Read Online The Rain by Virginia Bergin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Virginia Bergin
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happened again, he put on
rubber gloves and carefully shifted all the jugs and bowls and pots and pans of water into the corner of the kitchen and fenced them off with chairs and the bin. I don’t know why he
didn’t just chuck it all down the sink; too splashy, I guess. Or because that would somehow feel like setting it free. So there it sat: our little poisoned sea. I hated the sight of it.
I wanted to ring my dad.
‘Everything’s down, Ru.’ That was all Simon said. He passed me the phones anyway: the landline, his mobile, my mum’s mobile.
I tried my dad; I tried Leonie. I didn’t know anyone else’s number by heart; that wouldn’t have mattered because my mum and Simon had pretty much all our relatives and most of
my friends’ parents’ numbers on their mobiles, but there wasn’t even a dial tone. No sound at all on both their mobiles, and just a single endless beep on the landline.
‘What about email?’ I said. ‘We can email people.’
He gave me the laptop too. He hadn’t shut the internet off. The internet was down. I kept trying: the laptop, the phones. I don’t know how long I tried for – a long time, while
the TV bloke rattled on about the Tudors and Stuarts. They weren’t even on our syllabus. Nor was the Civil War, which is what the TV bloke was going on about when Simon took the computer and
the phones off me. I didn’t kick off. I was crying.
‘They might be trying to get through to us too,’ he said.
He laid his mobile, my mum’s mobile and the regular phone on the windowsill, in front of all the family photos. The laptop he put on the coffee table.
‘We’ll try every hour,’ he said.
We did. We took it in turns. We ended up not even telling each other that nothing had changed.
Sometime during the afternoon there was a really loud bang – like an explosion, I guess, in the town. We both jumped up and ran to the kitchen window. You could see
nearly the whole town from our kitchen: the castle, the church, the housing estate that spread up the hill east of the river where Leonie lived.
There were flames and smoke coming up from the High Street. A fire in the rain.
Simon opened tins of fruit, poured out the juice and gave it to me.
‘Where do you think that is?’ he asked me. ‘The George?’
You could see, working it out from the rooftops, that it must have been.
‘Such a shame,’ muttered Simon.
Dartbridge is ram-packed with old buildings. Medieval stuff; even the dentist’s has got gnarly old beams on the ceiling. (I’ve spent a lot of time looking at them.) Probably if it
had been any other old building in town I might have thought a stupid building didn’t matter, not now, but it wasn’t any other building. I wanted to tell him that The George was where
the second most amazing moment of my life had happened prior to the all-time number-one kissing amazing moment that had happened at Zak’s party. I wanted to tell him that was where Caspar had
looked up at me, when he was playing his guitar, and that I had felt myself fall in love on the spot.
We stared out at it. There were no sirens.
I said it then: ‘Simon, I’m really scared.’
He led me back into the sitting room. I sat in my nest; he sat on the sofa.
‘Shall I make us something to eat?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
This is a thing to know, a thing I have learned, about what fear and grief and horror do. They mash you up from the inside out. They twist you, and they break stuff inside you.
They tear stuff out. They get whole brains, whole hearts, in their hands and they crush and crush.
‘Can I come and sit with you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Of course,’ he said.
And for the first time ever I snuggled up to Simon on the sofa.
I thought how pleased (and shocked) my mum would be, and I cried.
I felt
so small
. Littler – younger – than even before I knew Simon. I felt as tiny as Henry. Tinier. I didn’t want to cry, I wanted to bawl. For my mum.
When it was dark, Simon did
rubber gloves and carefully shifted all the jugs and bowls and pots and pans of water into the corner of the kitchen and fenced them off with chairs and the bin. I don’t know why he
didn’t just chuck it all down the sink; too splashy, I guess. Or because that would somehow feel like setting it free. So there it sat: our little poisoned sea. I hated the sight of it.
I wanted to ring my dad.
‘Everything’s down, Ru.’ That was all Simon said. He passed me the phones anyway: the landline, his mobile, my mum’s mobile.
I tried my dad; I tried Leonie. I didn’t know anyone else’s number by heart; that wouldn’t have mattered because my mum and Simon had pretty much all our relatives and most of
my friends’ parents’ numbers on their mobiles, but there wasn’t even a dial tone. No sound at all on both their mobiles, and just a single endless beep on the landline.
‘What about email?’ I said. ‘We can email people.’
He gave me the laptop too. He hadn’t shut the internet off. The internet was down. I kept trying: the laptop, the phones. I don’t know how long I tried for – a long time, while
the TV bloke rattled on about the Tudors and Stuarts. They weren’t even on our syllabus. Nor was the Civil War, which is what the TV bloke was going on about when Simon took the computer and
the phones off me. I didn’t kick off. I was crying.
‘They might be trying to get through to us too,’ he said.
He laid his mobile, my mum’s mobile and the regular phone on the windowsill, in front of all the family photos. The laptop he put on the coffee table.
‘We’ll try every hour,’ he said.
We did. We took it in turns. We ended up not even telling each other that nothing had changed.
Sometime during the afternoon there was a really loud bang – like an explosion, I guess, in the town. We both jumped up and ran to the kitchen window. You could see
nearly the whole town from our kitchen: the castle, the church, the housing estate that spread up the hill east of the river where Leonie lived.
There were flames and smoke coming up from the High Street. A fire in the rain.
Simon opened tins of fruit, poured out the juice and gave it to me.
‘Where do you think that is?’ he asked me. ‘The George?’
You could see, working it out from the rooftops, that it must have been.
‘Such a shame,’ muttered Simon.
Dartbridge is ram-packed with old buildings. Medieval stuff; even the dentist’s has got gnarly old beams on the ceiling. (I’ve spent a lot of time looking at them.) Probably if it
had been any other old building in town I might have thought a stupid building didn’t matter, not now, but it wasn’t any other building. I wanted to tell him that The George was where
the second most amazing moment of my life had happened prior to the all-time number-one kissing amazing moment that had happened at Zak’s party. I wanted to tell him that was where Caspar had
looked up at me, when he was playing his guitar, and that I had felt myself fall in love on the spot.
We stared out at it. There were no sirens.
I said it then: ‘Simon, I’m really scared.’
He led me back into the sitting room. I sat in my nest; he sat on the sofa.
‘Shall I make us something to eat?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
This is a thing to know, a thing I have learned, about what fear and grief and horror do. They mash you up from the inside out. They twist you, and they break stuff inside you.
They tear stuff out. They get whole brains, whole hearts, in their hands and they crush and crush.
‘Can I come and sit with you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Of course,’ he said.
And for the first time ever I snuggled up to Simon on the sofa.
I thought how pleased (and shocked) my mum would be, and I cried.
I felt
so small
. Littler – younger – than even before I knew Simon. I felt as tiny as Henry. Tinier. I didn’t want to cry, I wanted to bawl. For my mum.
When it was dark, Simon did
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