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

No one knew what to do. Jan made them tepid tea in plastic cups but she couldn’t stay with them long. Sophie watched her walk away, perhaps towards another grieving family, other bereft relatives, perhaps simply going off shift and heading home. She realized she herself would never walk in that free, purposeful way again. There would never be any point in walking anywhere, ever, if it were always to be without Matt.

A discussion ricocheted back and forth about where they should go, which Sophie was only dimly aware of. Someone had given her a pill to take and she was able to breathe again but everything felt as if it were happening far away, to another Sophie who was just looking on, observing wryly how at sea they all were. Death had been neither expected nor prepared for. Thirty-two-year-olds do not, generally, drop down dead. They were asking Sophie did she want to go to her house, to her flat, or back to her parents’ place in Farnham. Which would be best? Which would she prefer? Fear clenched at her heart and made her blood run icy cold, her breath once more refusing to come, at the thought of home.

What was home, without Matt?

She let herself be guided along hospital corridors and through the sliding exit doors to her parents’ car. There was a yellow ticket pinned beneath the windscreen wiper; her father, in his haste and distress, must not have completed the pay-by-phone parking properly. Sophie looked at it numbly. Could they really issue fines to the bereaved?

She watched as her father detached it from its lodging, barely glancing at it. He placed it, carefully and deliberately, in the breast pocket of the smart jacket he was wearing despite the heat. She opened the car door. Inside, it was solid and capacious, leather seats spotless, seat-wells clear of the detritus of water bottles, books, and discarded newspapers that littered hers and Matt’s. She slid into the back and shut her eyes.

She only opened them as she felt the car drawing out of the parking space and into the exit lane. And then she realized that she was leaving Matt behind and that she’d never see him, ever again, and she began to scream. She screamed and screamed and flung the car door open, hurling herself out of it and running back towards the hospital doors, aware of people stopping and staring, gaping open-mouthed at this mad woman.

She cared not at all. She couldn’t leave Matt. He wasn’t dead. She’d make him come alive again; the power of her need for him would resurrect him. She tore headlong through the traffic and the pedestrians and the smokers gathered around the entrance until she finally got back inside the hospital where she knew Matt was waiting for her, smiling, wondering what all the fuss was about.

Chapter 1

The room was utterly silent, hushed in that way of places that have been devoid of life for too long. Sophie wandered around, every sound she made deafening in the emptiness that surrounded her. At the open window, she stood and looked out. The sea lay almost directly below, separated only by a narrow road and fringed by the bushy green of a row of juniper trees. There was no wind and the azure water beyond the dusty tarmac shone glass clear and still. On the far side of the bay, dark mountains rose majestically upwards, towering over the red-tiled rooftops of the clustered stone houses that colonized the waterside.

She watched as an enormous Italian cruise ship plied its way towards Kotor, ploughing the deepest course that curved around the opposite bank and which would bring it right up to the city’s ancient walls. Sophie thought of all the people the ship was carrying, all the lives and futures, all the hopes and dreams of those on board. Were any of them like her, only thirty-two but already widowed? She doubted it, but then could hardly believe it was true of herself.

That Matt was dead was undeniable. They had had the funeral. Everyone had been there – family, friends, people she hadn’t seen since their wedding. People who she hardly knew and wasn’t sure she liked. She hadn’t cared. She knew her husband was gone for ever but still she kept expecting him to arrive, to walk in the room as if nothing had happened, to be by her side as he always had been since they were seventeen years old.

The ship sounded its horn and the reverberations echoed between the enveloping mountains. There would be many tourists in the old town today; even in just five days here, she and Anna had learnt to avoid the place when these vast vessels disgorged their multitudes of linen-clad sightseers. It had been her best friend Anna who had persuaded her to come on this holiday, who had insisted she must begin to get back on her feet. But that was easier said than done when you felt as if you had no feet, had nothing to support you or to propel you forwards.

Nevertheless, Sophie had complied, too numb with grief and pain and sadness to find the resources to do anything else. And despite the heartache, she had been instantly beguiled by Montenegro, its beauty and tranquillity. It felt like a healing place, even though she doubted she ever could be healed. And having come here at Anna’s behest it seemed a small leap now to be, at her insistence, looking around a house for sale. The fact that said house was near derelict merely added to the surreal nature of it all.

Anna had been indulging in a solitary game of ‘spot the property that’s ripe for renovation’ ever since they had arrived and had studiously scrutinized Kotor’s real estate office windows, swooning over what was immaculately restored and exclaiming in astonishment at the low prices of what was not. It had probably been inevitable that, at some point, Anna would succumb to temptation and insist on a viewing. But even Sophie, dazed and confused as she was, had been taken by surprise when it happened.

Having spotted a ‘for sale’ sign outside one particular stone house, serendipitously accompanied by a businesslike woman in smart clothes armed with a glossy brochure in her hands, Anna had summarily screeched the car to a sudden stop. And now here they were, Sophie inside, while Anna, her small son Tomasz, and the estate agent were on their way in. Sophie really had no idea what they were all doing. What she was doing. She felt as if she were permanently on autopilot, acting unthinkingly, without direction, just conforming with whatever she was told to do by someone who had a handle on the world. All her actions were immaterial; nothing mattered now that Matt was gone.

A noise in the background and a clattering on the stairs alerted Sophie to the fact that the others were almost upon her. She walked towards the door – her feet in flip-flops that softly flapped against the wide wooden floorboards – and rejoined them. Jovanka, the estate agent, led them around the rest of the house, revealing room after room, all equally dusty and neglected but full of charm and promise. In each one, she opened windows and threw back shutters, unleashing priceless view after view.

Sophie looked on, stupefied. It was her dream project, something she could transform as she had done the flat in Belsize Park, painstakingly remodelling and redesigning it until it was completely unrecognizable to the wreck she and Matt had bought. But the idea was ridiculous, nonsensical.

‘What are we actually doing here?’ she hissed in Anna’s ear, taking advantage of Jovanka’s temporary distraction with a recalcitrant window bolt.

‘Shh,’ Anna hissed back, and continued to follow Jovanka around, asking a constant stream of property-related questions designed, Sophie assumed, to make her sound like a clued-up potential buyer.

In one third-floor room with no electricity, a pile of grey plaster dust lay forlornly in the centre of the floor.

‘Damage from the 1979 earthquake,’ pronounced Jovanka, sagely. ‘It brought down most of Kotor,’ she continued. ‘But this is a good sign.’ She pointed at the mound of debris.