The Rain (5 page)

‘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 that:

‘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.

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 to 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 . . .

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.’