Rain

by Kate Le Vann

  This isn’t right, Rain thought. The year is wrong. Something’s wrong.

  6 September

  Mum went unexpectedly crazy at me for coming in so late last night. I’d told her before I went that I was going to see the band play so she knew I was safe – well, you know what I mean. Mum is pretty cool, and we have obviously talked about sex a lot – about the importance of condoms and how you should be sure that you’re sure, and that you feel safe before going ahead and all of that. She acts like everything’s okay if that’s what I choose. But I think she really doesn’t want me to do it, because she goes nuts when it looks like I might be. Hot and cold. Is everyone’s mum like this?

  Q called when I was crying and feeling dodgy, and it was like the previous day had been ruined. He said, ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong?’ and thought it was him I was angry at, and I had to tell him it was my mum, and then he said something horrible about her and I was furious at him because I bloody LOVE my mum and I know why she goes nuts, and I hate it when anyone doesn’t understand her. They don’t even know each other, but they get so angry at each other. So now I’m angry at everyone and can’t stop crying. The thing is maybe I don’t know if I DO know enough about him to have sex, if we can still argue like this. But I argue with my mum all the time and we love each other. And I love Q. Even if I am angry with him right now. And angry at her. Angriest at myself.

  Still 6 September

  Q called again and said, ‘Can we be friends?’ I just stayed silent, listening to him breathing into the phone, holding my breath so he couldn’t hear me breathing. He said, ‘I’m sorry, Sarah.’ I said what are you supposed to be sorry about? He said, ‘I didn’t mean to be hard on your mum, because I understand why she worries about you – she loves you. And you can tell her why she shouldn’t worry. I love you too.’

  He loves me.

  I knew he loved me but to hear him say it! All my bones seemed to go soft. It was like being kicked, but instead of pain feeling warmth and peace and mad happiness.

  But she’s not going to have sex with him, Rain thought. Rain’s bones had gone soft, too. How can this be dad? Dad wouldn’t be in a band, he can’t even sing! He’s a geek! This isn’t dad. This isn’t my dad.

  7 September

  First day back at school and it was surreal being a schoolgirl again when I’ve just spent months out there in the real world with a real life. Now things are like they used to be, but with all the colour drained out of them. I have to smile at jokes that don’t seem funny any more, while the funniest person I’ve ever met isn’t there, and if he was he’d say something just right after everyone else had finished laughing, then just me and him would laugh. It’s not good that I can’t get on with my friends the same way I did, and I really want to feel like I used to feel, but at the same time I put on the laughter and try to keep my head on the job. All I want to do is talk about him, but I know I’d drive people mad. Besides, what we have is for just us, I don’t need to brag about it and stuff.

  There are teachers again, people whose job it is to think you’re wasting their time, and you have to call them ‘miss’ and ‘sir’ and ask permission to leave the room and I just want to say to them, ‘It’s over. You don’t mean anything to me any more. Life isn’t about iambic pentameters and quadratic equations, it’s about the people you love.’ If I said this to my friends they’d tell me to take my head out of my arse! Ha ha! And they’d be RIGHT. And I still don’t care because I am in love. And I am loved.

  I took some non-schooly clothes in with me and changed in the loos before I left, redid my make-up with all my pencils and lippies rattling in the sink, so I (hope I) looked okay when I met Q. It’s still light quite late – the clocks haven’t gone back yet – and still warm. We met at the statue of Eros (ahem) and went to a photography gallery near Leicester Square for the opening night party of a new exhibition there – a set of pictures taken in the Vietnam War, and they were beautiful but so sad and horrible that near the end I started crying and when I tried to blot the tears I smeared all my make-up and looked terrible. Afterwards, I didn’t want to go anywhere fancy, so we got some chips and sat in Soho Square. It felt madly glamorous, though, going from an art opening to a shared tray of chips outside. A little old man tramp came up to us and said we made a lovely couple and asked when we were getting married. I felt my head boil up with blush and Q just smiled and neither of us said anything. Maybe I should have said something so he didn’t think I was thinking about it! Made a joke. Said, ‘Not bloody likely!’ or something.

  But the truth is I could see myself with him for ever.

  30 September

  Last night I had sex with Q.

  ‘No!’

  Rain realised she’d said this out loud. She hoped no one had heard her.

  ‘But you didn’t!’ she whispered. ‘You’re lying. And even if you’re not lying you’re going to meet my dad in no time at all and you’re going to know what love is really like. You’ll fall in love and it will be the real real thing. And I’m proof of that. You just have to hold on a little longer until he gets here.’

  Last night I had sex with Q. Is there any other way of saying it? Slept with? That sounds like what old people do, people in their thirties and forties. Made love with? That sounds like what creepy old people do. Or people on Dynasty – Blake Carrington would have made love. We had sex. It hurt. Q kept saying, ‘Are you okay?’ and I told him how much it hurt and he stopped and I said I was okay, then he’d start again and it hurt more and didn’t stop hurting until he’d finished, but I stopped telling him it hurt. But just before he’d finished,in amongst the pain, I felt something that might just also feel nice – really nice – but I couldn’t focus on that feeling because of the pain. Then I got all weirdly giggly, and Q was upset because I was lying there laughing my head off, and then I was angry because he was upset and then I just started crying and couldn’t stop. I acted like a complete freak. And then he held me, and said he loved me, and I closed my eyes and tears kept coming out of them, and I was making weird breathy sobbing noises that I couldn’t stop making and I tried to stop all of it, the crying and the noises, but I couldn’t. He lay there with me, kissing my cheek gently, stroking my hair back from my face, me with my eyes closed and my face wet with tears. Eventually I fell asleep.

  I woke up not that long afterwards, it was still dark but I couldn’t see my watch and didn’t want to wake Q, so I don’t know what time it was. He was lying with his arm over me, snoring, and I lifted my head to look at his face. I thought, yesterday I loved you, do I still love you today? I didn’t hurt anywhere, but my mouth was woolly from the wine we’d drunk. Dawn was breaking and the room was cold. The bed seemed dirty, the mattress all thin and unevenly squashed, the sheets dark blue, and it was so far from the way I wanted things – a big high bed with white, white sheets and feather pillows, the morning all golden with bluebirds singing outside, and me smiling. I lay there and thought that I would never have this moment again. Then Q made a strange snotty sound and woke himself with a cough, and I looked around for places to hide, and he opened his eyes and looked at me, and for a moment his face was just … so innocent and so worried and lost and … beautiful. He found my eyes and looked into them, questioning, eyebrows shrugging, and then he winked and said, ‘Morning, gorgeous.’ And I knew how to answer my own question. Yes, I still love him today.

  It was the last entry. Rain stared at it with eyes so dry that she could hear herself blink. Then she gasped, and started counting on her fingers.

  PART TWO

  Rain’s diary

  29 July

  I can’t ask Dad. I can’t ask Gran. If I was born a month premature then there’s a chance … but how could my mum have found my dad so soon after what I just read?

  How could she have loved him?

  I can only think that something must have happened between her and Q, like maybe he did something that made her hate him. Was he just trying to get her into bed and then, as
soon as he had, he changed? Why did she stop writing?

  And then I keep coming back to the obvious. It makes me sick with fear. I called Georgy, but she was all busy and shouting at her mum about whether she needed wellies because they’re going on holiday tomorrow and I was too nervous and too ashamed to tell her. I don’t even know what I mean by that – why would I be ashamed? My dad is my dad: he’s the person I love most in the world and nothing is going to change that.

  But does he know?

  I didn’t sleep last night. I tossed and turned and kicked and sighed, then I got out of bed and looked for a follow-up diary, one that mentions my dad, and then I surfed the net. Georgy won’t have the internet or even any mobile reception where she’s going, it’s the middle of nowhere, because her mum wants her dad to forget about work and this is the only way she can get him to do it. And I’ve sent my dad on a working holiday because it’s the only way I can get him to relax! I wish I could talk to Dad about it, but if he doesn’t know – how could he NOT know? If my dad isn’t my dad, she must have been pregnant when she met him … but she might not have known she was pregnant. Maybe even Sarah didn’t know who my dad is! Oh, that’s just STUPID and IMPOSSIBLE. Why didn’t Mum keep writing? Can’t ask Dad, can’t ask Gran, I’m completely alone with this. Well, there’s Harry, Harry’s the only new person I know, but I’m not about to start telling him, he’d think I was some kind of basket-case. Well, maybe a stranger is the best person to tell … but not a stranger you sort of might fancy, probably. I’ve just got to keep this to myself, or even better, try not to think about it.

  But how can I think about anything else?

  Chapter 7

  Harry was on his hands and knees when Rain found him in the living room the next morning: he was reading the instructions for an industrial-strength steam wallpaper- stripper which were opened out over the floor in front of him. Rain didn’t speak for a moment: this was not because she didn’t want Harry to know she was there. She was just so exhausted from the previous night’s diary reading – and the shock and sleepless overthinking it had led to – that she felt quite a wreck this morning, and almost couldn’t remember how to talk. Harry looked up and saw her and his face creased in a big smile, and she felt warmer all over and less like a wreck.

  ‘Hey, here she is,’ Harry said, so loudly that his voice boomed in the empty room. He stood up. ‘Rain, this is Maddie. Maddie, Rain. I’m expecting you to get on because you both have weird names.’ Rain looked where Harry was looking, at a very beautiful girl who was sitting behind Rain on the floor, long legs in jeans stretched out in front of her.

  ‘Oi, you!’ Maddie said, deftly throwing her balled- up hoodie at Harry so it hit him straight in the face and tumbled to his shoulder, where it hung without falling further. ‘Rain is a beautiful name. And you should think before being rude to your boss, Harry. Hi, Rain, it’s lovely to meet you.’

  ‘Well, you too,’ Rain said, feeling confused. ‘Um .. . Maddie isn’t weird at all, either.’

  ‘It’s short for Madrigal,’ Harry said, removing Maddie’s hoodie from his shoulder as if it was an unruly cat. ‘It’s pretty weird. We’ve roped Maddie in to speed us along with the interiors – remember Vivienne wanted us to get a move on and asked me to find help? I know she looks like a skinny posh girl who’s never done a day’s work in her life, but it turns out her Swiss finishing school did courses in Ancient Greek, etiquette, and spreading Polyfilla.’

  ‘And judo,’ Madrigal said, glaring at Harry with a pouty smirk. ‘So watch it.’

  Vivienne came in with a bucket full of decorating tools, from which she took some small paint-strippers.

  ‘Any luck with the machine, Harry?’ Vivienne said. ‘I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Well, to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered to read the manual, and it wasn’t immediately obvious how it worked.’

  ‘Yes, it should be pretty straightforward,’ he said. ‘As far as I can see, the only way it can go wrong is if your walls are made of chocolate.’

  Vivienne laughed. ‘Right, I’m going to go and make some tea. I’ll keep the KitKats away from your steamer.’

  ‘What have you got planned for today, Rain?’ Harry said, when Vivienne had gone.

  ‘Well, I’m helping here, obviously,’ Rain said. ‘Many hands make light work.’

  ‘Ah, but too many cooks spoil the broth,’ said Madrigal with a giggle. She pulled herself to her feet, and she was even taller than Rain expected. ‘I expect you’re dying to get out and see some proper shops, Rain! Harry said he took you to Covent Garden, and then to buy a chainsaw? Poor you, you’re really getting a taste of the glamour of London, eh?’

  Rain felt her stomach turn to dust. She’d had a great time with Harry and thought he liked being with her. But in fact he’d come straight back and told this … girl about it and couldn’t have made it sound like much fun.

  And, it was almost like this Madrigal was telling her to go away. Who the hell was she to tell Rain to leave her own grandmother’s house? Surely when her gran had asked Harry to bring in another pair of hands, she’d meant another BOY! Otherwise, why couldn’t Rain do whatever Madrigal was going to help them with? Rain was boiling with the kind of rage you only get when you’re being weedy – when the only person you dare to give a hard time is yourself. She meekly left the room, though not the house, retreating upstairs. But in her bedroom she was trapped with the horrible secret she’d found in the diary. That her mum had loved someone who wasn’t her dad at the time Rain was conceived. She needed to tell someone, she needed to shout it at someone, she needed someone to hold her by the shoulders and tell her everything was okay. And as Rain paced about the bedroom and stared desperately out of her window looking for that someone, she knew why she was so angry with Madrigal: she’d already wished it could be Harry.

  There was a knock at the door and Vivienne walked in with a cup of tea.

  ‘I told you I want to help, Gran,’ Rain said. ‘I thought I was doing okay in the garden. And before you say it, no I don’t need to be going around seeing more of London, I need to be seeing more of my granny. Who I haven’t seen for most of my life. So why is that girl here?’ As she talked she heard her voice getting higher and closer to tears but she didn’t care.

  ‘That’s why,’ Vivienne said, looking at her granddaughter squarely, ‘Madrigal is here. You and I are going shopping today.’

  Rain grinned. ‘Oh, okay.’

  In the streets around Vivienne’s house, Rain started noticing a lot of the girls and women were dressed in a quite similar way and it was a much fancier way than she’d seen before – at home, and when she’d been out with Harry. There were a lot of beautiful dresses in bright colours with expensive shoes and bags, and Rain started to feel hot and dowdy in her jeans.

  ‘Maybe I should have worn a dress,’ she said at one point to Vivienne, really just thinking aloud.

  ‘Do you want to pop back and change?’ Vivienne said. ‘It is going to be hot today and we’re not far from home.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got a dress with me!’ Rain said. ‘Well, I know I haven’t because I don’t actually own any dresses.’

  ‘We should do something about that,’ Vivienne said. ‘Everyone needs dresses. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Rain!’

  ‘I don’t really know that I’m a dress person,’ Rain said, blushing. ‘You know how some people are jeans people and … ’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, not you,’ Vivienne said, turning down a small road to the right. ‘You’ll see – there’s a shop along here and you’re going to want everything.’

  Rain wouldn’t willingly have gone into a ‘boutique’ shop in Meersley, because they tended to look like charity shops that only sold beige clothes and might have smelled of cats. De Facto was nothing like that. It was like a cool girl’s boudoir, with little crystal chandeliers and chaise longues, long ornate mirrors and curtains and gorgeous velvet-tied necklaces thrown casually on counters. An icily-beauti
ful Japanese assistant was lounging near the window, flicking through a magazine. When Vivienne held up a dress and asked about it, she came over in a second, nodding excitedly about how much the dress would suit Rain and stagily whispering that they’d sold one like this to Keira Knightley. Rain had never tried on anything this expensive: she knew she wasn’t going to buy anything, but it was really nice dressing up and having someone with her who made her brave enough to be there. Vivienne leaned against the wall and when Rain came out of the changing rooms in various outfits she said things like, ‘Oh, you could be Mary Tyler Moore’ and, ‘No, no, the trouble with that one, if I’m being honest, is you look like a call girl. A nice call girl, though.’ Rain looked really different in dresses like this: not like herself – tidier and older, in a way that she loved. She’d always been on the scruffy side, but here she was in a little sugar-pink Sixties-style number looking like – well, not quite like Vivienne said, but not like a teenager who dressed down in old comfy jeans and dressed up in new dressy jeans.

  ‘Let me buy this one for you,’ Vivienne said, when Rain emerged in a gorgeous grey shift dress with little cap sleeves. It had a prim little white Peter Pan collar, and a killer-short A-line skirt.

  ‘Oh, Gran, I love it, but the truth is I’m never going to go anywhere posh enough to wear it.’

  ‘You’ll be going to places with me that are posh enough to wear it! Besides, that’s nonsense, it’s just a little everywhere everything dress. You could wear it to Tesco.’

  Rain argued and Vivienne paid, and Rain only felt a little bit guilty walking out with her boxy cardboard bag, because Vivienne was so sweet and dismissive about buying it. Rain thought that this must be what shopping with your mum was like. She felt a sudden sad-angry pang because she’d never really had the chance to do it with her own mum, whereas her friends luxuriously tried to get out of shopping with their mums or got indulgently stroppy with them. After years of hardly seeing her gran, she now had this moment with her, and she wasn’t going to waste it on feeling sad.