Rain

  ‘Rain,’ Vivienne said. ‘I don’t mix them up!’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, of course,’ Rain mumbled. She felt embarrassed: before this summer she would never have said anything like that, but she thought about things differently now. She put her nose to the perfume bottle again. ‘Did you love them both as much? Do you mind me asking that?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Vivienne said. ‘And … no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I wish I had, but I still think of your grandfather as the love of my life. Ed was just … me, you know? But with added blokey things that made him fun to be around. Now I’m back in London after such a big gap, it’s hard seeing the places we went to, without him. When I see them again, the first thing I think about is the last time I was with him there.’

  ‘Do you think there is only one true love for everyone, then?’

  Vivienne leaned forwards so her elbows were resting on her knees. ‘No, of course not. I fell in love again when I was married to Philip, for one thing.’

  ‘With someone else? Bloody hell, what happened? Did he love you too?’

  Vivienne smiled wonkily. ‘Yes.’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing happened. We were both married. I did love Philip, you know, it just wasn’t the thing. He was a lot older than me, and he was what I needed at the time, someone very grounded and easy-going, someone to stay indoors with. I would never have hurt him, or been cheap enough to be unfaithful, so … we just … had a good laugh about what terrible luck we had, me and the other man, and I cried in the bath for a week or two, and then I let him go.’

  ‘I’ve never been in love,’ Rain said. She didn’t know what to say after her granny’s revelation; she didn’t think she could talk about it with her as if they were both adults. ‘I don’t think I have, anyway. I’ve never felt like people do in films and songs. Sometimes I wonder if I even could fall in love, I think I may have something emotional missing. When I’ve gone out with boys I haven’t really felt anything, except that it’s a bit of a pain having to decide where to go and what to do, and having to pretend to your friends that it’s going to last FOR EVER when I know it isn’t.’

  Vivienne snorted. ‘Pff. I’m afraid I think you’re just like the rest of us, Rain, and you’ll fall in love horribly easily as soon as you meet someone good enough for you.’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Count on it.’

  The doorbell rang and Rain jumped so much that she knocked over the now-empty cup on Vivienne’s tray. ‘That’s Harry,’ she said.

  Vivienne was in the middle of an indulgent yawn. ‘D’you fancy letting him in so I can lounge around a bit longer?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ Rain said. She didn’t know why she was so nervously excited, but there was no mistaking the thumpiness of her heart or the silly smile that kept tugging at her lips. Was she expecting Harry to walk in with her real father or something? He was just as likely to have bad news, or no news.

  She smeared a little lip balm on before she opened the door … to Madrigal.

  ‘Oh, hi Madrigal,’ she said, and tried to glance past her.

  ‘Harry’s going to be late,’ Madrigal said.

  ‘Oh. Fine,’ Rain said. ‘Come in. Can I … make you some tea?’

  ‘Oh yeah, that would be great – could you use my herbal teabag, though?’ Madrigal said, giving her a little grey-green sachet.

  ‘Sure,’ Rain said. When she came back up with a mug of boiling water that the herbal teabag had barely coloured at all, Madrigal was just wearing a bra with her jeans. Rain gaped – not least because Madrigal had the most perfect and rather huge breasts she’d ever seen – and then realised that she was just pulling off her jumper and had accidentally pulled off her T-shirt underneath with it. Her stomach was concave under her ribs, and her knickers, just visible above the jeans, were bright candy-pink with blue lacy edging. Rain tried not to stare as Madrigal tugged the T-shirt back down.

  ‘I’m happy to make a start on my own,’ Madrigal said. ‘Have you got the radio?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, sure,’ Rain said, and fetched the radio they usually listened to when they were doing housework. Madrigal took it from her and turned it to an indie music station, then carefully set it down on the floor by her jumper.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, and started pulling the teabag in and out of the pale water, not looking at Rain.

  That was it. They weren’t friends. When the others weren’t there, they weren’t going to talk.

  Rain felt too embarrassed to stay. She muttered something about having to go upstairs for something, when Madrigal suddenly said, ‘Oh, Harry asked me your pop star question. Funny! Well, he’ll tell you, but I think I put him on the right track. I was surprised he knew anything about the Sandcastles, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. Harry has always had the worst taste in music. I’ve learned to … well, tolerate it would be the best word. But you have to put up with each other’s lapses of taste, don’t you?’ She paused, as if this wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you do,’ Rain said.

  ‘Harry is just as annoyed by my constant checking of celebrity gossip websites,’ Madrigal said.

  ‘Haha, yeah,’ Rain said. She needed to get away. Unlike Madrigal, she wasn’t being paid to be here.

  ‘How was the Warhol, by the way?’ Madrigal said.

  ‘Oh,’ Rain said, surprised by the question. ‘Really nice. I thought some of the … er, paintings were really … er, great.’ She was sick of sounding like an idiot, but her brain seemed to be freezing every time she had to answer Madrigal. It was like staring at a blank screen waiting for a web page to load, and then getting an error message.

  ‘And what would you say were the highlights?’ Madrigal said, suddenly staring straight at her. It felt like being quizzed by her maths teacher!

  Rain returned the stare. ‘The Coke bottles,’ she said, breathing heavily through her nostrils, as if she was being surly in class.

  There was a pause and then Madrigal said, bouncily:

  ‘Well, great, I’m glad he found someone to go with him after I let him down; that was the last day that exhibition was on, you know. And Harry’s never liked going to art galleries alone, he likes discussing the show and thinking it through out loud.’ She turned her back on Rain completely and started getting on with the wall stripping.

  Now, finally, Rain’s brain was filling with cool retorts that she just couldn’t say out loud because they’d have been rude. She wanted to tell Madrigal that she knew what was going on: that she was a little rich girl who didn’t have to be here, playing at having a job for the summer just to hang out with her boyfriend, and that Rain got the message, she couldn’t have him, fine! She didn’t want him! But behind those protests would be the truth: Rain did like Harry. She did want to spend more time with him. She felt fizzy when he made fun of her. She’d loved it when he’d almost bounced with excitement when they’d been caught up with looking at pictures of Quentin Vienna together, Harry pointing to the album covers and saying, ‘He looks like you, too, I’m not making it up! Those are your ears!’

  That nice memory was muddied now by the fact he’d gone off and talked to Madrigal about everything. Rain understood exactly why he’d had to; that it would be natural to explain to your girlfriend what you’d been doing – and Harry had told Rain that was what he was going to do, he’d said Madrigal’s dad and his music industry contacts might be able to put him on the right track. But after hearing Madrigal’s smooth, clear warnings, Rain felt young and dumb. The embarrassment steamed inside her until it turned into anger. How could Harry have been so careless when he must have known how much this mattered to her and that she’d want it kept a secret?

  She jumped when Harry knocked on the window and waved from outside at both of them. Madrigal went to let him in, and when she was in the hall, Rain grabbed her chance and got out of their way, slipping behind and up the stairs.

  A little later, Harry came up to see her. Rain opened the door with a
pair of sandals in her hand and told him she was just on her way out.

  ‘Oh,’ Harry said, sounding disappointed. ‘But I’ve got some news so … when are you going to be back, do you think?’

  ‘What sort of news?’ Rain said. Her plan had been to stay frosty with him, so that he had some idea that he’d done the wrong thing, and would back off. But even though she felt mad at him and betrayed, and still felt the edge of Madrigal’s obvious warnings, she wished above all that she could pull him into her room and start whispering with him about whatever he knew.

  ‘I’ve found Quentin,’ he said.

  Rain sat on the floor, because she knew if she carried on looking straight at him she’d smile, and started putting her sandals on. ‘Well, that’s very clever, but aren’t you forgetting we have literally no reason to think he’s QV?’

  ‘Well, not no reason,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, you know he’s in a band. His initials. ‘Not My Baby’. The fact your mum has the albums. Your, er, ears … ‘

  Rain touched her ears. ‘All ears look the same! And even if they don’t, what kind of resemblance is ears? I look like my mum.’

  ‘You look like him too.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘But why not start with him?’

  ‘We can’t go and ask everyone with those initials, that would be insane.’

  ‘Well, what else does it say in the diaries?’

  ‘There’s nothing else in them, nothing else about who he is or how she knows him.’ She shrugged. Harry sat down with her, his thigh touching hers, and she looked at his lean, dark profile and had a sudden, mad urge to grab his shoulder and throw herself into his arms. ‘You can look at them if you want?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Harry said. ‘They’re private. Look, I should get back and do what your gran pays me to do.’

  Rain held her toes in her fingers. ‘Where’s Madrigal?’

  ‘Downstairs, stripping,’ Harry said, and Rain thought of the gorgeous body she’d seen first thing this morning and knew that she didn’t have a chance with him.

  ‘Why don’t you just read the last one?’ Rain said. ‘I mean, if it doesn’t creep you out. It may be I’m just missing something.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Look, I just think it’s a bit … ‘

  ‘I know, I’m being obsessive. Let’s pretend I’m not nuts.’ She took the notebook off her bed and flicked through the pages. Then she handed it to him. Harry shut the book, but he took it.

  ‘So where did you find Quentin Vienna?’ Rain said. ‘Is his address in the phone book?’

  ‘I don’t have his address yet,’ Harry said, ‘but I have his name. His real name.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Colin.’

  Chapter 10

  ‘Huxnjjd ehsuihf hsdrh efhuhu.’

  ‘I can’t hear you!’

  ‘HUXNJJD EHSUIHF HSDRH EFHUHU.’

  ‘I can’t hear you, where are you?’

  ‘Can you hear me now?’

  ‘Yes I can hear you now.’

  ‘I’m outside the National Gallery. You have to get here now. Huxnjjd ehsuihf hsdrh efhuhu.’

  The line went dead. Rain waited, staring at her mobile. Harry rang back.

  ‘Sorry about that. You have to come to the National Gallery now. I’ve FOUND THE PROOF.’

  ‘What proof? How do I get there?’

  ‘Take a 23 bus.’

  ‘What sort of proof? Do my ears look like the Mona Lisa’s?’ Rain laughed at her own joke.

  ‘The Mona Lisa’s in the Louvre, you fool. You’re going to see it, and you’re going to be amazed and you’re going to apologise!’

  ‘But it’s seven o’clock, when does it close?’

  ‘It’s Wednesday, it’s open late tonight. Till at least eight, maybe nine, when can you get here? Oh, I suppose you’ll be eating supper soon.’

  ‘I don’t think Gran’d mind, we were only going to have the rest of the deli salads she left you for lunch today, she isn’t cooking.’

  ‘Then get on the bus! I’ll go and wait in the Pret over the road, call me when you get close.’

  Rain had given Harry her mum’s diary and she wasn’t sure why; she couldn’t think of a good reason now. In fact, she could think of a few bad reasons: she’d started worrying he thought it was weird of her, because he hadn’t got back to her, until now. She hadn’t seen him on his own for a couple of days. Vivienne had been taking her out in the daytime to her favourite places in London – today it had been Soho, where her gran had once had a flat (!) and where they made their way past little market stalls and XXX-rated bars with neon naked-woman-shaped signs outside, and then ate delicious, tiny dim sum in a super-trendy restaurant. In their absence, Madrigal and Harry had been dutifully stripping the huge, high ground-floor walls on their own. Rain knew how hard the work was, and felt bad about it when she and her gran came in late and the two students looked totally flat-out exhausted, sitting at the bottom of the ladder with massive piles of torn grey wallpaper pieces around them. Still, it was a summer job, and they had both wanted to do it. Probably, in fact, they’d spent half the day snogging, so Rain had nothing to feel bad about. Actually, she admitted to herself, it was precisely that, the probable-snogging, that she felt bad about.

  But Harry hadn’t said anything about the diary, and, although Rain wasn’t surprised, she’d been disappointed when he came to work and didn’t take a detour past her room and excitedly explain his latest theory. Had he got something to tell her now?

  Rain found her granny eating olives and reading a magazine at the kitchen table, and told her that Harry had asked if she wanted to go and meet him.

  ‘I think he suddenly got last minute tickets to something or something like that,’ Rain said, realising this was a lie that was only going to get more complicated later, but she couldn’t come up with anything else. She took an olive so she’d have thinking time while she chewed.

  ‘How are you getting on with Harry?’ Vivienne said. ‘He must fancy you tons, I think.’

  Rain almost inhaled the olive. She started coughing. ‘Oh, Gran, he doesn’t, what about Madrigal?’

  ‘What about Madrigal?’

  ‘They’re totally girlfriend and boyfriend!’

  ‘Oh, she wishes,’ her granny said.

  ‘Really? You think they’re not a couple? Do you know that?’

  ‘Well they haven’t talked about it, but it seems obvious to me.’

  ‘But it seems obvious to me that they are,’ Rain said. ‘They kept holding hands when we went out for dinner.’

  ‘She kept holding his hand.’

  ‘I didn’t notice him objecting.’

  ‘He was probably being polite. I just can’t see him with someone like Madrigal,’ Vivienne said. ‘She’s really not very funny, she’s just … pretty. That’s so boring.’

  ‘Yeah sure,’ Rain thought, ‘gorgeous blondes probably aren’t his “type”, he’d rather have a good old-fashioned belly-laugh.’ There were some things grandmothers just weren’t going to understand, even very hip ones like Vivienne.

  ‘So is it okay if I go?’ Rain asked.

  ‘Yes, go! But look, I’m telling you, I still think Harry fancies you. So if you don’t fancy him, be warned.’

  ‘Right, Gran,’ Rain said and, even though she knew it was completely impossible and stupid for her to even think about, she smiled all the way to the bus stop, and only stopped smiling because a weird-looking man with lots of laundry bags on the other side of the road noticed and smiled back at her.

  Rain was just a touch more nervous about going on the bus alone in the evening, but as soon as she got aboard, she realised it was just the same as the daytime bus – packed with the same mix of people: two elderly Arab men reading the same foreign paper together, a crazy old lady filling out both sides of her seat with knotted carrier bags, people of all ages and all races ignoring each other. And it smelt faintly of sick. She asked the nice-looking Chinese
girl next to her if she could tell her when the National Gallery stop was coming up and the girl said she was getting off before then. Rain didn’t dare ask anyone else, and kept her eyes fixed to the road, nervous that she’d miss it, but a few minutes after the Chinese girl had got off, a little old man two seats away turned around and said to Rain, ‘Excuse me, love, were you asking about the National Gallery? It’s the next stop. This is Trafalgar Square.’

  She thanked him and rang the bell. As she hopped over the massive gap between bus and pavement, she was already punching Harry’s number into her phone. She waved at the old man from outside the bus.

  ‘Okay, I’m at Trafalgar Square,’ Rain said.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Harry said. ‘Stay right where you are!’

  She looked around her, trying to see across the still-crowded Trafalgar Square, feeling a little lost. They’d gone past it before on the bus, but now she was there she realised she should have made Harry tell her exactly where they were meeting. The roads around the square were jammed with fuming traffic. The buildings on all sides were very tall and white and she wasn’t even sure which direction she’d come from, or where she should be going, or how Harry would find her, everything was too big. She stood still for a moment, watching kids climbing all over the big lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column, and little toddlers getting out of their buggies to chase the pigeons, screaming with laughter. There were loads of pigeons and when they flew up away from the toddlers in frightened clouds, Rain ducked and let out a little scream, holding her hands over her face, feeling the sweep of dusty wings against them.

  Then she saw Harry, breaking into a little skippy run every three or four steps, brushing his hair back and, when he saw her, smiling.

  ‘This had better be worth it,’ she warned him.

  ‘This,’ Harry said, ‘could be dynamite.’

  It was funny how they could both talk quite lightly now about Rain’s terrible bombshell discovery, and Harry didn’t worry about hurting her feelings, and Rain didn’t worry, as she initially had, about the fact that her feelings should be hurt when Harry was flippant about it. But moments like this didn’t really feel much to do with anything real, they just felt like the crazy thing she was doing this summer.