he squawks sometimes, like an avian Terry Thomas. Or, ‘What a funny thing!’ – Granny used to say that all the time. He’s got her cackling laugh too. Down to a tee. It’s shattering, and so authentic that I find myself saying, ‘What’s so funny, Granny?’ although she’s been dead for six years. Whenever the phone rings he says, ‘Oh, hello’ – like that. And then, ‘How are you?’ And, ‘Yes …yes …yes …’ in a desultory sort of way. When he’s not having one-sided telephone conversations, he whistles, and screeches and – this is really annoying – he barks. Whenever he hears the doorbell, he emits a volley of soprano yaps because that’s what Granny’s Yorkshire terrier, Audrey, used to do.
Pedro’s a Festive Amazon, just over a foot long, with peagreen plumage, a blue and red cap, and a vivid, scarlet waistcoat which is only visible when he spreads his wings. Granny bought him in Colombia in 1955, when she was doing the research for An Amazon Affair. She’d stopped at a little town called Leticia, on the border with Brazil and Peru, and in the market was a man selling young parrots which were crammed into crates. Granny was so appalled she bought Pedro, and brought him home on the plane. He spoke very good Spanish in those days – he’d picked it up in the market. He could say, ‘Loros! Hermosos loros! Comprenme a mi!’ – Parrots! Lovely parrots! Get your parrots here! And ‘Page uno, lleve dos!’ – Buy one, get one free! He also used to shout, ‘Cuidado que pica!’ – Watch your fingers! and ‘Cuanto me dijo? Tan caro!’ – How much? You must be fucking joking! He’s forgotten most of his Spanish now, though I think it might come back if we practised it with him. He loves really authoritative female voices – Mrs Thatcher’s, for example. He used to shriek with excitement and bob up and down whenever he heard her speak. These days Esther Rantzen tends to have the same effect. Anyway, he and Granny were inseparable for almost forty years. And when she died, we didn’t know how he’d cope. But in her will she left him to Amber – ‘An Amazon for an Amazon,’ she wrote wryly – and luckily, though parrots are loyal to one person, Pedro adapted well. In fact, they adore each other. He likes to ride around on her shoulder, and nibble her blonde hair, or listen to her reading out bits of her latest book.
Anyway, Amber and I have always been very close, so the next morning she offered to drive me round London while I disposed of the wedding gifts. She said she didn’t mind, and that she’d welcome any distraction from her distress. She’d looked awful at breakfast, obviously hadn’t slept, and she kept trying to put the sugar in the fridge.
‘Are you sure you can concentrate enough to drive?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Woof! Woof!’
We’d already had the post – who on earth could that be? I opened the door to find a man standing there with a huge bouquet.
‘Miss Amber Dane?’ he enquired, as I stared at the profusion of pink roses.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But she’s here.’ I signed the proffered delivery sheet and carried the bouquet into the flat. The cellophane said ‘Floribunda’. How odd. Why on earth would Helen send Amber flowers?
‘They’re from Charlie!’ Amber screamed, grabbing the tiny white envelope. ‘It’s his handwriting, and he wants me back. It’s only been a few hours, but he’s already realised he’s made a dreadful mistake.’ She ripped open the envelope and removed the small, rectangular card. She read it in a flash, then I saw the light fade in her eyes.
‘He should have sent a wreath,’ she said bitterly, handing the card to me.
‘I’m really very sorry it had to be like this,’ Charlie had written. ‘I do hope you’re all right, Amber, and that you’ll wish to be friends one day.’
And I thought, Dominic didn’t send me flowers. Dominic didn’t offer me the hand of friendship. Dominic offered me nothing but a few of my possessions stuffed into two plastic bags.
‘I can’t bear to look at them,’ said Amber, as she picked up her car keys and bag. ‘I’ll give them to the hospital.’ So we went first to the Royal Free, where she left the bouquet at the reception, then we got on with the task in hand. We had to make a total of five trips because there were so many wedding presents and Amber’s car is very small. Her black Mini hovered like a fly on the double yellow lines while I dived in with the gifts. I felt like Lady Bountiful with a horn of plenty as I distributed my brand-new luxury goods. Cut glass and kettles and picnic rugs flowed forth from my outstretched arms.
‘Don’t you want this?’ said the woman in the Red Cross shop as I handed her an exquisite Waterford bowl.
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t.’
Amber was a bit aggrieved about the Antonio Carluccio truffle-grater and the River Café Cookbook, but I wouldn’t relent – it all had to go. Every item. Every atom. And as we drove round Camden and Hampstead her mood began to lift. And she went on and on about what a bastard Dominic was and how she’d like to kill him for what he did to me. And then she went on about what a bastard Charlie is, too, which isn’t true at all. And I don’t blame him for dumping Amber, though I’d never dare say that to her. So I tentatively asked her if she was sure she wasn’t making a mistake with Charlie and that she wouldn’t one day change her mind.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I’d want to go through that? It’s barbaric!’ And then she went on and on, again, about the awful things that happen when you’re pregnant. The nausea and cramps, the swollen ankles and the varicose veins. ‘The heartburn and the thousand natural shocks,’ as she likes to put it, not to mention the haemorrhoids and hair-loss.
‘Basically, Minty, a foetus is a parasite,’ she declared as we pulled away from the kerb. ‘It will suck the calcium out of your teeth, the iron out of your blood, and the vitamins from your food. It’s like a fast-growing tumour, taking over your body.’ And then she went on about the horrors of childbirth itself. The pain of parturition: the screaming, the stitches and the blood. But worse than any of these, she says, is the loss of mental power.
‘It is a well-known fact that a woman’s brain shrinks during pregnancy,’ she said, with spurious authority, as I got into the car again.
‘Well, yes, but not by the 70 per cent you claim,’ I replied, as we set off. ‘I think that statistic may be, you know, not quite right.’
‘I’m sure it is right,’ she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. ‘I have a number of extremely intellectual friends who, the minute they got pregnant, took out subscriptions to Hello!’
And then she started talking about Dominic again and what a ‘total shyster’ he was and how, if it hadn’t been for him jilting me, Charlie would never have dumped her. I didn’t agree with this analysis, but obviously I didn’t say so. I never argue with Amber. I’ve never really argued with anyone, though I’m beginning to think I should. And then she went on and on about how she’s going to put Dominic in her next book. And I said, ‘Please, Amber, please, please don’t.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said with a sly smile as we hurtled home. ‘I’ll do it very subtly.’
Subtly? Amber has all the subtlety of a commando raid.
‘No, really, Minty, I’ll disguise him totally,’ she went on in that pseudo-soothing way of hers. ‘I’ll call him Dominic Lane, thirty-five, a blond insurance salesman from Clapham Common, so
