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The strawberries—plump, heart-shaped, grey—tumble into the bowl. Funny how quickly you come to accept the changes, muses Amber as she takes a bite. The strawberry’s flesh is tender, juicy, just like a red one. Or maybe not. No point in worrying about it either way.
She carries the bowl into the garden, sits at her dull black picnic table and tugs at a knot in her hair. Six months ago she’d briskly plucked her first grey strand, and now her chestnut mane has turned completely white. At first, she tried to dye it but the colour wouldn’t take. These days, she doesn’t care so very much.
Amber had taken pleasure in her garden once, but the lush green lawn has faded to charcoal while her ash-grey roses droop. Weeds the colour of dishwater sprout where bright flowers once bloomed; palings, riddled with decay, have peeled from the fence. She’d like to blame the weather, but that doesn’t account for the greyscale plumage of the rainbow lorikeets who squawk disconsolately in sooty-coloured eucalypts. She’s sad just sitting here under this leaden sky and sullen smudge of sun, when friends no longer visit.
They should have had an inkling of what was coming. There’d been portents but the few who’d hollered warnings had been dismissed as cranks. As seas stilled to ripples and breezes abated to heavy air, a collective torpor seemed to seize the world. People mostly stayed at home and watched their black and white TVs or stared into space with hollow eyes. It’s too late for action now.
Amber helps herself to another strawberry. This one’s gone soft, staining her fingertips a darker grey. She yawns and considers heading back inside. As her chair scrapes across the flagstone, she hears a stifled moan—her neighbour, Atong, whom she hasn’t seen for months. She peers through the gap in the fence. Atong’s hunkered on the lawn, sobbing. Amber’s shocked to see her friend’s hair as white as her own, her skin as grey. She holds her hand out and helps Atong through.
