The Rain (39 page)

As I made my way to my seat, I noticed a thing. Those other people on that coach, they looked at me funny. They looked at me funny as if . . . they felt sorry for me? They thought I was stupid?
Surely not that they – seriously – thought a girl like me would ever have ANYTHING to do with a boy like Darius Spratt.

I did an emergency rummage in my head.

‘That boy,’ I announced to them all, ‘is a lousy kisser.’

‘SIT DOWN!’ yelled the SIT-DOWN! soldier.

I glared at them all and sat down.

My heart – bristling, bleeding, bruised, confused, messed up good and proper – shut itself up, tight . . . and
right
.

I checked my make-up. It was pretty bad, unfortunately. Worse than I had thought. Amid the swipe and smudge marks, mascara run-off streaks fell like black rain from my eyes.

We passed other gates to other camps. I was so busy sorting my make-up out (it’s a very calming activity, I find) I hardly noticed much, but some didn’t even look
like they were army bases, how you’d think they’d be; they just looked like housing estates behind high fences – you even saw people there, with kids . . . out playing, because it
was sunny and dry.

‘House like that’ll do me,’ said the woman who’d been rude, loudly.

‘Probably have to share it,’ said a bloke.

‘No way,’ said another woman.

But that wasn’t where we were going.

When we finally stopped, it was getting dark.

We pulled up in the middle of this pretty little village.

Sweet little cottages crowded around a sweet little village green filled with sweet little dead people. And a maypole, around which pretty ribbons fluttered in the breeze.

‘This ain’t right,’ the rude woman said.

‘Shut up,’ said another bloke. ‘They know what they’re doing.’

They did know what they were doing. I’d been dumped that many times that day I should have known too. I was being dumped. Again.

They herded us out.

‘What the
is this?’ said the rude woman.

They got that girl’s wheelchair out of the coach; I remember how cool it looked, decorated with a million stickers. Her dad carried her off the coach and put her in it.

‘Now what?!’ demanded a bloke.

The SIT-DOWN! soldier cocked his rifle again. Didn’t he just love doing that?

This bawly brat in his mother’s arms started to cry.

‘The army is not able to accommodate everyone at this time,’ announced SIT-DOWN! soldier.

I saw then that maybe he wasn’t so tough; I saw his fingers all nervous on that gun. It looked like as if maybe he was going to say something else; maybe he was supposed to say something
else . . . but, really, what else was there to say?

‘You have
got to be
kidding me!’ said a bloke.

‘You are NOT leaving us here,’ said the rude woman.

‘You
s!’ screamed the woman with the bawling kid as the soldiers got back on board.

They hadn’t switched off the engine; they were positioned just right to go.

The abandoned (half) coachload of people didn’t even try to get back on board. The soldiers got back on and they pulled away.

All day long, I hadn’t looked at the sky. I hadn’t needed to; it had been sunny and then I’d been at the army place and I didn’t think – for one moment – that
I’d get dumped under . . . The wind had got up and it looked rubbish: a jumbled altocumulus sky, the kind that changes every two seconds and is almost impossible to read. It’s the kind
of sky you only go out under if you have to, and you’d better be quick about it.

Like banging on about dead bodies – which, incidentally, do NOT go zombie grey when they start to go off. They go GREEN; they go GREEN with white mould spots and their lips shrivel and
their mouths rot so everyone looks like LIPLESS MAGGOTY-MOUTHED SPOTTY ZOMBIE ELVES. BUT NORMAL-SIZED. PEOPLE DON’T SHRINK, THEY JUST GO GREEN.
GREEN!
Yes, like not banging
on about that, I also do not want to bang on about the way people behaved – I just want to say that I was brought up to think that if something awful happened PEOPLE WERE SUPPOSED TO HELP
EACH OTHER, NOT GRAB ALL THE BEST SUPPLIES, THREATEN PEOPLE WITH GUNS, MURDER PEOPLE, CHASE PEOPLE, ATTACK THEM WITH POISONED WATER OR . . . OR GO OFF WITH PEOPLE THEY WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO GO
OFF WITH.

OR DUMP PEOPLE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WHEN IT’S OBVIOUSLY JUST ABOUT TO RAIN. PROBABLY.

‘STOP!’ STOP!’ I yelled, chasing after that coach.

Amazingly, they did stop.

Look charming, look contrite, look . . . desperate. That’s how I felt: desperate.

‘Please!’ I said, grabbing at the open door. ‘There’s been a mistake!’

I didn’t know what the mistake was, but I knew there must have been one. (And not mine, surely!)

That soldier, that SIT-DOWN! soldier, he came down to that door and he looked at me; I looked at him. I thought I saw a flicker of something human in his eye. Something human, but maybe only
some flicker of shame. And so he should be ashamed, for what he was doing.

‘Go to Salisbury,’ he whispered.

Was that supposed to be some kind of
joke
?!

‘I’VE-JUST-BEEN-THERE,’ I hissed. Maximum cobra-strike sarcasm.

I’ll remember you, I thought, staring him straight in the eyes. I’ll remember you.

‘To the cathedral?’ he whispered, like I was stupid or something.

I felt like I
was
stupid or something. ‘
What?!
’ I said.

‘GO-TO-SALISBURY-CATHEDRAL-IN-THE-CITY-OF-SALISBURY,’ he said.

HE-DEFINITELY-THOUGHT . . . I was some kind of an idiot.

And then they shut the doors. And then they drove off. Yeah, they left us.

I would have just gone straight home; I wanted to just go straight home.

There was this really ugly few minutes when everyone who’d been chucked off the coach stood in the middle of that pretty little village and raged. That wasn’t the ugly bit; the ugly
bit was when people realised there was no point raging. Then people just split. Some went for houses, some for cars; some teamed up and some headed off alone. A kind bloke helped the woman with the
bawling kid. The rude woman, amazingly, went off with this frail old lady – but probably only because she seemed to be deaf and could put up with the rudeness. That left me, some bloke with
Down’s syndrome (like Ronnie’s brother had), another old lady, the wheelchair girl and her dad standing on the pavement.

I split.

Ten minutes later I was back with a car. Think that’s because I’m a nice person? It’s not. I’m the kind of person who leaves a hamster in a car, who forgets to feed
guinea pigs – every day, for two years. Why I went back wasn’t really because I couldn’t ignore them (like I’d ignored Melissa, the Girl Guide girl). It wasn’t even
that the thought of those people left there would chew deep into – and feast upon! – the massive guilt I already felt about a whole load of things I couldn’t even exactly name
because I couldn’t even exactly think about them (like Melissa). Those people left on the pavement, they probably would have been OK. I’m sure they would. Why I went back, really, was
because some creepy bloke from the coach who said he was an artist had been following me about, trying to get me to go with him.

‘Safety in numbers’, that’s what I thought, as I hammered on the horn to summon my new passengers.

That wheelchair girl, she smiled when she saw me; her face lit up and she grinned at me like I was her best mate.

Please, please DON’T, I thought.

‘Hello! I’m Sagal!’ she said, beaming at me as her dad helped her into the passenger seat.

‘I’m Ruby,’ I said in a dead voice.

The dad, who had climbed into the back with the others, asked Sagal a question; she said ‘Ruby’ and he gabbled on again. The only word I understood was when he repeated my name.

‘Abo – my dad says to say thank you and to tell you that you are not useless after all,’ said Sagal.

Whoa. From somewhere deep inside me the spirit of yee-haa arose.

‘YOU
WHAT?!
’ I said.

Before I could stop her, Sagal translated that.

It seemed to be an accurate translation – even the tone of her voice and the steely gaze matched – and her dad, looking fairly cross, launched into a long speech.

She grinned apologetically at me as her dad banged on.

‘Does he want to drive?’ I whispered.

‘He’d love to, but he has no UK licence,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s against the law.’

Oh, for crying out loud . . .

It’s international, I guess, cross parents banging on. What’s less widespread as far as I know is us actually bothering to listen. Even though Sagal had to translate, she asked
questions too; we both did. You kind of didn’t want to believe it, and at the same time . . . you totally could. And you weren’t really allowed not to, because everything the dad said,
the old lady (Margaret) agreed with. Even the guy with Down’s syndrome – his name was Peter – agreed: ‘Listen to what you’re told, Ruby!’ he said to me.

(And how the
had Peter ever made it to the army place on his own?)

(And
! I hate that I can even remember these people’s names! I hate
that.)