For the next few hours they walked together side by side at every stall. Julia pointing out things that Amber deigned to give a cursory glance. When Julia picked up an old school test-tube clamp purely for the nostalgia of science lessons, Amber bought it as a possible bedside lamp stand. They stood together staring at an old green factory pendant light – would it work draped over a club chair in the corner of the bedroom? Amber got her notepad out, flicking through to one of the pages dedicated to the room redesign and showed Julia where she could replace the standard lamp in the corner with the pendant, amending the little sketch.
Julia looked at the drawing. ‘You’re really good at drawing.’
‘I know,’ Amber replied.
Julia stared at her in surprise.
‘What?’ Amber stopped what she was doing, confused by her expression.
‘Just…’ Julia shrugged. ‘Not many people just agree to a compliment.’
‘What would you prefer me to do?’ Amber looked at her puzzled. ‘Go all coy and dopey?’ She put her notebook back in her bumbag.
‘No, no,’ Julia waved a hand to show she wasn’t disagreeing, ‘no, I want you to say yes. It’s just most people deny it, don’t they, if someone says they’re good?’
Amber narrowed thick lashes. ‘Well most people care too much what other people think.’
Julia paused for a second. ‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ she mused as she followed behind Amber, snaking through the mass of people, her contemplation of the fact making Amber smile under her breath. Maybe she’d have Julia ditching the Lexi-esque pompom on her bag before the end of the holiday.
They finished off the south section of the fair by zigzagging up a network of side streets where Amber bought a handful of Emerald House pieces. It was just before lunch by the time they’d done the main bulk of the fair. There were only the stalls on the north of the river still to do but Amber explained that was all the smaller stuff – jewellery and more antique pieces that they would have a cursory look at but it wasn’t that relevant to her.
So they retraced their steps, picking up everything Amber had purchased and lugging it back to the van. They had to do four trips, borrowing a trolley to wheel a little chest of drawers Amber had bought along with three big mirrors. Julia carried a bag filled with lamps and candlesticks that cut deep into her skin. Amber hoisted the taxidermy fox under one arm and the cardboard box of picture frames under the other. They were hot, dirty and sweaty by the time it was all collected, and only then did Amber sanction a quick stop for lunch at her favourite crepe van. It was where her dad always took her when they were here. As a kid, he’d lift her onto his big broad shoulders so she could watch as the woman in the van scattered the pancakes with grated cheese that bubbled and melted as soon as it hit then she’d crack an egg and when done, she’d fold the finished crepes into perfect quarters with a palette knife and slide them into their little cardboard envelopes, handing them over with a flourish. Always with a big grin and a sneaky double helping of cheese for Amber’s dad. It was one of Amber’s favourite memories – everything about it was good. Behind the counter it was still the same woman making the crepes, back hunched and wrinkled skin, but the same beaming smile.
Julia and Amber stood under the shade of a plane tree and drank Perrier from bottles, runny yolk dripping on their chins, silently surveying all they still had left to cover. The vans glistening like flames in the incessant heat. A mirage of winding lanes ahead of them.
Lovejoy and Martin strolled past. Lovejoy spotted them and with a tip of his head said, ‘Ladies.’
Julia glared at him sullenly.
Amber shouted, ‘That was a dirty trick you pulled on Julia, Lovejoy.’
He held his arms wide with a smile. ‘What are you talking about? I had to buy it, someone else came along and offered him more.’
Amber groaned, ‘Oh please, that’s such a lie.’
Lovejoy crossed his heart, ‘God’s honest truth.’ Then he grinned at Julia, ‘Aww, don’t look at me like that. I promise, I had to buy it!’
Amber replied with a dismissive wave, sending him on his way.
Lovejoy held up his hands, still protesting his innocence. ‘It’s the truth.’
Amber tossed the cardboard wrapping of her crepe in the bin, then got her compact out and redid her lipstick.
Julia said, ‘I don’t think that’s true.’
Amber smacked her red lips together. ‘Course it’s not.’ She chucked the compact into her bumbag.
Lovejoy had paused by an adjacent plane tree to answer his phone. Amber’s attention was immediately caught when she heard him say, ‘Billy?’ Her gaze shot to Lovejoy, his smiling, quizzical face as he spoke into the handset. ‘What are you calling me for? I’m standing right by your mum.’
Amber felt her heart start to hammer. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said, striding over towards Lovejoy. ‘He’s just calling you because my phone’s died.’
But Lovejoy held up a hand to fend her off. The light through the branches of the tree played on his face. ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t quite catch that. Your dad? What do you mean, your dad?’
Amber watched with horror as Lovejoy started to frown, listening to whatever Billy was telling him on the other end of the line.
‘Christ, Billy,’ Lovejoy blew out a breath, leant one hand against the peeling trunk of the tree. ‘No it’s not me. Definitely not.’ He laughed. ‘Bloody hell.’ Then he paused again, nodded. ‘No, there’s no way your mum wouldn’t have told me—’ He looked up, caught Amber’s eye as if to convey the fact this was big news being discussed, almost sorry for Amber that her and her son were going through this.
Amber stopped a metre or so away from him. She swallowed. Waiting. Waiting for the hesitant moment of doubt to cross his face.
But she needn’t have worried. Lovejoy wasn’t going to give it any credence. She should have known. Should have guessed. He would never want to even consider the possibility.
He shook his head, looked at Amber, all regretful. ‘Nah, mate, you’ve got the wrong guy. Sorry, kiddo.’
And his expression took her back to exactly the moment when he had looked at her exactly the same way. Used exactly the same tone. Finished the sentence with that slightly off-hand laughter that always served to make the other person feel just a tiny bit silly for asking.
It was the same afternoon her mother had left with Keith, one of the many boyfriends she’d handed herself over to after Amber’s dad died, but this one stuck. It was a Tuesday, she remembered because the dustbin men were collecting the rubbish and she remembered the sweet, rotten smell as she stood in the wind-tunnel corridor of their flat block with her rucksack. A couple of cleaners hired by the landlord were already working on the flat she’d lived in with her mother, getting it ready for his next cash in hand tenants. She saw them shoving stuff into bin bags – Amber’s eighteenth birthday cards still on the windowsill, a vase of dying tulips, some old shells they’d picked up on the beach, a stack of condolence cards for her dad that Amber’s mother had shoved in the drawer as soon as one of her new boyfriends came on the scene – all grabbed and discarded by the rubber-gloved hands of a stranger. She remembered having no idea what to do, shocked that even though she knew what her mother was like, she had never expected her to leave. Amber had been so lulled by her mother’s desperate dependency on her that she had never prepared for the eventuality of being left.
When she’d had enough of watching the stuff she couldn’t carry being unceremoniously junked, Amber had turned and walked three doors down to Lovejoy’s. He’d been her best friend since she was ten years old.
His mum, Carole, was the complete opposite of her own mother. The type of woman who glowed with open friendliness. She made vats of jam – with quinces and apples from her allotment. She had symbolic tattoos up her arms, smelt of washing powder and was always lamenting the fact she wasn’t lying on a Lanzarote beach. She was an antiques dealer too, she’d been a great friend of Amber’s dad’s, and her mother loathed her. Jealous of their shared laughter. Carole laughed a lot. She hugged a lot. And when she looked at you she could see right into you.
She’d opened the door with a beaming smile, an offer of a cup of tea and an apology about the state of Lovejoy’s bedroom as Amber disappeared down the corridor in that direction.
Amber’s friendship with Lovejoy had recently developed from its teenage bantering one-upmanship into a tentative relationship. She’d tried to resist – she’d seen enough of his girlfriends leave the pub in tears or watch as he got bored and dumped them with a text. She had been the friend he whined about them all with and she’d vowed to never step into their shoes. But then one night, their flirty peacocking had slipped into an illicit, never-mentioned kiss round the back of the King’s Head and she hadn’t been able to forget it. She had woken up at night thinking about him. Lovejoy had been trying to get her into bed since they were sixteen, it had been part of their banter, so when she finally caved in he was delighted. Then it was covert nights spent over, and finally to what it was at that point – coy hand-holding when they walked down the street and an understanding that they’d go home together after a night out. Their friendship, initially unchanged, had just started to tip, to veer into territory where not everything could be said out loud, where vulnerability and pride were suddenly at stake. And neither was willing to be the first to dip their toe into the water first.
When Amber had walked into his room, he’d grinned like a Cheshire cat at the sight of her. And she had grinned back. She climbed over the discarded clothes on the floor and onto the bed where he’d been lying listening to music, where he’d opened his arms wide to envelope her, where he’d smelt of warmth and sleep, Lynx and sweat.
Where she’d found herself shy suddenly. And for the first time in need. Where she had allowed herself, as she slept on his grey patterned sheets, as she’d heard his mum watching TV in the living room, as she’d fought the drag of the blank hoarse loss of her dad dying and the bewilderment of her mum leaving, the momentary luxury of safety.
She had woken up in the morning to find Lovejoy sitting up, T-shirt thrown on, fidgety like he’d been waiting for her eyes to open. When he’d smiled, this time his face was too vibrant. His eyes too wide. He started talking about a plan he’d had. He wasn’t hanging around here, he said. His mum had come into a bit of cash selling some old photographs of vegetables she’d found in an attic clearance. She was lending him some. He was going to go to the States. Did she know there were warehouses in Brooklyn packed with the antique equivalent of solid gold? Buy it cheap, ship it over. No messing. His hands moved fast as he talked. Then he might go east, he thought. There was so much to see. He wasn’t staying around here, no way. Amber had barely wiped the sleep from her eyes. All she noticed was that he kept looking furtively at her rucksack in the corner, panic on his face. Like it was going to rise up and tie him down where he was on the bed, forever. Not once did he mention the possibility of her going to America too, of them buying stuff cheap and shipping it back together.
Amber didn’t need to be told twice.
They got up and had breakfast with his mum. She remembered Carole asking, ‘How’s your mum, Amber?’ And Amber had said, ‘Oh she’s fine. She’s just gone on holiday actually. Back in a fortnight.’
Carole looked uncertain.
Amber’s expression was too neutral to challenge. But she knew Carole knew that she was lying.
‘That’s nice,’ Carole said in the end. ‘Very lucky.’ She glanced at her son. Amber had seen her mouth, ‘Have you told her?’ And Lovejoy nod as unsubtle as ever. Carole had turned back to Amber and said, ‘I know Lovejoy’s going away, but there’s a home for you here, always, you know that?’
‘Alright, Mum, I’m not going till next week, you can’t rent my out room yet.’
And Amber had smiled almost quizzically, as if even the mere mention of her needing a place to stay was completely unnecessary – she had a home, a mother, a place to sleep.
As soon as she could leave, without seeming too hurried, Amber had picked up her massive rucksack, as if it were no big deal, and with a casual ‘See you at the pub later’ to Lovejoy, she strode off down the biting, wind-tunnel corridor. Then she had got into her dad’s battered old van and driven off to nowhere. That night she slept in the back. Shivering in a car park.
And here Lovejoy was, at an antiques fair in France, with that same off-hand, bright-eyed emotionless expression on his face. It made Amber feel sick. It made her take those few final strides towards him, snatch the phone and say, ‘It’s not Lovejoy who’s your father, Billy. I told you that. If you must know, it was a guy called Richard. He was in a band called something like Open Water or Something Ice, I can’t remember. I don’t know where he is. He’s probably dead from all the drugs he was taking. Alright? There you go. That’s all I can tell you.’
On the other end of the phone, Billy was silent for a second, then he said, ‘Richard. Something Ice or Water…’ slowly as if he was writing it down.
Amber exhaled. ‘Billy, you don’t need to do anything about it now. OK. We can talk about it properly when I get home.’
‘Yes,’ he said, completely unconvincing. ‘Bye, Mum.’
‘Bye, darling,’ she said, but he’d hung up.
Lovejoy looked vastly relieved. Like the status quo had resumed.
When Amber handed him back the phone he said, ‘Well that was interesting. I never knew Ned wasn’t his real—’
But Amber wasn’t listening. Every part of her body was telling her she had to leave. She had to get as far away from him as possible. She couldn’t cope with any questions. She couldn’t look at the expressions on his face. She couldn’t cope with the tendrils of him curling into her world. ‘Come on, Julia. We have things to do.’
Julia hurried to catch up as Amber started to stride away from the shade of the trees.
‘Amber?’ Lovejoy called after her.
But she ignored him.