The Rain

by Virginia Bergin

  It’s not like you ever give any thought to what a town sounds like – you don’t; why would you? – until it stops sounding like a town. When we went outside there was no people noise whatsoever. There was just birdsong, loud like you never hear it.

  A second later, when the gate clanked shut, there was another sound, which was dogs barking and whining. Dogs barking and whining inside houses. I heard the howling of the terrier that lived at the end of the terrace; I could see Mrs Wallis’s grumpy shih-tzus, Mimi and Clarence, at the sitting-room window, a low line of nose-slime smeared on the glass where they had been running back and forth on the windowsill, yapping. Her Siamese cat was upstairs, calmly watching us from the bedroom window. (She was called Ruby, which freaked me out when she went AWOL at night and Mrs Wallis wandered up and down the street going, ‘Ruuuu-by! Ruuuu-by!’) You couldn’t see Whitby, the golden retriever at the corner house, but you could hear his big boomy bark somewhere inside.

  What you could not hear – or see – was any of their owners.

  The part of me that knew their owners were dead wanted to say to Simon, ‘Stop, let’s rescue the poor pets!’ But I wanted to believe those people were still alive, that even if they weren’t there right now they’d come home and be really upset if their pets were gone, so I said nothing.

  We walked on, rucksacks on our backs. I felt like a criminal and we hadn’t even done anything yet. I said I didn’t want to go in our neighbours’ houses; I didn’t want to go in any house that belonged to anyone I knew, not even people I didn’t know know, but just knew from seeing them about. That pretty much ruled out the whole of our road. There were other houses we could go to, down the town end of our road, but I didn’t want to go there; I didn’t want to go anywhere close to the shops, where there might be other people about – people going crazy, people with guns. So we went the other way.

  Simon stopped outside a house towards the end of our road.

  I shook my head. ‘Not this one,’ I said.

  I didn’t know the people there at all, but I could picture them: this un-Dartbridge-like couple with smart suits, shiny cars and no kids. So we headed off our road, up another road. He stopped outside the next house. I didn’t know who lived there. There was no car outside; no dog barked, no cat watched. I’d run out of reasons to say no.

  We went up to the front door. Simon knocked.

  We stood for a while, the afternoon heat baking down on us. Simon knocked again. No one came.

  Simon got the crowbar out of his rucksack, put on a pair of super-tough gardening gloves.

  ‘Can’t we just call them first?’ I whispered. I was so worried there would be someone in that house. Someone alive. Or dying, but alive. ‘I mean, they might be in. They might just be scared.’

  ‘OK, Ru,’ said Simon.

  He bent his head down, lifted the letterbox and shouted.

  ‘Hello?’

  When there was no answer, he gripped the crowbar.

  ‘Once more?’ I said.

  Simon bent his head down to the letterbox and opened it. He peered in.

  ‘Hello?! We’re neighbours!’ he called.

  No reply.

  He looked at me; I nodded. He smashed the glass in the door.

  That smash; it was so loud. It felt like the whole of Dartbridge would hear it.

  ‘If someone comes,’ he said, ‘you run home.’

  It seemed a little late to be saying that kind of stuff, but maybe that smash had freaked him too. It felt like you could still hear it, echoing across the whole town.

  He reached his hand in and tried to open the door. He couldn’t.

  I’d been learning a lot of stuff about Simon, how clever he was; what he wasn’t clever at, at all, was breaking into houses.

  ‘We’ll go round the back,’ he said.

  Really, that was what we should have tried first. We went round to the side of the house. We tried the back door – it was locked – so we peered in through the kitchen window.

  It was easy. He smashed it, he opened it and he climbed in.

  I hated that, him being in there and me being outside. If something happened to either of us . . .

  I tried not to think about that. Without being told to, I kept watch while Simon ransacked.

  He handed me a tin of fruit salad and a bag of ice cubes. At this rate we’d have to break into about fifty houses just to get through a single day. And if we ever wanted to do something hygienic – like get enough water to actually ever wash again – we’d probably have to break into the whole of Dartbridge. I was just about coping with babywipes but, although something told me Simon wouldn’t consider it a priority, I was dangerously close to running out of that spray-in dry shampoo stuff. I’d actually had to move on to the blonde glittery stuff, which was strictly reserved for nights out because if I wore it in the daytime it looked kind of . . . ‘You look like you’ve got dandruff,’ was what Dan said, doing pantomime choking after I’d sprayed it. Brat. (And, NB, I probably wouldn’t have had to use it in the first place if my mum would actually let me dye my hair.) (And which, NB, I suspected she would have crumbled and caved on if Simon hadn’t gone and agreed with her the first time she said no.)

  Thinking about all that made me completely depressed. In every way.

  ‘Shouldn’t we leave a note or something?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Simon, climbing back through the window.

  I think I kind of glared at him. It could have turned into a row, but – honestly – I was too depressed to bother.

  ‘Ru,’ he said. ‘I know this feels awful, what we’re doing now, but it’s what we have to do. I don’t think these people are coming home. I think a lot of people are dead, Ru.’

  There: it had been said.

  The next house was more difficult, but had much better pickings. It wasn’t more difficult to get into – they’d left the back door open – but . . . it smelt like our house smelt: sweet and spicy. Thing is, what was in the fridge and the cupboards was so good you didn’t even care: juice, soya milk, bubbly water – and vino collapso supremo, said Simon, stuffing a fancy-looking bottle of wine into his rucksack as I glugged down juice.

  The third house, and the fourth? I got over myself. Yes, we still knocked and shouted, but you kind of knew no one would come . . . and though I felt that dread, about what we would find (dead people), I sort of also felt this weird thrill thing, this weird hungry energy to get stuff. The buzz when you find something. The triumph as our rucksacks filled up.

  At the fifth house, it wasn’t so good. The TV was still on, for a start; the same stay-home, remain-calm broadcast playing. That was freaky. We had to shoo the cat out from the kitchen, from where it was . . . The cat seemed absolutely fine, so I guess nibbling on that body on the floor hadn’t hurt it a bit. We didn’t take stuff from there. We just left.

  How stupid we were. How stupid I was. You need to just take stuff, whatever you can get. People who are dead are dead; they don’t care . . . maybe, even, they’d want you to take it. That’s what I’d want: take it, and live. And good luck.

  We stepped outside into the lovely warm evening. I felt sick – yes – and I felt something else. I felt angry.

  ‘Let’s go there,’ I said, pointing at a big house up on the hill.

  We had enough stuff, really; there was no need.

  ‘Well, I suppose we might as well,’ said Simon. ‘Unless you’d rather—’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

  I assumed Simon was going to say ‘Unless you’d rather go home’ – but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was going to say, ‘Unless you’d rather wait; just sit here in the sun for a moment listening to the birds sing and then we’ll go home’ or, ‘Unless you’d rather go let Whitby, Mimi, Clarence and that terrier out.’ But Simon, who always told me what was what and what I had to do, or else banged on at me until I was forced to say it for myself, did not, on this occasion, this one occasion, tell me what I had to do.

  ‘
OK,’ he said.

  I don’t know why he said that. Maybe he’d got into the weird thrill of it too – I sort of felt like he had – or maybe he was thinking that we should just get as much stuff as we could while we could. I don’t know.

  The big house was detached, no cars about. No dogs barking. I had no clue about who lived there, but they must have been minted. It wasn’t just because it was a big house – I’ve got friends, like Zak, that live in big houses and they’re as scruffy as our little one – it was the way it was: crisp. You know: all primped and prim and proper. A house without a hair out of place.

  We crunched up the drive. We rang the doorbell. They didn’t have a normal ding-dong battery-type doorbell – they had a bell bell. A real bell, hanging outside the door. We clanked on that, then we knocked. What we didn’t do was call through the door. We didn’t say, ‘Hello? We’re neighbours!’

  It was the first house we had come to where the front door was open. We went inside.

  The smell was there to greet us. So was a cat, a little tabby. It came running up behind us from the garden. It didn’t even hesitate; it just purred about us, like we were its owners, come home to feed it. We stepped inside the house and Simon closed the living-room door – but not before I saw . . . there was a body in the front room with a sheet over it.

  We crept through into the kitchen.

  It was a super-bonanza. There was a walk-in larder. Inside it: tons and tons of stuff.

  They must have been at the supermarket or somewhere like that, because there were boxed packs of water bottles, still plastic wrapped. Juice, long-life milk, soda water, tonic water. Tons of it. I felt the thirst kick right back in at the sight of it and I swear I could have drunk every last drop. I tell you: looting, fear, rage and grief make you mad with thirst.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Simon.

  As he loaded up our rucksacks and every other bag he could find, I fed the cat. I found the cat food under the sink; I got a plate and dumped the whole can of food on to it. I mashed it up a bit with a fork. I set it down on the floor and the cat scoffed.

  That’s what I remember: the cat scoffing and me thinking I’d done a good deed. Then thinking the cat might be as thirsty as me.

  There was a bottle of water on the table, and glasses. I picked up the bottle. I unscrewed the lid; open already. And then I thought, yeurch.

  I didn’t think the water might be bad, that wasn’t what I thought at all, I just thought that the bottle of water had once belonged to that dead person, and it creeped me out.

  It was a half of a half of a half of a second; that’s all it took. I put the bottle down, Simon snatched it up. He’d just hoisted his rucksack on to his back. He snatched up that bottle and glugged the water down.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  He stared at me. I stared back. Like he knew; like we both knew. Instantly.

  And then he sort of grimaced.

  A trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Ruby,’ he said. ‘I need to go home now. I need to go home to Becky and Henry.’

  He turned and walked out to the front door; he steadied himself on it. He let out a roar and propelled himself off, out, down the drive, towards home. He went like . . . like I’ve seen marathon runners go; when you can see their whole body yelling stop, stop, stop but they’re just gonna get to that finish line whatever.

  I dived back into that kitchen to grab my rucksack. I think a part of me thought he would be OK, so we’d need all that water and stuff that we’d worked so hard to get. I grabbed the rucksack. I looked up. There was someone standing there.

  Posh man. Grey-haired. Primped and prim and proper like his house. Some weird look that was almost like a slow, astonished smile creeping on to his face at the sight of me – and then he looked at that bottle and that weird look curled up into a miserable frown and turned to stone. Gargoyle face.

  You . I got it; even right at that moment, I got it. He had known the water in that bottle was bad. He had put it there. It had been a trap.

  I plunged out of that house and ran after Simon.

  At the end of the drive I looked back; that man was on the doorstep, the cat in his arms.

  I followed Simon home. I followed him because whenever I tried to get close, whenever I called out to him, he kept waving me back, to keep behind him, and I was too scared to disobey. I followed him, whimpering with fright like a dumb dog. I kept looking behind, but the grey-haired man didn’t come. Simon cried out loud; he spat blood, he choked up blood, he sicked up blood as he went. Halfway along, he stopped, dumped his rucksack, pulled out the bottle of fancy wine and smashed it open on a wall. He swigged from it.

  Glass! I thought, But there’ll be glass!

  He raised the bottle to the sky, roared, then flung that bottle against the wall so’s it smashed into a million pieces, then he staggered on; I heaved up his rucksack . . . then ditched it – the weight was just too much to bear.

  He got to the house; he got up the stairs; he got to my mum and Henry.

  I stood outside their bedroom door. That bunch of flowers I’d left outside, they were wilting, dying. Simon howling in agony. I opened the door. The smell punched me in the heart.

  ‘GET OUT!’ spluttered Simon.

  I won’t ever forget seeing him like that. At least I didn’t have to see my mum and Henry too. Simon had covered them with a sheet.

  I closed the door. I sat outside. The fright in me bit so hard in my guts I felt I could puke too.

  ‘Ru,’ he called, his voice all twisty with pain. ‘Help me. Get tablets. Get painkillers – get whatever you can.’

  I had instructions. I could do something. But tablets? All we had in the house since my mum had chucked the paracetamol to Mrs Fitch was indigestion stuff, hayfever stuff and Henry’s teething stuff. I knew; I’d looked when I still believed what the broadcasts said about paracetamol.

  I went downstairs; I went out the back door. I climbed over the fence that separated the Fitches’ tidy garden from our messy paradise.

  The back door was open. I went in. The TV was on, loud, filling the house with advice that was too late for the Fitches. I went through the stink up to the bathroom. Unfortunately, Mr Fitch was in there. He was the stink. I had to step right around him, thinking that if I touched him I’d die right there with him in their horrible green bathroom. I yanked open the medicine cabinet and I looted it. There was a lot of stuff in there; stuff I knew – paracetamol, aspirin – stuff I didn’t. Stuff prescribed for Mr Fitch, who had a bad heart; stuff prescribed for Mrs Fitch, who got worried about Mr Fitch’s bad heart. And a small bottle of brandy, which she told me and my mum she took a tot of every night.

  ‘For medicinal purposes,’ she said. ‘Just a drop, before you clean your teeth.’

  (‘But she hasn’t got any teeth!’ I whispered to my mum. And my mum trod on my toe to shut me up.)

  I took the lot; Simon would know what was what.

  I knocked on the door. He didn’t answer. I opened the door. His eyes rolled open as I dumped my offerings on the bed. He waved me off. He clawed open boxes; he popped pills, swallowed, slugged brandy. More and more and more pills. Simon wasn’t going to get better. I wasn’t helping him to live; I was helping him to die.

  ‘Go away, Ru,’ he managed to say. ‘Go find help.’

  I thought he was going to say something else, about what I should do.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Simon fell asleep and he didn’t wake up.

  I sat in the kitchen and I glued together that stupid hideous pottery vase thing he’d made. My hands were shaking so much it kept going wrong. When it finally stayed together, I put it in the sink.

  Since that first morning, when I’d gone to fill the kettle and Simon had told me to stop, he’d told me the same thing most times we were in that kitchen, because most times I forgot.

  I forgot. I turned the tap on. Water gushed into the vase for too
many seconds before my brain screamed and my hands did something about it. I turned off the tap and backed away from the sink. The tap dripped into the vase.

  Disgusting. Disgusting, vile, filthy – I grabbed my rubber gloves and I threw every last container full of water out of the kitchen window. I didn’t empty them out; I threw them out – pots and pans and everything; I poured the last of the bleach all over the floor – but I could not bring myself to throw away that vase. I emptied it and filled it up with a bottle of tonic water from my ruck-sack. I carried it up the stairs. I put it down and put the flowers in it, willing them to live.

  ‘Simon?’ I called, standing outside their bedroom door. ‘Simon?’

  There was no reply. From the vase, the dark ooze of a leak spread across the floorboards and I stared at it, wondering how many of those disgusting little things were crawling about in it.

  The panic I felt, it was the worst kind of panic. Blind panic, that’s what they call it, when you stop thinking completely. I had never, ever felt so alone and so frightened in my whole life. My brain had no say at all in what happened next, which was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done – apart from the thing I’d just done, filling the vase with water, and the thing after the thing that happened next.

  I couldn’t stay in the house another second.