ahead, Amber said a cheery ‘byee’ into her phone. Christie knew that the correct teacher response at this point would be to catch up with her and ask what she was doing out of school. But suddenly Amber broke into a run, high heels notwithstanding, and was gone down the street before Christie could move.
Christie shrugged. Amber was a good student, hardly a serial absentee. She and Ella had never been part of the school’s wilder cliques and had both managed to move from adolescence to young womanhood without any noticeable bursts of rebellious behaviour.
There might be a perfectly good reason for her absence today. And Christie herself knew that you could learn plenty of things outside school as well as in.
When she’d been young, she hadn’t done everything by the book either.
Yet again, Christie thought about the past and the places she’d lived. The house in Kilshandra with bitterness and misery engrained into the wallpaper so that she’d barely been able to wait till she was old enough to leave. The bedsit on Dunville Avenue where she’d met so many friends and learned that she didn’t have to hide her gift. And Summer Street, where all the best things in her life had happened.
She could remember what the young Christie had looked like when she’d moved to Summer Street – long dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, always in jeans and T-shirts – and she could remember how lucky she’d been, with a kind husband, enough money so they weren’t in debt, with one beautiful, healthy child and another on the way. Yes, the years on Summer Street were the ones she liked to remember.
But there were other times she’d like to forget.
The strange feeling came through her again and despite the warmth of the morning, Christie shivered.
Amber Reid was concentrating so fiercely on getting to the bus stop in time that she hadn’t noticed Mrs Devlin walking along Summer Street behind her. This was despite her intention to watch out for anyone who might sneak to her mother about her appearance out of uniform on a school day.
‘We’re going on a field trip,’ Amber had planned to say blithely should the need arise, though the final-year students at St Ursula’s didn’t have time for field trips this close to the all-important state exams. And even if they did, what sort of field trip would require her best high heels – Oxfam spindly sandals revitalised with bronze paint – a sliver of a silk camisole and a flippy skirt, all topped off with the curious and fabulous silver tiger’s-eye pendant she’d recently found buried in her mother’s bottom drawer? The pendant was a mystery. She’d never seen her mum wear it. Faye dressed in boring suits and was resolutely against making the best of herself, no matter what Amber said. The pendant was so not ‘her’. Amber was still wondering where her mother had come by such a thing. She didn’t like to ask, because Mum would be hurt that she had been snooping. But it was odd of her to keep it hidden because they shared everything.
Well, not everything. Amber felt a splinter of guilt pierce her happy little cocoon. Today was a secret she couldn’t share with her mother. It wasn’t the first time she had concealed something. Mum was so square, so protective, that on the rare occasion that Amber had done anything outside her mother’s rigid code of what was acceptable, she’d had to fib a little. But the current secret was certainly the biggest.
Ella had phoned just as Amber slammed the front door behind her.
‘Ring me later and tell me how you got on, won’t you?’ Ella begged.
‘Promise.’
‘Wish I was bunking off,’ Ella grumbled. ‘I’ve history in ten minutes and I haven’t finished my bloody essay on the Civil War.’
‘Sorry, I did mine and I could have lent it to you so you could use some of my ideas,’ Amber apologised. She loved history and the words flowed effortlessly from her pen to the page. Although how she’d written her essay last night was largely a mystery, as she’d been consumed with excitement thinking about today.
When she’d said goodbye to Ella, she broke into a run so as to race past the Summer Street Café in case of neighbours lurking within.
A minute later, she was at the bus stop on Jasmine Row, just in time to catch the 10.05 bus into the city, and Karl.
Karl. She whispered his name to herself as she gazed dreamily out of the windows on the top deck. Karl and Amber. Amber and Karl.
It sounded just right, like they were destined to be together.
Destiny had never been a concept Amber had held much faith in up to now. Just a few weeks away from her eighteenth birthday, and a month from the hated exams, she felt that she was in charge of her own life.
So she’d only been half paying attention when Ella read their horoscopes that fateful Friday at lunch. Horoscopes were fun but hardly to be relied on. Mum always insisted that Amber was responsible for herself and that life should not be lived on the word of what some astrologer had dreamed up for that day.
Mum was firm that Amber should never follow the crowd or do anything just because of someone else’s opinion or because ‘everyone else is doing it’. It was a lesson Amber had followed very well up to now.
‘Crap for Aries, as usual,’ muttered Ella, reading hers quickly. ‘“Rethink your options but don’t let your enthusiasm wane.” What does that mean? Why doesn’t it ever give us hints on what’s coming up in the maths paper? Now that would really be seeing the future.’
They were eating lunch on the gym roof – strictly forbidden but the current cool spot for sixth years – plotting their weekend and how to fit exam study in around at least one trip to the shopping centre to flip through rails of clothes they couldn’t afford. All study and no play made you go mad, Ella insisted.
‘Yours is better. “Single Taureans are going to find love and passion. Expect sparks to fly this weekend.”’
‘Sparks at the football club disco?’ Amber roared with laughter at the very ridiculousness of this idea. It was the same big gang of people she’d known all her life and you couldn’t get excited about a bunch of guys you’d watched grow up. Where was the mystique or the romance of that?
‘Patrick?’
‘Too nice. He’d want to walk along with his hand in your jeans pocket and yours in his and discuss the engagement party. Gross.’
‘Greg’s cute.’
‘He called me Chubby Face once. No way.’ Growing three inches taller in the past year meant Amber had gone from being childishly plump to womanly and voluptuous. The addition of honeyed streaks in her rich brown hair meant that all the boys who’d previously talked to her like a clever younger sister suddenly sat up and took notice.
This new power over guys was heady and Amber was still testing it, gently. But she wanted to go somewhere more exciting than the football club disco to do so. Somewhere, beyond the confines of Summer Street, the football club disco and St Ursula’s was Life with a capital L: pulsing, exciting, waiting for her.
‘You’re getting so choosy,’ said Ella. ‘You fancied Greg last year.’
‘That was last year.’
‘Should I get more highlights?’ asked Ella, pulling forward a bit of the long, streaky blonde hair that was almost mandatory in sixth year and examining it critically. ‘Your highlights look great but mine have gone all dull and yellowy.’
‘Use the special shampoo for blondes,’ said Amber.
‘It costs a fortune. I bet your mum buys it for you. Mine wouldn’t.’ Ella was indignant. Because there were only the two of them, Amber’s mum bought her everything she wanted, while Ella’s, with three older sons as well, could hardly do the same thing.
‘I’ll