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

When Sophie Taylor’s life falls apart, there is only one thing to do: escape and find a new one.

Dragged to Montenegro by her best friend Anna, Sophie begins to see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. But when she stumbles into an old, run-down house on the Bay of Kotor she surprises even herself when she buys it.

Surrounded by old furniture, left behind by the former inhabitants, Sophie becomes obsessed by a young Balkan couple when she discovers a bundle of letters from the 1940s in a broken roll-top desk. Letters that speak of great love, hope and a mystery Sophie can’t help but get drawn into.

Days in Montenegro are nothing like she expected and as Sophie’s home begins to fill with a motley crew of lodgers the house by the bay begins to breathe again. And for Sophie, life seems to be restarting. But letting go of the past is easier said than done…

Also by Rose Alexander:

Garden of Stars

Under an Amber Sky

Rose Alexander

ROSE ALEXANDER

has had more careers than is probably strictly necessary, including TV producer/director making programmes for all the major broadcasters, freelance feature writer for publications including The Guardian and secondary school English teacher, not forgetting cocktail waitress, melon picker and interior designer.

Writing a novel is, however predictable the line seems, the realization of Rose’s childhood dream and the result of finally finding ‘a voice’. The triumph is that the voice was heard above the racket created by her three children plus rescue cat (tabby white, since you ask).

Follow her on twitter at @RoseA_writer

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Author Bio

Notes

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Excerpt

Note

Acknowledgements

Copyright

Alongside the Serbian calendar, the central coastal region of Montenegro has its own names for the months of the year. They are both beautiful and poetic which seems to encapsulate the spirit of the country – one that is small in size but big in heart.

January / sječani – cutting wood

February / veljača – big winter

March / ozujak – wind blows

April / travanj – mowing

May / svibanj – dawning

June / lipanj – flowers

July / srpanj – harvest

August / kolovoz – back from holiday

September / rujan – everything is red like wine

October / listopad – leaves fall

November / studeni – cold

December / prosinac – gathering

The Montenegrin love of liberty and fair play and the Montenegrin sense of honour have made me feel more at home in this far corner of Europe than in any other foreign land.

Edith Durham, British traveller and writer, Through the Lands of the Serb, 1904

NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE

What to call the common tongue spoken in Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina is a matter of some controversy. Many readers will remember past times when it was referred to as Serbo-Croat, but this is outdated now. In Montenegro there seem to be two main schools of thought. One is that the language is Serbian and should be named as such. Advocates of this approach maintain that citizens of the USA have no problem saying they speak English and have not attempted to rename it ‘American’. On the other hand, proponents of calling the language Montenegrin claim that there are enough differences, subtle though they may be, for it to be a separate language and that as a source of national pride, it should bear the name of the country.

Equally confusing – to an English speaker – is the interchangeable use of two alphabets: the Latin and the Cyrillic (again with a few small differences from the Russian/Serbian versions). A professor of the Montenegrin language turned estate agent whom I asked about this said that in schools, the time spent using each alphabet is equally divided. Most people seem to fiercely protect this system. Recently, it was proposed that school certificates would be issued in the Latin alphabet only, and parents would have to pay if they wanted them in Cyrillic, which sparked nationwide outrage.

I have settled on using the term Montenegrin for this book, though you will note that Sophie’s language learning book is called Total Serbian. You will not find language primers in any shop that I know of that promote the learning of a tongue called Montenegrin, which is probably unsurprising when the population, at less than 650,000, is so tiny.

Prologue

Pushing her bicycle over the crooked slabs of the path and into the front garden where it lived chained to a metal rack under the hedge, Sophie breathed a deep sigh of relief. Friday at last and nearly the holidays, too. Six weeks off work over the summer was definitely the best thing about being a teacher, almost making up for the long hours, stress, and exhaustion of the rest of the year.

As she fumbled for her house keys, she ran through her and Matt’s plans for the weekend. Relaxing at home tonight, dinner out with a gang of people on Saturday, and a walk on Hampstead Heath with their good friends, Sam and Suzie, on Sunday. She also hoped to fit in a trip to John Lewis to choose a new stair carpet.

Alongside all of this ran the frisson of excitement that thrilled through her every time she thought about the fact that she and Matt had, only a couple of weeks before, started trying for a baby. Of course it was far too soon to expect to be pregnant, but the prospect of motherhood in the not too distant future floated tantalizingly before her, eclipsing all other hopes and dreams.

Her phone rang and, fishing it out of the detritus that always seemed to accumulate at the bottom of her bike basket, she noticed that it was an unknown number. She pressed accept and then immediately found herself inwardly cursing; it was bound to be someone she didn’t want or need to talk to, someone selling something or one of those irritating automated PPI calls.

‘Hello,’ she said warily, hovering half on and half off the doorstep, wanting the phone call over before she entered the sanctuary of the flat. There was a pause during which she almost hung up, and then someone said her name, hesitantly, as if testing that it were really her.

‘Sophie?’

She didn’t recognize the voice, though there was something familiar about it.

‘Speaking. Who is it, please?’

‘Sophie!’ The voice had a forced jollity about it that quickly faded. ‘Sophie, it’s Alex here, Matt’s work colleague.’ Alex faltered, then resumed. ‘We’ve met a couple of times, remember?’

Sophie nodded, vague recollections of Alex filtering through her mind. He was a typical city lawyer type, bold and brash, full of himself. He didn’t sound like that now, though. His words were tentative whilst at the same time carrying an undercurrent of urgency. It made her feel uneasy.

‘Nice to talk to –’ Sophie began, but Alex cut in.

‘Sophie, it’s Matt. He’s – well, he’s been taken ill. He’s on his way to hospital.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sophie’s head spun and she reached out her hand to hold on to the door surround, needing to steady herself.

‘The ambulance only took a few minutes to arrive; lucky we’re so near.’

‘Ambulance?’ The juddering realization that Matt must be really sick if it was bad enough to have called an ambulance seared through Sophie and she broke out into a cold sweat.

‘You need to get to the hospital as soon as you can.’ Matt named which one it was but Sophie hardly registered.

‘What’s happened, Alex? Is he OK? Is Matt OK?’ She was shrieking, frightening herself with the noise she was making. It echoed between the houses, rending apart the tranquillity.

‘He’s fine.’ There was a brief, telling pause. She could hear Alex whispering something to someone, but could not make out what he said.

‘I mean, I’m sure he’ll be fine.’ Alex was talking to her again, sounding suddenly much too loud. ‘Look, a cab will be with you in three minutes – it’s already been ordered.’

Sophie was crying, tears pouring down her cheeks and dripping onto the flimsy gauze scarf that kept the wind off her neck when she was cycling. ‘What’s going on?’ she sobbed. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

Her nose was running but she didn’t have a tissue and didn’t want to put the phone down for the time it would take to find one, as if losing hold of Alex for even a few seconds would mean that Matt was also lost.

Alex coughed. ‘I don’t know anything else, Sophie. When you get to the hospital – they’ll be able to tell you everything.’

The deep, low rumble of a diesel engine indicated the cab’s arrival. Slowly, trancelike, the phone still in her hand, Sophie moved towards the vehicle and indicated for it to stop. As she clambered in, a feeling of dread lodged in her heart and stayed there for the torturous duration of the drive, the cab constantly impeded by traffic lights, junctions, and queues. Staring out of the window, willing the cabbie to drive faster, to break all the rules, to just get her there as soon as possible, Sophie almost convinced herself that Matt would be all right.

***

Matt wasn’t all right.

When she got to the hospital, Sophie was ushered into a side room and left there to wait. She felt numb, dazed. She knew what the side room must mean but couldn’t accept it, couldn’t even begin to process it. He was probably in the operating theatre or something, having tubes stuck in him or observations (is that what they called them?) taken. That must be what was happening.

A doctor came in, knocking hesitantly on the door before swinging it open. He was accompanied by a nurse and another woman who wasn’t wearing a uniform but was dressed in ordinary, workaday clothes, trousers of the kind usually called slacks and a shirt that gaped where it was stretched over her bosom. She had a name badge proclaiming her to be Jan. Sophie stared at them, trancelike.

The three seemed to take a long time to settle down, arranging themselves carefully: the two women on adjacent chairs, the doctor finally alighting on the edge of one of the plastic armchairs. He was tall and looked incongruous and uncomfortable there, like a gangly heron on a tiny perch. All avoided eye contact with Sophie.

‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs, um …’ The doctor looked down at the notes in his hand. ‘Mrs Taylor.’ He gulped and fiddled with the stethoscope slung around his neck. ‘I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.’

‘Bad news! What do you mean? How bad?’ Sophie could hear the panic in her voice. If Matt were disabled, brain-damaged, whatever, she would still love him. In sickness and in health – that’s what she had committed to.

‘Mr Taylor – your husband – came into A&E unconscious and unresponsive. We did everything we could.’

Sophie’s sharp intake of breath interrupted the doctor’s speech but did not seem to reach her lungs and she found herself gasping for air, floundering, drowning.

‘What are you saying? It’s not serious, is it? Tell me it’s not serious.’

‘I’m really sorry. Your husband has – he’s – passed away. I’m so sorry.’

‘No. No. What are you talking about?’ Sophie’s head spun, from the impossible words she was hearing and the lack of oxygen and the disbelief and denial that coursed through her veins. ‘He’s only thirty-two, he was fine this morning –’

‘We couldn’t … It wasn’t …’ The doctor’s words cut across hers. ‘He didn’t ever regain consciousness. I’m sorry.’

‘You mean … you mean he’s dead?’

Everything went black, the room and all that was in it swallowed up into an atramentous darkness. Sophie started to vomit and a cardboard tray was thrust into her hands. Jan was beside her, patting her shoulder, whispering soothing words that Sophie couldn’t process. When she had finished being sick, Jan removed the tray and gave her some water.

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.’ Sophie was conscious of repeating the words, her voice a harsh, rasping whisper, even whilst she knew they could not be lying.

‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she said, again and again.

But neither the doctor nor the nurse nor Jan did so.

The next few hours were a blur. Her parents, Helena and Tony, came to the hospital, and Matt’s parents, too. All were speechless, stunned. Matt’s mum and dad went to see his body but Sophie didn’t, couldn’t. She couldn’t bear the thought, screamed when they tried to make her, telling her she’d regret not going. What did they know about how she would feel, did feel? Was it their husband, their lover, their soulmate who was lying on a hospital trolley, lifeless?

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.

‘How do you work that out?’ questioned Anna, a note of challenge in her voice.

‘If that’s all the damage the quake caused,’ Jovanka explained, ‘then you know that this is a house that can withstand anything.’

Anna nodded, purporting a knowledge of seismic activity and its effects that Sophie knew was utterly feigned.

Outside, behind the house, the garden rose up from a courtyard through five terraces until right at the top the cerulean sweep of the water became visible again above the pantiled rooftops. Fig, pomegranate, lime, and grapefruit trees grew wild and untended, and the fragrance of wild mint scented the air as their legs brushed against its leaves. A plump tabby cat lay on a stone, basking in the heat.

‘How much is it?’ asked Anna. Sophie surreptitiously kicked her but Anna took no notice.

‘It has just been reduced significantly, and it won’t hang around at this price.’

Jovanka named a sum which, translated into pounds at the current exchange rate, was a steal. The price of a studio flat in London.

‘The owner of the house is ninety-four,’ the estate agent continued. ‘And she wants to sell. She’s set her heart on ending her days in a retirement village on the Croatian coast where it’s nearly always sunny. She’s already sold up in Zagreb.’

Sophie thought she might cry. She wanted the old lady to have sunshine and happiness in her twilight years, and was sorry it wouldn’t be them who made that dream come true. She comforted herself with the knowledge that – as Jovanka asserted – the house was definitely a bargain; someone would undoubtedly snap it up.

‘So the owner would probably negotiate,’ continued Jovanka, cutting through Sophie’s ponderings and going on to present her with exactly what she had been dreading. ‘She’s spending a week or two here in the hope of getting everything sorted – she’ll be back any moment now. Her neighbour takes her for a little stroll to the café every morning. Let’s go in and meet her.’