Rain

by Kate Le Vann

  ‘This is going to prove that “Colin” is my dad, is it?’

  ‘You’re making fun of me,’ Harry said, raising an eyebrow and smiling. ‘But get ready to take me seriously.’

  ‘It could be dynamite,’ Rain said.

  Harry held her hand and pulled her arm. ‘This way.’

  He opened the door for her, and, going straight past the reception desk, led her through lots of dark, woody rooms with warm red wallpaper. The gallery was still quite full, with groups of students sitting on the floor, some of them sketching paintings. The floors creaked as Harry and Rain walked behind them. Finally they came to a much bigger room with soothing green wallpaper, bright with natural light. Harry took a step back, and flamboyantly waved his arm towards a picture. It was one of the smallest pictures in the room. It showed a plump androgynous young man with a pink rose in his hair holding his hands up in weedy horror and pain as a little reptile hung from his finger.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ Rain said. ‘A fat boy playing with a newt?’

  ‘Maybe you could read the title?’ Harry said, failing to hide how much Rain had amused him.

  ‘Boy Bitten By A Lizard… ?’ Rain read. ‘BITTEN BY A LIZARD! That’s a Lavender Sandcastles song! It’s on Belinda’s Destiny!’

  ‘Aha,’ Harry said.

  ‘But that’s … ‘ Rain took a step closer to the picture and stared at it. It was a very beautiful picture, with a crystal-clear vase of water and glossy succulent fruit in front of the boy. ‘But actually … what’s that got to do with anything? “Colin” named a song after a picture, so what?’

  ‘Did you see who painted it?’

  Rain leaned forward again. ‘Caravaggio?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Caravaggio, it’s in the diary, it’s, er … ‘ She couldn’t remember why her mum had mentioned it.

  ‘And this one too?’

  Rain leaned across to the next painting, which was much bigger, and looked familiar, she felt it must be quite a famous one. ‘The Supper at Emmaus … Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da.’ She read it slowly, trying to remember.

  ‘Let’s sit down.’ Harry was carrying a newspaper, and he carefully opened it and took Sarah’s diary out of its folds. There was a paper bookmark in its pages, and Harry turned to the marked page and gave Rain the book.

  4 September

  So … the fact is, he kissed me.

  In the National Gallery!

  We were in the room with the Caravaggios – the best room – sitting on one of the curvy leather seats looking at QV’s favourite, and the place was totally empty.

  ‘It’s this room? It’s this room!’ Rain said.

  ‘Boom,’ Harry whispered.

  ‘But even so,’ Rain said. ‘Where does it say this is his favourite picture? It just says favourite picture.’

  ‘You’re a tough crowd,’ Harry said. ‘His initials are a not very common QV. We know this bloke plays in a band. He takes her to fancy gallery openings. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of Sixties music – the influence of which some might say can be heard in the retro-Sixties melodies of the two-hit wonder band Lavender Sandcastles, who recorded the song “Not My Baby”. And his favourite picture is in this very room which doesn’t have many pictures, but one of them has the same weird name as a Lavender Sandcastles track. Seriously, what more do you want?’

  Rain pushed her lower lip out in an unconscious pout. ‘My mum to tell me it’s him … ‘ she mumbled. ‘

  How about if he tells you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you I found out Quentin Vienna’s real name. I think we can track him down and we can go and have a chat, and if he knew your mum then … ‘

  ‘But how? Oh, Madrigal, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Madrigal’ll help, of course she will!’

  Rain remembered with a jolt that she’d been angry with Harry for sharing the story with Madrigal. She wasn’t angry any more, not when Harry was doing so much for her. He was being lovely. But she still felt sick to the stomach that Madrigal was involved, and this could never be more than a larky summer mystery to Harry. If he could get his girlfriend to help him play detective, it would be even more fun for him.

  ‘Well, I suppose we could … talk to him … about … ‘ Rain tried to find the words. ‘No, this is just insane! We can’t go hassling some stranger who’s also sort of famous, he’ll think we’re complete nutters. He probably still has groupies camped outside his house.’

  ‘I have to say, that’s incredibly unlikely. Seventeen-year-old groupies even more incredibly unlikely. They weren’t a massive band. Most people haven’t heard of them.’

  ‘But he’s still not going to see us.’

  ‘At this point,’ Harry said, ‘he’s just some bloke who was in a band when he was a kid. There are thousands of old pop stars alive today, and they don’t go around acting like Elton John. So we just don’t know. He might.’

  Rain breathed out loudly, half-laugh, half-exasperation. She was sitting in the seat where her real parents first kissed, with a boy she wanted to kiss her. Instead of kissing her, he was talking crazy talk to her that seemed to drift in and out of making sense.

  Harry gave her a little smile. ‘What’s the harm in asking?’

  Downstairs in the café, Rain had managed to come up with a more competent list of questions.

  ‘He must have known, she must have told him, and he didn’t stay with her. Why bring back what must have been an awful time in his life? What if he has a wife now, and he has to tell her and they can never be the same again? And if I find something out, how can I not tell my dad? I would never be able to keep something like that from him.’ Rain looked into her cup because she knew she’d cry if she had to face Harry when she said the next thing. ‘Last week, no one hurt at all. What gives me the right to hurt other people this week?’

  Harry tilted his head on one side. His dark brown eyes were warm, but she felt herself shiver. ‘You’re not trying to hurt anyone,’ he said. ‘You’re just trying to make sense of things.’

  Rain’s diary

  6 August

  I can’t sleep. It’s 4.22 a.m. and I haven’t slept yet. I flopped around in bed until the restlessness made me want to kick my legs until they couldn’t kick any more. Then I started looking out the window, which was a mistake; the street is empty and lonely and dark with strange shadows, it just makes me even more scared and I feel scared anyway. Harry only told me this evening that we were on for tomorrow. There were a few days where he didn’t have any news at all: I was disappointed, but relieved too, because part of me didn’t want to go any further, wanted it to be so hard I just gave up.

  What if tomorrow changes me? It’s bad enough today, not knowing anything – yet knowing there’s more to know. Now that it’s happening, I’ve started thinking about it seriously and the questions I keep coming back to feel like stones in my stomach. Does he know? If he knew, why did he let me go? If he knows, he doesn’t want to see me – so what will happen when he’s forced to?

  And if he isn’t the one, how long do I have to keep looking?

  I keep thinking, I can’t stop my head thinking. I know that in all this the one person I don’t want to be hurt is my dad, my proper dad, Sam Lindsay. Does he know? If he doesn’t, do I have to tell him? Or can I only find out he knows by asking him, by which point it will be too late? When I think of him being sad because he’s found out, or because he knows I’ve found out, I almost can’t hold everything I feel in my head at once, it’s a junkyard of shame and regret, I’m aching all over at the thought of doing something that’s going to cause him pain. He is the person I love most in the world, and whatever train of events threw us together, he’s the biggest part of me, what makes me me. It’s his sense of honour and sense of humour that I’ve absorbed, his amazing kindness that I’ve always seen as the sort to try for. Yes, he’s a brilliant scientist and I got a C at GCSE chemistry, but you know what? I am also virtually tone deaf and can’t play an instrument t
o save my life, so I don’t have anything of the other bloke either, and I know that genes aren’t what made me and my dad so close.

  Even as I write this, I’m terrified that opening up the past will somehow let my dad stop loving me. I know it’s stupid, but it’s such a big fear, the worst and biggest, that the tiny odds don’t matter – God, there aren’t even any odds! I have to stop thinking that way! But I can’t … I don’t want the other man, not for a second, if it’ll risk what I have with my dad. So why am I doing this, and why is Harry involved? It’s not his life.

  And Harry, who’s responsible for tomorrow, who has pestered Madrigal’s posh dad and somehow talked a former pop star into spending his Saturday evening talking to a teenage girl, God, what do I do about Harry? It feels a lot like I’m falling in love with him. I once read an old saying in a romance book:

  To love is nothing

  To be loved is something

  To love and be loved is everything.

  What I have right now is the beginning of nothing. When I’m not thinking about my dad and bloody Quentin Vienna, I am playing back in my head all the things Harry has ever said to me, every smile, every look, every accidental or friendly touch. It’s partly to obsessively analyse it and try to work out how he feels and what he meant by it, and partly because, when I replay the smiles, the looks, the touches, I start glowing all over again and can’t feel my feet … and I want to laugh out loud.

  Gah, it’s stupid! He’s got a girlfriend! But I can’t help that he makes me happy. I sound like a tired person now. I’m writing like someone who is stupid with tired and doesn’t even know what the words mean. I need to sleep or I’ll talk like this tomorrow. If I just sleep through tomorrow, will Harry come and tell me how it went and who I’m supposed to be now?

  Chapter 11

  ‘I can’t drag you and you can’t keep hiding behind me,’ Harry said. ‘People will see. People will think I’m your abusive boyfriend. Come on, Rain, he’s expecting us and we’ll be late.’

  Rain tried to stay on her feet without moving, while Harry pulled her. She hid behind him again, burying her face in his shoulder. He smelled clean and just noticeably citrussy. She didn’t want to lift her head off him, she didn’t want to see people who might be looking at her. She was being a nightmare and she knew it, but couldn’t stop.

  ‘Hey, Rain,’ Harry said very gently. ‘Do you want to go home? If you want to go home right now, it’s totally okay.’ He tried to look over his shoulder at her. Rain shook her head into Harry’s shoulder. ‘What do we do?’ he said.

  It was seven in the evening, but as sunny as it had been at noon, the kind of evening Rain liked to spend entirely out of doors, because being inside was a waste of summer. They were in Camden, which was very different from Notting Hill. It was younger and untidier. There were more drunk people, tattoos and piercings, girls with shaved heads and boys with pink hair, but there was a sweetness to the atmosphere, almost a last day at school feeling, when everyone looked more like themselves but the bullies left them alone because they were in a good mood. And Rain’s erratic behaviour wasn’t really standing out as she and Harry fitfully made their way through the streets.

  ‘Can’t you do it for me, without me?’ she said. ‘We’re too close now, he might walk down the street, he might look out of the window and see us.’

  ‘I’ll go without you if you want, but I think it’s a bad idea,’ Harry said. ‘But if that’s your decision, I’ll do it. I’m right here with you and I won’t go anywhere unless you want me to.’

  ‘Of course I don’t want you to go!’ Rain said. ‘Tell me again exactly what you told him, exactly how much he knows and what you’re going to say … ’

  ‘What you’re going to say … ’

  ‘NO. I’m not going to say anything. You’re going to say everything and I’m going to hide behind you. Or it’s ALL OFF. We may as well go back now because I can’t, there’s no way, I’m not going to say anything. We’ll just sit there in silence if it’s up to me, it’s not going to be up to me, I’m not doing it.’

  ‘I told him … ’

  ‘It’s definitely him? Madrigal’s dad is sure? Because Colin Thurber isn’t a very unusual-sounding name.’

  ‘It’s definitely him. You can make that your first question! Were you Quentin Vienna? If he says no, you don’t even have to ask him the rest of the questions!’

  ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him that we found him through Madrigal’s dad, who used to manage two of the bands that the Sandcastles supported. He remembered Big Roy … ’

  ‘Big Roy?’

  ‘Er, Mr Madrigal used to be known as Big Roy, apparently.’ Rain smothered a smirk. Big Roy didn’t sound very Madrigal-esque. ‘ … and we wondered if he could spare a few minutes to talk about the year he was doing the Belinda tour, as research for a university project.’

  ‘What, you lied?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What? Why? He’s going to be horrified and he hasn’t been warned!’

  ‘Well, I did warn him as well. I said there was also something more serious we wanted to talk about that happened around that time, but it was probably best not to talk about it over the phone first.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Rain said.

  ‘He asked if it was bad news, and I said no.’

  ‘It IS bad news! For him it is terrible news!’

  ‘It isn’t bad news. For all you know he’s spent the last seventeen years wishing you’d try to find him.’

  They crossed the road and Rain tripped over the kerb. As the pavement zoomed towards her face, Harry grabbed her and pulled her up at the last minute, almost tearing her T-shirt at the neck.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Harry said, keeping hold of her shoulders. ‘Rain, if there’s really a chance this is going to kill you, I’ll just take you back home. Vivienne will kill me if your heart stops in there.’ Rain blinked at him with tired eyes. The heat of his touch shot all the way through her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘In there or home?’

  ‘In there,’ she said, her voice all croaky. ‘But you have to do the talking.’

  Colin Thurber’s house was a tiny little Victorian terrace on a street that looked like it had once belonged to poor people and had now been poshed up. The front door didn’t have a doorbell, just an old-fashioned knocker. Harry knocked twice, hard. Rain flinched both times. Harry touched her back with his palm; it was just a little touch, but it kept her from fainting. She changed her mind more than twenty times as they waited for someone to answer the door, the nervousness building inside her and making her want to shout something out loud, or just run as fast as she could, anywhere. In moments, Rain might be looking straight into the eyes of her real father. What would he look like now? What would he think of her? She shut her eyes and said a last-minute prayer that he wouldn’t hate her.

  A handsome middle-aged man opened the door. He didn’t look anything like Quentin Vienna – he was black and very tall, and Quentin Vienna wasn’t either of those things.

  ‘Hi – Harry? And Rain? I’m Anthony,’ the man said. He smiled. ‘Col won’t be long, he’s in the middle of something in the kitchen – we’re having some friends round later. Come in, he told me you’d be here now.’

  Rain’s stomach twisted. She pushed Harry in first, so hard he almost tripped over the step himself. Anthony led them into the living room. The house seemed much bigger on the inside than it had looked from outside. It was decorated in a pretty and modern way – the walls were bathed in light and painted a warm sunflower yellow. There were slightly knobbly stripped wood floors, and two fat gold corduroy sofas. The windows were open wide and there were fresh flowers. The television was enormous. The cooking smell was almost delicious, but was shot through with a slight suggestion of something possibly burning somewhere.

  ‘Rain’s such a pretty name,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Rain said.

 
‘Well, please, sit down. I’ll just go and hurry Col along. Would you like tea?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ they both said.

  When Anthony had gone, Rain grabbed Harry’s hand. She would never have dared do it normally, but there’d been a lot of touching between them today, a lot of falling and shoving and hiding and clutching and she was finding it easy to be rough with him now. ‘We can’t stay,’ she whispered. ‘They’re expecting people. They think we’ll be gone in five minutes! I can’t stop talking about it in five minutes. We have to go.’

  ‘What are you talking about? We’re here now!’ Harry whispered.

  ‘You told me I didn’t have to go through with it. Well, I want out.’

  ‘It’s too late now. Look, he said to come at this time, so he must be okay for a bit.’

  ‘Harry,’ Rain said out loud, standing up. Harry stayed where he was, looking up at her, smiling. ‘Are you really not coming with me?’

  ‘I told you, I’ll do the talking. Sit down. Be quiet.’

  Rain pretended to be shocked by Harry’s straight-talking, but she was grateful that he’d taken away the choice and sat down again. Anthony came back with tea.

  ‘I think the cooking is going quite well,’ Anthony said. ‘So there won’t be any plate smashing and screaming.’ He caught Rain’s expression and smiled. ‘I’m just joking,’ he said. ‘You’re both at Imperial, right? Col said you were here doing some kind of research into the pop scene when he was in it. He’s had students writing to him in the past, once or twice, and he’s never talked to them before, but he told me he owed Big Roy a favour. You’ve got to love Big Roy. What’s the project you’re working on?’ Rain listened to the lies Harry had told stacking up and thought she might have to make some kind of sound – a scream, a yelp, something.

  ‘Well, look, I really have to come clean about something straight away,’ Harry said. ‘We’re not just here for the research, or at least, well, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that.’