The Rain (8 page)

‘Not those either,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to make do with what’s left in the kettle. There’s orange juice and milk in the fridge.’

I put the kettle back. I kind of stared at it, and then the tap, and then the sea of containers.
What?!
Was that disgusting little tentacle-y space thing in the house?!

‘Don’t touch any of that water,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll get rid of it.’

I was too thirsty and muddled to start thinking. I flicked the kettle on, poured myself a glass of orange juice and glugged it down. My stomach gurgled horribly.

‘I’m just gonna go to the loo,’ I mumbled.

‘You’ll have to use the bucket,’ said Simon, staring at his list.

‘
What?!
’ I said, but not a yee-haa ‘
What?!
’. It was just a ‘
What?!
’ kind of what, the kind of ‘
What?!
’ that
comes out of your mouth when your brain doesn’t get it.

‘We don’t know whether the water’s OK any more. It’s too risky.’

‘But . . . I need to . . .’ I wasn’t going to put my bum
in
the loo, just
on
it.

‘Sorry, Ru. Use the bucket.’ He added something to the list then.

I poo’d in the bucket (too much information?). I thought I wouldn’t be able to, but I was desperate and anyway I told myself . . . well, it was just like one of the
rubbish camping trips Simon took us on before Henry came along: rain pouring down, squatting on a plastic toilet thing. (We didn’t go to the kind of campsites where there were showers and
toilets and swimming pools and entertainment. Or even other people. We went to cold, windy fields in the middle of nowhere.) I piled layers of toilet paper on top of my poo . . . and even though it
was my own and you can’t smell that like you can smell other people’s – can you? – I felt so embarrassed. I felt . . . so . . . humiliated. Like it was so unfair – on
me.

Bristling – that’s what you call it, when you’re trying to not be cross even though you’re raging – I went back to the kitchen. Simon was making scrambled eggs.

‘I suppose I can’t even wash my hands,’ I said,
bristling
, as I sat down at the table and poured out the last of the orange juice.

‘Or have a shower,’ Simon said, pointing at a pack of Henry’s baby wipes across the table.

NO SHOWER?!
ARE YOU KIDDING?!

Mobile, friends, Caspar. Priorities, Ruby, I thought, priorities. I wiped my hands,
bristling
.

Simon put a pile of toast and eggs in front of me, plus butter and jam and the secret stash of peanut butter. He’d also made a cup of tea.

‘Last cup in the kettle,’ he said as I slurped.

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling totally, bristlingly depressed.

Simon didn’t eat. He just kept staring at his stupid list. He didn’t add anything to it; he just kept looking at it.

When I had finished, I got a glass of milk.

‘Feel better?’ he asked.

It was harder to bristle; I did feel better.

‘Yes. Thanks,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said.

I glugged down the last of the milk – well, almost; I did what you always do, which is leave this little bit in the bottom of the bottle so’s you’re not forced to wash it up
and put it in the recycling. I felt about ready to tackle it; how I was going to get Simon to take me to Zak’s – though I reckoned it would be pretty hard to persuade him until the rain
had stopped. I looked out of the window; it was coming down in sheets, pouring down, from the kind of low, grey sky that’s got no hope of sun in it.

That’s nimbostratus; I know that now. I didn’t then. All I knew was it looked like the kind of gloomy total cloud-out that means forget it: you’re going nowhere.

But I could in a car; if we could just get into the car without getting wet – like if we took that massive umbrella my mum used to keep her and Henry in his stroller dry – and then
we could just drive into the carport at Zak’s place . . . but maybe I should try for the laptop first, check the chat and see what had been going on and –

‘Ruby,’ said Simon. ‘I need to talk to you.’

Here we go. Now I’m gonna get it.

That’s what I thought, you see. The whole world was in some kind of hideous death-fest space-bug meltdown . . . and I was still on the page before, still stuck in yesterday. I still
thought . . . I dunno what I thought! That everything – if it wasn’t exactly the same right now, that it would still be the same . . . later? Tomorrow?

I’m not stupid; I knew something really bad was happening, but at that moment in time I just wanted to see my friends. I wanted my mobile back so I could call Caspar, which I’d never
actually done before – we’d just texted and done the whole virtual flirtation thing a bit – but felt I could now on account of the kissing and the suffering. I just wanted to ring
him, almost as much as I wanted to ring Lee . . . but did Caspar even have his phone, or had he left it at Zak’s? I could get it and take it to him and –

‘Ruby! You need to pay attention,’ said Simon.

I sure did! I was going to have to charm my way out of there; I helpfully grabbed my plate and had my hand on the tap before –

‘No!’ Simon bellowed. ‘Don’t use the tap!’

I sat back down with my plate and smiled sweetly at Simon. Look
contrite
, I thought – which means looking really sorry, even if you’re not. He sighed – not in a nasty
way, in a sad way – and pulled his chair round next to mine.

‘I need you to really listen,’ he said.

OK, I thought, humour him. I nodded, contritely.

‘No one really knows what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Not for sure. But until we know we need to stick to these rules.’

That’s when the list came out. It was basically a to-do list from hell. A hideous, death-fest mega-crisis do-this-do-that tick-list, only it was all don’ts and no dos. You can
imagine what was on it: all the stuff that had been on the radio. All the stuff I’d been trying to block out . . . plus a few things I hadn’t even remembered hearing and that, later on,
I realised was stuff Simon must have thought of.

DON’T GO OUT IN THE RAIN.

(Dur! I thought.)

DON’T TOUCH ANYONE WHO’S TOUCHED ANY WATER. OR ANY ANIMAL. OR ANY THING. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING THAT’S TOUCHED ANY WATER.

It felt like his list was already losing it a bit, but I did get what he meant. I could imagine that horrible microscopic bug thing creeping about everywhere.

‘Zak’s mum said not to touch the car door,’ I said (to pick up some Brownie points).

‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Maybe he’d just let me use the laptop; it was sitting right there, right in front of me and –

‘Ruby! Please! You need to concentrate.’

I peeled my eyes off the laptop and focused on the list. The next item was the freakiest:

DON’T TOUCH ANYONE WHO’S SICK. OR DEAD.

‘That’s horrible,’ I said.

He grunted.

DON’T TOUCH OR DRINK ANY TAP WATER.

He rattled on for a bit then, about how although no one had actually said the tap water was bad already it probably was or would be very soon because people had probably panicked like he’d
panicked and emptied their water tanks, which would just speed up sucking the bad water into the pipes unless you could shut the water off, which he couldn’t because he’d have to go
outside to do that, so even though the water he’d filled up every last container in the house with was probably OK you couldn’t be sure, could you?

‘No, Simon,’ I said, and before he could go on about it any more I read the next bit out loud.

‘DON’T USE THE TOILET. NO BATHS.
NO SHOWERS.

DON’T EAT ANYTHING THAT’S BEEN OUTSIDE. NO FRESH FRUIT, VEG, FISH, MEAT.’

There was a question mark at the end of that, but the meat bit annoyed me; technically, apart from eating fish, I was a vegetarian . . . it was just that it was a bit hard to keep it up
sometimes and there’d been lapses – that Simon knew about and went on about.

‘Yup. Got it!’ I said brightly.

‘And, Ru, this is the most important thing.’

At the top of the list, he wrote one word, in capitals, underlined. Then he wrote over it again, and again. One word:

THINK

‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

It was too horrible; I just wanted to get this mini-lecture/test thing over with, but I knew ‘OK!’ wouldn’t cut it.

‘Like filling the kettle?’ I said.

‘Like filling the kettle,’ said Simon.

Phew. Comprehension test passed. But no –

‘Do you understand, Ruby? You have to think. You have to stop and think, whatever it is, whatever you feel, you have to stop and think.’

‘I get it,’ I said.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What do you get?’

‘That I’ve got to think,’ I said.

‘About what?’

‘About . . . I dunno, about the water and stuff.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

He turned and held my face in his hands; it scrunched the Caspar-kissing sore patch a bit and made it hurt, but I was too freaked out to even say ‘Ow’.

‘Ruby,’ he said. ‘You have to think.’

It was the worst eyeballing he’d ever given me.

‘You have to think about yourself,’ he said. ‘You have to put yourself first.’

Huh?!
My whole life, I’d been told I was selfish. Simon, he’d just say, ‘Will you please stop being so selfish?!’ – while my mum would say something like,
‘Oh, Ruby,’ and I just knew she meant the same thing. And now?

‘You have to think about yourself first, Ruby. About your
survival
.’

Yup, he’d gone from weirding and freaking me out to full-blown scaring me out. He wouldn’t let up.

‘Before you do anything, what are you going to do?’ he asked.

My chin hurt.

‘Think,’ I said.

‘About what?’ he demanded.

‘About me,’ I said. Said? Any second now I could feel I was going to be forced to shout a bit, just to make him lay off.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Think.’

‘About?’

‘ME. Leave me alone, Simon – I’ve got it, all right? I have to think!’

‘About?’

‘Survival!’

‘Whose?’

‘MINE!’ I shouted. I hated him then, more than I had ever done. ‘MINE! ME!’

He let go of my face.

The house was still quiet. I’d shouted and the house was still quiet.

‘
Mum?!
’ I shrieked.

Shrieked; that’s a word for a kind of scream, isn’t it? Not some great howl of a scream, when you know, but the kind of scream you make when –

‘Think!’ Simon shouted, trying to grab my arm.

I was too quick for him. I stormed up the stairs; I flung open the door to their room.

Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . I saw my mum.

She was just lying there, curled round Henry, like she might be asleep. The bed-clothes were all rumpled up. I didn’t fling myself at her, in case she was just sleeping. Yes, I still
thought that was what it could be.

‘Mum?’ I said.

The way she was lying, on her side, she had one arm stretched out across the pillow. Her hand was all bloody. The blood had soaked into the pillow. Her other hand, not bloody, lay on
Henry’s tummy. He was lying on his back, completely still. Only the tiniest little red sore on his cheek.

‘
MUM?!
’

Simon’s hands snatched round my middle and pulled me back. He pinned me to him.

My scream died in the air; it died and joined all the other screams. They live like ghosts, like echoes in the minds of the living.

My scream burst out and died and my lungs refused –
refused
– to suck in air. I wanted to stop, to die with that scream.

‘Breathe, breathe, breathe,’ Simon kept saying. He was crying. He would not let me go.

Then it comes. Your lungs suck in air; your body decides for you. You will live.

You’re one breath away from her, then two, then three, then four, then five.

Mum, I am still breathing.

I don’t know how we got back downstairs. I was sobbing, that I remember. Wailing so I could hardly breathe. But I did breathe.

What I kept trying to say, over and over, was that I knew why. I knew what had happened. Hadn’t I seen the tablets fall? My mum must have reached out into the rain to throw the box to Mrs
Fitch. Poor stupid
Mrs Fitch.

Why hadn’t I realised? Why hadn’t I shouted? Why hadn’t I thought?

And then what? Had she known right away? No . . . or else she wouldn’t have touched Henry. Oh, she would have stroked his little face. Not even enough to wake him. Just the softest touch
on his cheek. She did it to me, still; even if we’d rowed I’d pretend to be asleep just so she’d do it . . . the softest touch and a little kiss.

For the rest of that day, it rained. Simon and me, we set up camp in the sitting room, made Dan-nests there. I guess neither of us wanted to be alone.

I’ll tell you the bits I remember, but – really – how it all went, what we said and did, it’s kind of muddled.

What I do remember, more than anything, was stuff about sound, the torture of it. To begin with, he turned the TV off. Fine, because who would want to see that? Even though it had been on mute
anyway, those pictures – I dunno – they kind of made noise . . . because of how horrible they were, I suppose. But when the TV was off, all we had was the rain. I couldn’t listen
to that . . . but whatever we tried to stop it with – music, a DVD – none of it was right. Cheerful stuff, sad stuff, silly stuff – whatever we tried seemed so wrong, so
angry-making . . . and unless you had the volume up, right up, deafeningly up, you could still hear it: the rain.