That day had been a hot day. A very, very hot day.
Under your feet the road surface seemed to melt; it became soft then it turned into a fiery steam that deformed everything about you.
This happened everywhere, but not by the sea.
Every summer the city's waterside became a world apart. Elsewhere life was just like usual. There were modern and tall buildings, because the city was a metropolis full of offices with air-conditioning, and busy people (that is, busy 24/7, because you cannot waste your time just because it's holiday), and cars, and traffic jams, and shopping malls. But not by the sea. By the sea there was the oldest part of the city, its heart, what we generally call “the old town”. The city had been founded there two thousand years ago, more or less, and there the city came back when all its modernity exhausted it leaving it breathless. It came back and remembered how it had been and where it was going. And it found a bit of rest, at last.
On the waterside there were ancient buildings, tree-lined avenues and long promenades. And then there was the original islet, that a light bridge connected to the mainland, with its old and typical restaurants and its old, tuff Castle (legends had it that if the Castle crumbled, the whole city would crumble after it) that glassed itself in the sea like a mermaid enraptured by its own beauty. Nowadays in the Castle there was not much left to see, only the vast terraces and some chambers where sometimes they had art exhibitions (and the medieval suits of armours' room, of course, but that was almost always empty). Then there were town offices, the fine arts department and many other things that did not involve the general public. But from a distance anyone could look at the Castle and fancy it was overflowing with knights in shining armours, damsels in distress and spitfire dragons, even if everyone knew perfectly well that the Castle had never seen such things.
It didn't matter, the Castle didn't need a “magical history” to be charming. Its form, imposing and graceful at the same time, was enough to inspire dreams and fantasies in those who contemplated it. Now, in that late summer afternoon, it was pink and indistinct under the setting sun, as if it had just jumped out from a book of fairy tales. It was like a watercolour. Like those Amber made with finger colours in those summer days, when she was home from the nursery school. Well, her “masterpieces” looked more like colourful blots than paintings, but in that quivering and sticky atmosphere even the Castle was nothing more than a pink blot in the middle of a blue sheet. A soft breeze rippled the sea in tiny waves azure and sparkling. A light mist created by the heat was raising from afar blotting out the mountains on the other side of the bay.
By the sea, and near the Castle, there was a wonderful place. And right that day Mummy and Daddy had decided to bring Amber there.
That place was the most stupendous ice-cream parlour in the universe... as far as she knew the universe, her universe being only a few blocks wide. But the Belle Fleur Café was truly the best in town. It was the oldest, the most celebrated, a real historical shop, and this meant that furnishing had been renewed for the last time not less than a century ago. Someone said that even Mozart himself once had been there to taste a lemon sorbet and play something on the old (already old in Mozart's times) clavichord of the landlord. It was possibly just a myth, maybe Mozart had never even fancied of going there, let alone eating lemon sorbets. But it was a beautiful, harmless dream to believe in.
Usually the Belle Fleur Café had extremely elegant inner rooms with wall paintings and oil pictures dating back to the 18th century where sophisticated people with exotic semblances sipped apparently delicious beverages from delicate china cups. Those pictures seemed alone to emanate sweet perfumes of chocolate, tea and quality coffee. The gilded stuccoes on the doors, the delicate inlays among the paintings, the flourishing letters on the menu... everything there suggested a lost and charming world.
Amber's favourite room was the Tea Room. Here in every corner you could meet an elegant dancing girl, all gilded and black with shining metal, holding a crystal flower from which light seemed to bloom just like daisies' petals do. Of course they were only lamps, Amber knew it well, but when she looked at them with her eyes half shut they really looked like fairies dancing in the room with golden clothes and blazing flowers. And there was the princess' portrait. Amber had decided she was a princess, but she could be just an ordinary elegant lady, after all... The princess wore impalpable robes of light blue tulle and sipped something from a china cup with such a pleased and blissful air that at last Amber decided to taste that same drink, believing it to be a highly luscious elixir. What a disappointment when she found out that that magic potion was nothing more than a plain (and unpleasantly bitter, too) coffee! Maybe she had been deceived, and maybe the princess was drinking something else. When you're just four years old you're easy to deceive in such matters.
Amber was four, was unlimitedly enquiring and unrestrainedly talkative. Saying she was “lively” would mean saying nothing. She was crazy for cats, just like her mother. And just like her mother, and like many cats, she had yellow eyes. Her eyes were yellow like amber, and that explained for her name. People was amazed when they noticed that strange colour; and indeed it was an odd colour, but she was proud of it. It was so beautiful having your eyes the same colour of Mummy and Pearl! It was a sort of magical tie that linked the three of them.
Pearl was Mummy's cat. She was an ordinary ex-stray, short-haired cat. She was bi-coloured, that's the proper name. It means that she was white with large grey tabby spots on the back, head and tail. The spot on the head was funny and looked a bit like a slanting wig. Pads and nose were pink, save for a little grey spot on the right side of the nose, as if she had just dipped it in a pail full of coal. And she had large, golden, sparkling and almost hypnotic eyes. She was not a pedigree cat, some would call her plain, like many others in the world. But to Amber she was a very special friend.
Since Amber's birth, Pearl had established a unique relationship with her: they, together, literally lived in symbiosis. The cat slept in her bed, warming her little feet in winter, and allowed the child to dip her nose in the soft fur of her belly, knowing that Amber loved to smell that delicate scent of face-powder typical of clean cats. And Pearl always knew so many funny anecdotes!
Oh! I'm afraid I forgot to tell you one, very important detail: Amber could talk to cats.
Of course, she “spoke cat-ish” in her own way. Cat-ish didn't require words... or better, she used words but cats answered her with sensations, colours, images, sounds, smells, feelings... in the end, it all became a sort of thorough speech that Amber could understand just as if they had spoken human words. Mummy spoke cat-ish too, maybe because she had yellow eyes too, bud Daddy didn't. He couldn't speak cat-ish and was positively sure that Amber and Mummy couldn't do it either, he thought it was only a sort of private game they played together and he sometimes gave them enough rope.
After all Daddy was a scientist and he could believe only what he could touch with his own hands or see with his own eyes. Since he could not talk to cats, he believed that nobody could do it. Or so thought little Amber. Daddy was a geologist, a person who studies rocks, stones, pebbles and everything concerning the earth's crust. His name was Leonardo Rossi; he was director in the Natural History Museum, a place that Amber liked very much because it was full of beautiful and magical things, even if Daddy did not approve of the word “magical”.
Mummy was a scientist too. She was an ethologist and her name was Gemma Green. Mummy was a university professor, she was beautiful, and slender, and athletic, and had long, auburn hair, just the same colour of copper, while Amber's hair was chestnut brown with ruddy shades. An ethologist is a person who studies animals' language, so maybe this was the reason, and not only the colour of her eyes, Mummy could talk cat-ish. Mummy was named Green and had green fingers too, because on their balconies she could raise every kind of plants and flowers, and this was another thing that Daddy could not do. Sometimes Mummy left, to go and study wild animals, and spent whole days far from home. When she came back she always had a beautiful tan and lots of photographs of woods, and wolves, and bears, and barn owls and many, many other beasts. She showed Amber all those photographs from her laptop computer and Amber thought that her job must be really wonderful!
Mummy and Daddy met at university, when they were students. They both loved nature, even if they had two different ways of loving it. While Mummy had green fingers, Daddy was a very clever cook. Cooking was a thing Mummy was really poor at. She couldn't fry an egg or, as Daddy always said, “she could burn even a cup of water”. But they both loved music and the four of them (including Amber and Pearl) felt they were very happy and lucky.
That day (it was by the end of August) had been a wonderful day. Ten days before they had come back from the seaside resort because Mummy and Daddy had to go back to their jobs. They had been to the playground and Amber had played with the merry-go-round, with the slides and with any other thing she could play with. Mummy had bought her a very beautiful bracelet made of transparent beads of pink and green, and she had to wear it double because it was too large for her wrist, but maybe in a few years she would grow up and the bracelet would fit. Then they had gone to the beach. Amber had taken off her sandals and had enjoyed walking barefoot on the wet sand, leaving behind her a trail of tiny footprints; and Daddy had found a handsome flat, oval stone as green as the sea during a storm, with streaks of white and darker green. The pebble was small and had a hole in it, so Amber had stringed it to the bracelet, as a charm: it was... charming. Possibly not even the princess that sipped coffee at the Belle Fleur Café had such a beautiful jewel!
Amber would rush in to make a comparison, but that hot day the little garden outside the Café was much more attractive than the inner rooms, because in such days they laid out tea-tables in the garden, in the shade of oleanders and lemon trees, where you could forget the heat that wrapped the rest of the town and taste the best ice-creams in the world.
That day tea-tables were crowded as usual, but Amber's favourite one, the one under the wisteria bower, was free.
“Mummy” asked Amber, “may I go and say hello to Marigold?”
Marigold was a beautiful, and large, ginger cat with blue eyes. He belonged to the land mistress of the Café. He surely would tell her lots of funny things.
“Yes, dear”, answered Mummy with a smile, “In the meantime I'll ask for your ice-cream, as well. Vanilla and pistachio, as usual?”
“Yeeeeeeees!”, Amber loved those flavours. And she loved their colours more than their taste.
While Mummy and Daddy sat down, Amber ran among the beds of white dahlias, where she knew she could find Marigold. But that day Marigold seemed to be worried.
“What's wrong?”, asked Amber, “Did they bring you again to the doctor for the punctures?”, Amber knew that the proper name was veterinarian, but it was still a difficult word to utter.
“No”, answered Marigold, “but there are two curious customers... I don't like them... their looks don't say anything good to me.”
“What you mean? They're bad?”
“It's not that easy... they give me the jitters. Look, they're at the table under the orange tree.”
Amber turned and looked. At that table sat a very elegant couple: a young lady and a man older than her. The woman wore a light suit of immaculate elegance with tiny checks of black and white and a cream-coloured silk blouse. She had patent leather black sandals with staggering high heels. Her page-boy haircut was black and smooth and had a sort of metallic lustre. Amber could not see her eyes, because she had sunglasses. Her skin was velvety and pale, her lips and nails had a cherry-red, really flamboyant, hue. She held in her hands a glass full of a pinkish drink. What a curious thing: even if she was holding the glass, the ice in it didn't melt. The man had grizzled hair, a slight tan and extremely light blue eyes. He wore with a nonchalant attitude dark trousers and a sandy shirt. He fingered with a crystal goblet filled with a crystal beverage. In that goblet there was an olive. Amber felt like laughing: what kind of drink could require an olive? A codfish-flavoured one?
If Amber had been a newspaper reader she would have recognized the two of them, because they were quite famous in town. He was Oliver Wormond, was well known since two years and had distinguished himself for his great enterprise in business matters and his parties rich with celebrities. To name but one example, the most important shopping malls in town belonged to him. She was Jade Duval and was manager of the Fab Design, a very lush shop where she sold posh and expensive furniture. And even that shop belonged to the Wormond & Co. Associated.
But Amber was only four and was not a newspaper reader, so she could not absolutely recognize that couple.
She was still laughing for that joke about the olive and the codfish flavoured drink, when she noticed that that strange man was looking at her. He smiled at her, and she smiled at him in reply. Why shouldn't she smile at him? He got up and joined her.
“What a beautiful tomcat!”, exclaimed Mr Wormond with extreme kindness, “Is he yours?”
Marigold's hair bristled up.
“No, sir”, answered Amber politely, “He lives here. I have another cat, Pearl. But Marigold here is my friend; aren't you, Marigold?”
“Were you talking to him?”
“Of course, sir, I always talk to cats and they talk to me. You don't talk to cats, sir, do you?”
“Oh, no, I can't! But it must be grand!”, and here Mr Wormond stooped and put out a hand to stroke Marigold, but the cat spat, unsheathed his claws and scratched him, then ran and hid in the inner rooms of the Café.
“Dammit!”, exclaimed Mr Wormond drawing back the hand and wiping the scratch with a white linen handkerchief he had taken out from his trousers' pockets, “Apparently he doesn't like me.”
“Don't be angry, sir”, said Amber with a forbearing smile, “Not everyone can speak to cats. Even Daddy can't. But Mummy can.”
Wormond looked at her more carefully. “You have yellow eyes, don't you?”, he said.
“Yes, I do, just like cats”, said Amber proudly, “and Mummy too. That's why we can speak to cats, because we have their same eyes.”
Wormond was on the verge of asking something else, but Mummy cut in; she had joined them as soon as she had seen that man talking to Amber. She had the same icy look she usually displayed when she was really, really enraged.
“Good evening, madame”, said Wormond with a honeyed smile, “I'm Mr Oliver Wormond and was having an interesting conversation with your... er... adorable child...”
“Yes, I know who you are”, cut in Gemma, adding curtly to her daughter, “Come, Amber, it's time to go back home.”
“But... my ice-cream...”
“Here it is”, Mummy thrust in her hands a paper cup with the ice-cream and a pink plastic teaspoon, “You'll eat it on the way home.”
“But... Mummy...”, objected Amber, not understanding the reason of that sudden haste.
“Stop making such a fuss! Come on, let's go!”, she took her by the hand and made her march away.
What was the matter with her? Could it be that she had scrapped with Daddy?
While the little family, parents and child, walked away, two pairs of eyes stared at them. One pair was of an extremely light blue, the other pair was emerald green behind sunglasses.
It was a hot evening, but suddenly Gemma Green felt chilly thrills.
* * * * * * * * * *
A fortnight later it was September and summer heat was only a vague recollection.
That morning there had been the first rainstorm of the season and even if now the sun had reappeared from behind the clouds, the atmosphere was cool, almost autumnal. It scented of rain and damp earth, Amber went on the balcony to breathe it and glance at the condominium's garden all glistening with raindrops. Amber's family lived at the ground floor, so she always had the impression that that garden was theirs.
“Mummy”, called Amber, “Pearl is in the garden and sleeps under the oleander. Can I go and play with her?”
Mummy was working at her computer because she was writing a book about lynxes, but when she heard Amber she froze. “Where did you say she is?”, she asked, somewhat puzzled.
“On the lawn, under the oleander. She sleeps... I think.”
“But the lawn is all damp and she hates sleeping on damp grass.”
“But she's there, I tell you. And doesn't want to move. I called her, but she didn't hear me. Can I go out and wake her?”
“Show me where you saw her”, said Mummy; there was a note of alarm in her voice and Amber started getting alarmed too, though she didn't understand why.
“There she is”, said Amber pointing at the cat, motionless under a tree, with her little forefinger. A white flower, soaked with rain, fell from the tree on Pearl's nose, but she didn't move.
Mummy didn't utter a word, she only opened wide her mouth without saying anything. Then she put a hand on Amber's shoulder. “Come... come in”, she said with quivering voice, “Leonardo! Leo!”, she called.
Daddy emerged from his office, were he was probably studying some kind of rock. “What's the matter?”, he asked with a puzzled look.
Mummy was thoughtful and her face was strained, but nevertheless she tried to affect a smile. “Take Amber to the cinema. There's that cartoon movie... don't you remember? It will start soon”, and while she spoke she put on the child a light jacket... and was so hasty that she put it all askew.
Daddy didn't understand, but Mummy took him aside and, excited, muttered something in his ear. Something that Amber could not hear.
“Oh, yes... you're right”, muttered Daddy. Now he too had a tense expression, but he too, like Mummy, pretended he was cheerful and smiling, “You forgot it, Amber, didn't you? I promised that today we would go to the theatre. Come on, it's getting late.”
What was wrong with grown-ups today? Why were they so nervous? Amber did not understand, but they went out anyway. She and Daddy from the main door and in the street, Mummy, still wearing her slippers, from the back door and in the garden
The cartoon movie was funny. True, Amber wanted to watch it because her friend Fran had watched it and said it was super-extra-wonderful. But she could not really enjoy it, because she perceived that there was something strange, and wrong, going on. She did not want to be there at the theatre, she only wanted to go home, and hug Pearl, and feel her rough little tongue on her hands, and dip her nose in Pearl's silky hair and smell that delicate face-powder scent.
When they came back home, Amber rushed in the sitting room calling out Pearl's name. But Pearl did not answer as usual. There was only Mummy, and she was sitting at the TV. But the TV was off. Mummy's eyes were bloodshot and swollen, as if she had been crying.
“Mummy, where's Pearl?”, asked Amber, somewhat frightened.
“Come here, darling”, said Mummy trying to smile, a tear still glistening on her cheek. She wiped it with a finger. “Come here, darling”, she repeated.
Amber sat on her lap and Mummy hugged her. “Why you're crying, mom?”
Mummy opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, as if she could not find words to say. But in the end she succeeded: “Amber, my dear... Pearl is not here... no more.”
“She's gone?”, asked the child; she still didn't understand, but she felt that that was no good news.
“In a way...”, said Mummy, “She has... gone. She... flew away... over the Rainbow Bridge. Do you know what I mean?”
“My dear”, said Daddy, who liked spelling things out, “Pearl is dead. She's no more with us. But you will remember her because she was your friend, will you?”
Amber didn't need more words and burst in tears. She was far too young to catch the full meaning of those words, but she perfectly understood that Pearl, her friend Pearl, her beloved, little, sweet cat, was no more there and would never, never, never come back! She had lost Pearl for ever and ever! And so she wept all the tears her little body could produce, shaking like a blade of grass in the wind, and Mummy's and Daddy's hugs and kisses could do nothing to soothe her: that pain was too big and heavy to fit her child's heart. She cried so much that in the end she was extremely tired and fell asleep by mere exhaustion. While falling asleep she thought she could feel her hands plunging in Pearl's soft hair, she thought her nose could still smell that delicate face-powder scent. And when Mummy put her in the bed, she thought just for an instant that she could feel that soft and warm body crouching down on her feet. Then she fell asleep and felt nothing else.
“Where did you put her?”, asked Daddy closing the door of Amber's room.
“I brought her to the vet. He examined her and...”, she hesitated, her lips were quivering, “Leo, it was not incidental... she has been poisoned. With an injection! Leo, someone killed her deliberately!”
“But... but...”, faltered Daddy, horrified, “It's... nonsense! Who would do such e thing? And why?”
“I think I know it. I'm afraid I know it.”
Chapter 2 – Pearl
That cat couldn't be Pearl. It was absolutely impossible. Unbelievable and unthinkable. Pearl had died seven years before and Amber had no reason to doubt it.
She remembered Pearl very well... no, maybe not that well because when the cat had died Amber was only four years old, and now she was eleven. But some of her memories were really unforgettable, such as the way Pearl used to nibble at her nose to welcome her, or her delicate face-powder scent, and again, that funny little grey spot on her nose and that blot on her head, that made her look as if she was wearing a wig askew. But what Amber couldn't really forget were those large, golden and mesmerizing eyes. These were things that Amber could remember well, and for what she didn't remember she had plenty of photos and films.
And Pearl was dead, she knew it. It had been Amber who had found her body lying still under the oleander. Clearly this cat only looked like her. Looked a lot like her, yes. Just like two peas in a pod. But clearly enough that cat could not be Pearl.
Summer was going by, it hadn't been a beautiful day: too hot with a thick steam blotting out the sky. Daddy had asked her to go out and buy ice-cream, and she had done it. Now she was coming back home with a bowl full of strawberry-chocolate-vanilla flavours. She was wearing khaki bermudas, a yellow T-shirt, her beloved and almost worn out clear cloth sandals and had two small pigtails at the side of her head, just like when she was a child. She knew that very soon she must stop doing her hair like this, because on September she would start the secondary school, so she could no more have those childish attitudes that now she still retained. And besides this, Jade would never allow her to keep them.
Jade Duval was Daddy's new wife. They had married almost one year before and this was a fact, but Amber was not yet accustomed to that fact. In other words: Amber did not like Jade at all.
Mummy was no more, just like Pearl, and this was another fact.
Mummy had passed away in a very strange way three summers before. They had spent their holidays in Paris, had visited the Louvre Museum (and Amber had gone simply mad about the Nike of Samothrace), the Opéra-Comique, the Champs Élisées and Disneyland Paris. It had been rapturous!
Then they had come back home, and Amber could distinctly remember her last instants with Mummy. It was evening when they had come back home and they had dined with small pasta in broth with melted cheese in it, because before leaving they had not shopped for food and that was all they had in the pantry. But they had eaten so much while they were in Paris that they didn't care if for one evening they ate a little bit less than usual. Mummy and Daddy had a bottle of Australian red wine too, a Shiraz, that had on it a black label with a yellow hopping kangaroo. As you can see she remembered everything, didn't she? Amber had drunk only water from the tap, because there wasn't anything else to drink and when you're only eight you surely don't drink wine, do you? Truth to tell, she didn't drink wine even at eleven. Anyway, they had spent the evening talking about Paris and they had laughed a lot, but not too much because next morning Daddy had to wake up early and go to work.
But that was another matter. Where was she? Ah, yes: last instants with Mummy! That evening they had laughed even if they were very, very tired. Mummy looked a bit sad, too. But maybe that was only a false memory, what had happened afterwords might have distorted the truth. This Amber could not tell. Had Mummy really been sad, as if she had foreshadowed her own fate, or had Amber thought it only after it all had happened?
The morning after Daddy had gone to the Natural History Museum. About eleven o'clock he had phoned to tell Gemma and Amber that day's news. Among the other things, he had said that while he was away someone had stolen a relic kept in the Museum. But it was nothing particularly valuable, only a large piece of rock crystal. It was not even worth the while to report the accident, that crystal was worth so little. But Mummy had taken very seriously that piece of news. Very, very seriously. She had asked their neighbour to keep an eye on Amber while she was out, then she had left for the Museum.
Only she never arrived there.
The morning after (and Amber remembered far too well that horrible night, when nobody knew where Mummy was) they had found her on the cliff. The high one, the one they called the Suicide's Jump, because in the Fifties a woman had jumped from it in the sea below together with her new-born baby. But Mummy hadn't jumped, and nobody had pushed her down, because she was not injured, she didn't have so far a single scratch on her.
Only she was stone dead.
Nobody knew how it happened, still she was dead.
A couple of years after this mysterious incident, Daddy had met Jade Duval and had fallen in love with her.
This was far from being odd: Jade was beautiful, charming and sophisticated. But she was just Mummy's exact opposite. Absolutely her direct opposite. How could a man who had loved Gemma Green love Jade Duval as well? And Jade? How could Daddy ever impress her? She was used to celebrities, famous people... Daddy was not famous. Yes, sometimes he appeared on TV, but only when there was to talk about earthquakes, floods, eruptions and similar natural disasters. He had nothing to do with the glamourous world Jade loved to associate with.
Amber lost again the thread of what she was thinking of. It is unbelievable how things you can get in your head just going out and buying ice-cream!
For instance, now it had just occurred to her that after all the ice-cream was only for her and Daddy, since Jade didn't eat it (it was dangerous for her figure). In that case, why did she take two kilos of ice-cream? It was too much, they would probably throw most of it away. Just like she would have to throw away that tiny bouquet of shamrock flowers she had picked up on the way, unless she managed to hide it somehow. Amber loved shamrock flowers, the yellow ones shaped like little trumpets. For mysterious reasons they always reminded her the New Year's Day Concert, the one they broadcast from Vienna. Perhaps because once when she was a child she had seen it on TV together with Mummy and there were ballerinas dancing a waltz wearing long yellow gowns. Jade would make her throw that bouquet because she hated flowers, particularly humble and plain ones, like those Amber picked up from pavement's and walls' cracks. Jade hated everything Mummy had loved. When she went to live with them she had refurnished the whole house. Once their furniture was warm, and colourful, and comfy. Now it was all leather-and-steel design (Mummy would never have leather couches: with a cat in the house they wouldn't last for long) and all black-and-white, the only colourful exception being a pale kind of beige. Only Amber's room, and with countless ferocious arguments, had escaped Jade's updating project. Never before in her life Amber had had to dig her heels in that much for something. And she had to do it just because she didn't want to have her cosy, little room turned into a fashionable and chilly place.
And Daddy always backed Jade. It was enough to drive Amber mad. And after all lately everyone in town seemed to get a bit mad, or tense at least...
And what about the balcony on the back, the one belonging to Amber's room? Preserving that had required a real battle. The big balcony on the front had been left to the cares of a famous (and extremely well paid) garden designer who had plucked off all Mummy's beautiful plants to replace them with very stylish and apparently artificial green creatures (Amber was not sure they were real plants).
Amber had done her best to hide on her balcony more plants she could: the big jasmine, the small lemon tree, lavender, rosemary, the wild pink rose and some other plants that she considered very beautiful even if they were not stylish, nor posh, nor trendy.
And after all... what could Jade understand of plants? For her a “honeysuckle” could be a kind of mountain goat. While Amber knew everything about plants. Sometimes she even managed to make flowers bloom at her command. She only had to say “bloom!” in a special way to a bud and... POP POP... it actually bloomed! It was a trick she had learnt many years before from Mummy, she called it “her little magic”, but she never spoke of it to anyone, not even to Daddy, let alone to Jade.
Amber did not trust Jade, not a single bit. Even though they had nothing to share, Jade was always a little too inquisitive about her. She was never kind, only enquiring. She wanted to know everything about her, her friends, what she thought, said or did. That's why Amber had got in the habit of always carrying her personal journal with her. It was a small, pocket-size booklet, the only place where she wrote, with tiny letters, all was passing in her mind. Of course, she had a blog and even a Facebook account, but she wrote there only ordinary, simple things, things she was not afraid Jade could find out. For older journals she had found a better hideout: she had entrusted them to Francine, or Fran, her bosom friend. Jade wouldn't surely look for them at hers, would she?
But in her room she kept many other precious relics: Mummy's books, her photos and her videos on DVD. Just like she kept Pearl's photos and movies.
And so we go back at the beginning point: that cat looked even too much like Pearl.
Let's recapitulate: she had gone out and bought ice-cream. This thing had happened often that summer, because she had remained in town (Daddy couldn't leave and Jade had to put on a new Fab Design's store opening party) with nothing much to do. While she was coming back, she had daydreamed a bit. That summer had been a very boring one, because she had not left town for holiday and because she really had nothing to do. Having left primary school, she didn't even have homework, so she had spent summer reading novels and comic books. Now she was reading an old, strange book (one of Mummy's books, one she could save, written over two hundred years ago by a German writer), a story where an absolutely ordinary, young student suddenly lived an extraordinary adventure only because one spring afternoon he lay under an elder tree and there he saw a snake, but found out that this snake was also an extremely beautiful girl. Before going out Amber had been so engrossed in that book that now she almost thought that everything she saw might hide a magical and mysterious meaning.
So maybe that was why when that cat had crossed the street, stopped before her, her bent its head, looked at her so long and then had hopped quietly away... well, maybe that was why the first thing she had thought of had been Pearl.
When she was a child Amber believed that she could talk to cats. Even Mummy said she could do it herself. Of course it was not possible: cats are only cats and don't talk. Everybody knows it. But at that time she really believed she could do it.
Anyway she still loved cats. She wished so much she could have a cat of her own, but for different reasons after Pearl they did not take another cat, and now with Jade around it had become impossible: Jade loathed cats. Occasionally (and this was another thing Amber didn't tell anybody except... her journal, that now was safely hidden in her bermudas' pocket) she felt, when she was falling asleep, as if a cat was crouching down on her feet. She really thought she could feel its warm and soft little body, with a paw that outstretched itself on her ankle and unsheathed just a bit of claws while doing it. If she gave her mind to it she could even hear purrs. And so she pretended she had a cat... her Pearl, why not? She pretended that Pearl had never died and had remained always with her. She could even fancy a whole day spent together, with Amber opening a can of cat food with tuna and shrimps and Pearl eating it hearty, or they playing together with a cloth mouse or a feathered stick... but when she opened her eyes everything disappeared: purrs, claws, paws and everything else. She had no cat. And that was yet another fact.
This was thinking Amber, when that cat reappeared before her, with that silent and strange movements so typical to cats, one of the reasons why in medieval times most people believed them bewitched or even diabolical. It was an ordinary cat, short-haired, bicoloured, with grey-tabby spots on its head, back and tail. The spot on the head was funny because it looked like a little wig all askew. It had pink pads and nose, except for a little spot on the right side of the nose, just as if it had dipped it in a pail full of coal. And it had large, golden, sparkling and almost mesmerizing eyes. I know, I already said these kind of things. But it's better if I repeat them: they might be important. Because that cat couldn't be Pearl but blimey!, it was just like her!
The cat stopped, fixed its eyes in Amber's (another thing cats do, that's why in medieval times... and so on...) then it sat and yawned, curling its little tongue that was pink and delicate like a rose's petal. Amber didn't smell it, but she knew that it scented like face-powder (even if Jade always said that cats don't scent like face-powder but stink like rotten tuna, at best).
Then the cat quietly got up and, with its tail straight upwards, it scuttled around the corner and slipped in a side alley Amber had trodden for the last time four years ago: it was the alley she walked through when Mummy brought her to the dance school.
Now it was all water under the bridge, as Amber had understood quite soon that she liked seeing other people dancing, though she didn't like dancing herself. But this is a different kettle. Now the alley seemed to her extremely magical and filled with deep symbolic meanings. What it symbolised, she couldn't tell. After all you can't know everything at once, can you?
The alley was little more than a shortcut. It was narrow, short and anonymous. It was paved with cubic granite stones, dirty and uneven, and its pavement was a dark greyish pink, full of cracks where spear-grass and dandelion grew. Funny: that alley was near home but she never trod it. Incredible, but often we know the less right the things we have nearer.
Pearl... no, the cat that looked like Pearl, was sitting before a gate and was toileting itself, licking exceedingly slowly its paw and then rubbing it on its ears, just like cats do. Teacher at the nursery school always said that it was a poor way of getting clean; “You wash like a cat”, she said, meaning “You're always dirty”. But Amber knew it was not true, she knew that cats were extremely clean and that what worked with them didn't work with humans.
The gate, made of metal bars, wooden boards and iron grate, opened in the middle of a long grey wall. As soon as Amber got near, the cat looked at her then walked through the gate. What was beyond the gate was evident, because nearby there was a large sign that said
Multi-storey car park under construction:
We're working for you!
Please, be patient!
A car park. Another one. As if they had not even too many car parks! Amber didn't want to be polemical, but lately in town they seemed to build hundreds of car parks. Right the last Christmas, and Amber perfectly remembered it, they had knocked down a centuries old wood that its former owner had left to the town meaning it to become a public park. And now it was a multi-storey car park and all the objections of this world (including Amber's protests, and she made them behind Jade's back) had been vain. Ancient trees had been cut and taken away, and a concrete flow had taken their place. Amber had picked up a last twig from those trees and now she kept it in a green glass jar in her bedroom. Woe betide her if Jade discovered what she had done! Because the “principal”, the one that had ordered the car park's construction, was Oliver Wormond, Jade's boss.
And beyond the gate the cat, sitting on a mound of sand, was still staring at her with its incredible yellow eyes. Amber, now that she came to think of it, had yellow eyes too. But she'd rather pretend they were light brown. This she did since at school a boy had told her that her eyes were “pee coloured”.
The cat stared at her and she stared back at the cat. But what could the cat want from her?
“Kitty?”, called Amber, softly for fear that someone might overhear her and think she was getting insane, “Heeeeeere, kittykittykitty...”
The cat yawned again with its pink little tongue and its white, sharp, tiny fangs.
“Blimey, what can I do?”, thought Amber uncomfortably, “Maybe it needs help? Maybe it has kittens and doesn't know how to feed them? Maybe I could give it some ice-cream? No, chocolate is dangerous for cats...”, in short: she didn't know what to do, and she couldn't manage to bring herself away.
The iron bars were quite far between, so she could see the building yard behind the fence: cranes, tools, dry stretches of gravel and earth that had been dug out from whence dead and withered shrubs sprouted.
She leaned on the fence and a loose board gave in sliding on its hinges like a door.
There was enough room to poke one's head, and Amber did it. Then you know how these things go, there's that old motto about cat that says “Where the head goes, the rest can go as well”... well, as soon as Amber had poked her head in the hole, her whole body went through it.
She did not mean to do it, but that urge was stronger than her will. Just the same instant she had thought she might poke her head, her whole body had poked itself, so to speak. You may not believe what your body can do when your head takes her mind off!
Anyway, she was now on the other side of the fence, nothing more than this.
Maybe she shouldn't be there, it was probably against the law. The building yard workers would have her arrested and so Jade would acknowledge she really was a naughty girl good-for-nothing. She had to go back, no matter how many cats were waiting for her!
But as soon as she got up and tried to brush from her knees the dry gravel she had seen from the street, she got bewildered, because her knees were dirty as she had expected them to be, but they were dirty with moist earth and fresh blades of grass. Now that she came to think of it, she had expected as well to find herself in a sunny, hot spot, but truly she was in a shady and cool place. A soft and pleasant breeze caressed her cheek and from above she could hear leaves whispering and birds twittering.
She looked at the gate she had stepped through. From this side it was completely different. It was an old fence made of wrought iron... as far as she could see it, because it was almost completely covered with dark green ivy... ivy? There was no ivy when she looked from the street! Where did that ivy come from?
Near the fence, in the shelter of the wall, there was a huge mulberry tree loaded with fruit. Among the ivy leaves she saw a cobweb as perfect as a needlework, all sprinkled with tiny dewdrops that in the daylight sparkled like pure diamonds. From behind a dark leaf, just skimming that jewel, long and thin like a harpist's fingers, she saw popping, vibrantly waiting for a prey, the spider's legs.
Amber looked at them for a long minute. It all was quite natural, and at the same time it all was very odd. All those things simply shouldn't be there! Then she turned on the breeze that incessantly kissed her cheek. It was scented. First of all she recognized the sweet jasmine tones, then, quite from afar, the briny sea ones, and something reminding of brier roses. And pine, yes. And rosemary as well. And stones hot with sunlight. And as a frame for that symphony of scent there was the mulberry fragrance: the ripest fruits had fallen on the ground and had started to leaven exhaling their typical winy flavour.
What sort of building yard was that?
Slowly Amber turned and gasped.
The cat was still there, still licking its paw, but it was no more on a mound of sand. It was sitting among oak leaves and acorns, and had the calmest look of this world.
Behind it there were no cranes, no concrete mixers, no building yards. There was a wood instead, a huge, shady, wonderful, ancient wood.
If you want to read the whole novel... you can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092ASVNC
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0092ASVNC
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0092ASVNC
https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0092ASVNC
https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0092ASVNC
https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0092ASVNC
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