanted to say. Jinn had it first. But I knew now. Panic lurched through me. I could get away with the Jinx thing, but I couldn’t get away with Cyclops cat.

  And besides, it was why he was here. He’d seen it on the clifftop. An invisible fist punched me lightly in the diaphragm.

  ‘It was that girl had it,’ he said. ‘That girl Roberta.’

  I said, ‘Her name was Marley.’

  ‘Was it?’ His eyebrows rose.

  I wanted to be sick and I wanted to cry. I wanted Foley. I wanted Jinn. I wanted something to hit a man with. I wanted somewhere to run, other than up.

  I couldn’t have any of those things. No one was climbing the cliff path towards us. Nobody was around but the fulmars, wheeling and mourning. Clutched tight in my palm, a shell fragment pierced my skin.

  ‘Oh, Ruby,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about all this.’

  I tried to stand up but he grabbed my arm.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I gabbled. ‘Why are you sorry? I’m fine. I want to go.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Ruby. Not Jinn. I didn’t want to.’

  He leaned closer. Fear scuttled across my skin with his whisper.

  ‘I had to do it. She made me do it. It was her fault, Ruby. You have to understand that.’

  Couldn’t speak. My throat was the gullet of the narrow cliff path, all rock and sand.

  ‘She was a good girl, Jinn. Despite – you know? She was only trying to help him, that useless creature Nathan. She was trying to get him clean. I’d never have done it to her, never. It was her own fault.’

  He hadn’t let me go. He wasn’t going to.

  He tensed, his fingers tightening. ‘She wouldn’t listen to me! I told her I just found the cat, I told her that; I found it in the road. And you know, she wanted to believe me. She did! It was Baird, bloody Baird. He thought it was easy money. He thought they could blackmail me!’r />
  I wondered where Jinn had found it, Marley’s little cat. In his lorry?

  And then I thought, No. I remembered her rummaging in his jacket, looking for something to steal. Finding more than she bargained for. I remembered her pale face: horror and disbelief. She wouldn’t have wanted to believe it.

  But she couldn’t ask me, certainly couldn’t talk to Bertha. So she’d have asked Nathan what to do, and he’d have known. He’d have known exactly what to do.

  Oh, Jinn.

  I remembered George standing outside Dunedin. Him and Nathan, glaring at each other like I didn’t exist. He’d gone there to negotiate. Of course. I thought about the fight I’d witnessed: Nathan thinking he’d found a way to stop her working the streets; Jinn horrified at what they were doing instead.

  You’re the one that says we need the money! You are!

  ‘Jinn liked you,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I liked her! Ah, Rubes, she was beautiful, your sister. She glittered. So lovely, she was so lovely, and inside too. She didn’t want me to have done it. She didn’t want Bertha getting hurt. Bertha all over the papers. She didn’t want Bertha’s heart getting broken, and see what happened? It got broken anyway.’

  He was trembling.

  ‘Just some money, she said. Just enough to pay their debts, that’s all, and she’d never tell anyone. As if I could ever have left it at that. And the stupid thing is she really wanted an innocent explanation. For the cat, you know? She’d have believed me. Nathan wouldn’t, but the trouble is, she went and confided in him, didn’t she? If it hadn’t been for him . . .’ He took a breath. ‘I didn’t mean to do it’.

  ‘What? That girl. Roberta. Marley.’

  ‘You did,’ I said.

  ‘No. She was a mistake, a terrible mistake. She was wandering around at night, she didn’t want to go home, she was running away. She was so mixed up. I thought she was one of them. It was such an easy mistake. She was a lost soul. I did her a favour, Ruby, I really did. But it was a mistake. I didn’t mean to kill her. And I didn’t want to kill Jinn.’

  Terror ripped down my spine, sending my whole body into a spasm of fight. I kicked him, tried to twist away, but he was strong. The hand on my arm tightened fast. I tugged and yanked, weakening, but his grip was hard. I whimpered.