Beat the Rain Page 2

  “No.” Irritation flickers in his voice, but is replaced immediately with a more conciliatory tone. He turns to her; grin lips, dark eyes. “It’s not for now. It’s for later.”

  * * *

  Now is later. Her fingers pull the last of the bubble-wrap off, freeing the wine so it sits cool in her palm. She puts it down, snatching the DVD, which wears no label of its own. Her hands are like those of an alcoholic in withdrawal as she fumbles it into the machine and pushes the play button. On the floor in front of the TV, she can hear every whir of machinery. She clears herself a space on the floor and waits.

  * * *

  The first time Louise saw Tom was in the dirty pink-walled newsagents at the end of her road. He was standing at the counter, talking to someone in the aisle and then he glanced at her and she was hooked. She fell in love there and then. He looked so…safe, actually. If you’d asked her before, she’d have said it was his smile she liked, or the way his t-shirt was caught in his jacket, showing the tiniest bit of the skin around his midriff, or the way he was massaging his neck with his hand as the cashier took his money. But in reality, she simply knew in that instant that he could fix her – and she needed that after her dad’s death.

  After the newsagents, Louise didn’t see Tom again for about two weeks. Then, as she was getting a coffee in a café at seven dials, she saw him. He was standing at the café counter, wearing his suit and tie, sweating.

  “Coffee, please. And a slice of toast and marmite,” he asked the woman behind the counter.

  “White or brown?” she asked.

  “Granary, please.”

  “Only got white or brown.”

  “Brown then, thanks.”

  Louise stood staring at him and it took her a few moments to realise he’d turned around and was looking right back at her.

  “Work experience.” He smiled, opening his arms out and glancing down at his suited body. “What do you think,” he said, giving her a twirl and a wink.

  “Oh, hi. Yeah. I saw you in the newsagents the other day,” she said nervously.

  “I remember.” Tom smiled.

  “Small place, Brighton,” the woman behind the counter said jovially.

  “Yeah, some bloke got his nose bitten off in the Zap Club the other day, did you hear?” Louise said. Shit.

  “Um, no, I didn’t,” Tom replied, his gaze not leaving hers. “Listen, I’ve got to run, can’t miss my train. But you want to go out? Cinema or something? Or pizza?”

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to remain cool and calm. “That’d be great. Do you want my number?”

  * * *

  “Lou?” Tom’s voice. The television screen flickers. Her fingers tremble over the DVD controller. “Will you love again?”

  “I don’t have to. I’ve got you,” she hears herself reply from the screen. He’d been recording her without her knowledge.

  “But if you did have to. What then?” Dark screen before her. No pictures. Then:

  Light. His smiling face. He sits in a clean sitting room, on the sofa that presses into her back. She looks over her shoulder, sure for a second he’s sitting there, he’s come back to her. But her version of the room is like a junkyard, he could never live there.

  “That was as far as I got,” she hears from the television. Her head darts back to it and her eyes swallow his moving image. His living image. Tom leans closer to the camera.

  “I’m stupid, aren’t I? But I can’t tell you.”

  Chapter Two

  Adam sits at his kitchen table staring at the telephone in front of him. Louise was anxious and dismissive. She could need time on her own, he supposes, but given the letter that arrived from Tom this morning, he suspects there’s something else going on. He shivers in his t-shirt and stares at the telephone again before standing up and grabbing his keys and jumper. He’s going to have to go to Brighton to talk to her, whether she wants to or not. They can’t carry on like they are, skirting around the issue. If he’s learnt anything from his brother’s death it’s that life is too short; you have to grab it while you can – nobody is guaranteed the long haul.

  * * *

  Losing a twin is something Adam can’t explain to anyone. How can anyone not born half of a pair understand? Even Louise, suffering her own grief, can’t get close to comprehending the complexity of Adam’s emotions. Not that she’s tried. But that’s okay. In some strange place inside, the loneliness of his grief is comforting, like it is another aspect of being a twin that outsiders can never ‘get’. It makes him feel closer to Tom. Their bond, their ‘otherness’ is still there, even if Tom isn’t. But there is something else lurking deep inside Adam, another feeling, something uncomfortable, something guilt-laden that Adam has spent months working hard to supress – something he will never consciously recognise despite the profound effect it is having on him: Tom’s death has offered him a release – it has given him the opportunity to just be Adam Gaddis. For the first time in his life, he isn’t one of a pair, he isn’t the less-charismatic twin, crouched in his brother’s dazzling shadow. Emotionally, Adam understands this feeling but he can’t allow it in, he can’t allow the possibility of finding a positive in something so horrific.

  The truth is that everyone preferred Tom to Adam. They didn’t mean to and Adam doesn’t blame anyone for it, but it was true. Tom knew it and Adam knew it. Some people probably didn’t even know they felt that way – not consciously. But Tom had been the charming twin, the handsome twin, the accomplished twin. Somehow, Adam – who looked like Tom, spoke like Tom, dressed like Tom – had always been second best. In many ways, Adam hadn’t even minded – the lack of attention and expectation meant he’d been able to relax a bit more than Tom, who always felt the need to perform.

  “It’s all right for you,” Tom would say playfully. “Nobody expects anything from you. They all think I’m going to run the world or something.”

  When Tom died, Adam’s parents went to pieces and he couldn’t help feeling a sense of guilt, somehow, like his survival had created an imbalance in the world that only he could correct.

  His parents had insisted on having Tom’s body brought home to them. Adam realises now that he’s never asked Louise how this made her feel. They’d all been so wrapped up in how the family was feeling, Louise had been excluded from everything, like her relationship with Tom wasn’t worthy somehow because it had been cut short. What were a few years compared to a lifetime? But she loved him, she deserved to be treated better.

  Would she have been happy with Tom’s body being displayed in his parents’ front room? She was in so much shock that Adam doesn’t think she’d have had any reserves left to argue with her pseudo mother in law, anyway. The first few days after Tom’s death were a fog of denial for all of them he supposes, days he can’t replay in his mind with any accuracy. Even Adam hadn’t known what his mother was planning.

  “He’s in the front room,” she said. The words were hard for her, he could tell. They struggled dryly out of her throat, like it was cracked and bleeding, denied of moisture. “You should say goodbye properly, before the cremation.”

  “In the front room?” Adam steadied himself against the edge of the wooden kitchen work surface, his fingers becoming purple white with pressure. The freshly boiled kettle beside his mother was still steaming, making the white and green tiles beside it dewy.

  When he finally mustered the courage to go and look at him, Adam loitered in the doorway for what seemed like hours. The floor of the room where they’d put him was covered with an old, Persian-style rug. It wasn’t Persian, of course. It had never been near Persia, it was from the Sunday Wimbledon market. It was red and blue and gold, diamonds and paisley and the tassels had been cut off years ago as their mother couldn’t bear having to brush them out every day. Adam stood in the doorway, staring at the rug and not daring to step fully into the room where his brother was ‘resting’. Such euphemisms struck him as unnatural. He wasn’t resting; he was dead. Adam has always felt peop
le should be encouraged to deal with reality, not fiction. They should grieve for what’s real, not imaginary. This repression, this obsession with pretending things were other than they were didn’t work for Adam.

  Against the back wall of the room sat a dark chestnut cabinet with glass doors to display the best china.

  “Why can’t we use those plates?” Tom had asked his mother once.

  “Because they’re for best,” she’d replied.

  “When will that be?” Tom had persevered as Adam sniggered in the background. As far as Adam could remember, the plates had never left the cabinet except when they needed dusting. That was Gaddis life. All show, never letting go.

  Adam took a step. In the centre of the room, a dark, polished wood coffin held his brother, his mirror image, his true other half. The room was warm. He imagined the whole place should be cold and grey, devoid of life, but it wasn’t. The fire was flickering, casting warm shadows on patterned wallpaper. The small figurines that usually sat cold on the hearth were bathed in an orange glow. As the flames moved, it seemed they might spring into action, stretching, dancing and pirouetting.

  His parents had chosen silver handles for the coffin, something Tom would have approved of. He’d always hated gold, for some reason Adam could never fathom. Maybe it was because his first girlfriend, the first to break his heart at least, used to wear big gold hoop earrings. Adam doesn’t know, he never asked. Now he’ll never know.

  Adam stood rooted to the spot, unable to step further into the room. He could see the satin interior of his brother’s casket, light blue. He could smell something, not a horrible smell, but something he couldn’t identify, something at odds with the room. Whatever it was, it didn’t smell like Tom, it was neither the soap he used nor the overpowering special-occasion aftershave Louise had bought him for his last birthday. Adam peered forward and could make out Tom’s white hands against his best black suit. They were lying clean and pale by his sides, not crossed over his chest. Holding his breath, Adam took another step and looked at his twin’s face – a deathly reflection of his own features – inanimate and otherworldly.

  Adam stared at Tom’s face, pale and expressionless, nothing like his brother was in life. Adam couldn’t look at him; he didn’t want to see that. He didn’t want to remember that. The thing in the casket – that husk, that hunk of meat – that wasn’t Tom. Filled with something uncomfortably close to revulsion, Adam ran from the room and from his parents’ house.

  The funeral wasn’t any better. His parents chose to respect Tom’s wishes and cremate him, even if they’d gone with a church service, something Tom would have hated. Adam had stood there, detached from the proceedings, looking around the church, too large to be small, too small to be large. People squeezed into it as the rain poured down outside. It didn’t fit. Like a t-shirt washed on boil, it was cutting into him, stifling him and making it hard to breathe. In the months since his brother’s death, he’s tried to remember the service, tried to remember people’s kind words – anything about that day that will blot out his brother’s cold dead features. But he can’t.

  He can remember his mother, at first so composed that people remarked on it, on how well she was doing, on how strong she was. Then, as the coffin was carried in, it was like she had been attacked from within and gasps and tears clawed their way to the surface as she fought desperately to drag them back, to compose herself for her son, to show him that respect at least. But it didn’t work and each time she failed to contain her sobs, they resurfaced again with renewed energy. Adam thinks that was the hardest thing to watch for many of the people in the church – their grief wasn’t so much about the loss of Tom; it was about a mother who’d lost her son. That was a grief everyone could understand and empathise with.

  He remembers the inappropriate cousins, the ones who got so drunk at the wake they forgot where they were, coming up to him and saying: “I’ve had such a good time, today, Adam. It was so nice to catch up with the family,” as if he was going to grin and agree with them, slapping them on the back and buying them another pint.

  But the rest of the funeral? He can’t remember. He can’t remember Louise, what she wore, what she said, almost like she was sidelined from the whole event. But he did sit with her afterwards.

  “He made me smile, Adam,” she said, leaning into his shoulder. “I didn’t realise how important that was until I lost him, you know?”

  To Adam, the whole thing is now like a scene from someone else’s life, something that happened elsewhere that he’s only got the vaguest notion of. But Tom’s cold expressionless face in his coffin is perfect, he can remember that in detail. If he could change anything in his life at all, it would be that: seeing his brother’s dead body. He’d give anything to have Tom’s memory uncorrupted. Un-decayed. But there is no point in regrets, Adam now understands.

  “You can’t rewind, Ad,” Tom used to say. “Learn and move on.”

  * * *

  Adam walks along the main road, searching for a cab. There are many but most whiz past with lights extinguished. When one finally stops, the driver pulls the window down and looks out.

  “Where to, mate?”

  “South, to…”

  “Sorry, mate.”

  He’s pulled away before Adam can argue. Three taxis later and Adam is finally wrestling in from the cold. He’s trying a new tactic and hasn’t spoken to the driver to tell him he wants to go south of the river. He sits back into the leather interior, which smells of kebabs, turning his stomach slightly.

  “Victoria, please.” He winces and waits for a response. The taxi driver turns around.

  “Sorry, mate, I’m not going south,”

  “But that’s where I want to go.”

  “I’m meeting the wife for lunch in Finchley. I’ll never make it back in time.”

  “So why did you have your light on?” Adam says, trying his hardest to hide his irritation.

  “Because I’m a taxi.”

  “That doesn’t want to taxi?” Adam pulls on the door handle, more irritated by the second but the door doesn’t open.

  “Okay, mate. I’ll take you, alright. Can probably make it back as long as we don’t hit traffic.”

  Smug bastard.

  “I don’t want you to take me now.” The door clicks open and Adam falls back onto the cold street.

  Adam misses living in Brighton, wishes he hadn’t quit his course the way he had, wishes he hadn’t moved back to his parents’ house in north London. He wishes a lot of things, but what’s the point in that? He knows why he left, of course. Louise. In the end, he couldn’t bear to be near her and Tom. Couldn’t bear to see them together day in day out, so happy. He hadn’t wanted them to split up, he hadn’t wanted that at all – but at the same time, he couldn’t have stayed and watched their love affair for another day longer. He’s not sure he’s ever admitted that to himself before now; he’d almost believed his own lies, the reasons he gave his parents about his course not being a ‘good fit’, about not feeling like he was achieving anything. In reality, it had hurt too much to be near them.

  So he’d moved back to his parents’ house. It hadn’t been easy to do even then, but living there got worse after Tom died. Adam’s relationship with his parents never recovered from his brother’s death. His dad believes ‘less said, soonest mended’ and when he thinks about it, Adam probably takes after him more than he realises. But that meant they retreated into themselves and never mentioned Tom to each other – and that didn’t feel right. Almost immediately, Adam felt awkward, like he couldn’t mention his brother in his dad’s presence in case it cracked the glass case of denial he’d built around himself. Who knew how far the glass shards would shatter and who they’d injure in the process? Better to remain quiet. Don’t mention Tom. Less said, soonest mended. Except of course, they were all far from mended. They’d dressed their wounds to stop any outward signs of bleeding. Put up a front to make sure the world thought they were coping. Because that was th
e most important thing to do, wasn’t it?

  Adam isn’t without sympathy for his mum, of course. She copes in the only way she knows how. He’d been with them when they found out Tom had died – when Louise had called to tell them. He’s always loved her for that, for the fact she’d wanted to make the call herself, despite the fact she didn’t get on with Janet. Adam and his dad had been sitting at the kitchen table eating sandwiches. The phone had rung and his mum had answered, smiling. Then her face had frozen. Then had come the silence, the calm, white silence. Adam can’t remember how long this went on for, but as she tried to find the words to convey the information to her husband and surviving son, she couldn’t get the words out. She hadn’t needed to, they’d known. Adam often longs to go back to that moment, before Louise’s phone call, before awareness, before they knew they’d lost Tom forever. His father had run over and grabbed his mum and held her to him. Adam had remained seated in unreality, a black-and-white figure in the middle of a blood-red vignette of family tragedy. Sometimes he feels like the colour never came back to his life, not fully.

  But now Tom has sent him a letter from the grave. He’s giving his blessing, his permission to move on. The only question is, will Louise feel the same?

  Chapter Three

  “I wish I could tell you,” Tom is saying on the DVD, rather than actually speaking to Louise while he had the chance. “This is hard for me, Lou. I don’t think you can share it.”

  Louise leans back, buttocks solid on the floor. On the DVD, he is sitting on the sofa that she can feel on her back.

  “I don’t feel like I’m dying.” His lips seem to take up the entire screen as he speaks, like they might lean out and kiss her, giving her one last moment, one last touch. But they don’t. Instead, he pauses and sits back, rubbing the back of his head.

  “I guess you think that I took the bloke way out. Avoided the issues. Avoided you. Well maybe I did. Maybe I am. But you’re so far away. It’s like I live somewhere else.” His eyes look away from the television at the floor.