Or something else – that’s what I think now. Fear, probably. Maybe despair.
‘Come on,’ Sarah told Caspar, handing him the towel.
They went out the back door; Sarah in front, Caspar shambling after her.
I let go of Leonie’s hand.
‘Wait,’ I said.
I ran out into the hall; I shoved my feet into any old wellies. I looked back at everyone in the kitchen. For a second, if you ignored the looks on everyone’s faces, it looked so cosy. Big pot of tea, mugs waiting. Even the burnt toast smelt good.
‘Ru! Don’t!’ sobbed Leonie.
(And I swear; if someone else had said a single other thing, I would have caved.)
‘See you later, hon,’ said Ronnie.
‘See you later, babes,’ I said.
Just like we always did.
CHAPTER THREE
It wasn’t like I was about to run out into the rain. There was a kind of carport thing outside, a place where they stored all sorts of (hippy) junk and chopped wood. Their cars – a little zippy thing they used to nip to yoga classes (hopefully wearing clothes on the journey) and this other beat-up big one, an estate, were parked there. So it’d be wrong if you in any way thought I was being brave. I really wasn’t. I don’t even know what exactly I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking.
I suppose . . . I felt bad, for not having tried to stop Caspar going outside.
I got into the front of the estate. Sarah didn’t say anything, she didn’t even look at me, not to begin with; she just drove. To this day I’m not sure why she didn’t send me back to the house. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight either; maybe she needed someone with her; maybe she thought Caspar and I were a serious item and not just two ‘friends’ who’d only started snogging about an hour ago. Or maybe she thought I might need to go to hospital too. Maybe she’d seen the state my chin was in; maybe she’d seen how I couldn’t stop touching my lips, checking. I wasn’t sick; I couldn’t be sick.
Sarah had put Caspar in the back so he could lie down, and I was glad because it meant I didn’t have to look at him. I’d been snogging his face off and now I couldn’t even bear to look at him. What it does to people is disgusting.
You could still hear him, though, panting and shaking and groaning and moaning.
They lived way out in the sticks, down miles and miles of country lanes. Do you know what the lanes are like in Devon? They’re tiny. They twist about all over the place. On either side are high banks. On top of the banks are hedges. You can’t see where you are. It’s bad enough in the daytime; at night it’s like being stuck in some crazy maze. Up and down and left and right, twisting and turning; all you can see in front of you is a little patch of road, to the sides of you walls of grass and stone and brambles. I started to feel even more sick, which made me panic, which made me feel sicker.
‘Don’t,’ said Sarah, when I went to roll the window down.
It had stopped raining then, but she was right. Water dropped on to the car from the trees. Every now and then Sarah turned the wipers on. I watched the silvery-dark drops smear across the screen. It was kind of impossible to get your head round it; how something so ordinary could . . . how they were saying it could do that, make someone sick like Caspar was sick.
Fatal, that’s what Barnaby had said. Fatal.
I shut my eyes and tried not to think about that. I tried not to think about anything, except not throwing up. I breathed deeply, waiting for us to get to the main road. At least then we could speed up; at least then the car would stop weaving about.
Neither of these things happened. We didn’t speed up and we didn’t stop weaving about. When we hit the main road there were lots of other cars on it; some heading out of town, most heading into town. The traffic was moving still; not a crawl, faster than that, but slower than it should be; the road was really busy.
At first, when I saw that traffic, I closed my eyes again. I didn’t want to think about what was in those cars, whether we were just part of a long line of cars carrying people like Caspar, suffering. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to think about how long it was going to take for us to get to the hospital, which was miles and miles away, in Exeter. There was a hospital in Dartbridge but it wasn’t the emergency kind; my mum said you couldn’t even go there to get a splinter taken out.
Fatal.
I breathed. I tried to just listen to the engine. When I felt the car weaving again, I thought maybe Sarah had taken a short cut and we were back on the lanes.
My dad took me and Dan on a boat once. Dan’s my half-brother; he’s twelve and he’s a pain but I love him. Brother-brat beloved. Also my dad’s not with Dan’s mum any more either, so Dan and me we’ve got the whole smashed-up family thing in common. It’s kind of bonding. Anyway, we’d gone on this boat on a river with my dad, just for a weekend, and when we’d got off I still felt like I was on the boat, for hours after. As if the ground was water, and I was bobbing about on it.
That’s what it was like, in that car; I felt like we were back in the lanes, weaving. It made me feel so sick I opened my eyes; I wasn’t imagining it, we were weaving about. For no reason. I looked at Sarah; even though it was so dark, I could see there was sweat on her forehead – but sweat, not blood. I dunno what I thought; that she was nervous, that she was panicking . . . It wasn’t until there were street lights that I noticed her hand. She kept flexing it, like it hurt. Flexing it, then rubbing it against her raincoat. I saw her look at it. I looked too. Her palm was bloody.
‘The towel,’ she said quietly.
I looked round at Caspar.
‘Don’t touch him,’ whispered Sarah.
He’d rolled over on to his side; in the orangey bursts of street lights, his face looked shiny-dark with blood, ragged from scratching; his eyes staring at the seat in front – so still, his gaze, while his body shook and shook and he groaned and groaned.
I looked away; I tried not to panic.
The traffic ground to a halt.
‘,’ said Sarah. She was grimacing with pain now; her jaw started to shake a little, as if she was freezing cold – but sweat ran off her face like she was boiling hot. ‘We’ll have to go another way,’ she said.
I saw her look at her hand. ‘I’ll drop you home,’ she said.
I didn’t argue. I wanted to be there. I wanted my mum. My chin hurt. It kind of throbbed.
She banged the car down a gear, then jerked the steering wheel left; we bumped up on to the kerb. Car horns went crazy, honking at us as we drove – at an angle: half the car on the pavement, half in the road – until there was a car so tight against the kerb we couldn’t get past. Sarah pounded the horn; they wouldn’t budge – and now, behind us, other cars were trying the same trick, tooting at us to get out of the way. There was a bump – the car behind actually tried to push us on.
‘There’s nowhere to go!’ I shouted at them, even though I knew they couldn’t hear.
‘,’ cursed Sarah.
She turned the wheel hard and slammed down on to the accelerator. I screamed because it felt like we were going to roll over, but we steadied – and that’s how we did it. That’s how we got down as far as Cooper’s Lane – at a crazy angle, the car now half on the pavement, half up on the grass bank where there were tons of daffodils in spring.
‘All right?’ said Sarah as – just missing a street light – we cleared the end of the lane and bounced back down on to the road.
And she looked at me, then, and somehow she smiled.
‘Yeah,’ I said. Somehow I managed to smile back at her.
Five minutes later, we pulled up outside my house . . . I sort of felt like I ought to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. ‘Thank you for giving me a lift home’ just didn’t seem to cut it.
‘There’s your dad,’ said Sarah.
Simon was standing at the front-room window, watching. Stressing, by the looks of it.
Know what I said? What I always said to anyone who said tha
t:
‘He’s not my dad.’
I turned to look at Caspar. He had his hands clasped over his face. I couldn’t see his eyes, only his lips.
‘Caspar?’ I whispered.
His lips, the lips I had been kissing, moved a little.
Maybe he was whispering, ‘Rubybaby . . .’
Maybe he wasn’t saying anything at all.
‘Go on,’ said Sarah.
‘Don’t touch the outside of the door,’ she said as I opened it.
I stood in the road to wave her off; all around me alarms, screams, shouts, panic.
Then I turned; Simon wasn’t in the window any more and the curtains were shut. So was the front door.
Huh?!
I ran up to the porch and banged on the door.
‘Simon? Mum? Mum!’ I shouted.
The lights were on and through the frosted glass of the door I could see them, the shapes of them, moving about. I could hear them too; talking low and angry to each other, like they did when they were rowing and didn’t want me to hear.
‘Mum!’ I shouted, banging on the door. It was nearly a scream.
There was a Ruby Emergency Key stashed in the garden but I could hardly go rummaging around in the poison-rain-soaked shrubbery to get it, could I? I banged on the door again.
‘MUM!’
I felt this horrible stab of fear . . . then Simon’s face loomed up at the glass.
‘Ruby,’ he instructed through the glass, ‘you need to take those boots off to come in the house. Carefully. You mustn’t touch any water. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. It was the right thing, I knew, but I felt angry.
He opened the door then. My mum was standing at the end of the hall. My mum!
She kind of gasped at me.
‘Ruby! Oh my ! Your face!’
You know, for a moment I actually thought it might be easier to make out like I had that thing, rather than fess up.
‘It’s from kissing,’ I said.
‘You’re OK?!’
‘Yes!’ I wailed.
She sort of smiled at me; this soppy, sobby smile of joy. And I did too! She looked a mess; she’d been crying, but at least she wasn’t covered in blood or anything. I suppose she might have been thinking the same thing about me.
I stepped out of the wellies easily enough – they were massive – and into the house – on to a bin liner. Simon, who’d been standing by the door, blocked my path. He had a broom in his hands and he actually put it in front of me . . . I looked up at him in total disbelief. The look on his face was terrible – and weird: not his usual angry face, all grim-jawed, but shaky somehow. Upset. Scared.
‘You need to go in there,’ he said, pointing at the front room.
He was wearing rubber gloves. Ha! I thought he’d been cleaning.
‘What?!’ I said.
‘Oh, Ruby . . .’ said my mum. She came a couple of steps towards me.
‘Becky, stay back!’ Simon told her. ‘Go in there, please,’ he said to me.
I looked at my mum. ‘Are you OK?! Is Henry OK?!’ I couldn’t work out what was going on.
‘Just go in the room, darling,’ said my mum. ‘Please?’
I went in, thinking Simon would follow. I suppose . . . I was so used to being in trouble, getting told off, that a part of me kind of thought that was what was happening. The party I’d been at? Maybe I hadn’t exactly mentioned I was going to it.
Simon shut the door behind me, and locked it.
CHAPTER FOUR
One little rainstorm. ‘Only a shower’. That’s the kind of thing my mum said all the time because it rains a lot in Devon. Where I used to live, in London, where my dad still lived, it hardly ever seemed to rain and even if it did it hardly mattered because you could always hop on a bus or a tube that would take you to exactly wherever it was you wanted to go without getting a drop of rain on you. In Devon, you had to walk places – or kill yourself cycling up hills. If I moaned that I didn’t want to go and do something or that I wanted a lift because it was raining, that’s what my mum would say: ‘It’s only a shower!’ It meant, ‘Get on with it.’ Simon, on the other hand, could never leave it at that.
Example No. 1
Simon: If you were going to a festival you wouldn’t be bothered about a bit of rain, would you?
Me: Well, as I’m not allowed to go to festivals, I wouldn’t know.
Example No. 2
Simon: So, Ruby, how come you don’t mind spending hours in the shower, but you’re bothered about a bit of rain?
Me: I have to spend hours in the shower because the shower is useless.
(This is me having a go at Simon because he refused to get a new shower.)
You get the idea.
Then there were the historical ones, which were his absolute favourites; he had millions of them . . .
Example No. 3
Simon: Supposing Sir Edmund Hillary had looked outside his tent and said, ‘You know what, it’s raining. I don’t think I’ll bother conquering Everest after all.’
Me: It doesn’t rain on Everest – and anyway Sherpa Tenzing got there first.
(I didn’t really know whether that was true, about the rain – it just seemed it ought to be . . . but the Sherpa Tenzing bit? Ronnie had told me that. Some things he said were true.)
Example No. 4
Simon: Imagine if Winston Churchill had said, ‘You know what, it’s a bit rainy in Europe, let’s just let Hitler get on with it.’
Me: Actually, this country is part of Europe . . . and, anyway, I’m not going to war, am I? It’s only a stupid guitar lesson.
Simon: Which you asked to go to, and which we’re paying for.
Etc.
That one ended up with me grounded for the rest of the week – after I’d been forced to go to the guitar lesson (in the rain).
I just want to tell you one more.
Example No. 5
Simon: Imagine if the Americans and the Chinese and the Russians had said, ‘Oh no! It’s raining! Let’s not launch the missile that’s going to blow up the asteroid and save the planet until it’s nice and sunny.’
Me: Great! Then we’d all be dead and I wouldn’t have to live with you!
I really did say that. My mum heard me, and she was quite upset. She told me, for the zillionth time, that Simon did have feelings. I didn’t believe her. I hated him. I thought I meant it, what I said, but I didn’t mean it mean it; it was just how I felt at the time.
Since then, there have been times I’ve felt that way and I have meant it. Not the bit about Simon, but about how it might have been better if the Earth had been blown to smithereens. At least it would have been quick. Less suffering.
That night, locked in the front room, I thought I was suffering. I didn’t ask what was happening, or why. I went nuts. I really went crazy. The Henry Rule went right out of my head.
Oh. Oh no.
I do not want to have to do this. I need to tell you who Henry was.
My own sweet liberator.
My babiest brother-brat beloved: one year old.
When my mum told me she was pregnant with him, know what I thought? I thought that because of the secret-y way she said it – when there was just me and her in the kitchen – and in spite of the fact that she and my dad had been divorced for centuries and despite the fact that my dad had had Dan with Kara and they’d split up too and he was now dating ‘floozies’ (that’s what I heard my mum tell my Auntie Kate), when she said she was going to have a baby I thought she meant that she was having a baby with my dad.
DUR.
When I realised she meant Simon, I went up to my room and cried my eyes out.
BUT!
If I had understood what a brilliant thing Henry would be in my life, I would have jumped for joy . . . because Henry, dear Henry, set me free. It’s true; even before he was born, Simon and my mum got so obsessed with him that they got less and less obsessed with me. I got given my OWN set of keys t
o the house (although – luckily – we still kept the Ruby Emergency Key in case I had a dizzy fit, which might have happened sometimes) and best and most brilliant of all: MY OWN MOBILE PHONE.
So: The Henry Rule. It was a total, complete and utter no-no any day – possible global-disaster days included – to make any sort of noise that might wake him; that was The Henry Rule – to which, up until that moment, I was fully, totally, completely and utterly signed up because once Henry got going . . . he could bawl for England. Yes, my babiest brother-brat beloved was a bawling beast.
I would have just texted Lee immediately, but – MY MOBILE! I DIDN’T HAVE MY MOBILE! IT WAS IN ZAK’S BARN WITH THE REST OF MY STUFF! – so I pounded at the front-room door. I screamed and shouted – all sorts of terrible things, and all of them at Simon. I couldn’t believe it, what I had just been through, and now this. Then I started chucking things around a bit. Yup.
There was plenty of stuff to choose from, because that room was basically a dumping ground for all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in the rest of the house. There was a computer in there, surrounded by junk, which was where I was supposed to do my homework – but there was usually so much junk dumped about the place I used that as an excuse to borrow Simon’s laptop and work in my room – i.e. surf the net, do chat things and not work at all.
I didn’t rage randomly. I picked out Simon’s stuff. I threw whatever I could lay my hands on . . . and then . . . I started breaking things. His laptop wasn’t there, or I probably might have smashed it. I snapped some of his stupid CDs; dropped this hideous pottery vase thing he said he’d made when he was at school.
Simon, doing art – can you imagine?!
All the while, he stood outside the door, going, ‘Ruby, calm down, Ruby, calm down.’
I suppose my mum must have gone upstairs; I could hear Henry crying.
I told you I would tell you everything, except the swearing. But it’s hard, telling this bit. I’m not proud of how I acted. I am the opposite of proud. In my defence, all I can say is that . . . it was all too much. Do you see? One minute my life had been the best it had ever been, kissing Caspar McCloud, the next minute it was . . .
The Rain Page 3