Past Secrets. Cathy Kelly

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      She ran questing fingers along his powerful chest, feeling the curve of his muscles, the sensitive nubs of his nipples, so different from hers.

      She’d seen men’s bodies before, but never fully naked except on a canvas or on a plinth carved from finest Carrara marble. And marble felt different from the warm, living beauty of a man’s body beside hers, inside hers. Desire rushed through her veins again. Why had nobody told her lovemaking could be like this? All those talks about pregnancy, AIDS and being emotionally ready, nobody had said how utterly addictive it all was.

      ‘We should get up,’ Karl said. ‘It’s after six. Your mother will be home soon.’

      Half six, Amber had said. Her mother ran her life on a strict schedule. Half six home, change out of her office suit by 6.35, dinner on the table – pre-prepared from the night before, obviously – by seven.

      Amber used to love the comfort of their evening routine. It made home seem like a refuge. No matter how much life changed in the outside world, her mother put dinner on the table at seven. But lately, Amber found herself telling Ella that when she moved out of home, she’d never have a schedule as rigid as her mother’s as long as she lived. Life was about being a free spirit, not a slave to the clock or the powers of good kitchen cleaning products, or having to hear the oft-repeated phrase ‘a good education and you can go anywhere, Amber’.

      Right now, education suddenly seemed so boring. Her mother’s view of life was stifling and there was no escape from it. And Mum would hate Karl, who was a free spirit, would hate his intrusion into their tightly run lives. It wouldn’t be the two of them any more. It would be a different twosome, Amber decided firmly: her and Karl.

      She slithered over until she was astride Karl, her long tawny mane a tangle over his lightly tanned shoulders. ‘We don’t have to get up,’ she said, smiling. ‘We’ve ages yet.’

      There was so much they could do in that precious twenty minutes.

      ‘And if my mother arrives home early, you can always hop out the back window and climb down the flat roof of the kitchen.’

      Her mother was still paying off the credit union loan for the kitchen extension, a fact that often brought a worried look to her face.

      Money: that was another subject Amber never wanted to worry about again, along with timetables and exams. Karl was going to be a famous musician and they’d have loads of money. Enough to pay off her mother’s debts, enough to buy anything Amber wanted.

      Just once, she’d love the thrill of shopping and never looking at the price tag. Wouldn’t it be glorious to spend without worrying or feeling guilty over it?

      ‘The neighbours will call the cops if they see a strange bloke hop out of your bedroom on to the kitchen roof and down the lane.’ Karl put both hands around her waist and splayed his fingers.

      Amber was proud of her tiny waist. She’d inherited her mother’s hourglass figure, although, thank God, she hadn’t inherited her total lack of interest in looking good. Her mother wouldn’t have been seen dead in the clothes Amber wore: slivers of vintage fabric that barely covered her breasts, low-rise jeans that revealed more than a hint of bare skin. Mum just never bothered making herself look good or showing off her waist.

      Amber arched her back as Karl’s fingers moved up to cradle her ribcage. She didn’t want him to go. They had plenty of time.

      ‘Everyone’s at work or cooking kids’ dinners,’ she said, feeling sympathy for anyone engaged in such boring duties. ‘Nobody will see you.’

      There was only one person on the street who might possibly know she had phoned in sick to school and might wonder at her having a strange guy in the house, and that was Mrs Devlin.

      Amber approved of Christie Devlin, even if she was old and, therefore, should be totally wrinkly, boring and incapable of remembering what it was like to feel alive. For all Christie’s silver hair, she had a way of looking at Amber that said she knew what was going on in the girl’s head. Scary. Amber wondered if Christie would know by looking at her that Amber had just had the most incredible sex of her life.

      Losing-her-virginity sex. She’d nearly done it eighteen months ago, with cute but dopey Liam, who was a friend of Ella’s youngest brother. She’d called a halt to the proceedings just in time. Liam’s hand was burrowing into her jeans and she’d realised that she was about to have sex with a guy just to see what it was like rather than because she would die then and there if she didn’t.

      A woman had the right to say no at any point, her mother had said in one of her talks about sex.

      ‘Whaddya mean, you don’t want to after all?’ demanded Liam, who clearly didn’t agree with Amber’s mother on the whole issue of coitus interruptus.

      ‘I mean no,’ said Amber. ‘No means no. Got it?’

      And although Liam hadn’t spoken to her since – not a big worry – she was glad she’d said no when she did. Imagine having to live your whole life knowing you’d lost your virginity to an ordinary guy like Liam when you could have the memory of a man like Karl Evans?

      This was sex with a man of the world, a twenty-five-year-old man with a future. He was her future. She was going to travel the world with him and discover life, with a big L. She’d be eighteen in less than three weeks. She could do what she wanted then. Nobody could stop her.

      ‘So you’ll come with us?’ he asked, returning to the subject they’d discussed earlier, before they’d fallen into bed. ‘If we’re going to work with a producer in New York, we’ll be gone at least six months. I’d hate to be away from you. I couldn’t bear that.’

      ‘I’d hate to be away from you too,’ Amber answered, stroking his skin with exploring fingers.

      This was love. Pure contentment flowed through her veins. Karl was so crazy about her that he wanted her to travel with his band to America to record their album.

      He needed her, he said. He’d been writing songs like a man possessed since they’d met. ‘You’re my muse,’ he’d said.

      And Amber, who’d been told all her life how talented and special she was, believed him. She and Karl: they were the twosome now.

      As the ambulance carted Una Maguire and her frantic husband Dennis off to hospital, Amber gazed at her lover with shining, besotted eyes and imagined all the wonderful times they’d have. Her mother would flip when she discovered Amber wasn’t going to art college after all, but Amber was an adult now, wasn’t she? She could do what she liked. That, surely, was the point of all those years of ‘you have the power to do what you want’ conversations. Amber would do what she wanted and although she hated hurting her mum, Faye would have to live with it.

      

      Faye left work early so she could dash into the mini-market near home and pick up a few last-minute bits. They were out of basmati rice and she’d defrosted a home-cooked vegetarian korma the night before.

      Ordinary rice wouldn’t work, it had to be basmati.

      Near the checkout, she dallied briefly by the ranks of magazines and papers. She loved the interior decoration magazines but they were all so expensive, so she didn’t splash out very often. But she felt weary this evening, and the house felt lonely when Amber was upstairs at her desk bent СКАЧАТЬ