by Kate Le Vann
I’m glad you’re getting on with Vivienne. Personally I’ve always been a bit scared of her, but men should be scared of their mothers-in-law.
It’s strange for me spending so much time without you, and to be experiencing this beauty without my favourite person in the world. I miss you very much, Rainy.
Love Dad
Rain smiled with real pleasure, thinking of her skinny father with his slightly wild hair and bright, brilliant eyes, gasping with pleasure at his strange sunrise. Her own eyes filled with happy tears.
Georgina’s email was still downloading because it had so many attachments – seven photos.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Holy Moley it’s Toni’s Birthday!
Date: 27 July 8.55 a.m.
To: [email protected]
I look drunk in all these pictures, but I wasn’t. I just blink a lot. A photographer once told me I would never look good in pictures because I have a slow, frequent blink. Anyway! Here, here and here am I in your green silk top and towards the end of this photo story you’ll see the other person who got inside your green silk top that night! (BUT THAT WAS ALL!) Rain Rain Rainy Rain, I got off with James Stephanos! Do you forgive me? Do you think he pretended it was you? Seriously, are you okay with this? Email me back immediately.
James Stephanos had been Rain’s very first boyfriend, for two weeks back in Year Eight. But she’d had a crush on him for two years before that, so really it had been more serious than it sounded. The relationship, when it happened (and set up by none other than Georgina), had been a disaster, with neither of them having anything to say on the three dates they went on, and Rain eventually trying to avoid him in school. It ended politely and with no heartbreak on either side – just an easy, straightforward mistake, like getting a pair of shoes home, realising you would never wear them, and taking them back the next Saturday. And Rain laughed out loud when she read Georgy’s email … but, as she was looking carefully at all the pictures, she did feel quite sad about Georgy and James kissing. It made her feel forgotten.
From: [email protected]
Subject: We can never be friends again
Date: 27 July 9.22 a.m.
To: [email protected]
Kidding. James got further with you than he ever did with me, you tart!
Was it a drunken mistake or do you like him? Why didn’t I know anything about this before? Or was there some moment at the party where everything changed? You can’t leave me dangling like this! I’m going to press send, and then I’m going to phone you! So expect a call before you even READ this! Here I come!
Rain leaned back from her computer and sucked her lips. Everyone was getting on very well without her. Her dad was eating proper breakfasts, Georgy was eating James’s tongue. It was all good. It was what she’d have hoped would happen. So why did it make her feel lonely? Or was she just missing them? She found her phone, raked back her hair with her fingers, pulled herself together, and called Georgina.
‘All right, you vixen, tell me what happened,’ Rain said.
‘Seriously, Rainy, are you okay with it?’
‘I’ve had two boyfriends since James, what are you talking about?’ Her voice squeaked, as if Georgy was totally crazy.
‘I know that, and I wasn’t seriously worried because if I’d been seriously worried I’d have left him alone. I just want to be sure. It’s WEIRD you not being here. It’s WEIRD going to things without you.’
‘It might be WEIRD for you, it’s torture for me. What have I missed? Who else got off with who?’
Georgina talked and talked and Rain listened and laughed. She loved more than almost everything in the world the way her best friend told stories, including every detail, remembering every word of every conversation, and tantalisingly focusing on something apparently unrelated and trivial that would be important later. She SHOUTED when she got excited. It was almost worth missing things to have Georgy get her up to speed.
Georgy eventually remembered to take a breath. ‘All right, your turn,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything you’ve been doing.’
Rain felt a little rush of panic as she decided whether or not to lie. ‘Well, I’m in a really nice part of town, the weather’s been … oh, Georgy, the fact is I’ve spent most of the time in a cupboard.’
‘What do you mean, a CUPBOARD?’ Georgy said. ‘What about the gorgeous handyman-type boy?’
‘Oh!’ Rain said, blushing suddenly as she thought of Harry and the way she’d first described him to her friend. ‘We sort of had a moment. I mean, we’re friends now. Just friends.’
‘JUST friends? What’s this moment? The cupboard action didn’t involve him, then?’
Rain explained how the cupboard action had not been at all romantic. Georgy listened, her impatient interruptions coming less often, her voice softening. ‘Oh, sweetie. But you’re in London and you’ve been there more than a WEEK. You have to get out and see things. At least go shopping! Do it for me! You know I’d swap places with you in a second.’
‘If only you could come down,’ Rain said.
‘And you know I’ve got this majorly tedious family holiday in a few days and I can’t come and see you for at least a month, if at all. Oh, WHY do my parents have to go away for three weeks anyway? People go to ANTIGUA for three weeks, not to the middle of nowhere. I know my dad loves hanging out with his sister and it’s sort of fun, sometimes, with everyone there, but it’s still probably illegal to make people stay so far away from the internet for that long. My sister and our airhead cousins will drive everyone INSANE because they’re bringing their karaoke machine, we’ll all have run out of things to say to each other by the end of the first week, it’s STUPID and it’s SCOTLAND, it won’t even be WARM! Oh, anyway, there’s nothing I can do.’
‘Yeah … ‘ Rain said, quietly, then more brightly to turn down the guilt trip, ‘Listen, it’s fine here. I’m getting on really well with my gran. We watch DVDs together and she’s funny and lovely and I’m really glad I’ve got to spend this time with her. I just miss you.’
‘I would KILL to be there,’ said Georgy. ‘You know that.’
‘I like our gang. Our gang of two,’ Rain said. She heard raised voices in the garden and crossed the landing to look out of the window on the other side of the house. Vivienne and Harry were staggering under the weight of a huge tree and both laughing. She realised she wasn’t going to spend another day sitting around not being involved in this. She carried on watching them as she finished talking to Georgina and then found a baggy pair of combat shorts and her comfiest Converses and went out.
‘Right, I want to help!’ Rain said. ‘Today I’m going to help you both in the garden.’
Harry and Vivienne exchanged a glance.
‘Okay,’ Vivienne said. ‘But no telling your father I’m working you like a common servant.’
‘Hey!’ Harry said, raising one eyebrow. Vivienne laughed.
‘I’ve bought your soul, Harry, I’ll call you whatever I like,’ she said. ‘Do you want to take a break and go and get us some lunch, and Rain and I’ll fill the skip?’
Rain felt a small lurch of disappointment in her stomach because Harry was going.
‘This place already looks so different,’ she said to Vivienne.
‘I know,’ Vivienne said. ‘I’m rather proud of us. Harry’s a good kid, I got lucky finding him.’ She tossed a roll of plastic bags at Rain, who caught it, to her own amazement – she’d spent her life being picked last for netball. Rain tore a bag off and copied Vivienne, who was filling her bag with small leafy branch cuttings. ‘But I think we’re going to need help for the inside.’
‘Are you going to hire a proper decorator?’ Rain said, again disappointed because this seemed to spell the end of Harry’s help. The twigs spiked her hands but she didn’t want to complain and look wimpy already.
‘Oh no, I’m just going to see if he can haul in a friend of his to help. I know what I’m doing! It’s just that I
do want to get it over in the next few weeks and it’s too much for two people.’
‘Three!’ Rain protested.
‘Well, too much for three!’ Vivienne said. ‘Especially as I want to take you into town while you’re here. Rather than stick you with the hardest work you’ve ever done.’
‘Oh, this is not the hardest work I’ve ever done, thank you very much!’ Rain said, mock-offended. ‘I’ve just left a good Saturday job with Graydon-Hervey Shoes in the centre of Meersley. Average customer age seventy-five, and, if they’ve forgotten to wear their support stockings, I have to gently roll the snaggly, grey ancient pop sock over their blue corny feet. So it might be the hardest work you’ve ever done … ‘
‘I can beat that.’ Vivienne smiled. ‘My first year as a student nurse and one of the patients, Mr Dalender, died with his mouth wide open. Matron told me and my friend Lucy to put his false teeth back in and get him ready for the morgue. But no matter how many times we pushed the teeth in, his jaw kept falling slack and the teeth dropped out again. By now Lucy and I were laughing hysterically and there was no way the patients outside couldn’t hear us.’
Rain had started laughing so hard that she had to sit down on the warm grass. Vivienne sat down next to her and went on: ‘So I had this brilliant idea of tying a bandage under his chin to the top of his head to keep his mouth shut. Lucy is tying the bow on the top, pulls too tightly, and the teeth shoot out. By now the pair of us have lost it completely. The other patients in the ward have seen us pull the curtains round him and now they’re listening to us making these high-pitched squeaking noises – I couldn’t even breathe any more – and then they see the teeth fly out through the tiny gap in the curtains.’ Vivienne’s voice was getting higher as she told the story. ‘I peek out and grab them back, then we just shove them back in his mouth. This time they stay, and the mouth stays shut, but we still have to get him on to the trolley. The two of us – I was your age and about your weight, a skinny little thing – put his arms over our necks and try to heave together. But a dead body is really heavy and Mr Dalender was pretty fat, so he just keeled forward, and as he does that, he lets out this horrible loud GROAN! We nearly shat ourselves.’
‘Oh my God he wasn’t DEAD?’ Rain said, thinking, ‘Did my granny just say “shat”?’
‘He was dead! But dead bodies still have air in their lungs and we’d squeezed it out – that’s what made the groan. Of course we thought he’d come back to life and the pair of us screamed and I dropped him, his body lurched to the side then slowly out of the bed, and we scream again, then just stand there watching uselessly as his teeth roll out one more time.’
By now, Rain was cackling helplessly, crying and getting a stitch in her stomach, while Vivienne was making strange squealing guinea-pig noises along with her. At that moment, Harry came through the back door with their lunch and stood looking at them.
‘Okay, I don’t want to know,’ Harry said. ‘The pair of you just terrify me.’
Chapter 6
Sarah’s diary
17 August
Why do I only write my diary when I am blissfully happy or suicidally depressed? The future me is going to think I only had two emotions! Mad ones at that! But I am, Older Sarah, perfectly, amazingly, madly happy today! It’s midnight and I’ve just got in from the gig. I went with Nicola and I got to talk to QV again!
Rain felt her lips tighten and her eyebrows inch together. It was late, she’d been reading since midnight, but tonight she was losing herself in her mum’s life. Sarah’s first kiss aged fourteen on holiday in St Tropez, with a tall Irish boy who told her her lips were made for kissing, and she hadn’t been able to stop giggling. Her fifteenth birthday, when Nicola had poured extra alcohol into the punch Vivienne had made for them all, and Sarah had taken the blame. She was starting to get to know all the characters. Nicola wasn’t a good friend to Sarah. In fact, in her opinion, Nicola was a flighty … well, bitch, who treated Sarah like crap far too often, expecting her to be there when she needed her, then ignoring her when other friends Nicola could use more came on the scene. Rain pulled the blankets tighter around her in bed, feeling suddenly cold. She read on.
QV is so perfect for me. I spend whole days after seeing him being excited and shivering with pleasure at the thought of things he’s said – sort of whispering them out loud so I can hear them in my mouth – and remembering the way he looked at me when he said them. I come down with a case of grins, smile in that stupid uncontrollable way, sometimes I even start laughing JUST THINKING about being able to see him soon. We talk about things the same way – like we make jokes but don’t laugh out loud at them, we just keep on talking, all deadpan. I love his voice and his face, and he gets me and he knows what’s cool and what’s not. He’s read everything. He has this vast knowledge of Sixties bands – well, he’s obviously going to be into music! – but he loves classical music, too. I think he likes me. I don’t know if he likes me that way, but he’s spent more time with me than he had to – he could have gone straight home tonight after his gig but he asked if I wanted him to see me home and I said no because I didn’t want to look pathetic – but was that a move? What if he really wanted to walk me home and was put off because I said no? And now he thinks I don’t want to spend any more time with him! OF COURSE I want to spend more time with him but I didn’t want him to go out of his way, I didn’t want him to be annoyed with me or think I was some wimpy little sexist girly. So I said no, HOW STUPID am I? Or maybe I did the right thing because it’s better to play hard to get because he’s older than me and obviously out of my league. Or maybe that was my ONE CHANCE and I BLEW IT. Oh, please fancy me, QV, because I am going crazy over you.
It was quite a sad turn in Sarah’s story, really, because Rain had looked at the date on the front of the diary, and this was late in the year before Rain was born. In just a couple of months – or less! – Sarah would meet Sam Lindsay and fall in love with him, really in love, and … the forecast for the following June would be Rain. Rain sounded out the letter Q in her head. Qua, quer, quee. Quentin was the only boy’s name she could think of.
Er … Quincy?
Or maybe it was a nickname, like a rap name: Quali-T or something like that? ‘After his gig’, the diary said, so he was some kind of musician? But was Sarah writing too long ago for that sort of thing, rap names like that? The trouble with Sarah’s diaries was all the gaps – she’d write every day for a week, even two weeks, and the entries would stop for a month or even more and the cast would have changed and someone important would have come out of nowhere. This was the first time QV had been mentioned in the diary, and he’d come after one of the bigger gaps. As Sarah said, she tended to turn to it when she was very unhappy, putting down sad little entries about how Nicola hadn’t asked her to some big social event, or how she wasn’t pretty or funny, so no one would ever like her.
They were difficult for Rain to read. She had days like that, too; everyone did unless they were superconfident, and who was? But it was harder to think of her mum being sad when Rain was only just coming to terms with the thought of her mum being a real person. Before, when she’d thought of her, Rain’s emotions had been rushes of warmth and safety; but also a huge, painful love she could never hold tightly enough, and that made her afraid. Something else, too – a dream-like, Princess Diana, fairy-tale sense of confusion, as if maybe it hadn’t all been real. Now this: too real, too sad, too much emotion to put together.
4 September
So … the fact is, he kissed me.
In the National Gallery!
We were in the room with the Caravaggios – the best room – sitting on one of the curvy leather seats looking at QV’s favourite, and the place was totally empty. Except for the guard, who was a woman about my mum’s age, and she was just slumped in her chair looking bored and deliberately not looking at us at all. We sat there for ages just talking and talking and laughing about the picture as if we were alone in our own living room – we w
ere being a bit rowdy, actually, and I was convinced the guard would throw us out even though she wasn’t looking, so I said shhh really quietly, and he repeated it back at me, taking the piss out of the quiet way I’d done it, and I gave him my meanest look, trying not to giggle, and he leaned forwards and kissed me. Just a little, soft, soft kiss, not some big snog like the boys my age would have tried to get away with. I pulled a shocked face at him, and he put both his hands up as if to say sorry. He didn’t kiss me again. I overreacted! But I was joking, I didn’t mean him to think I was genuinely offended. How do I make him kiss me again?
5 September
It’s 3.15 a.m. and I’m still awake on the most perfect night of my life, and I don’t want to go to bed because the moment I fall asleep it ends. We walked along the South Bank and held hands, stopping to kiss and look out across the river. It still looked like summer, but when twilight fell there was a bluey coolness in the air and I felt that time was rushing away from us and started to get goose-bumpy. Q took off his coat and wrapped it around me, and the breeze from the river rippled his shirtsleeves but he wouldn’t let me give him the coat back. Then we held each other and I’ve never felt like this about anyone before – it was like electricity passed between us. He was hugging me so tightly and I wasn’t sure I was standing on the ground any more, and when I opened my eyes he was still right there with me and I couldn’t believe I could be so lucky. How has this happened to me? This is love. It is LOVE. This is the love that people die for and kill for. But it can’t be happening to me! I don’t have feelings like that and, much more importantly, it is impossible that anyone could feel like that about me.
But when he holds me, when he kisses me, it’s like our souls are touching.
I’m so tired but I can’t sleep. I can’t let this day end. This is our last weekend before school starts again and there will be no more days that are just ours, not for so long. I can’t let this day end.
