amber

Whenever I’m asked to list a ‘best feature’ I say HEAD. Not because I’m smart or anything, but because my forehead is large and it’s usually the thing people notice first. If I’m pressed to be serious, I say EYES. Because they’re right below my forehead and people notice them next.

A perfectly acceptable optometrist sends me to a specialist because she doesn’t like the “yellow tint” to my eyes. She mentions something about bad livers and bad health and since it’s the NHS I have to wait six months to find out I’m not jaundiced.

My mother, who has known me all my life, insists I wear contacts. “But they look yellow,” she’s always saying. I have to let her rub my eyeballs to prove I don’t.

And you know that Euro of mine, he tells me it was my eyes (so much for personality girls) that drew him to me.

“It was Gatwick. Three a.m.” he says. “You had on a black skirt and no makeup. I remember looking at those big gold eyes and thinking how beautiful they were…how beautiful you were.” He always rolls his own right about here because he’s English and the sentiment is getting him nauseous. “I think I said something to that effect at the time.”

He didn’t. What he said was this: “You have amazing eyes. They’re just like Amber’s.” Amber was his chocolate Labrador.

Lucky for me, he loved that Lab.