by Kate Le Vann
Rain’s diary
20 July
How long does it take for a face to go from streaky to normal again? Outside, my gran is doing gardeny things with a student called Harry – more about him later. Inside, I’m hiding in my room until it no longer looks as if I’ve been crying all morning. Harry is going to think I’m a complete freak, or a pampered princess, or both. This is my second full day here and I keep waking at ten and going downstairs to find him and gran up to their elbows in soil and worms, having spent the morning uprooting trees with their bare hands. Although why should I care what he thinks?
But I hope my gran doesn’t think I’m lazy. I really love her in ways I’d never dreamed I would. She’s funny; she tells hilarious stories about living in Germany and her ninety-year-old mother-in-law trying to fatten her up. She’s so young-seeming – I know some of my friends’ mums are as old as her, but she’s not mum-like either. She’s loud and bouncy and always rushing around and it hasn’t felt uncomfortable being around her, the way I was afraid it might be. I still worry about us running out of things to say to each other! But I think the more time we spend together the more we’ll have to talk about.
I miss Dad. I keep expecting him to be in the next room, I keep thinking I’ll be able to talk to him later. All the same, it’s good that I’m doing this alone. I’ve spent years always covering up my sadness about mum because I didn’t want my dad to see.
But he can’t see me now.
And I have more to cry about than ever; she’s here. She’s in everything. The mum I knew and the mum I didn’t know, and I’m trying to knit the two together so I can come up with one person, the real her. I just wish I had a spare year to work this out and feel fine about it and then I could go back to my dad and I wouldn’t have a streaky face and I wouldn’t make him sad. To begin with I have to work on just going downstairs and seeming normal.
Harry is here all day long. He gets on really well with my gran, and she doesn’t seem to notice or mind that he’s a big-headed pretty-boy. He seems to be always making fun of me, which is driving me round the bend. My gran may be posh and live in a big house in a fancy area, but I’m not like that. And, you know, she’s not like that! Her second husband left her with lots of debts and she’s just come back to a life she left years ago and she’s making her way through it completely alone and she’s doing bloody well. Why do I care and why do I even think I know what Harry thinks? I only just met him. He has nice hair. He smirks too much. You know what? I don’t like him.
Chapter 3
Although it wasn’t a very big garden, Harry and Vivienne seemed to be producing endless bags of waste from it every single day. Rain often peeked out at them, watching Harry tearing at branches with his bare hands, and feeling guilty for not being any help to them. Still, she told herself she was also pretty busy doing reorganisation inside the house, and she hoped it wouldn’t be totally unhelpful to her granny. Plus, Vivienne kept coming in with bits of twig in her hair, assuring Rain she wasn’t needed in the garden, and they spent their evenings together, sampling more of Vivienne’s experimental cookery and watching American medical dramas.
On Saturday, Vivienne knocked on Rain’s door. The muffled reply seemed to come from next door. She knocked again and went in. There was no sign of Rain, the cupboard door was open and the floor was absolutely covered in junk.
‘Rain?’ Vivienne said.
‘I’m in the cupboard,’ Rain said. She backed out and smiled at her granny. Her dark brown hair was grey with dust, her cheeks were flushed. ‘This probably looks a bit messy,’ Rain said. ‘But I promise there is a system!’ She sneezed.
Vivienne was more amused than she let on.
‘You’ve been doing this for days,’ she said. ‘You’ve barely been out. It’s Saturday morning, it’s summer and you’re in a cupboard. Now, does that sound normal?’
‘I know, Gran, but I started finding things and I couldn’t stop. For instance!’ She filled her arms with old clothes and held them up to her granny. ‘My mum’s! Look at this beautiful dress, it’s retro-Seventies and … ‘
‘Retro, is it? That’s my dress, madam, and it’s not retro, it’s genuine old person’s,’ Vivienne laughed. ‘I can see you’re making progress, anyway. Do you have any bags you want me or Harry to take to the charity shop? Clear up a bit of space for you, so you can … carry on?’
Rain rubbed her nose with her sleeve. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I haven’t really organised it as such yet.’
‘Are you okay?’ Vivienne asked. ‘I think there are better things you could be doing here.’ She took the top book off a pile of her daughter’s old books and looked at it. On the back cover, Sarah had written her full name – Sarah Devonshire – in the fat, balloon letters she and her best friend had spent a summer practising.
‘Gran, I promise I will come and help you soon! I just thought if I sorted this out, all this stored stuff, that that would be helpful too, a little bit?’
‘Rain, you didn’t come to London to help me tidy my house or my garden or anything at all!’ Vivienne said. ‘I don’t want you to be unhappy here, that’s all.’
‘Oh, Gran!’ Rain said. ‘I’ve never been happier.’
Vivienne understood perfectly; she longed to sit on the floor right now and start going through the pile of Sarah’s things, holding her belongings. But it would be different for her; it would feel like intruding. She’d never have done it when Sarah was alive, and Vivienne respected her privacy now. She was also afraid of becoming too upset. For Vivienne, it wouldn’t be about discovering who her daughter was, it would mean tumbling into the cracks of a heartache that she could still only just skate on.
‘But you know,’ Vivienne said, gently. She knelt down next to her granddaughter. ‘You have all summer. I won’t rush you or start throwing things away. It’s time you saw a bit of London. It’s quite a cool place.’
‘No, I do want to go out more.’ Rain looked apprehensive. ‘It’s just all a bit … And I know you’re really busy just at the moment.’
‘Well, all this is quite true,’ Vivienne said, ‘but you’re going with Harry this afternoon. I’m sending him to Goodge Street for a chainsaw.’
‘A chainsaw?’ Rain said. ‘Well, why am I going with him? He’s really going to love me tagging along, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t think he’ll find it that much of a chore,’ Vivienne said. ‘He needs a break, you need a break.’
‘Well you need a break more than anyone,’ Rain said. ‘Why don’t you and I —’
‘I might be in pretty good shape but I can’t carry a chainsaw around, and by the looks of things nor can you. Anyway, I can’t leave Harry on his own, he’ll dig up the wrong things,’ Vivienne said, getting up.
‘But why do I need to go with him?’ Rain replied. ‘And where is “Goodge” Street?’ She said the name as if it was a weird foreign word. ‘The thing is, I’m happier here and I know he’d be much happier if —’
‘No excuses. Okay, I have to get back to my composting,’ Vivienne said. ‘It’s sunny today, by the way … ‘ She was gone, the door clicking shut behind her. Rain wrapped her arms around her head and gave a little scream.
She had been making her way through a cardboard box of Sarah’s schoolbooks when Vivienne had come in, and it didn’t take long for Rain to lose herself in them again. Even the boring books were fascinating – her mother’s careful little drawings of chemistry experiments made Rain just love her so much, the swirly style she wrote her name in on the front of each one, and the way for the first few pages of a new book her writing was so beautifully neat, then a few days later turned into a reckless scrawl. ‘Would she have liked me,’ Rain thought, ‘if we’d met at school? Would we have been friends?’ She imagined them both in school, checking each other out, or heading out in a group to the school disco. ‘How,’ Rain wondered, ‘do people see me anyway? What am I like?’
She was thinking so hard that she barely noticed the books she’d
been so fascinated by, moments before. Her head was almost whirring. But it was all forgotten in a second when she opened an orange exercise book with nothing written on the front cover, and read the first line inside:
This is going to be my first diary as a teenager: let’s hope enough happens in my life to make it interesting.
Rain hadn’t been expecting to find a diary, and she discovered there were more: actually a few years of entries in little exercise books. According to the dates written inside them, they covered her mum’s life from the age of thirteen all the way to sixteen. Even before her head had time to get excited, her heart started beating like crazy. A hot and cold emotional rush swept through her. Was she the first person ever to read them? Rain leafed through one of them from the top corner, opening it just enough, her shaky fingertips slipping between the pages and enjoying the crinkliness, the little bumps pressed into the paper by her mum’s biro. Every page was written on. Sarah’s thoughts, her memories, answers to questions that Rain had been asking all her life, here, right now, in her hands. She took two deep breaths, uncrossed her legs, and started to read.
Sarah’s diary
13 April
Just back from the youth club, which is always a bit of an event even though it should be the most boring place in the world. It’s run by church people for one thing, and they only sell Penguins and Panda Cola. Tonight there was a big fight between Nicola and Joanne Ridley. It started because N was talking about J’s friend Suzanne in the loo but J WAS ALSO IN THE LOO and heard it all. When it kicked off, there was a Madonna song playing, that smoochy one, but no one was slow-dancing. I was leaning against the wall wishing Paul would look over, just once, but I was also desperately not looking at him – but I’d still have seen if he’d looked, out the corner of my eye. Then I noticed everyone looking up and Nic & Joanne were face to face on the stage, which you have to walk across to get to the dance floor. But what a place to fight. N knows loads of Fourth Years because until last week she was going out with Dan from the Fourth Year.
Rain stared at the paragraph she’d just read, and tried to go through it again, but it was sort of hard work. There were too many names to keep in her head and she was trying hard to remember them. It was just a story about lots of people she’d never know doing things that didn’t even involve her mum. She just hadn’t imagined her mum’s secret diary would be quite this … ordinary. Were her own diaries as boring?
I’d heard it was Suzanne who split them up, but I haven’t talked to Nic about it. Joanne told N it was no wonder Dan dumped her and everyone watching gasped. But N laughed and said she’d dumped Dan and she didn’t care if Suzanne had her sloppy seconds. Joanna got really wound up and said it was her business if people slagged off her friends and Nic had better watch out! Then N put her hands on her hips and raised one eyebrow and said, ‘Ooooh,’ acting pretend-afraid. Some boys giggled. It was probably the COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN.
Rain unconsciously raised an eyebrow at this. ‘Oh, Mum, it was not,’ she whispered, smiling.
I was scared for her, though. It wasn’t so long ago that Nicola was my best friend. I know she ‘demoted’ me when she started going out with boys and hung out with Karen more, but in a way that was the natural thing to do because Karen hangs out with boys more. I was still hoping she’d be okay. You don’t mess with Fifth Years. But when the boys laughed, when she had the boys on her side, Nicola knew she’d won, everyone knew. I looked straight at Paul. He was smiling at Nicola and my heart hurt. I wish I was pretty.
Rain sighed. She wondered what Paul was like and if he’d ever looked at Sarah. Rain’s dad was called Sam. Sarah had been thirteen when she wrote this. Right at this moment, she was older than her mum. Sarah seemed small and vulnerable and Rain wanted to protect her.
Vivienne brought Rain a sandwich at lunchtime and Rain swore she was almost done and she’d be down soon. She took a bite of the sandwich, realised she was starving and ate the whole thing in seconds.
Sarah’s diary
2 May
Debs and I spent the day in Covent Garden, buying mad things at the Covent Garden General Store: groovy new pencil cases and stationery. We had lunch in the café there and eavesdropped on a couple of ACTORS at the next table talking about auditioning for a film. We didn’t recognise them, but they were still very glam, a boy and a girl, both gorgeous. When we got out to the cobbledy bit, we noticed a couple of lads looking at us and they started following us. Older than us, it was exciting but scary. We only managed to get rid of them at Miss Selfridge, where we spent an hour putting on tons of Kiss & Make-up stuff. Then we went back to Covent Garden, hoping we wouldn’t see the lads again. And we didn’t.
I love being there, though, you pick up on all the tourists’ good vibes and start feeling like YOU’RE on holiday too. When the sun started to set, we noticed these big screens around the square, and they started showing an opera LIVE on them. It was playing at the Opera House, but inside, obviously, and they were broadcasting it outside, to everyone. I’ve never heard an opera before (and tend to run from the room when my dad starts playing classical music), but it was so amazing, being outside with all these people listening to that beautiful singing, for free, together. Oh, but we had to leave before the end to get home! Then we were messing around trying to sing the soprano’s song while we were waiting for the Tube lift and when the doors opened there was a full lift of people gawping at us as if we were drunks or escaped lunatics, and we were crying with laughter all the way back.
Rain took the plate downstairs.
‘Is Goodge Street anywhere near Covent Garden?’ she said.
Chapter 4
Rain sneaked a glance at Harry as they sat together on the front seat of the top deck of the 23 bus. She was trying to work out how annoyed he was that her gran had made him take her. Harry was looking down, trying to scratch a spot of dried mud from the knee of his jeans. She peeked at the long thick lashes over his eyelids, at his mouth, which was softer than the rest of his face, full lips curved into a slight smile, his bafflingly sexy neck. He looked up and caught her looking.
‘Okay, so it makes sense for us to go to Covent Garden first,’ he said, ‘and we’ll get the chainsaw last, because it’s always better not to walk round town with a chainsaw.’
‘I’m sorry you got dragged into taking me out,’ Rain said. ‘I’m totally fine on my own. We can split up and meet again in an hour or so and just tell Gran we hung out together.’
‘What would I tell Vivienne if you got lost?’ Harry said.
‘I’m not going to get lost!’ Rain said. ‘This is ridiculous. I do not get lost, by the way.’
Harry turned away from her, smiling, and she could hear him humming a little tune as he looked out of the window. Then he leaned towards her, his shoulder pushing against hers, teasingly. She quite enjoyed the way he made her flop to the side every time he pushed, even though it was also, obviously, irritating. She leaned away from him.
‘Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?’ Harry asked. ‘Are you meeting someone? A boy you met on the internet? Hmm, what would it be … a Harry Potter board?’
‘Yeah, well, better Harry Potter than Harry … Flowerpotter!’ Rain said, and immediately felt really stupid. Harry turned away again and laughed with his mouth closed; his shoulders jumped a little, twice. He didn’t say anything, and they rode for a while in silence.
‘No, I’m not meeting anyone,’ Rain finally said. ‘I just don’t want to put you out and bore you.’
‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen,’ Harry said, then added, softly: ‘I know you’d rather be on your own, but Vivienne probably has other ideas.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, didn’t you ask yourself why she sent us out for the unique street-market bin bags at the furthest end of the market? How much did she save? Fifty pence?’ Harry said.
‘Huh?’
‘I think she’s afraid of you going anywhere on your own until y
ou know the place better and she’s using me as your personal Sherpa. I could have got a chainsaw closer to home, but she wants you to venture out a bit further today, I expect, start using the buses.’
Rain realised what he was saying. Oh God, he was having to look after her because her gran thought she was too afraid or too stupid to go out alone. ‘Yeah, I kind of worked that out myself,’ she said, sounding sulky to cover her embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry you applied for a gardening job and ended up as a babysitter.’
‘Don’t make me feel bad,’ Harry said. ‘I think Vivienne doesn’t really know how to handle you yet – she’s a bit shy about taking you round a town she hasn’t lived in for years, she has no idea where a teenager wants to go. And she knows I can handle you very easily.’
Rain flushed with anger at Harry’s sly smile, but replied coolly, ‘A teenager? WOW, are you really twenty years old? You’ll let me know if I do something hopelessly immature, won’t you?’
Harry glanced at her from under his thick eyelashes, enjoying her sarcasm. The bus had reached Marble Arch, which she’d heard of, but she didn’t really know what it was. It was a little bit puny. Rain had been to Paris on a school art trip, and they’d seen the Arc de Triomphe, which looked like this, but bigger and brighter and not just stuck on a traffic island.
They turned left and came to a halt. After about five minutes not moving, Rain said, ‘What’s going on? Why have we stopped?’
