Under an Amber Sky: A Gripping Emotional Page Turner You Won’t Be Able to Put Down. Rose Alexander
placed her book on the pillow beside the torch; she would read herself to sleep. She changed into her pyjamas and went to the kitchen sink – the only tap – to clean her teeth. Turning it on, forgetting the force of the water, she soaked herself again. Now she could not stop the tears coming. She took off the wet garments and got under the sheets shivering, then, realizing this was not going to work, got back up and dressed fully: leggings, long-sleeved T-shirt, polo neck jumper. She longed for Matt’s warm body, for his embrace, for his strong caress on her softness.
She needed him so badly, needed Matt and not Matt’s ghost.
It was another bad night’s sleep. Sophie was spooked by noises on the stairs, voices in the street that seemed to be loitering outside her windows, strange bangings and thumpings that she could not figure out the origin of. She had spent so few nights alone since her marriage to Matt ten years before. In the darkness, the anger coursed through her veins anew. How could he? How could he have left her; how dare he?
And then it dissipated again, immediately, in a flood of repentance for her evil thoughts, which were even more insidious than the gushing water of the broken washing machine or the overenthusiastic tap. It couldn’t be true, that he would never lie beside her again, would never hold her in his arms or make love to her, would never kiss her neck and forehead and lips as he had done so many, many times over all the years. Surely it couldn’t be true.
When she did finally sleep, as the cold light of dawn was creeping around the sides of the wooden shutters and the spectres of the night seemed finally to be vanquished, she dreamt of Matt. He was walking towards her across the lawn at her parents’ house, laughing, unable to believe that she had really thought him to be dead, asking her how she could ever have conceived of the idea that he would leave her.
She felt so relieved, even as she slumbered she could feel the tension and anxiety pour out of her, could hear herself sighing at the release of all the trauma she had been holding tight inside. Matt wasn’t dead; of course he wasn’t. In the dream, a new worry took hold – how was she going to explain away her resignation from work? The funeral? People would think she was a terrible fraud; how could she have made such a mistake as to think her husband had died?
She woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed, her hair hanging in lumpy strands across her face. She reached out across the bed, wanting to touch Matt to make sure he was really there. The covers were flat and cold. She flung herself forward, reaching out with her hands, feeling all around for his warm, muscular body. Nothing. Her eyes had adjusted to the light now. There was no one beside her. Apart from her, the bed was completely empty. The dream was a cruel illusion.
Matt’s absence, his death, was the cold, hard reality.
Over the next few weeks, Sophie survived, but only just. She knew she was not eating enough, doing enough, sleeping enough. Everything was scant. When she did eat, she found herself unable to sit down and instead snacked on the hoof, wandering restlessly from room to room, concentrating on not letting the food make her retch. When she attempted chores, she did them half-heartedly, never quite getting anything finished, never totally eradicating the layers of dust that coated everything. When she slept, she felt that she was always just beneath the surface, never in a deep sleep, never comatose the way she wanted to be.
And then what was bad anyway got even worse. A dull ache in her belly heralded the arrival of her period, and the understanding that there would be no baby. She was not pregnant. The heavy, dragging pain, much worse than she had ever experienced before, receded gradually as the days passed in equal proportion to the tightening of the band of misery around her chest.
She had thought that a heart already in pieces could not shatter any further but now she understood that it could. The disappointment melded with her grief and became indistinguishable from it and she was mourning, in addition to her husband, a baby that never was.
Her self-imposed isolation was, for the most part, complete. But every day, an old man would come wandering along the bay, from which property Sophie knew not, and take up a perch on the large flat bollard on the pier in front of her house. Slowly, he would lay out an array of plastic containers, unravel his fishing line from the rod, bait the hook, and start fishing. He was exceptionally old, Sophie was sure – his wrinkled face, bent posture, and pure white hair and beard testified to that – but he seemed hale and hearty. He wore a red woolly bobble hat that gave him a more than passing resemblance to a jolly, though skinny, Santa Claus.
She would watch him from her window, see the prodigious amounts of fish he seemed to always catch. If she happened to come out when he was there, he would invariably strike up a conversation, engaging her in voluble streams of utter incomprehensibility. She would stand, arms held helplessly by her sides indicating her inability to understand a word.
He liked to press rakija upon her, and she would politely take the minutest sip, feeling the burn down her throat and the instant warming of her stomach as she did so. The only thing she consistently refused were the fruits of his catch that he urged her to take; she had no idea how to clean or gut a fish and no intention of learning. But strangely, over the days and weeks that passed, far from dreading these encounters she started to enjoy them. It was oddly calming not to have to say anything, just to nod and smile and shake her head, following his lead as to which would be the most appropriate of these gestures.
The man, name unknown, felt like a friend, and she didn’t have any others out here. He was utterly unperturbed by her lack of response or engagement and carried on talking regardless until, eventually, Sophie would say do videnja (goodbye) loudly several times and then make her escape.
Her mother and Anna phoned regularly; Kotor was generously equipped with free Wi-Fi so calls, whether video or not, were easily made if she was in town. Other than that she had little contact with anyone from home. Friends and acquaintances had melted away in the aftermath of Matt’s death, embarrassed perhaps by Sophie’s raw grief, unable or unwilling to find a way through it so opting for absence instead. It felt as if she had moved to another planet rather than another country in Europe.
Gradually, the weeks slid by and winter set in; on these short days, the sun barely reached the tops of the mountains before disappearing, leaving behind the gathering dusk and long December nights.
Christmas was not far off and Sophie had already decided she wouldn’t spend it in England. It was the season that she and Matt had both adored. They’d met at the school Christmas disco – the one event a year when the girls’ and boys’ establishments had come together. It had been love at first sight; they’d kissed under the mistletoe on New Year’s Eve just two weeks later and done so every year since, secure in the certainty of their devotion.
They would each prepare the other a stocking full of presents to open on Christmas morning, always just the two of them together, never sharing this so special of moments. Sophie would make by hand as many as she could: baking little packages of the shortbread biscuits that Matt so loved, embroidering socks with his initials and L for left and R for right so that he always knew which were a pair, sewing a fabric roll in which to store his cufflinks.
Doing her shopping now, just the smell of the tangerines, redolent with memories of magical Christmases past, assaulted her and sent her flying for the supermarket exit as if under fire. She knew that the scent of pine needles, of burning candle wax, of central heating newly turned on in rooms long left empty, would destroy her. The only way to survive the so-called festive season without Matt was to ignore it, to pretend it was not happening. And to stay here in Montenegro, where the memories might hurt but would not kill.
Instead, her parents came and took her to a small hotel in a town further down the coast, near the Albanian border. It was even more suitable than Sophie had imagined as the population was predominantly Muslim so Christmas barely featured. The weather was beautiful, sunshine most days, and they walked around the cobbled streets and down to watch the boats in the harbour, or along the wide, windswept beach where the seabirds wheeled in a white-blue sky.
In the evenings, they retired