‘But...’ The past twenty years were speeding through my memory, garbled, like a tape on rewind. ‘But
no, her parents are in Bolton. She always went to stay with them.’ I looked at Amber, elegant and poised
in a black cashmere turtleneck. Her sophistication was a million miles from Esther’s chaotic Northern
sexiness, all chipped red nails and boobs on display. And could Amber be old enough to have given
birth to her, even allowing for Arthur’s sneering aside about her real age? ‘She’s not... you’re not...’
Amber’s eyes narrowed. ‘Exactly,’ she said, icily calm. ‘You would never know that my own child is
mine. My life – and her life – were stolen from us.’ ‘I don’t understand...’ Amber leant towards me
across the coffee table, and I instinctively drew back. ‘I had her very, very young,’ she said. ‘I came
down here for Drama College, got in volved with one of my tutors.’ She silently shook her head at the
memory.
‘Oldest story in the book. He didn’t want to leave his wife, I didn’t want to...’ She paused a second.
‘Our family are Catholic; I would never have got rid of her.’ Shock had frozen me now. I just needed to
hear the truth; I could allow myself to feel the feelings later. ‘Of course,’ I said, and let her carry on.
‘So, I had her, but my mum said I couldn’t possibly look after her. I was only seventeen. They’d bring
her up instead.’ Her face was set, the blazing rage of earlier drained away, r eplaced by something far
more chilling. ‘She was the first one to take my child from me.’
‘That must’ve been agony,’ I said. I couldn’t think about the whole picture yet, the torture she’d devised
for us. I had to wait for her to lay out the whole sorry map.
Amber gave a terse nod. ‘It was like I was in the way, whenever I went back home. She didn’t know I
was her mum; I was just some interloper she had to give up her bed for.’ Her blue eyes flashed with that
potent, controlled fury. It was so unnerving, the way Esther’s face seemed to layer over hers as she
talked about her now that I knew the truth. ‘I just had to stay away. I wasn’t wanted.’
My anger – my fear at where we were headed – got the better of me for a second. ‘So it sounds like it
was your parents who stole her away from you?’ I said. Amber looked at me with pure contempt.
‘Unlike your parents, with all of their money and their status, they didn’t have many choices. They did
what they thought was right to protect us.’ The room hummed with silence. She knew exactly how to
take the power back, even now.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, the words like glue in my throat. I knew, even in my profound shock, that I had to get
us to the end. ‘I tried to kill myself, Rachel,’ she said. ‘That was what my pain drove me to.’ Her gaze
settled on me, almost affectionate. ‘You’ll understand that. You came so close to doing yourself serious
harm until I intervened.’ Her self belief was cast iron – how stupid I’d been to fall so hard for her. ‘But
ultimately it taught me how much I needed to survive. For my child. I needed to build a life for us.’
‘So what did you do?’ I said, my voice a whisper. It was getting harder and harder to endure this. ‘I went
to Oxford Poly and did psychology. I waitressed the whole way through to make ends meet.’ She smiled
coldly. ‘Unimaginable to a girl like you, I should think.’ Her bitterness towards us was so profound, so
far-reaching. How de ep had it taken her?
‘And then what happened?’ I said, ke eping my voice deliberately gentle. It gave me a horrible feeling of
vertigo – me sitting here in this room coaxing and luring out her confessions, the way she had mine for
all these months. ‘It took a long time, but I was ready. I was ready to take her back. To tell her the truth.
And... all she wanted to do was go to London, just like I had.’ She looked at me. ‘She was still my little
girl, even if she didn’t know it consciously.’
Despite everything she’d done, the tragedy at the heart of this story was real. ‘It wasn’t like my mum
wanted her to know the truth; she still thought it was some shameful secret.’ Her face looked as though
she’d taken a gulp of sour milk. ‘So, I let it happen, I let her go. I kidded myself the shock might be less
once she’d lived a bit of life. And then...’
‘And then she came to us,’ I said, the pieces of the story starting to coalesce. ‘She was seventeen, too,’
said Amber, her eyes boring into me. ‘I’ve told you so many times, haven’t I? How history r epeats itself
in families?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, my voice tiny. There was something worse coming – I could sense her
closing in on it, my body tingling with a sickening dread.
‘And it did, Rachel,’ she said, almost triumphant. ‘Pregnant by a man more than twice her age who
thought she was shit on his shoe.’ The world went dark momentarily, the shock almost forcing me out of
my physical form. Again I felt that childish desire to reverse time, to close the lid on a box of horrors I
wasn’t sure I was strong enough to stare into.
‘Amber...’ I said, my hand splayed across my mouth like I might vomit. Her face was alight now, her
power absolute. Some sick part of her was enjoying this. ‘I know it’s a shock,’ she said, leaning across
to gently touch my hand, her old persona flooding back suddenly. Her shape-shifting was terrifying to
me. ‘But some part of you knew, I’m sure. Some unconscious part of you had to grieve that lost sibling.’
A sound that wasn’t quite a word es caped from my lips. Memories were flinging up, shape-shifting the
same way that Amber was. That day I found them together: was a baby already forcing its way into
existence as I backed out of the room? A secret presence, hidden de ep inside? I saw Esther’s face now, a
snapshot in time. She didn’t look sly anymore; she looked stricken.
‘I’m so sorry...’ Shame flooded me, my family’s sins a single, crushing weight. All those years that I’d
hated Esther – it was nothing but that trick mirror. It was so much easier to be fuelled by bile: now I was
felled by disgust at how we’d treated her. ‘You’re sorry, Rachel?’ she said, cocking her head. ‘It wasn’t
you,’ she added softly. ‘It was all your parents. You’ve done nothing but try to make things right.
The fact is, it’s an impossible task; they’re beyond redemption. This is the final piece. Now you can
begin to make a real difference.’ My thoughts were scrambling again, trying to make sense of what I
knew and what I didn’t. ‘What happened to the baby?’ I stuttered, even though some part of me already
knew. A sick kind of anticipation lurched inside me as she carried on.
‘Your mother found out about the affair...’ ‘From me?’ ‘From you,’ she confirmed, looking almost
proud. Coldness slithered down my spine. It hadn’t been pure spin – in some twisted way Amber did
care for me. I didn’t know if that was better or far, far worse. ‘And then she found out Esther was
pregnant.’ ‘But...’ It was so hard to form a coherent sentence – no wonder the one that finally came
from my lips was so naive. ‘Where’s the baby now?’
The look on Amber’s face made her words almost irrelevant. ‘There is no baby, Rachel. Not now. Your
mother convinced her to scrape it down a drain.’ I buried my face in my hands – felt the deathly
coldness of my skin against my palms. ‘Does Dad even know?’ I whispered. ‘She paid her off, made her
promise not to tell anyone, including him,’ Amber said. As I let my eyes peel upwards, I met her
ice-chip gaze. ‘Your mother spends her Christmases unwrapping Barbies and Lego with her
grandchildren, while we’re left with nothing.’ A smile briefly slashed its way across her face.
‘Well, most years at least.’ The chill sunk even de eper into my bones: Christmas had been an elaborate
trap, and I’d walked straight into it. My fury about the drugs spurted up again – my suspicion now was
that the bitter tea she gave only me before my turn was laced with something – but I pulled back before
the accusation could spill out of me. If I thought about how large and sprawling Amber’s trap really was
– all of us running down invisible tunnels she’d spent years crafting – I wasn’t sure I’d be able to reach
the end of the story I so desperately needed to dig out.
‘Esther’s still young,’ I said. ‘She’s still got time to make a good life for herself. Have a family.’
It’s so ridiculous the way we try to make sense of an unfair world by creating happy endings for even
the bleakest of stories. By now, I of all people knew it was fantasy to suggest we can just magic our
wounds away, and Amber’s look of contempt reminded me of that fact. ‘Your family broke her. She
can’t hold down a job, she can’t hold down a relationship. She’s still obsessed with your dad, even if she
lies about it. By the time she found out I was her mum, it was too late...’ For the first time, her voice
broke. ‘It was too late for me to heal her.’
Was that what she was doing? Trying to create her own happy ending by finding surrogate daughters –
me, Hannah, countless others – and sticking them back together with the glue she hadn’t had the chance
to use on Esther? In some cases, perhaps, but in mine the story was far, far darker. I forced myself to ask
the inevitable question. ‘Are they still... My dad and her...?’
Amber shrugged. ‘She says not. She says she’s just back there for the money. But she’s never let him
go, however much I try to tell her it’s a delusion. He’s her lost youth – she can’t face up to the fact she’s
never getting those years back.’ Acid lurched up my throat again. Hearing that, it was hard to know if it
was more tragic if she was still his mistress or if she wasn’t.
‘And on top of that, your mum left herself in a nasty fix,’ Amber said, that grim, mirthless smile back on
her face. ‘She said she’d take care of her if she did what she asked. And she can’t have your dad finding
out what she persuaded Esther to do – he’d know what a monster she is. So Esther reappears when she’s
desperate.’ Her head shook with disgust. ‘Your dad’s too weak to say no to her and your mum can’t say
a word.’
I felt so exhausted, even though there was still so much further that I would have to walk. I slumped
backwards against the sofa’s cushions. It was no longer my refuge; it was my cage. Amber’s eyes
tracked me, her gaze intense. ‘But you and me, we can clean it up. We’re a great team. I meant
everything I said to you. The love between the two of us is real.’ A soft smile warmed her face now,
restored her momentarily to the woman I thought I knew. That I had loved. ‘There’s no greater healer
than pure love, Rachel. I sincerely hope I’ve taught you that.’
An in voluntary shudder moved through my body. I knew Amber so well by then. I could see by the set
of her face that she had a plan for me. Had always had one, in fact.