Under an Amber Sky: A Gripping Emotional Page Turner You Won’t Be Able to Put Down

Mileva was talking again, and Sophie forced her attention back to her. ‘My third husband bought the house many years ago, in 1960 I think. I wasn’t married to him then, of course. We didn’t meet until the late Seventies.’ Mileva smiled, a wistful, nostalgic smile, as if looking back on good times, gone but not forgotten.

Sophie nodded, inwardly absorbing both Mileva’s ability to talk about her past love without the taint of sorrow that marred all her own memories, and also the fact that Mileva had been married three times. What had happened to husbands one and two? It felt too intrusive to ask.

‘He purchased it from a Serbian man who had rented it out for years. An absentee landlord, I suppose you would call him now,’ continued Mileva, dreamily. ‘The last family to live here had long gone. Apparently, they were tenants all through the Thirties and early Forties, but after the war they moved away from the area. The Serbian man was already ill and infirm and he simply left the place unoccupied and untouched until Zoran – my husband – bought it.’

‘Gosh,’ responded Sophie, inadequately. ‘It seems strange to think someone had no use for a property so beautiful, but …’ She left the sentence hanging, unsure where she wanted to take it. There were so many derelict houses around, testimony to people leaving for work, family, or myriad other reasons. Then she thought of something. ‘Where did the old tenants go?’ She wondered if they wanted their things back. Surely not, after the passage of so much time.

‘I’ve no idea what happened to them, or where they went,’ continued Mileva, as if reading Sophie’s mind. ‘They left so much behind, including that bureau, but people had no money in those times to pay for packers or removal firms. My husband and I came here only during summer, and somehow we never quite got round to sorting it all out.’ Mileva paused for breath, and met Sophie’s eyes. ‘So anything you want you are welcome to keep.’

‘If you’re sure,’ Sophie blurted out, holding back tears with difficulty. ‘Thank you.’ She had no idea why she was saying this when it was clear she was not going to be the house’s purchaser.

‘I’m sure,’ she vaguely heard Mileva say, her voice faint with tiredness. ‘And God bless.’

***

Stepping out onto the street, Sophie was momentarily blinded by the sun’s glare. The heat was stultifying. Anna, dragging a whinging Tomasz – who was unsettled by being disturbed from his impromptu nap – followed. After her came Jovanka, shutting the door behind her.

‘Are you going to put in an offer?’ she asked, addressing Sophie whilst Anna was half hidden inside the car. ‘The house will not stay around for long at this price.’ Her tone was forceful.

‘Oh no …’ Sophie began.

‘I’m not sure.’ Anna’s voice, as she emerged, rose above Sophie’s. ‘We’ll have to think about it. It’s a lovely house but there is a lot of work to do, so –’

Jovanka was momentarily distracted by her phone ringing.

‘Be careful,’ hissed Sophie. ‘You’ll make Jovanka think you’re in the running.’ She caught the glint in Anna’s eyes and stopped, abruptly.

‘I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not sure I like it, whatever it is.’

Anna merely shrugged and smiled in response.

Jovanka was off the phone again now.

‘That was the representative of the Russians who saw the house yesterday,’ she said. ‘They will definitely be offering, later today or tomorrow.’

‘OK. That’s interesting to know. We’ll be in touch.’ Anna’s voice had an affected air of disinterest about it. She shook Jovanka’s hand and opened the driver’s door. ‘Speak later.’

In the car, Anna decisively clicked her seat belt into the catch. ‘Never let estate agents think you’re too keen,’ she stated, definitively. ‘And if she thinks we were taken in by that Russian buyer story, well, she must think we were born yesterday.’

Sophie put her head in her hands. ‘Why are you playing games?’ she asked, when she had recovered enough composure to speak. ‘You’re not even thinking of buying that house, are you?’

‘I’m not,’ replied Anna, speeding off along the shimmering bay road amidst a cacophony of horns at her sudden pulling-out. ‘But why don’t you?’

The strobing sunlight streaming through the trees that lined the road was like a flashing neon sign, impossible to ignore.

‘Me?’ Sophie wasn’t sure whether to be angry or amused.

Anna slowed down as a cluster of houses approached. ‘Think about it.’

Chapter 2

The route to the beach took them all along the waterfront, past numerous other ancient stone houses, many restored, others even more romantically dilapidated than the one they had just viewed, with dark ivy growing thickly up crumbling walls and through broken windowpanes. Everywhere were tiny konobas, all boasting prime waterfront positions, the many piers that jutted into the flat blue sea bright with tables laid for lunch. Fishing boats of all sizes lazily drifted on the calm water and seabirds swooped and soared above. Alongside one house, a quaint but rusting communist-era, banana-yellow Trabant – barely bigger than a motorbike sidecar – was chocked up on bricks and awaiting restoration.

‘It’s like I imagine the South of France – Nice or St Tropez – circa 1950,’ mused Sophie, gazing out of the hire car window. ‘I keep expecting Princess Grace to appear in front of me, all priceless elegance and white gloves, and get into an open-top car and drive off to lunch somewhere divine.’

Anna laughed. ‘I know what you mean. And apparently, according to the guidebook I was reading on the plane, she loved it here.’ She paused for thought, frowning. ‘Or maybe it was Ava Gardner. I forget.’

‘Well, both always had immaculate taste, didn’t they?’ replied Sophie. She saw Anna glance at her, as if trying to work out what she was feeling before replying.

‘Sure did.’ Anna clunked the gears as she had to suddenly slow down for a fast-approaching vehicle. ‘So are you glad we came? Despite the reluctance?’

***

In the immediate aftermath of Matt’s death, Sophie had cocooned herself at her parents’ house, the house in which she had grown up, where she had lived until she and Matt had left home to move in together. For days, she had been unable to get up but had lain in bed in the bedroom that had been hers for so many years. Flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, the tears slid off her cheeks and soaked her pillow and nightie.

Her mother had lent her the nightdress, which was long and white and ethereal, like something a Victorian consumptive might wear whilst waiting to cough up her lungs. It was supremely unsexy and Matt would probably not have allowed her into bed with it on. But now Matt would never comment on her night attire, or any other aspect of her, ever again.

At short-spaced intervals, her mother Helena would come in with tea and biscuits and a look of quiet desperation in her eyes that grew ever more despairing as the days passed. Sophie would regard her, and the steaming mug on the bedside table, from beneath half-closed, swollen lids, unable to respond to either. There was no point in any of it.

‘You need to have something, love. You’ve hardly eaten or drunk anything since … You didn’t have any dinner last night, or the night before.’ Helena pursed her lips and inhaled deeply. ‘It won’t do any good for you to get ill.’

The absurdity of this remark temporarily stemmed Sophie’s tears. ‘What does it matter what happens to me? It doesn’t, does it? Nothing matters.’

Helena swallowed anxiously. ‘I know you feel like that now. I understand but …’

‘I don’t think you do understand, Mum.’ Sophie’s voice was harsh and shrill. She heard how she sounded and hated it. ‘I’m sorry, I just mean – I know you’re trying but you can’t possibly understand. You haven’t lost Dad, have you?’

Helena had wept then, her tears replacing her daughter’s on the white bed linen. ‘No. No, I haven’t. But you’re only young; you can’t give up on life now, at your age. You’ve got all your life ahead of you.’

Sophie wanted to scream, to tear the walls of the suddenly claustrophobic room apart, to bring the ceiling down and rock the house’s very foundations to replicate how her own had crumbled and disintegrated in just a few short seconds.

‘That’s the problem, Mum, isn’t it? That’s exactly the problem.’

She turned on her front, shoving the pillow away and burying her face into the mattress, the duvet up around her ears. She stayed like that for hours, her mother beside her, her eyes burning with tears already shed and those not yet released. Her heart had been ripped out from inside her and behind it had been left a lacuna that would never be filled. Her mind was utterly empty, unable to comprehend her insupportable loss.

She drifted in and out of sleep, remembered waking once, unclogging her sticky eyes, pushing back the bedcovers and raising her head to look around her. She was alone and the sun had disappeared to the west-facing side of the house. In the distance, she could hear the sound of a lawnmower; the faint scent of newly cut grass drifted through the half-open window.

She wanted to get up, to go and see who was cutting the grass, but it required too much energy so she didn’t. She merely turned onto her side and stared at the floor over the edge of the mattress, at the mustard-coloured carpet that was so dated now it had almost come back into fashion. Almost, but not quite.

Against the wall stood her washstand, the one she had bought from a junk shop in town and dragged home, with Matt carrying one end and her the other, too impatient to wait for her dad to hire a van to transport it. She had stripped it down with Nitromors, rubbed it with sandpaper, and lime-washed it in the popular style of the time. Eventually, she’d found and saved up enough money to buy a bowl and jug to fit in the hole and she saw now that her mum must have crept back into the room while she’d been asleep and filled the jug with white roses and peonies, her favourite flowers. The very ones she’d chosen for her wedding.

Her eyes closed and she wept again, sure that at some point her body must become so dehydrated with all the shedding of liquid that she would shrivel up like a desiccated leaf in autumn.

***

Back in her married home in London, she had spent days sitting, staring at the rain, contemplating how different the drops looked slamming against the huge panes of her London sashes rather than the small ones of her childhood home’s casements. They seemed bitter and angry, in a way she had never noticed before, hitting the glass and running evilly downwards until they met the wooden surround and accumulated in vicious pools. She had imagined the water eating away at the paint, the elements always trying to destroy what was manmade and protective.

Determined to rescue her, Anna had descended bearing homemade fish pie and the green olive soap that Sophie loved. Anna had also dealt with the flood caused by the blocked washing machine filter that Sophie knew existed but didn’t know how to fix because she had always let Matt take care of such things and, before that, it had been her father who had dealt with everything. Because of the constant availability of male help, she had allowed herself to become totally useless and dependent, possessing no practical skills whatsoever.

‘Good thing you live on the ground floor,’ was all Anna had said as she got down on hands and knees to clear the filter and mop up the water, Tomasz occupied with digging the soil out of the yucca plant pot and Sophie looking dazedly on. Anna had always lived alone, manless, and so she knew how to do useful things. Sophie would have envied her, if she had had the will or energy.

When she’d finished, Anna had shown Sophie the culprits: two five-pence pieces, a paperclip, and half a metal popper. Sophie picked up the popper. It was black and bore the brand name of Matt’s favourite make of cycling clothing. Just seeing the familiar logo had caused all the pain and grief and disbelief and shock to rise up inside Sophie once more. Anna soothed and patted and rocked her until the weeping had ended, and then ran her a bath and helped her in. Sophie had known that her hair was rank and that she smelt, but had not cared enough to do anything about it. As if she were a child, Anna had washed her hair for her.

The next day, she had returned and taken Sophie’s passport and bankcard hostage, telling her she’d found cheap flights to Montenegro and they were going on holiday.

‘Monte-where?’ Sophie had replied, not really focusing on what Anna was saying. Let her take charge; what was it to her where she went? And then, ‘I think the Caribbean’s a bit too far, isn’t it? I don’t like long plane journeys.’

‘It’s not the Caribbean, you dozy cow.’ Anna had laughed, with characteristic brusqueness. ‘It’s Europe, between Croatia and Albania, opposite Italy. You’ll love it.’

A few clicks on the laptop later, it had all been booked.

***

And now here they were. Sophie looked out of the car window again. They had left the bay behind, passed through the tunnel under the mountain, and were heading towards the peninsula. The slopes behind them were purple in the heat haze, the sky above huge and blue. Wild gorse exploded in bursts of hopeful yellow among the browning vegetation of late summer. She reflected on Anna’s question.

‘Yes, I’m glad I came,’ she said, finally responding. She turned to her best friend, steady hands firm on the wheel, always so confident and assured, always so certain. So unlike Sophie, who was more often than not filled with doubt until impulsion overcame her and she did something spur-of-the moment and perhaps unwise.

Like the time she’d vacillated for months about changing her hairstyle and tried to get Matt to give his opinion, which he never would because he said she was beautiful whatever her hair looked like, and then on an impulse she’d had it dip-dyed, badly. She’d hated it and Matt had too, although he wouldn’t say as much. The kids at school had teased her about it relentlessly and she’d ended up crying so much that Matt had paid for her to go to a really expensive salon and have it cut into a bob, removing all traces of blonde from her chestnut tresses. She simply couldn’t cope without people like Anna. And Matt.

She gave Anna a gentle, grateful pat on the knee. So many people had patted her since Matt’s death – her knee, leg, back, shoulder, arm – sometimes tentatively, quickly withdrawing their hands as if death might be infectious, sometimes with overfamiliarity or a boisterousness that made Sophie cringe. It felt good to be the patter rather than the pattee for a change.

‘Thank you for thinking of it and sorting it out. I needed to get away from … To get away for a bit.’

It occurred to her that, fleetingly, whilst absorbed in viewing the house, the grief that she had been imbued with since the day of Matt’s death, that felt so much like fear – shaky, shivery, insidious – had been absent. The beautiful old stone house, with its perfect setting on the frontline to the sea and its captivating views over the expanse of the bay, had driven away her pain, if only momentarily.

Silently contemplating this, she started as something soft and wet landed in her hair, accompanied by a cry of ‘Gophie’ from the back seat. It was toddler Tomasz’s best approximation of her name and clearly designed, like the flying missile, to get her attention. Instinctively, she put her hand to her head to retrieve the object. It was a soggy, half-chewed cheese stick.

‘Thank you so much, Tomasz,’ Sophie said as she showed it to Anna.

A giggle erupted from behind them. Both adults started to laugh and once she’d started Sophie found she couldn’t stop. They were still laughing when they pulled up at the beach ten minutes later.

As they got out of the car, the heat was even more intense than earlier, the sun burning high in the sky. Sophie lifted her face towards it and shut her eyes, relishing the sensation of its rays upon the skin that she knew was pallid and grey from lack of fresh air, good food, exercise, and happiness. Perhaps the sun, here where it shone with such brilliance from dawn to dusk, would sear the loss of Matt out of her soul, enough to begin to live again.

Chapter 3

Watching Tomasz play in the sand, building rudimentary approximations of castles, running to the sea and clumsily filling his bucket then slopping most of the water out on the way back, Sophie envied him his childhood innocence, his unsullied experience of nothing but love and happiness. She wished she could step backwards into her own carefree past.

Pulling her phone out of her bag, she forced herself to confront her new worst fear: the consequence of Matt’s untimely and tragic death that she had so far ignored. Keeping a careful eye on the little boy whilst Anna snoozed – she was up so early every morning with him – Sophie opened the email on her phone and read it, properly read it, for the first time.

It was from the solicitor, laying out the details of her finances. Despite a generous death-in-service payment from Matt’s employers, her expenses, mainly comprising their enormous mortgage payments, were far beyond what she could possibly maintain on her teacher’s salary. Everything had been built on the fat pay packet of Matt’s job as a lawyer. They had taken out life insurance when they first bought the flat but had let it lapse; they were both young, fit, and healthy, neither had ever smoked, they exercised regularly, ate well, drank little – why waste the money?

Sophie had preferred to spend it on doing up the flat rather than hand it over to some multinational corporation that would most likely never have to pay out. Home was a sanctuary to Sophie, the place where her world was centred, just as Matt had been the person around whom it had revolved. Now, that home to which she had devoted so much of her time, love, and energy, to which she would return after a tough day in the classroom only to take up a brush and spend a few hours painting a wall or tiling a floor, that home would have to go. She had to face the reality that she couldn’t possibly afford to keep it.

She would soon have nothing left at all to show for her fifteen-year relationship and ten-year marriage, not even a roof over her head.

***

That evening, once Tomasz was in bed and fast asleep, Sophie apprised Anna of the facts of her financial situation. Anna, to whom melodrama and histrionics were unknown, merely shrugged. ‘It’s a flat, bricks and mortar only. You can let it go.’ It was clear that Anna felt differently about what constituted a home. ‘There are plenty of places you could live,’ she went on, and reached out to pat Sophie’s hand. Sophie started to withdraw it but then didn’t. Anna’s patting was comforting. Necessary.

‘I’m sorry for everything that’s happened,’ continued Anna. ‘But you know what. That place will always be you and Matt; it will always remind you of him and you’ll never be able to …’

‘Don’t say move on,’ interjected Sophie, hurriedly. ‘Please, whatever you do, don’t say move on.’ So many people had mentioned ‘moving on’ in the weeks since Matt’s death. She knew she would never move on. She didn’t want to.

‘OK, start again, then. Begin afresh. Whatever you like. But it will be for the best, in the long run.’

The concept of this was incomprehensible. It was completely unimaginable to Sophie that she could ever make a nice, new life for herself. Pain gripped her, squeezing her heart so tight she let out an anguished, pitiful cry. She clasped her arms around her chest and let her head fall forward, her forehead resting on the warm, rough wood of the table, its grains pressing against her skin like branding irons.

Anna leapt up and crouched beside her. ‘Sophie? Are you OK? Are you ill?’

It was a long time before Sophie could answer. When she did, she could not even look up, just shook her head back and forth against that ridged table, imagining that the external abrasions created would match those cutting into her heart. Tears were pouring down her face.

‘I’m not OK. I’ll never be OK again.’

This was the thing about loss, about grief. After the first few weeks of nonstop crying, of feeling that she couldn’t breathe, of being gripped by an iron band of pain that tightened hourly around her heart, Sophie had thought it couldn’t get any worse. But now it was worse because she might be all right for a few minutes or a few hours and then suddenly, out of nowhere and with no warning, she would be seized anew by an unimaginable panic, a terror that winded her and threatened to destroy her. It was the fact that she didn’t know when it would happen and couldn’t stop it when it did that made it so frightening.

Anna patted her shoulder, unconvincingly. They sat in silence for a long moment. Then Anna was patting her again. But Sophie didn’t care. She needed human contact, needed Anna right now as much as she had ever needed Matt. Without her, she might completely fall apart.

‘Sophie, listen carefully.’ Anna was speaking slowly and louder than was necessary, as if Sophie’s grief had induced deafness. ‘When we get back to England, I’ll help you clear up the flat and get it on the market. It’ll be snapped up in no time. You know how hard it is to find property like that in your area. You’ve made it so beautiful; everyone’ll want to buy it.’

Sophie pictured her home, the designer wallpaper that adorned one wall of the sitting room, the copy of the Eames armchair, the stylish vintage Ercol dining table and chairs she’d bought for a song on eBay. Anna was right. What did any of it matter, now?

‘And you know what? This is the first time you’ve cried for days. You are getting better, slowly.’ Anna looked around and gestured towards the bay far below their balcony, black and still in the night-time, and at the encompassing mountains, dark shapes under the star-studded sky. ‘I think this place is good for you.’

Sophie lifted her eyes to look at the view, the lights that sparkled across the water. Closer still, the muffled noises of those in the apartments and houses around them were oddly comforting.

‘You’re never going to be homeless; you can afford something nice, somewhere.’ Anna took a swig of wine. ‘In fact, as I suggested earlier, you could buy the place we saw today. Say goodbye to grey skies and hello to blue ones,’ she continued smoothly, her tone even. ‘You know I believe in fate and I’d say that it was written in the stars that we would happen across that beautiful house, complete with estate agent ready and waiting. It’s meant to be. Your destiny.’

Sophie snorted in ridicule. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do,’ replied Anna.

***

That night, Sophie sat up in bed, unable to sleep. For the first time since Matt died, despite the denials she had made to Anna, she had felt the stirrings of interest in something that day. She wandered out of her bedroom, into the sitting room, and slid open the balcony door. Stepping outside, the heat hit her like a wall. In the distance, the lights of Kotor’s ancient ramparts glowed, a necklace of golden amber. After the earthquake in 1979, the local craftsmen had rebuilt the entire town by hand, stone by stone, painstakingly reassembling it just as it had been for centuries before, but better, stronger, more able to withstand future tremors. Maybe it was possible to put things back together. To remake them.

Sophie took a deep breath. The air was fresh, despite the treacly heat. Above her, constellations of stars bedazzled the clear sky, eclipsing the crescent moon with their radiance. She realized that she didn’t want to go back to London. She wanted to stay here, where it was hot and bright and still, where she felt she could breathe again, and be calm and serene despite Matt’s passing. The stars were telling her so, just as Anna had decreed.

***

The next day, Sophie made an offer on the house that was accepted. Two days after that, she, Anna, Mileva, and Jovanka gathered at the notary’s office to sign the contract. Sophie could hardly believe the speed and efficiency of the property-buying process in Montenegro. Everything was organized in an instant. The notary demanded a court translator and one was brought from his office above a shoe shop in the old town, a tall, attractive man called Darko who sported coal-black curls like Sir Lancelot in the ballad of the Lady of Shalott, and a small beard that would not have looked out of place in Shoreditch.

Next, the notary deemed it necessary to have a psychiatrist present to vouch that Mileva was in full possession of her faculties and was not being coerced into making the sale. As these additions were asked for, Sophie squirmed at the sight of poor Jovanka’s face getting paler and paler, despite the soaring temperatures, as she saw her sale, and its commission, potentially fade away. But all was well and one Dr Simovic joined the assemblage already seated around the capacious board table.

Whilst it was all being arranged, Sophie listened to Mileva explaining to Anna her joy at the prospect of her fresh start in the Croatian retirement village. The idea of having a new life at ninety-four struck Sophie as a delightful and wondrous one. She was pretty sure Dr Simovic wouldn’t find any of this old lady’s marbles missing.

Finally, everything declared in order, the notary called all parties to attention. She was an Amazonian woman in a black leather jacket, skin-tight trousers, and high-heeled boots, who had a handshake that Sophie was sure could crush bones with ease. Terrified, she sheltered behind Anna’s capable and indomitable presence and watched silently as she slid closer and closer to doing something absolutely insane and complete unplanned. Two hours later, the contract was signed. Sophie stood outside the office in the full glare of the midday sun, reeling from the heat and shock.

She had a derelict three-hundred-year-old stone house in the Bay of Kotor and two months to find the money to pay for it.