The Family Secret

‘And Rita and Viv?’

‘Same old insane.’

He laughs. ‘Yes, I miss seeing them around town.’ He’d moved out of Winterton Chine five years ago to the next village. When he’d messaged Amber to tell her, she’d felt a mixture of relief and regret. No more awkward encounters in town. But equally, no more chance of seeing him again, unless it involved a visit to the hospital, and nobody really savoured that.

‘Right, better go,’ Amber says. ‘Don’t want to leave Mum and Aunt Viv in charge of the shop for too long.’ She lifts her hand, gives a feeble wave, then walks off, aware of his eyes on her back.

When Amber arrives back at the beach huts, her mother and aunt are doing the foxtrot together on the icy beach as a man walking his dog looks on, bemused. They stop when Amber approaches.

‘You’re back already?’ her mother asks her, slightly out of breath.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Amber replies, walking into the shop and throwing her dark green coat to one side. ‘Did you sell anything?’

‘A blanket!’ Viv replies, smiling with pride.

‘What about the girl? She’ll be alone,’ Rita asks, ignoring her daughter’s question.

‘No she won’t,’ Amber says, checking the copy of the receipt her aunt had scrawled out for the blanket. ‘You knocked ten quid off?’ she exclaims in disbelief, waving the receipt about.

‘Fifty pounds is extortionate!’ Viv replies. ‘You can get them for thirty on Etsy.’

‘It’s the going rate, Viv,’ Amber says, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Jesus, I’m trying to keep my head above water here.’

‘Enough about the bloody blanket!’ Rita shouts at them both. ‘What about the girl? She’ll be all alone in that hospital!’

Amber fluffs up the remaining blankets then grabs her paintbrush and walks outside, the two women following. ‘Exactly, she’s in hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses.’

‘You should have stayed,’ Rita says, and Viv nods in support.

Amber turns to them. ‘Why? I don’t even know her!’

‘The man who helped you that night didn’t know you,’ her mum replies. ‘And he still sends us Christmas cards every year checking in on you, a whole thirty years later!’

Amber awkwardly holds the tin of paint against her hip with her bad hand so she can open the lid with her working hand. Then sets the tin down and dips the paintbrush in.

‘I don’t need your help any more today,’ she says without looking at the two women. ‘You can go have your tea and cake at Earl’s if you want,’ she adds dismissively, referring to the teashop in town. ‘They’ll be wondering where you are. Who’s going to pass on the town gossip otherwise?’

In the reflection of a small mirror Amber sees the two women register hurt on their faces. Amber bites her tongue. She’s taken it too far.

‘Is this your way of telling us to clear off?’ Viv says.

‘I have to focus on painting. I’m already behind,’ Amber says in a lighter voice, sweeping the paintbrush over the wood. ‘Needs some concentration, which is impossible with you two around,’ she adds, turning to give them a quick smile to try to ease the tension.

Her mother examines her face then nods quietly to herself. ‘Of course, love.’ She gives Amber a quick peck on the cheek. ‘As long as you’re okay?’ she asks, looking her daughter in the eye as Viv wrinkles her brow.

God, they knew her so well.

‘Fine! I’m perfectly fine,’ Amber lies as she aggressively sweeps the red paint up and down the wooden wall.

‘See you later, sweetheart,’ Viv says, stroking her face. Then the two sisters walk up the path and away from the beach arm-in-arm.

When they’re out of sight, Amber stops painting and slumps down onto her stool, looking out towards the vast empty beach. Ice laces the pebbles and in the distance the sea lies calm beneath the grey skies. More snow, her mum said. It’s not here yet but Amber suddenly feels stifled, buried under memories and the feel of frost on her fingers.

She glances back up towards her mother and aunt. Their heads are bent close together, lips moving. She imagines the conversation:

‘If little Katy’d lived, she’d be a teenager like the girl on the beach,’ her mother would be saying.

‘Yes, I thought the same,’ her aunt would reply.

‘Ten years. Can you believe it’s been ten years since we lost the wee girl?’

Amber puts her head in her hands and closes her eyes, allowing herself to remember the feel of Katy’s warmth in her arms and the sound of her giggle bursting out of her little body in a fit of happiness. When it was cold like this, she yearned for those stiflingly warm summer nights The Chine had experienced the month Katy was born. Amber would feed Katy in her nursery, looking out of the vast windows towards the sea. Jasper would sometimes pass in the hallway to go to the toilet, smiling with love in his eyes.

A violent wave suddenly crashes to shore, splashing onto the iced beach. Summer disappears in Amber’s mind, replaced by the sound of urgent rain on the window pane she’d heard that awful evening. She could still feel the scorching heat of her daughter’s skin beneath her fingers as she sat beside her small bed, watching as her breath grew more laboured.

‘It’s just a little virus, Em,’ Jasper had said, walking in and putting his hand on Amber’s shoulder. ‘We’re getting loads of cases at the moment in A&E and every single one has recovered within a day or two. She just needs to get over the worst of it. Go get some sleep, I’ll stay up with her.’

‘No,’ Amber had said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t sleep. Her breathing doesn’t sound right. Listen!’

‘Because she’s blocked up! We can’t do this every time she’s ill, babe. And God knows there will be plenty of times like this, especially when she goes to school.’

But there were no other times, no school either. An hour later, a rash appeared and Jasper went from relaxed to stricken, running with his daughter’s small body in his arms through the rain to get her into hospital. Amber knew then. She knew how serious it was, like she’d have known from the start if she’d been there when Katy had been sent home from pre-school, ill. But instead she’d been at some private doctor Jasper had recommended to look into prosthetic fingers. He’d had enough of her complaining how long it took her to renovate pieces to sell in the shop. But if she hadn’t been at that bloody appointment, if she’d seen the way Katy was from the start, maybe her maternal instincts would have sent her to the hospital sooner.

The next morning little Katy, the light of their lives, was gone for ever and with her Amber and Jasper’s marriage.

Amber crunches her good hand into a fist, feeling the tears starting to trail down her cheeks. Katy would have been light-haired like the girl, maybe a hint of the red hair Amber shared with her mother and sister. Strawberry blonde was what her mother called it the first time she’d seen Katy after Amber had given birth to her. ‘My little strawberry,’ she’d whispered, kissing her granddaughter’s soft cheek. It had been particularly hard for Rita. Amber could hear it in her voice when she’d called her from the hospital in the middle of the night. Just a few weeks away from her fourth birthday, the same age Amber had lost her fingers to frostbite. The memories must have come flooding back for Rita. All Amber could think was she wished she’d died that day, then she wouldn’t have to endure the pain of losing the light of her life all those years later. Selfish, really. But true. It was unbearable.

Still is.

Amber looks down the beach. She hates being alone with herself when she has these thoughts.

‘Come on,’ she whispers to herself as she forces herself out. ‘This hut won’t paint itself.’

As she paints over the next few hours, she tries to keep her mind on the job in hand but can’t help but notice there aren’t any customers. She’d not sold a jot the past week apart from the blanket, and her aunt and mother had done that. What was she doing wrong? She’d focused on the bestsellers, mainly the items she renovated: the small stools she’d picked up from charity shops, turned into side tables. The antique framed mirrors cleaned and spruced up. It was all on-trend: distressed look with pastels. So why were sales down this winter?

Deep down she knows why: she simply can’t produce stuff quick enough. If she had two good hands, it might be a different story. She did this a lot, thought about the what-ifs. A guaranteed way to distract herself. She’d had a talent for renovating items, even at a young age. She lost her fingers a few months after starting school and her mother talked about how her teachers marvelled at how skilled Amber was before her accident; she’d had a knack of turning cardboard boxes and plastic bottles into something pretty, even at just four. She’d overheard Viv once saying to a friend: ‘Amber could’ve done great things if she’d not lost those fingers of hers.’

Amber looks down at the stumps on her hand in frustration. One stupid moment going out in the snow when she wasn’t supposed to, and the course of her life had been altered.

Well, there’s nothing she can do about it now, is there?

Maybe she needs to think about reducing her opening hours, finding a job in town? She takes in a sharp breath. Does she really want to do that? Her mortgage is small, the apartment she lives in tiny. She has minimal outgoings. It isn’t necessary. And anyway, what the hell can she do with her useless hand? It takes her what feels like treble the amount of time to do everyday things – including painting.

‘Argh!’ she shouts in frustration. She throws her paintbrush down, red paint splattering on the pebbles. She makes herself a hot chocolate with the small kettle she has in the hut and walks out onto the sand, blowing on her drink to cool it down. As she does that, she tries to blow her worries away too.

She looks towards the hospital again and imagines her little Katy there, alone, scared, confused. Amber and Jasper had been with her to the end, holding her hands and whispering in her ear, trying not to look at all the wires coming out of her tiny body. Amber had that, at least. The knowledge her daughter hadn’t had to endure it alone.

But this poor girl, in hospital with no idea of who she was and where she came from.