Ka-boom. I snapped the stupid walking-stick thing Simon took on country rambles. It was hard work snapping it but I was ultimately doing him a favour because it made him look like an OAP and a nerd. Then I saw his binoculars. His new binoculars. His nerdish pride and joy. Simon liked to watch birds, you see. Can you imagine anything more deeply boring?
‘Ruby, calm down. Please, calm down.’
I tried to snap them, to bust them in half. The walking stick thing had been hard, but these were impossible. And then I thought of it: I’d throw them out of the window. I yanked back the curtain. And then I stopped.
One little rainstorm. Only a shower.
‘Simon,’ I called. ‘It’s raining . . . ’
‘It’s OK, Ru. It’s OK.’
‘Please let me out!’
‘Ruby, you have to listen to me. Please: calm down and listen.’
‘I’ll listen! I’ll calm down! Please, Simon, let me out.’
I heard my mum’s voice then; Henry grizzling. ‘Ruby, we can’t.’
I pressed myself against the door, and I listened. All the while I watched the rain falling. I did get it, right away, when they explained it to me. I had been outside, hadn’t I? For Henry’s sake, for my mum’s, they couldn’t take any chances.
Then I talked, and they listened. Every word I said, about what had happened at Zak’s, about Barnaby saying it might be contagious, about Caspar, about Zak’s mum, about the cars going to the hospital . . . all of it seemed to prove that it was right; that I should stay in that room until we knew.
‘I haven’t got it,’ I said. ‘I know I haven’t.’
My chin, my lips, my mouth, my nose throbbed. That’s kissing. That’s just kissing.
‘It happens really quickly. It does. I’ve seen it.’
My stomach churned. That’s gin and cider. That’s just gin and cider. And fear.
‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I believe you . . . but we can’t take any chances. Do you understand?’
Yes – but, I thought.
‘Do you understand, Ruby?’ asked my mum.
‘Yes . . . but—’
‘So please . . . just until tomorrow morning?’ said my mum.
‘It’ll have to be longer than that,’ Simon muttered at her – I heard him.
‘Just for tonight,’ said my mum.
I could hear Henry gurgling.
‘OK,’ I said.
I got up then, and drew the curtains.
‘Mum?’ I called.
‘Yes, Ruby?’
She was still there; I knew she’d still be there.
‘I’m thirsty,’ I said.
I heard them, not what they said, but the murmurings of a discussion. It wasn’t a row. I could imagine it: what to give me, how to give it to me . . . perhaps, also, whether I could be trusted not to freak out and break out the second they opened the door.
‘Ruby?’ said my mum. ‘I’ll get you something. I’ll be back in a minute.’
And I thought about how it was, then. That, really, we had been double lucky. That I’d had Barnaby drag me out of the hot tub, and my mum and Simon . . . they’d gone to the neighbours’ barbecue as planned and taken the babiest brother-brat with them – not in some hideous child-abuse way, keeping him up all night, but because he had kept them up all night the night before, teething, and had slept all afternoon and was full of beans, and just when my mum dared to pick up a glass of wine, Henry decided it was time to start keeping them up for another night. So she took Screechster Boy back home. She put the radio on. She rocked my baby brother to sleep . . . trying to listen to Gardeners’ Question Time.
She was so dog-tired, she said, she didn’t even bother wondering why it was on.
Simon would have stayed out, but apparently one of the neighbours had said something nasty (‘an inflammatory remark’) about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds . . . It was probably a joke, but Simon, on a warning from my mum after the last time he’d flipped out at someone for sniggering about bird watching, had downed his shandy and stormed home – seconds before the rain began.
I might be adding to the detail a bit, but that’s basically what happened.
A short while later there was a knock at the door.
‘Ma?’ I said.
‘It’s me,’ said Simon. ‘Ruby, I’m going to open the door. I’ve got some things for you. I want you to stand back, away from the door. Will you do that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He opened the door. His face looked closer to normal; not shaky, not angry either . . . not even when he saw the mess in the room. He bunged my duvet in, then – one, two, three – cushions from the sofa.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The airbed’s in the shed.’
My pillow came next. Then my dressing gown, my snuggliest pyjamas, and my winter fluffy fake-fur slippers.
‘Your mum doesn’t want you to get cold,’ he said.
Then he chucked a bucket in, on top of the pile.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked.
‘Guess,’ he said, slinging in a toilet roll. ‘And –’
He chucked in my mum’s toiletry bag, but carefully, so’s it landed on the duvet. There was a new toothbrush sticking out of it; mine was in the barn at Zak’s . . . WITH MY MOBILE. DID I MENTION THAT ALREADY? I DID NOT HAVE MY MOBILE!
He slid a tray into the room. Tea and toast. With peanut butter. I thought we’d run out.
Finally he reached round the corner and put two big glasses of water down on the floor. I suppose he guessed I’d been drinking.
‘I suppose you have to lock the door now,’ I said.
‘Ruby . . .’ said Simon.
I thought about Caspar lying in the back of the car. I thought about Henry.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Lock it.’
‘Night, Ru,’ he said. He shut the door and locked it.
I probably would have just cried my eyes out then, or something. But –
‘Ru?’
It was my mum.
She sat on the other side of the door while I ate my toast. I leaned against the door, and I felt as if I could feel her on the other side, sitting and leaning against it too. I felt as if I could feel the warmth of her through the wood. I rattled on asking her stuff: about whether my dad had called (he hadn’t; I already knew no one could call anyone, didn’t I?), about whether she thought everyone would be OK . . . and the more people I thought to ask about – family, friends, friends of family, families of friends – the worse it got . . . like how it is when you are little and they teach you to pray and to ask God to bless everyone and you get really worried about remembering everyone, thinking if you don’t something bad will happen to them and it’ll be your fault.
‘Shhh! It’s OK, Ruby . . . shhh,’ she said, when I started up again about Nana and Gramps. ‘Now, do you need anything else?’ she asked.
‘Sing to me,’ I said.
I wanted the lullaby song she did every night when I was little.
She sighed – so loud I could hear it through the door.
‘Mum, please . . .’ I tried.
‘Ru-by, it’s bedtime,’ she said.
Please don’t leave me. That’s what I thought. ‘OK,’ I said.
‘Night-night, darling.’
That’s what my mum said.
I made a bed-nest like Dan does, switched out the light and crawled into it. Under normal – normal?! – circumstances, I would have texted Lee then. No; I would have blanked the bill situation and called her. I could picture her, with the others, sitting round the big old table in Zak’s kitchen. I wondered how Caspar was, whether Sarah had got them both to hospital.
He’d be OK. Fatal. He’d be OK. Fatal. He’d be OK.
I couldn’t stand it any more, so I got up and put the computer on.
The internet was down, just like Zak had said . . . but maybe Simon had disconnected me. That was possible. That was very possible.
Nothing to do but go back to bed.
&nb
sp; Normally, at night, it was dead quiet. Not like at my dad’s, where there was noise 24/7. Tonight, Dartbridge sounded like London. You could hear sirens, alarms, car horns. Also, sometimes, shouting. Sometimes shouting, sometimes screams.
. . . And another sound: so quiet, so soft. The rain. It’s only a shower.
I didn’t realise I’d fallen asleep until I woke up because someone was banging at the front door. I was up and trying to get out of the room until I realised I couldn’t. Simon must have been asleep too, because it took him a while to get there. The hall light came on, but he didn’t open the front door.
‘Hello?!’ he called.
‘Help me! Help me! Help me!’
I pulled back the curtain a little. Our neighbour, Mrs Fitch, was standing in the rain. In her nightie, not even a dressing gown on top.
I heard my mum thump down the stairs. I let the curtain drop.
‘Simon?’ whispered my mum.
‘Simon? Rebecca?!’ cried Mrs Fitch. ‘Help!’
I heard Simon, plain as day – which it nearly was; the light had gone grey, the way it does when dawn is coming through the rain. ‘We can’t,’ he said, quietly, to my mum.
‘Please!’ cried Mrs Fitch, almost as though she’d heard him.
‘We can’t help,’ shouted Simon. ‘Go to the hospital.’
‘It’s my husband! I can’t move him!’
‘We can’t help,’ said Simon.
‘It’s the baby,’ cried my mum. ‘We’ve got to think about Henry.’
‘Please!’ screamed Mrs Fitch.
‘Come away,’ I heard Simon whisper to my mum.
The hall light went off. I heard Henry starting to grizzle upstairs. I heard my mum go to him, already saying ‘Shh! Shh, shh, shh, shh,’ in her lovely lullaby voice as she rushed up the stairs.
‘Ruby?’ whispered Simon. ‘Are you OK?’
I didn’t answer. I wanted him to think I was asleep.
‘Please!’ screamed Mrs Fitch. She banged at the door.
I didn’t hear Simon go back into the sitting room, but he must have done; the TV got turned up.
‘Now urging people not to panic –’ I heard.
He must have shut the door then; I couldn’t make out what they were saying any more, just the scary, bossy sound of it going on and on about how bad everything was . . . but at least it did sound more like normal TV, different voices chipping in, and not the same thing over and over.
‘Help me! Please!’ screamed Mrs Fitch.
I stood in the dark. It went quiet. I could hear the rain, still, but not Mrs Fitch. I peeped through the curtains. She was standing in the front garden. She was clawing at her face, at her head. I couldn’t look away, somehow. Something white landed on the grass next to her; I saw it was a box. A small white medicine box of tablets; the instructions, come loose, fluttering down after it. My mum must have flung it out. I saw Mrs Fitch pick it up. She looked up at the window – not the one I was peeking out of, but the upstairs one – Mum and Simon’s room. She looked up and in the grey light I saw the ghostly red running on her face, the skin torn away already where she couldn’t help but scratch.
I let the curtain drop and buried myself in my bed. I tried not to listen to it all: the murmur of the scary bossy voices on TV; the sirens – not so many now; and the car horns, also not so many. Mrs Fitch, groaning again. Why didn’t she just go away? The pitter-patter of the rain. Such a quiet sound you shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but once your ears caught it they couldn’t seem to let it go. Then Henry started bawling, having a right old screech – and that was a good thing. It drowned out every other sound, and it was a noise I knew how to deal with; I wrapped a pillow round my head to muffle the brother-brat out, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the next morning began properly, it began like a lot of mornings have begun since then. For a moment, I thought everything was fine. For a moment, I’d forgotten.
And then you remember.
I woke up thinking about Caspar. I’d been dreaming about him, but not how I’d seen him last, lying in the back of Zak’s mum’s car. I dreamed we were playing a gig together. It was brilliant. We were brilliant.
I’ve got to tell you now that even if the entire world hadn’t totally ka-boomed, this could only ever have been a dream. That guitar lesson I didn’t want to go to? It wasn’t just because it was raining – it was because I was rubbish. I’d only started up with it because I thought it would impress Caspar. OK, and I thought I’d turn out to be brilliant at it, but I wasn’t: I was rubbish.
And, by the way, I was rubbish at singing too, but I sang all the time (in my room, or with Lee), hoping that if I practised enough I’d suddenly, miraculously, become brilliant at that too.
Dreams – good ones – are beautiful things.
(And sometimes they come true. I should know: I kissed Caspar McCloud.)
Anyway, for a couple of moments before I opened my eyes, I was in heaven. And then I woke up in hell.
I stretched and felt floorboards under my legs where my bed should have been. The cushions had slipped about. I dunno how Dan manages it; he’s like a hamster or something, building his little nests. I’d had the worst night’s sleep ever, tossing and turning – and even before I attempted to get up I kind of knew I felt like rubbish and then I remembered why I felt like rubbish.
Caspar. Oh my : Caspar.
I reached up and felt my chin – yeurch! Seemed like overnight it had turned into a kind of giant scab. I felt my nose; that didn’t feel scabby – but I’d need a mirror to be sure. If I didn’t look too much of a horror, I’d get the train to Exeter and look for Caspar at the hospital – or get Simon to take me. I had some wicked foundation to deal with the face situation . . . no, I didn’t. That was in the barn with – MY MOBILE! I HAD TO GET MY MOBILE. Get my mobile – which would mean seeing my friends too, which was great – get my foundation. Go see Caspar. Get a shower first – no: check the net, then shower. Sort outfit, do temporary emergency make-up with items from the reserve make-up supply. Possibly have to do emergency mascara borrow from mother; definitely emergency perfume borrow (aka ‘steal’; she had a bottle of this really nice stuff I wasn’t supposed to use and the last time I’d borrowed a bit she’d gone mental – even for my mum – when she’d sniffed and twigged I’d used it). Ask, then borrow; or just borrow? Just borrow. It was an emergency.
MY MOBILE: priority mission. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That and I was thirsty – but the glasses of water were gone – and I was bursting, so I had to pee on top of last night’s pee in the bucket and when I’d finished peeing I checked the computer; it was still on from last night and everything was still down. It still showed the time, though. I tried to remember when I had come in, wondering how much longer I might get made to stay in that room if Simon got his way about keeping me locked up. It made my sore head muddle.
Then I opened the curtains. It was raining.
Surrounded by narrow beds of plants that sprouted crazily, there was a little square of grass outside; ‘the front lawn’, Simon called it. He mowed it, lugging the mower up the garden from the shed and through the house – dropping grass cuttings everywhere – for the two and a half seconds it took to cut the patch. Then he lugged the mower back through the house – dropping grass cuttings everywhere – and back down the garden to the shed. My mum said the front lawn wasn’t worth the bother – the grass didn’t even grow properly, the way the shrubs muscled in on it – but Simon did it anyway.
If I felt anything about it, I felt that front lawn was Simon. The order in the chaos, something like that.
The front lawn, that small, tidy square of mown green, was muddy, torn up – clawed up, like an animal had been at it.
Mrs Fitch was lying on it. She had her back to me. The box of tablets lay next to her.
It was raining hard. It was raining on Mrs Fitch. Mrs Fitch wasn’t moving. I watched; Mrs Fitch didn’t seem to be breathing.
You know what? Even then I thought . . . I dunno: that she had . . . stayed out in the rain too long or something? That she was old anyway, so she could have just had a heart attack. Died of hypothermia. Or had a stroke, like Grandpa Hollis.
I drew the curtains shut. I’d never seen a dead body before and I didn’t ever want to see another one. It was horrible; just horrible . . . and the curtains weren’t enough; I shut ten thousand doors in my head and even then I couldn’t keep it out. I had no words to say to myself to make it OK; instead, it was my body that started to shout. I’m thirsty! I’m thirsty and I’m hungry and I feel really skanky and . . . I am so not going to poo in a bucket. I want breakfast. I want a shower. I want my mobile. I want OUT.
Before I called I turned the handle of the door because you just would, wouldn’t you? The door opened.
‘Simon?’ I called softly. The house was quiet, you see, and I didn’t want to wake Henry. Come to that, the world was quiet. I could hear a few stupid alarms still, but no sirens, no car horns, no shouts – or shouts that could have been screams. That was all I could hear: a few stupid alarms. And the rain.
I listened hard.
‘Simon?’ I whispered.
Henry had to be asleep. I peeked my head out of the door. The door to the sitting room was open. The TV was still on, sound down. You could see the reflection of it in the glass of all the family photos on the windowsill; Grandma Hollis, smiling, TV flickers on her face.
Maybe Simon was crashed out in front of the TV?
‘Simon?!’ I hissed.
I tiptoed a few steps down the hall. Tiptoed, so’s not to wake Henry. I knew I wasn’t sick like killer-rain sick, so I kind of felt OK about it. Only, actually, I wasn’t that sure that I wasn’t killer-rain sick. I wasn’t all covered in blood and groaning, but I knew how much I definitely didn’t feel right. I felt really, really thirsty and my head hurt. I was hungry, too, but I felt sick at the same time – and a bit dizzy. Not good . . . but I couldn’t be sick that way. Surely? Could I be? No. Maybe. No.
The maybe made me scared.
‘Simon?’ I whisper-called.
Yeah. My head felt really swimmy and swirly.
The Rain Page 4