The Family Secret

Viv picks up a small mirror made of shells and sniffs it. ‘Smells like rotting crabs to me.’

‘Not to mention the smell of paint,’ Rita adds, wrinkling her nose. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just stick with the pastels.’

Amber puts her hand on her hip and looks her aunt up and down. ‘Gee, thanks for your support.’

Viv laughs and pulls her niece into a hug. ‘Come on, you know we’re joking around.’

‘When are you ever not joking around?’ Amber replies, shaking her head in disapproval. She doesn’t mind it really. It’s part of the three women’s camaraderie, the push and pull, the jokes and sarcasm. They drive her crazy sometimes, the two of them. But Amber isn’t sure where she’d be right now if it hadn’t been for their constant presence. They are all the family she’s known, being born and brought up in Winterton Chine. Her dad, a lorry driver, had cleared off a few months after she was born.

‘He always moaned about having to put up with two crazy redheads,’ her mother would say. ‘Then you come along, another redhead, screaming your lungs off every hour of the night.’ Some might take that as rejection. But from what Amber had heard from her mother, aunt and half the people in town about her hard-drinking, verbally abusive dad, she took it as a compliment. For years, it had just been her and her mother in their little terraced house in town, her aunt Viv a few doors down with her husband. But then they’d divorced and now it was just the three women – or ‘The Three Reds’ as the locals called them.

‘Getting really cold,’ Rita says, unfolding a thick fleece blanket and placing it over hers and Viv’s legs as they sit on a bench. ‘They’re saying on the news we might get snow.’

Amber twists at the wool of her jumper. ‘Hope not.’ She looks down at her left hand and the centimetre-long stubs that are an excuse for her fingers. Cold days like this always make her loss even more pronounced. She grabs a glove and pulls it on as her aunt and mother exchange a look. She worries that the sight of her fingerless hand puts customers off. Though her mum and aunt tell her she’s imagining it, she sees the way some customers’ eyes sweep over her right hand, a fleeting look of confusion. Better just to wear gloves when she can.

She sighs and grabs her paintbrush as her aunt and mother sit in contented silence.

‘Oh! Here we go, first customer of the day,’ her aunt says, voice puncturing the silence.

Amber follows her aunt’s gaze to see a woman walking down the beach. No, not a woman. More a slip of a girl with shoulder-length hair the colour of white birch, streaks of blue through it. Amber shades her eyes from the hard winter sun, taking in the girl’s woollen dress and snagged tights. ‘She’s not wearing a coat.’

‘No shoes either,’ Viv adds in surprise. ‘My God, she’ll catch her death.’

The girl stumbles slightly then pauses, looking down at herself in confusion.

‘Looks like she’s drunk,’ Rita says.

‘No, something’s not right with her.’ Amber grabs the blanket off her mother and aunt’s knees, steps off the veranda and rushes towards the girl.

Chapter Two (#ulink_796efc0e-5402-57bd-b712-c8e7fe5a108a)

Amber crouches down beside the girl and wraps the blanket around her slim shoulders. The girl is freezing to the touch and is shaking uncontrollably, her long colourless eyelashes glistening with frost. Amber instinctively pulls her close, willing her own warmth to seep into the girl’s fragile body.

‘What on earth are you doing here with no coat?’ she asks as Viv and Rita jog over.

The girl doesn’t say anything, just looks up at Amber with big, bewildered eyes.

‘Look at her, she’s freezing,’ Viv comments as they get to her.

Amber’s mum looks down at the girl, brow furrowed. ‘Are you local, love?’

The girl blinks, her eyelashes sticking together from the ice. ‘I – I don’t know,’ she replies. The three redheads exchange looks.

‘She looks familiar,’ Viv murmurs. ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘How long have you been out here?’ Rita asks.

‘Where are your shoes?’ Viv adds.

‘Too many questions!’ Amber says. She helps the girl up. ‘Come on, let’s get you into the warmth, you need defrosting.’

They all help the girl limp towards the beach hut and Amber takes the chance to examine her pretty face. Her eyes are set wide apart beneath her feathery blonde fringe, her nose a button. There’s a ring in her nose, a gem in her eyebrow. Both pretty and blue, like the streaks in her hair. She looks to be in her late teens. There’s a chance Amber’s aunt is right – maybe the girl had got drunk the night before and ended up in one of the beach huts? It happened sometimes. But looking at this girl, Amber thought she didn’t seem the type to do that. Not like Amber was at that age, wild-haired and even more wild-minded.

They walk into the middle hut and Amber helps the girl sit down on a stool. She turns up the electric heater. As she does so, Rita gasps. Amber follows her gaze to see the hair behind the girl’s right ear is matted with blood.

‘Call an ambulance,’ Amber says quickly, pulling her glove off, grabbing a sanitary towel from her bag and pressing it against the girl’s wound. The girl flinches then tries to brush the towel away.

‘No, love,’ Amber says, gently lowering her hand. ‘You’ve hurt yourself.’

Amber’s mother looks at the blood-soaked towel then turns away, hand to her mouth, as Viv pulls her mobile phone out and calls for an ambulance. When she explains the girl’s injury to the person on the other end, the girl’s eyes widen with fear. Amber puts her hand on her arm to comfort her and the girl looks down at Amber’s hand, taking in the missing fingers and the gnarled stumps at the end. She traces a cold finger over the stumps and Amber quickly pulls her hand away.

‘Let’s get something warm in you while we wait for the experts, hey?’ Rita says, pulling herself together. ‘Tea? Hot chocolate?’

‘Coffee?’ Viv adds as she puts the phone down.

‘I don’t think it’s like that, Viv,’ Amber says. ‘Anyway, best we don’t give her anything to eat or drink before she’s checked out properly.’

‘Really? Remember when you fell over and hit your head after that party, drunk as a skunk?’

Amber ignores her aunt, clearing some Christmas bunting from a small table and sitting down on it. ‘What’s your name then, love?’

The girl is silent for a few moments. Then she shakes her head, tears filling her eyes. ‘I don’t know it. Why don’t I know my own name?’

‘It’s okay,’ Amber says in a soothing voice. ‘It’ll be the shock of falling over. I remember being a bit confused when I did one time.’

Her aunt and mum suppress smiles.

‘My mum and aunt were too busy laughing to notice I’d actually hurt myself,’ Amber adds, scowling at them both. ‘Do you remember anything, like how you got here?’

The girl looks out towards the sea, flinching slightly. Then she quickly shakes her head.

‘Steady!’ Amber says as the towel shifts from the movement, the girl’s blood seeping onto her fingers.

‘Sorry,’ the girl says, stilling herself. ‘I – I don’t remember anything, really.’ Panic flutters in her eyes. ‘Why can’t I remember anything, why can’t I—’

‘Don’t worry, love,’ Amber’s mum says, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘It’ll come back to you eventually.’

The sound of sirens pierce the air.

‘They said they’d be quick,’ Viv says. She marches outside and waves up at the ambulance driving down the main road. A couple walking their dog stop and stare. It wasn’t often people heard sirens around those parts. Bar some recent muggings, the town was usually devoid of much crime.

A few moments later, two paramedics appeared at the entrance of the hut, a man and a woman.

‘Looks like you’re getting yourself nice and warm,’ the woman says as she gently lifts the sanitary towel from the girl’s wound and examines it. ‘Yep, that’ll need stitches.’ The paramedic looks at Amber. ‘It’ll explain the confusion too. Quite common with head injuries. You don’t know her then?’

Amber shakes her head along with her mother and aunt.

‘The poor thing doesn’t remember anything,’ Rita adds.