A Little Rain

by Dee Winter

  “What is going on? I mean, why the rush?”

  “Seriously Ella, this is not a joke.” I start to feel angry. I think she’s hiding something from me. I think she’s lying. Something has happened to Rob. “Ella, come home, please. We need to talk to you.” I hang up the phone. It looks like I don’t have a choice.

  My foot hurts again with a twinge, an ouch and a throb. I start to look for my bag of painkillers but they have gone. I thought they were by the sofa. I look around but I cannot see them anywhere. I look in cupboards, under cushions and even in the microwave, places where I know they won’t be. My foot hurts more still and I get frustrated, hot and angry. Then I think Rob has moved them. Oh God. He’s taken them, he’s gone and taken an overdose with my painkillers. He’s gone and done himself in. That’s why mum rang me. He is dead! It hurts all over now, inside and out. I feel like I’ve been shot in the foot, put through a meat grinder, then sprinkled with lemon juice and chilli powder. I’m burning up and will just have to make do without my drugs bag. I find a box of Paracetamol in the drawer in the kitchen. I take three with a full glass of warm tap water and say a prayer for my liver. I start to dress slowly, carefully reassembling myself in the grubby clothes I wore yesterday. I gently pull on my smelly trainers leaving the laces untied making a mental note to put them in the washing machine soon. The backs slide off my heels with every hop. I find my crutches lying on the floor nearby. I pick them up, cold metal in hand, one by one, and summon all of my strength from deep within. I have to do this. I go back to my phone to call a cab. They know it’s me. I’m in no mood for small talk. I say, “Hurry it up, yeah,” and then sit on the sofa and wait.

  I still think Rob is dead but an edgy sense of unreality has crept up on me like I’m in some sort of living nightmare with every second that passes. I feel maybe I haven’t woken up from my drug-induced sleep and none of this is real. Maybe I imagine this. Then I see something, folded up just near the foot of the coffee table, looking out of place like it is not supposed to be there. Maybe it fell out of Rob’s pocket. I pick it up, feeling the dry soft paper, and flatten out the pale yellow A4 sheet that smells of glue. It had been screwed into a ball and then flattened out and folded up again. I feel like I’m on quicksand. I feel horrible sinking despair. Something has changed. An uninvited harbinger has placed this in my palm. I start to read from the very top.

  Dated two weeks ago, addressed Mr Roberto Carlos Roman. It must be serious. I never read anything with his full name on it for as long as I can remember. In fact, I think I almost forgot what his middle name was. I read on.

  EVICTION NOTICE

  You are hereby given an eviction notice and notice to vacate the above premises on or before Thursday, 16th November, 2000... I skim forward. ...excessive damage, noise and deterioration to the property caused by the tenant and those residing in the premises...

  I don’t read it all. It’s too long and wordy. I can’t take it all in, but I get the gist. We’re being thrown out of this place in two days time. Two more sleeps. I’m convinced now more than ever he has gone and done himself in. This is his secret. It makes sense now. He has taken my pills. He is dead. Mum lied. I sit with my notepad and blue chewed pen and write.

  “Shock”

  Get out. Leave this place.

  Leave a chill, an ache

  A spine tingle.

  A deep dark hole carved in your soul

  Frail, delicate, so severe

  In disbelief, you do not hear

  Emotion shock, so single.

  I want my mum but I want Rob more than anything. I want to go there right now but feel like I cannot move at all, stuck to the sofa with superglue. The pain in my foot though has been surpassed my something more almighty. I feel like I have fallen down a manhole and someone’s shut the cover. I have been run over by a bus and there is no-one to pick me up. An atomic bomb has gone off inside me. I am forty thousand specks of dust. I hear the cab beep twice outside. I don’t move. I don’t think I can.

  I hear the car horn again, this time louder and for longer, like a ship’s foghorn in the night. I know it is not going to wait forever. I have to move. With a crutch handle in each hand, I force myself to stand on my good leg, feeling like a felled tree that is now upstanding and about as stable. I take a little money in my pocket from the coffee table. That’s all. I can only just about bring myself. I swing forward to the door and open it to the misty dark ahead. Headlights shine on in front of me. Thankfully I do not recognise the driver of the black estate car that reminds me of a hearse. I am like the dead body in the back just missing my coffin. I raise a crutch to the driver, a signal why I am slower than a snail. As I carefully close the door behind me, I realise there may not be many more opportunities like this, of me leaving this place. I just stand there staring at the door, looking at it in a different way. The solid wood, the peeling paint, duck egg blue. Letter box with knocker, Yale lock slightly wonky. Splash stains and marks of origin unknown. Tiny little dents, long line scratches, fingerprints and paint drips dried into little beads. The cab beeps again.

  The door is closed and I swing towards the car, slowly, carefully. I open the door, crutch still in hand and swing myself and the sticks onto the back seat. The grey cushion beneath me feels damp and cold. Inside it smells oppressively of a tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear view mirror, only just masking the slight but unmistakable whiff of weed. The driver does not say hello or even smile, or get out to help me close the door or anything. There is no music playing. The radio is off. We sit in awkward silence the whole way. I appreciate the quiet. Music would annoy me, especially some fizzy pop drivel.

  I pass the driver a five pound note so crumpled it feels like a tissue. He takes it greedily with his dirty hand, which I’m thankful does not touch mine. Now he gets out of the car, opens the door and helps me with my crutches. I am able to move again.

  14

  The Dead Walks

  It’s a long slow process getting up the stairs to mum’s flat. I take one green slimy step at a time, enduring the smell of stale piss the whole way. I try not to breathe at all. It takes longer than the entire cab journey did to get to her front door. I bang on the glass of the yellow wooden doorframe, criss-cross protection bars blocking my view in. The perfectly painted door is opened. I see him as he stands there tall by the low kitchen table, his hand resting on the bottle green cloth. I don’t know whether to scream or laugh or hug or hit him. I feel like I could actually murder him with my crutch. Bash him over the head with it until he’s not standing up anymore. I say, “Rob?” and he looks at me coldly, but I sense the startings of immense warmth in my tummy and heat rushes to my cheeks. Then I feel dizzy as I feel the blood fall away from my face and then it all goes black.

  I do not hit my head when I fall. I just slide down onto the floor. Now my hip hurts too and is throbbing slightly. As I come round I find myself lying flat out and uncomfortable on the ancient Parker Knoll. Mum perches on the mahogany coffee table next to me, pushing the lace table centre, like an oversize snowflake out of place. This irritates me. “Are you ok?” she says, and I really don’t know how to answer. I’m now recovering from a serious case of mega shock. With this brain-smash overload no wonder I blacked out and now my foot is hurting again too. My head feels like it might blow up, let alone can it now answer the question, “Am I ok?”

  Rob brings in two cups of tea in plain white cups with saucers, no frogs. I hope maybe one is for me. He places them on the table, with a gentle clunk. I glare at him. “I thought you were dead. Dead! But you’re not, you’re still here. You’re here now. I thought you’d gone. I mean like gone, forever... I thought you’d gone and done yourself in with my pills.”

  “What?” says Rob, looking at me like I have a golf ball-sized spot on my forehead. Mum’s face looks worried, well her eyes do, what I can see, most of the lower part is covered by her hand. “What?!” Rob says again, like he may be about to grab me and shake me. He then shakes
his head from side to side and gets up and walks towards the kitchen sink. He leans on the black worktop as the tap drips slowly, a constant unrelenting rhythm of annoyance. He stares blankly at the artificial blue hyacinths in the square glass vase on the windowsill.

  “Hang on a minute... No, wait!” I say, as Rob walks back into the living room. They both look expectant. “So, you’re not going to kill yourself?”

  “NO!” Rob bellows with ferocity that makes the teacups on the table shudder. “What the hell makes you think that?” I pause as something new stirs in me, aggravation.

  I say quickly, “Well, this weekend, all that’s happened, and what with my pills when I couldn’t find them. I thought you took them, and of course I was worried what with you not seeing Ruby. Oh, and now I find out that you are being thrown out of the flat on top of everything...” I trail off into the silence of the drips, distant in the background.

  “How do you know about that?” He says quickly, looking confused, head tilted, squinting at me.

  “Err... I read your eviction note. I have it with me.”

  “Really? Oh... Err, I must’ve...” He pats at his back pockets. “I was going to tell you, just the landlord, he wants me out. I think he wants to move back in or whatever... But anyway, I want to get out of there quick now. I’ve had enough of it all to be honest.”

  “When are you moving?”

  “I knew it was coming.”

  “When?”

  “Day after tomorrow. I am going as soon as I can. Like I say, really now I can’t wait to just get the hell out of there. Anyway, I think the break’ll do me good. It’s time for a change.”

  “What? Where are you going to go?”

  “Well, I want to get away from here. I’ve had enough.”

  “What? Where? Are you going to tell me? Y’know, I live with you too. I need to know what’s happening.”

  “You know Ella, you know what I think you need to do, is start thinking about your own life… Whoa!” he says grasping my wrists quickly, stopping me from hitting him. “Listen,” he says softly but urgently, holding on tight. “I’m really sorry that you found that eviction letter. Show me. Where is it?” He lets one wrist go free so I can pull it from my pocket. He then takes it from my hand, walks in to the kitchen and starts to burn it over a flame he lights on the elderly gas cooker. He then he places the blackening note in the kitchen sink. I can smell the burning paper. Mum watches on silently. “I’m sorry you had to find it.” He says, shaking his head.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, fire burning inside me. “Still, seriously, what are we going to do? Where are we going to live?”

  After a very, very long pause he speaks, “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What? Oh great… we can’t all squash in here with mum...”

  “No… no...” He shakes his head again. “You and I both know we can’t stay here.”

  “Then why are you here?” He is silent again, maybe to choose his words, or else he’s contemplating whether or not he should tell me at all. “Why?!” I almost shout, knowing now that I am not going to like the answer whatever it is.

  “I’m going to see Dad. I’m going to go and live with him.”

  This is new. A sudden unexpected, unimaginable, complete surprise and it hits me like a cold red house brick thrown bang in my face. A pit has opened up beneath me and I feel myself falling through the earth towards the edges of eternity. “What?” I manage to say, grasping blindly at the sides of the hole.

  “It’s ok. He’s got the space there so I’m going to go and stay with him for a bit.”

  “And you think he will be ok with that? He hasn’t been part of our lives for what? Twenty years? Are you crazy?” I feel so mad that I have now managed to climb out of the hole and I am about to go and karate kick him in the face and knock his head off.

  “Not crazy, desperate maybe. I don’t really have a choice.”

  “What? Of course you have a choice. What am I going to do?” I get another sinking feeling, slippery quicksand time again. “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “What? What are you sorry for?” Rob says.

  “I’m sorry. I think this is my fault. If it wasn’t for me and what happened with Benny, he wouldn’t have come here and wrecked the flat. I feel like it’s my fault you’re going. I don’t want you to go.” He gets up, rubbing his face with his hands and walks out of the room completely, closing the door behind him.

  “Well…” I say to mum and she looks at me silently, “Have you already talked about this with Rob then? Have you told him where to find our dad?” It hurts inside even to say these last two words, I almost couldn’t say them at all. They don’t exist to me. It makes me wonder how much more this must be hurting mum. I go over to her and give her a hug. She does not move her arms but puts her chin on my shoulder. I can feel her trembling under the soft folds of her cream sweater beneath my fingertips. I know she is crying inside but she barely makes a sound. “Oh mum,” I say slowly, “I thought Rob was dead. I was shocked but just so happy to see him when I walked in. I was furious, yeah, but so happy. I mean, I read his eviction letter. I really thought he was dead. I thought he’d gone forever, but now I’ve walked into this. Surely you’re not going to let him go? You’re going to stop him, right?”

  “Oh, I’m not going to stop him,” she murmurs, clearly unhappy in voice.

  “Oh mum,” I say, grasping her hand. “He can’t do this to us. I don’t want him to go. What am I going to do?”

  “There is something, one other thing, he wants...” she says, but trails off. Her voice is black, a picture of sadness, like a sparrow with a broken wing.

  “What?” I say and she is silent for a while more. “Please tell me what?” I feel inside like I want to burst. At the same time I desperately try to keep hold of the parts of myself, before they escape away forever, like little helium balloons.

  “He’s going to go there and see him now. He wants you to go with him.”

  She puts her arms around me and stops me from falling down on to the floor again, as the blood drains from my head for the second time today. I don’t pass out this time. I lean on her heavily, the falling tree against her stick-like frame. I just about stay conscious as the blood surges around my ears as well, and my heart thumps in my chest bomp bomp. I have never met my father. I watch my hands and arms shaking. I cannot stop them. I unpick myself away from her delicate body and go and take the packet of cigarettes from my bag. I continue to tremble as I try in vain to light one. I can’t even make my lighter work. My thumb gets hot and starts to hurt. I give up. Instead I light up using the flame on the cooker. Mum looks at me through pink eyes. I can smell gas. “Sorry to smoke in your kitchen,” I say, “but my dead brother is alive and I might be about to meet my might as well be dead father too. It’s a bit of a shock to the system. I know you can’t be feeling great either and I’m…” my voice shakes, like I’m standing on spin dryer.

  “You don’t know how I feel!” She snaps, taking me by surprise. I glare at her.

  “You’re right! I don’t, and I sure as hell won’t if you won’t speak to me.” She’s silent. “I know you don’t like to say, but I know it must be hard for you, it must hurt you as well, and that Rob feels forced to go to that bastard as you can’t help him.”

  She slaps me quite hard, square across my face, but not so that it hurts. It makes my ears ring and the noise hangs awkwardly in the air like a surprise unwanted guest and for longer than the smack actually existed. Something inside says strongly, I deserved it.

  “Ok, I’ll just shut up now,” I say, sharply.

  Rob suddenly crawls back out from wherever it is he went, like a spider from a crack in the wall, drawn out by the sound of skin on skin, phone in hand. He looks at us both and says gently, “Look, I heard everything you just said. I do want you to come with me, but there is something else I need to tell you, Ella.” I stare at him, like a ghost, transparent, motionless. My cigarette still burns
silently, a plume of wiggling smoke rises from my still shaking hand. “I just made a phone call. I need you to just listen to me now. Please, listen.”

  He then starts to speak differently little words come like coins plucked from thin air, flashes of silver. I can taste a lemon sharpness. The atmosphere has a jagged edge. The air in fact must be solid, holding me up. There’s no other explanation as to how I could be standing. “Look, now hear me out on this. You know Heather, our new neighbour in the flat upstairs, well I met up with her on Sunday, when you were back in the flat with your French fella. When I came back and saw you with him, I didn’t want to disturb you. Trust me. I could see you were a bit of a state. I didn’t want to freak you out even more by barging in on you both. But seriously, I was made up seeing you with someone else, and not that Benny lad. So, anyway, I left you to it. I knocked on Heather’s door and said Hello and said that I would like to take up her offer of a cup of tea. So, I went up to her place and had a chat with her.”

  “What? You saw… Wait… You’ve been in her house and had tea with her!” I feel like the kid at school picked last for the team. But no time to play green-eyed bitch, I’m so intrigued at what he’ll say next, I practically want to rip the words out of his mouth, while at the same time I’m feeling completely and utterly mortified beyond words that he actually saw me with Etienne, and that he just told mum. A heady mix of burning curiosity and withering shame. I just stand there. My knees are bent, shoulders hunched and all my teeth are showing. I can barely even balance now even with my crutches.

  “Well, it’s nothing much and not a lot to get excited about, but I told Heather that I’m moving out soon. I told her that you wouldn’t be coming with me and that you would probably have to come back here and live with mum and that’s when she told me she’s got a room going spare. It’s nothing big or fancy at all. But she knows you’re at college and only working in the pub and that you’re not bringing in much money, but I told her what a good housekeeper you were and all about your cooking and cleaning skills. I said that you like to do the shopping and stuff too. I even said you could walk the dog.” I feel even more unsteady now, but this time a good unsteady. A little dizzy and tingly excited, like a child in bed on Christmas Eve, but I don’t believe in Santa Claus.