The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise Read Free Page B

my T-shirt in his living room because Mum said it was ruined.
    â€œJust cut off the bloody part and use it for dusting,” she told him when he protested.
    He looked sick as anything but couldn’t be bothered to argue.

    â€œWhat were you and Chris talking about in the hallway?” I asked in the car on the way home.
    â€œJust chatting,” said Mum, and pressed her foot to the floor.
    â€œThis is a thirty-miles-per-hour zone.”
    â€œI can read, Francis.”
    â€œIn two years’ time I’ll be driving,” I said.
    I had to keep doing this with Mum. She’d once promised me that for my seventeenth she would pay for a set of driving lessons, so that fourteen days from my birthday I would be a qualified driver. It was up to me to maintain the momentum until she made good on her pledge. I imagined myself with Fiona in an open-topped sports car. The wind was blowing attractively through our hair as we cruised down country lanes, one of her hands resting casually on my leg. The only downsides were I’m not too great with directions, and the fact that there weren’t many country lanes near ours. There was a patch of farmland and some hedges on the back road behind the nearby supermarket, but it didn’t look anything like my fantasy, more the sort of place that the Evening Chronicle describes as a “dogging hotspot” (which I knew about because Mr. and Mrs. Tilsdale at number sixteen got caught in the act twice in one year). So that was my plan, and in preparation for it I had already bought a pair of mock-leather driving gloves and created the perfect mix tape for our sepia-toned journeys of love.
    â€œWe’ll see,” Mum muttered to me.
    â€œWe will,” I said, putting one of Chris’s mix CDs into the radio.
    â€œWahwahwah!” Mum said, rolling her eyes. “Why do you always listen to this dirge?”
    â€œIt’s cool.”
    â€œIt’s depressing! In my day we only listened to music you could dance to. You’re not going to bump and grind to some postgrad with a three-chord refrain and a broken heart,” she said, veering quickly sideways when she nearly missed the turnoff.
    â€œYou can shuffle to it, and sort of bounce your head while you’re staring at the floor. Then you can pretend you’re in a Cure video.”
    â€œEven the Cure don’t pretend they’re in the Cure anymore. Put on something more upbeat, Francis.”
    â€œAfter this song. What were you talking about, with Chris? You didn’t answer me before.”
    â€œOh . . .” Mum said, driving faster and faster. “Just making sure he was okay for money.”
    â€œYou said my name.”
    She had; I’d been listening at the door.
    â€œYou may have cropped up in our conversation, yes, but only in passing. You’re really not the most gripping of topics, love.” As she spoke Mum poked her hand out of the car window and flipped her middle finger at a man in a Toyota who had tooted at us twice. Then she went quiet and sighed.
    â€œI do love you. You know that, Francis?”
    â€œI know,” I said. “I love you too.”
    â€œGood,” she said, and nodded, speeding up even more as the traffic lights went from green to amber. “Glad we got that sorted. Now change this song before it kills us both.”

CHAPTER TWO
    It all came to a head on a Monday morning. The tests and the diagnosis and the strange, eerie dinners where there seemed to be a million things Mum and I wanted to say, but couldn’t because we were pretending to listen to every single syllable the newsreader was uttering.
    When I started feeling unwell she had tried to diagnose me herself. I knew she was doing it because she’d close the laptop every time I went into the front room, then keep behaving strangely the next day. At first she thought I might have gastric flu because of the amount of time I spent in the bathroom. I played