The Sun in Her Eyes (33 page)

‘It’s been a long time,’ I say carefully.

‘You’ll have to speak up, dear!’ she barks.

I repeat my sentence, adding, ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember you at all.’

‘You were unconscious,’ she tells me, and I stiffen, knowing that this will be hard for Dad to hear. Her brow furrows as she notices my reaction. She glances up at her son.
‘Darling, I would like to go outside. Would you mind if I spoke to Amber alone?’ She directs this question at everyone in the room, but I’m the one to answer.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ I get to my feet, casting Dad a small smile. He’s not happy, but I need to be able to talk openly. Neither he nor I knows what Doris is going to say.

‘It’s cold outside, Mum,’ Barry says, trying to dissuade her.

‘Oh pish,’ she replies. ‘Give me another blanket.’

I suppress a giggle as I reach for a colourful quilted one on the sofa. ‘Will this do?’

‘That will be perfect, dear,’ she says.

‘Shall I push you?’ I ask.

‘I can do it,’ Barry says hastily, coming forward.

‘Amber is more than capable of pushing me, darling. I don’t weigh much.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Barry mutters.

‘Hmm?’ Doris asks, her eyebrows jumping up.

‘Nothing,’ he replies.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘We’ll come back in for tea in a bit.’

I wink at Liz and Dad, grab the wheelchair by its handles and off we go.

A few moments later, Doris and I are outside on a large veranda with stone steps leading down to a pretty back garden. There are roses in bloom almost everywhere I look, trailing up trellises
and planted in a multitude of beds. There’s a white wrought-iron table and two chairs to our left.

‘Let’s sit there,’ Doris directs, so I move aside one of the chairs to make room for her at the table.

‘I was sorry to hear about your fall,’ I say, catching a glimpse of the awful bruise again as I take a seat on the other chair.

‘It looks worse than it feels,’ she assures me, adjusting the blanket on her lap. I hope she’s not too cold. Sunshine is flooding the grounds, but it’s not reaching us
here under the canopy.

‘It’s a beautiful garden,’ I comment.

‘It is. This was my house once,’ she reveals. ‘I’m in a home, now, but Barry and Patricia were good enough to put me up for Easter.’

‘Do you have many children?’ I ask, feeling a necessity for small talk before we get down to business.

‘Two. Barry and Christine. Barry has two sons. They’ve both flown the nest, now. Married with children. Christine lives in Adelaide.’ She tuts. ‘She has a son and a
daughter. What terrible grief the latter has got herself into.’

‘Oh no,’ I say with sympathy, my curiosity piqued.

She humphs. ‘Yes, Becca. She turns thirty next week.’ She glances at me. ‘You and she are the same age.’

I nod, taken aback. ‘I turned thirty a couple of weeks ago.’

‘You were both three at the time of the accident,’ she says, eyeing me shrewdly.

‘What can you tell me about it?’ My impatience has got the better of me.

For a moment she falls silent, staring past me in a slight daze. I’m about to repeat my question when I see pain pass across her face. I realise she’s remembering the
accident…

The winter-morning sunlight was momentarily blinding and Doris, who had been lost in her own thoughts, had to concentrate very hard to follow the line of the
road. That was when she saw it – the car mashed up against a gum tree. She would have driven straight past, thinking it had been there for a while, if it hadn’t been for the smoke
spiralling out of the engine.

Her reflexes kicked in and she pulled off the road. She looked over her shoulder, but the smoke was obscuring her vision so she climbed out to take a closer look. As the smoke
drifted, she caught sight of a woman in the driver’s seat. Doris’s heart almost leaped out of her chest as she picked up her pace and began to run.

The bonnet was completely crushed against the enormous tree and the driver’s side was pressed up against another. The pungent fumes of petrol and hot oil mingling with
omnipresent eucalyptus filled Doris’s nostrils as she rushed to the passenger door and yanked it open, experiencing a surge of relief as the woman turned her head to look at her. Doris jolted
at the sight of the small child in the back seat, but she seemed to be asleep or unconscious.

Returning her attention to the woman, Doris saw that, even with cuts on her face from the shattered windscreen, she was young and beautiful, with auburn hair half tied back
from her face. She had the most startling blue eyes as she gazed at Doris.

‘Are you alright?’ Doris asked quickly.

‘I don’t think so,’ she whispered, her lips trembling.

Doris’s eyes drifted downwards and, to her horror, she saw the woman’s hands and dress were soaked with blood and a sharp piece of metal was protruding from her
stomach. Doris couldn’t help the gasp that she emitted. She needed to get an ambulance.

‘Don’t go,’ the woman begged as Doris began to retreat.

‘I need to find someone to call an ambulance,’ she said, shaking her head. The country road was quiet. She’d have to get back into her car and drive to the
nearest house she could find.

‘No, please.’ The woman’s face was deathly white and blood bubbled out from beneath her shaking hands. ‘My daughter,’ she murmured.
‘Amber.’

Again Doris returned her attention to the little girl in the back seat. She had auburn hair like her mother, and her skin was also pale, but not deathly. At least Doris hoped
not. ‘She’s fine,’ Doris lied. ‘I must go and get help.’

‘Too late,’ uttered the woman, and then she coughed and blood sprayed out of her mouth.

Doris felt momentarily dizzy, but adrenalin forced her to focus.

‘Please tell her something for me,’ the woman said.

‘You must conserve your energy,’ Doris urged. ‘Don’t speak. I need to get you an ambulance.’

She couldn’t bear to stay here and do nothing when it seemed the woman would be dead soon.

‘No,’ the woman said again, and this time she had a strength to her voice that surprised Doris. ‘Please… You have to tell
her…’

‘Tell your daughter?’ Doris prompted, everything inside her tightening and pinching in the most excruciating way. This was her worst nightmare unfolding right in
front of her eyes. To know you were going to die and leave your child behind… This woman knew. She knew.

With everything in her, Doris willed herself to be strong, to be the messenger, to hear this stranger’s last words and to comfort her as best as she could. She reached
over and took the woman’s hand. It was icy cold and slippery with blood.

‘Tell me. What do you need to say?’ Doris asked, steeling herself.

The woman coughed again, blood trickling out of the side of her mouth. She was as white as a sheet. Doris wasn’t even sure she had the ability to speak.

‘It’s very simple. Tell her I love her,’ the woman whispered, and Doris nodded encouragingly. ‘She’s my little lamb,’ the woman said, a
tear falling from her blue eyes. ‘Tell my little lamb to be a good girl. Be a good girl for Mummy.’

This was no big revelation, no huge secret that had been kept from me for years and years. This was indeed a simple message from a mother to a daughter, a daughter she loved dearly.

‘I’m so sorry for upsetting you,’ Doris says, her voice wobbling as I cry.

‘She used to call me her little lamb,’ I blurt out, gulping back a sob. ‘I remember now.’

Lambert… She gave Lambert to me.

I dry my eyes to see tears coursing down Doris’s wrinkled face as she watches me.

‘She gave me a stuffed toy – a sheep. It was there with me in the car?’

Doris nods. ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t leave it behind. I took it out of your arms to unclick your harness and you screamed and held out your hand for
it as I lifted you from the car. I was distressed because my fingers were dirty.’

Dirty with what? It dawns on me: my mother’s blood.

‘They tried to take him away from me,’ I whisper, shuddering at the sudden recollection. ‘I remember a nurse saying he was dirty and I was so upset, she let me keep
him.’

‘There was nothing to wipe my hands on,’ Doris apologises regretfully.

Lambert has been grubby ever since I can remember, but I never knew… I never knew that the brown spots on his body were made by fingers soaked with my mother’s blood.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t try to contact you sooner,’ Doris says. ‘I did tell one of the policemen, of course, but the message was so, well, so
obvious
, I
suppose… Isn’t it what any parent would say to their child? I love you. Be good. It’s what I would say,’ Doris admits. ‘And I
have
thought about it. I
wasn’t sure the policeman would pass it on, and even if he did, I suspected your father might not see the significance or remember to tell you.’

I frown at her. ‘What significance?’ I ask, my throat still swollen with the most enormous lump.

‘My granddaughter, Becca,’ Doris says, and I’m not sure if she’s going off on a tangent. ‘She’s been getting into all sorts of trouble lately. She has always
tried to run before she could walk, getting engaged at the age of seventeen to a boy who was no good for her. She fell pregnant within a year and he divorced her a year later. She married again
soon afterwards and is now divorcing him. Christine says that she’s out at the bars every night and has a drug addict boyfriend, while little Paula is at home, being raised by my daughter.
She’s eleven now, and she’s all too aware of what her mother is doing. I dread to think of her learning from her behaviour.’

I’m listening, but I don’t understand what she’s getting at. She stops speaking and turns to look at me.

‘Your mother loved you,’ she says fervently. ‘But I needed to know what sort of a woman you had grown into. Whether you were good.’

I stare back at her, floored. Doris is looking at me quizzically and my face flushes as I fight the urge to look away. But then she answers her own question. ‘And yes, I can see that you
are.’

Very slowly, I shake my head. ‘No,’ I reply quietly. ‘You’re wrong.’

She sits up straighter in her seat, interested. ‘Why would you say that?’ she asks.

‘Because I’m not a good girl,’ I tell her, musing about how I’ve come to be having this surreal conversation with an almost total stranger. ‘The things that
I’ve done… The mistakes that I’ve made…’

‘Mistakes don’t make a person good or bad,’ she says. ‘They make a person. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. I saw from the window the way you are with your
father. Whatever you’ve done, you can make it right.’

I’m not so sure about that…

I close my eyes as I remember that all of this –
all
of this goes back to the first and worst fuck-up I ever made.

‘NAUGHTY GIRL!’

‘What is it, dear?’ Doris pries, as I silently begin to cry again.

My whole body is shaking, but I don’t make a sound as I hug myself tightly.

‘Amber, what is it?’ she asks once more, increasingly concerned. ‘What have you done? It can’t be that bad.’

‘I think I killed my mother.’

‘Pardon?’ she says, genuinely confused. I realise that she didn’t hear me.

‘I think I killed my mother,’ I say loudly, my face creasing in agony. ‘I caused the car crash.’

‘NO.’ I hear Dad’s voice, but I can’t see him, and a moment later the screen door opens and he hobbles out. His face is angry. ‘NO!’ he says more fervently.
Was he eavesdropping? ‘You did not.’

‘Dad, I did,’ I reply, crying openly now. ‘I was acting up, being naughty, distracting her. She screamed at me that I was a naughty girl.’ And then she went on to ask a
stranger to tell me to be good. I must have been
very
bad.

Dad looks shocked, but not for the reason I’m thinking. ‘Katy
never
raised her voice at you! You were the sweetest girl. She never once called you naughty!’

‘She did!’ I can see her, so clearly, in the rear-view mirror. ‘“
NAUGHTY GIRL!
” She screamed it at me in the rear-view mirror!’

‘No,’ he says, aghast. ‘No, darling, that was me.’

What?

He looks anguished as he hobbles towards us. I bring over the other chair and he sinks into it, exhaling heavily. ‘It was me.’

After Mum died, Dad struggled to look after me. He let himself go, let the house run to ruin and lost all patience for dealing with a three-year-old.

‘I shouted at you all the time,’ he relays mournfully. ‘I was always calling you a naughty girl.’ He swallows uncomfortably before adding, ‘I’m so sorry. So
sorry. You
weren’t
.’

Doris huffs and we glance at her. She shifts awkwardly, but speaks her mind nonetheless. ‘Every child is naughty,’ she says, and I recall Ethan saying the same thing.

‘Maybe,’ Dad agrees. ‘But I gave you a hard time. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s understandable,’ I reply after a long, thoughtful pause. But why do I have such a clear memory of it being Mum? Did Dad’s shouting somehow make it into my dreams
and distort my reality so I still believed it when I woke up? It’s possible.

‘Do you remember that Mum used to call me her little lamb?’ I ask Dad now.

He hesitates and then nods as the memory filters back to him. ‘She did. It was because you couldn’t say your own name.’

I give him a quizzical look, not understanding.

‘Amber,’ he says. ‘Baa. You called yourself Baa. She thought you sounded like a little sheep.’

I laugh and my eyes well up again. ‘Were you listening to everything Doris told me?’ I ask him.

He looks shamefaced as he glances at her. ‘Most of it. I had to know. I’m sorry.’

‘So you knew that Mum didn’t have a big secret?’ I say.

‘Of course I did,’ he brushes me off. ‘But I needed to know her last words. I needed to be sure.’