A Quiet Kind of Thunder

by Sara Barnard

  Everyone is staring at us. I am definitely not in a bubble any more. But near-death-experience adrenalin apparently beats anxiety, because I have my voice and I use it to yell right back. ‘He’s deaf!’

  ‘That’s why you should fucking look!’ The cyclist climbs back on to his bike and presses his feet into the pedals. ‘Fucking kids,’ he throws over his shoulder as he begins to ride away. ‘Fucking deaf fucking kids.’

  Rhys steps back up on to the pavement and I follow silently. The shock of the last minute has made my hands start tingling. I let out a breath. Rhys isn’t looking at me; he’s examining his hands, taking his time over them, studying the streak of wheel mud across his fingers.

  I touch his shoulder and he looks up slowly. You OK?

  He shrugs.

  I attempt a shaky grin. You’re welcome.

  He frowns. What?

  I just saved your life, I point out. Better a bicycle than a van, right?

  He looks at me for a long moment, his expression unusually unreadable. He pushes his fingers into his pockets and shrugs again.

  Are you OK? I ask again.

  A flash of irritation crosses his face, so alien I almost don’t recognize it for what it is. He clenches his hand into a fist and moves it up and down, which is the sign for yes. But the way he’s making the motion, it’s more like he’s saying YES, for God’s sake, shut up.

  I bite my lip, wrong-footed, unsure what to do or say. I hesitate, then reach up and sweep my fingers across his cheek, wiping off droplets of coffee. He closes his eyes, takes a hold of my fingers and kisses them. Before he lets go he sighs slowly, opening his eyes, then smiles.

  Sorry.

  You don’t need to be sorry, I reply, surprised. It was an accident.

  He shakes his head. My fault. Wasn’t looking.

  Neither was I. We’re both stupid. I smile, hoping the tension in his face will ease.

  You – he begins, then stops.

  Go on.

  You wouldn’t have been in the road. That was me not looking. I always look.

  ‘Rhys,’ I say, because it’s one of those moments where I need to say his name and I haven’t yet learned how to fill the same impulse with BSL. We were both not looking.

  He presses his lips together. No. I always look. If you weren’t here, I would have been looking. He suddenly squeezes both his hands into fists, as if he’s keeping the words in, stopping something else coming out.

  I feel my eyes widen. What does that mean? The words have kickstarted my heart – it’s cantering in panic in my chest.

  He shakes his head again. Nothing. I’m sorry. I want to keep you safe.

  The words are so confusing. Do they even go together? What does keeping me safe have to do with anything? It was so clearly just an accident.

  ‘Rhys,’ I say again, but he stops me, putting a finger to my lips. When he removes it he leans down to kiss me, his lips pressing against mine. I open my mouth and feel the familiar, fizzy jolt at the touch of his tongue. His arm curls around the back of my neck.

  When we break apart he pushes the tip of his nose to my cheek, smiling now. He kisses me again, reaches down and takes my hand. Let’s go, he signs.

  We carry on with the day we’d planned – buying presents for the whole Gold family, pausing to kiss on a bench, sharing a crêpe from the Christmas market – but it doesn’t feel the same after the collision. Rhys is a little distant, a slight frown in his eyes, and I’m fluttery with anxiety, jumping at every noise and checking all around me before I cross the street. Still, we don’t talk about it, skating around it like a crack in the road, as if it didn’t happen.

  I don’t mention it to anyone else, either. Even Tem, though I’m not sure why not. Maybe I just don’t want to take the shine off the perfection of our relationship, but when she asks how our trip was I tell her it was magical. ‘He got Beats headphones for his older brother,’ I say. ‘Red ones.’

  ‘Generous,’ she says. ‘I hope he gets you something just as good.’

  He does. We don’t exchange Christmas presents until Christmas Eve, which is the compromise both our parents force us into instead of allowing us to see each other on Christmas Day. I work at the kennels until mid-afternoon, and then Rhys picks me up and drives me to his house. He’s bought me a handmade quokka figurine, almost too beautiful to be real, and small enough to fit in my hand. When I pull back the tissue paper to reveal the intricate carvings, I almost cry.

  After the presents, we sink into each other and kiss for a while. Let me take this opportunity to say that ‘kiss’ is one of the most inadequate words in the English language. It sounds so innocent and sweet. But we are lying on his bed. His stubble is scraping my chin. My bra is unclasped. His hand is under my shirt, stroking circles on my stomach and sliding, oh so hesitantly, up . . .

  Anyway. So we kiss.

  I spend the two weeks of the Christmas holidays at Mum’s house. Even though I miss Rita, there’s no better place to spend the season than in a house with an excitable five-year-old. Especially a five-year-old who insists on being called Sleigh Bell all the way through December and who likes to dress up in sparkly costumes.

  Tem comes over at 9 a.m. on Christmas Day for hugs, presents and hot apple juice. We huddle together in the garden, watching our breath frost in the air in front of us, until she has to leave to go to Mass.

  ‘Have fun,’ I say, hugging myself for warmth on my front step as she heads off down the driveway. ‘Say hi to Jesus for me.’

  ‘I will!’ she sings, spinning on the spot but somehow not breaking her stride.

  I wait until she’s out of sight, then head back into the house. Bell has changed into her Cinderella outfit and is singing Christmas songs at the top of her voice. Keir is on the phone to his sister, who is coming over with her family, giving directions. I take the opportunity to go to my bedroom and open up jackbytes, hoping to talk to Rhys, but he’s not online, so I text him instead.

  Steffi:

  Merry Christmas, Boyfriend.

  I like you a lot. xxx

  His reply comes about an hour later. I’m sitting in the living room with my family and Keir’s, watching Bell and her cousins open presents.

  Rhys:

  Merry Christmas, Girlfriend.

  I like you even more xxxx

  My heart fills and I curl up even tighter in my armchair, hugging myself. I take a quick selfie of my bashful, beaming face and send it to him. When I look up, Mum is smiling at me. I’m so full of happy I smile back.

  We eat a lot of food and then go through Christmas traditions like we’re ticking them off a list: a flaming Christmas pudding only the adults eat; charades; an argument over what to watch on TV; Trivial Pursuit; a walk round the block; more arguments about TV; and then, finally, the elongated goodbyes, sleeping children carried to the car and Mum’s gentle sigh of relief as the door closes.

  And that’s Christmas over for another year. I take a box of After Eights to my room and snuggle up in bed with my phone, talking to Rhys until everyone else in the house has gone to bed and it’s all quiet and still.

  I work at the kennels for the next few days and then spend New Year with Mum, Keir and Bell. Rhys and his family are visiting his grandparents in Wales and Tem is at a house party with Karam and his friends. Though she’d invited me I didn’t seriously consider going, and I don’t think she did either. Instead, I sit on the sofa with a drooping Bell on my lap as the hours pass, waking her with a squeeze when the countdown starts.

  ‘I stayed up!’ she yells, blinking. ‘Happy New Year!’ And then falls asleep again.

  I’m in bed by half past midnight, and asleep by one.

  ‘You wild child,’ Tem teases me the next day, the two of us lolling on the swings as Davey and Bell run around the playground.

  ‘I’ve never claimed to be a party animal,’ I retort. ‘And at least I –’I gesture to myself as obnoxiously as possible – ‘am not hungover.’

  Tem scowls. ‘Yea
h, yeah. Don’t rub it in.’ She stretches, her feet dipping into the woodchips below the swing. ‘I shouldn’t have had so much Prosecco.’

  ‘Did you have fun, though?’

  She nods, but there’s not much fun in her face, to be honest, though I put this down to the hangover rather than a lie. ‘It was great.’

  ‘Who did you kiss at midnight?’ I’m teasing. It’s obvious who she kissed at midnight.

  A wolfish grin streaks across her face. ‘Not just at midnight, my friend.’

  ‘How late did you stay up?’

  ‘Until about four.’

  ‘Really?’ I make a face. ‘What’s there to do once the countdown’s over?’

  She laughs. ‘Oh my dear, sweet Steffi.’

  I reach over, pick up a handful of woodchips and toss them at her. They scatter over her jacket, fall into her curls. ‘It’s a totally fair question.’

  Tem twists her fingers into her curls and pulls them in front of her eyes, digging through for woodchip dust. ‘We carried on drinking. Bit of dancing, bit of kissing. You know. Normal stuff.’ The slight edge in her voice surprises me. Is that a dig? Tem never makes digs at me.

  ‘Normal is in the eye of the beholder,’ I say.

  She doesn’t laugh. ‘Is it?’

  I try not to sound offended. ‘Since when do you care about doing what’s normal?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she mutters under her breath, but of course I hear her anyway, as I was probably meant to. ‘Stop being so judgemental, Steffi. It’s weirder to be the seventeen-year-old who doesn’t go out drinking on New Year’s.’

  ‘Ouch,’ I say quietly.

  I wait for her to apologize, but she looks away from me instead, pushing her feet against the ground so she swings back and then forward again. In just a few seconds she is zipping past me, a blur of black curls and denim.

  I’m more confused than hurt. I don’t understand why she’s being so defensive with me, when she knows I’m the last person in the world she’d ever need to be defensive with.

  ‘Steffi!’

  I look up. Bell is running over the grass towards me, breathless and excited, holding something between two cupped hands. Davey is trotting along behind her, hopping after every second step.

  ‘Watch out, Bell –’ I start to say, but it’s too late, and of course the inevitable happens. Bell bounds across the woodchips, trips over her dangling shoelace and falls forward, directly into the path of Tem’s oncoming feet.

  ‘Bell!’ Tem yells, trying to twist herself out of the way. She goes flying off the swing, avoiding my little sister’s head by mere millimetres. I can tell that she intends to land on her feet, but the momentum and the twist of the swing ruins this and she lands heavily on the grass instead, cursing on impact.

  Bell, splayed at my feet, immediately begins to wail. I’m already off my own swing, which was practically stationary anyway – an anxious person is a safe person – and kneeling in front of her, carefully easing her into a sitting position. Her face is a blotchy mess of blood, tears and woodchips. Davey takes one look at her and bursts into tears too.

  ‘Shit,’ I say, breaking my formerly unbroken promise to my mother to never swear in front of Bell. ‘Oh, Belly-Bell. Where does it hurt?’

  She doesn’t actually need to answer me, because it’s clear what the problem is when she opens her mouth to let out another ear-splitting bawl. There’s a gaping hole where her two front teeth should be, and her top lip looks like it’s almost ripped in half.

  ‘Jesus, Bell,’ Tem is starting to say as she limps over to us, but she stops herself when she gets a good look at her. ‘Oh shit.’

  My hands are shaking. ‘Bell, stop crying, darling.’ I never say ‘darling’, and the word sounds strange coming out of my mouth. I try to wipe her face, but she just howls and jerks away from me. I have no idea what I’m doing. Shit. ‘Bell,’ I say again, my volume escalating, ‘why didn’t you stop your fall?’

  My beautiful idiot little sister still has her scraped and bleeding hands cupped together, still clutching whatever it was she was coming over to show me. I try to open them, but she’s too frazzled to notice, clenching her fingers even tighter together instead.

  ‘Bell!’ I snap. I know this won’t help anything, but I can’t help it. My nerves have clocked on to the situation and are sending ‘PANIC!’ signals across my whole body. I wrench open her fingers and a bright yellow bottle cap falls out. ‘Oh, Bell, for God’s sake!’

  There’s a hand on my back, and then Tem is squatting beside us both. She keeps one hand on me as she touches her other to Bell’s face, gentle and calm. ‘You’re all right, Bell,’ she says softly. ‘You’ve just had a bit of a bang, that’s all. Steffi’s going to give your mum a ring so she can come and give you a cuddle. OK?’

  Bell lets out a wrenching, hiccupy sob, then nods.

  ‘Don’t we need to go to hospital?’ I ask. ‘Look at her lip. Won’t it need stitches?’

  This is the wrong thing to say, because Bell’s face scrunches in fresh horror. ‘Stitches?!’ she wails, her voice distorted by the shock and the blood. And the mutilated lip.

  Tem gives me a look and I baulk. ‘Steffi’s going to give your mum a ring,’ she repeats to Bell, her voice even more deliberate this time.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, scrabbling for my phone. ‘Yes, she is. See, Belly? I’m calling Mum.’

  Bell looks at me, tears dribbling down her face. She looks so sad and pathetic I almost start crying myself, but Tem gives me a surreptitious shove and I leap to my feet, tapping my phone to unlock the screen and make the call every older sibling dreads.

  ‘Mum? It’s me. Look, don’t panic, but something’s happened to Bell . . .’

  In the end, Bell only needs a couple of butterfly stitches, but the way Mum goes on you’d think she’s going to be scarred for life.

  ‘She might be traumatized,’ she frets.

  ‘She’s clearly not traumatized,’ I say impatiently. If anything, Bell just seems thrilled that she’s allowed to eat ice cream for dinner. The only person really bothered about the hole where her teeth should be is Mum.

  I end up going back to Dad’s house earlier than usual, blaming it on coursework but mainly wanting to get away from all Mum’s fussing. Rita is beside herself, leaping all over me as I drag my suitcase through the hall.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ Dad says, giving me a huge hug. ‘And welcome home.’

  I grin, hugging him back. Dad isn’t really supposed to say things like that to me, but I don’t mind. His house always feels more like home to me than Mum’s, anyway, and I’ve missed him and Lucy over Christmas.

  The three of us celebrate my homecoming with a curry made from leftover Christmas turkey and vegetables and then have a quiet evening in watching Pixar films. We don’t talk about Clark, but he’s all I can think about, and I can tell he’s on their minds too. It’s like the polar opposite of how the last few days have been with Mum, Keir and Bell. Midway through Cars, I fall asleep.

  By the time I see Rhys again, we’ve been apart for over an entire week and I’ve missed him more than I ever thought I could miss someone. He comes over to pick me up and I’m giddy just waiting in the hallway, listening for his car. When I open the door I actually leap at him, throwing my arms round his neck like some kind of period-drama damsel. He hugs me back just as tight; his grin is just as wide, and it feels like something has changed. The word ‘love’ hovers. It waits.

  But not yet. Not quite yet.

  School starts up again and with it normality. It’s Friday and I’m sitting in English, the last lesson of the day before we’re all released back into freedom and the weekend. Everyone is a little bit restless, watching the clock and letting out audible, periodic sighs that Mrs Baxter studiously ignores.

  ‘I want us to think about women and girls,’ she says, her back to us as she writes on the board. I think, as I always do now, about Rhys and his lip-reading. If he was here, he’d be lost right now. ‘How
are women represented in Atonement?’

  I knit my fingers together over my copy of the book and rest my chin on the ridges, listening as Cassidy King starts in on a rant about passive women in books written by men. If I were a talker, I might challenge her on this, but I’m not, so I don’t.

  ‘Are they passive?’ Mrs Baxter asks in a voice that gives away nothing of her own opinion. ‘Wouldn’t you say they are the impetus for the narrative?’

  ‘That doesn’t make them active participants in it,’ Cassidy says. ‘The story happens to the men.’

  ‘Only if by “story” you mean “war”,’ Anthony Mitchell says.

  I write ‘passive?’ on my notepad, then add a few more question marks for good measure. Anthony and Cassidy – who have been on-again off-again for the last three years – start arguing about strong female characters, so I doodle a caterpillar wearing fluffy slippers from one end of my page to the other.

  ‘Let’s bring in some more people on this,’ Mrs Baxter says, her voice cutting through Cassidy’s increasingly shrill tone. Something tells me she and Anthony are off again. Again. ‘Kasia, what do you think makes a strong female character?’

  ‘Not needing a man,’ Kasia suggests. ‘Like, fighting her own battles.’

  ‘Literal battles?’ Mrs Baxter asks.

  ‘Those too.’

  ‘How about you, Steffi?’ Mrs Baxter’s voice is casual. ‘What makes a girl strong?’

  ‘Agency,’ I say. One word. Three syllables. I haven’t looked up from my notepad; my caterpillar looks great in his slippers.

  ‘Nice word,’ Mrs Baxter says. ‘What do you think Steffi means by agency, George? And does Briony have it?’

  I can feel eyes on me, but I still don’t look up. My cheeks feel red but my heart isn’t hammering; my palms aren’t sweating. Under the caterpillar I write ‘agency’ and then add a smiley face.

  Do I have agency? I give my caterpillar a hat with a fluffy bauble on top. OK, yes, I have it. But do I use it? Or do I just let things happen to me?