Beat the Rain Read online

  Calmly, Louise sits down in the centre of her room and rips Sylvie limb from limb. Once she’s ripped the doll’s head off, she finds it easy to pull the stuffing out and remove her stripy legs. Silas rocks in the corner of the room, crying for her to stop, but Louise doesn’t care.

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” Silas sobs over and over.

  “Get out,” she whispers in response. She doesn’t look up as he leaves; she doesn’t want to see his face. It’s only when she knows he’s safely banished to the landing that she climbs into bed herself. When the tears come, they are throat-squeezing and silent.

  * * *

  These memories are still so current, so powerful, that Louise finds herself weeping as she sits on her hotel bar stool. What must she look like, her mascara will have run, she’ll look like a bloody clown, she’ll…

  “Are you okay, madam?”

  A hot waiter. Young, too young for her now, she supposes, he’s probably ten years her junior.

  “Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Just thinking.” She tries to smile but knows she probably looks like a gargoyle. “Actually,” she says as he nods and turns away, “can I have another glass of wine? Dry white. Actually, make it a bottle.”

  She stands up from her bar stool and takes a seat by the window again, a comfy armchair where she can see the view of green fields from the window. What is she even doing here? Why isn’t she at home with her husband and her children? Because they don’t even want you, the automatic response fires off in her mind.

  She’s been sitting nursing glass after glass of wine for days and she’s not sure she’s any farther forward in her thinking. She loves Adam, not like she did in the beginning, perhaps, but she loves him. Their early days are soft focus for Louise, fuzzy and warm around the edges. After the DVD, after Tom gave them permission to start replacing grief with love, they’d settled into this madly hedonistic phase of life together. Adam had made her laugh, he made her feel safe and he went down on her. And it wasn’t the sloppy, misaimed tongue lappings she’d been used to. Adam hit the spot, oh God he hit the spot. Her toes had curled so much she was afraid they’d get stuck that way, twisted forever like some gnarled, arthritic punishment for having more than one orgasm in a single sitting.

  That’s how it used to be when they still had sex. But with two children, their sex life isn’t what it was. But that’s okay, she tells herself. She’s still attractive. Adam is still attracted to her. At least, she thinks he is. How normal is it that the man goes off sex? Usually you hear about women, especially after having children, who go off sex, or are too tired. But it’s the other way around for Louise, it’s Adam who doesn’t want it anymore.

  Louise respects him as a father, envies him even. But his shift from husband and lover to father of her children seems irreversible, like something has cracked in their relationship and any move now shatters the crack a little more, sending invisible, spider-like splinters outwards, irreparably damaging the mesh that used to bind them. The completeness they used to feel together was overwhelming, like she’d felt with Tom before him, but he’d gone and died on her and now Adam is so focused on Matthew and Maria, she doesn’t get a look in. Somehow, she always seems to end up alone.

  Louise conceived Maria on a weekend in the New Forest. She’d been an accident – they weren’t thinking about contraception. They were screwing and walking and drinking and smoking and enjoying being alive and together. Louise still had spare inheritance money from her dad, so they’d hired a convertible to drive there. Adam had pulled up outside with the roof down and the wind in his hair. They’d thrown their cases in the back, like they were in some romantic American movie. As Adam had sparked up a spliff and revved the engine, a newsreader on the radio said:

  “…and a new survey suggests that as many as one in ten young people drive while under the influence of drugs.”

  Laughing and exhaling a cloud of smoke, Adam had pressed the accelerator and they’d driven away. Happy, happy days, almost too happy to be real. So far away now, like another life lived by somebody else. But there are consequences to living as there are consequences to avoiding life. Maria was one of them – and Louise doesn’t regret her, she doesn’t. She doesn’t regret having Matthew 15 months later. But that doesn’t mean motherhood comes easily, either. But she wants it to, she wants it to more than anything in the world. She doesn’t want to be anything like her own mum, but as the years drip by, she can’t help thinking about it more and more. You’re turning into her, her mind whispers to her at night in the darkness. One day, you’ll have had enough and you’ll up and leave, like your mum did.

  * * *

  “I don’t love you,” Louise’s mother said calmly. Louise had been in her normal position on the stairs with her knees scrunched up to her chin.

  “Don’t say that, Jane…” Her father had sounded desperate. “I know I’ve not been perfect,” he carried on, sounding lost.

  “I’ve met someone.” Her mother had been calm, almost emotionless.

  “What?” her father said, genuinely confused. “You can’t…”

  “I was too young, Pete. With you. With Louise. I had so much potential, I could have been anything…”

  “She’s your daughter…” Louise will never forget the tone of her father’s voice at that moment, almost ethereal, not like her father at all, like he’d been possessed by someone else, something else. Not a nice something.

  “Louise is not right,” her mother had said. “I was too young, Pete. I should have got rid.”

  From her seat on the stairs, Louise hadn’t seen her dad punch her mum but she heard it; full-fisted and bony. She’d heard her mother fall backwards, heard the clattering coffee table and the lung-breaking thud as she hit the floor.

  “Shit, Jane, I’m sorry,” her father’s voice had warbled, softer now, desperate. “I’m sorry, fuck, I didn’t mean…”

  Louise had heard scrambling, then she’d seen her mother bolt out of the living room and flee through the front door.

  “Mum,” Louise had yelled, her small voice sounding feeble and useless. It was night, dark and cold. Where had her mother been going? She hadn’t been leaving her, had she?

  “Louise,” her father had said, trying to grab her arm as she ran past him and out of the door after her mother. “Louise!” he’d shouted after her as she ran down the uneven slabs of the garden path to see her mother disappearing around the corner, a small bloody trail running from her nose. Small stones had pushed into the soles of Louise’s iced feet and the night air had sucked the warmth from her lungs. She’d wanted her mum to stop running, to turn around, to scoop her up in her arms and hug her close and tell her it was going to be okay. She’d wanted to feel safe again.

  She barely remembers her father finding her, or how she’d struggled and kicked and screamed as he’d tried to cuddle her, to tell her everything would be okay. In the days that followed, the house fell silent. Louise hadn’t cried, she hadn’t even asked if her mother was coming back. She’d simply played in her room and kept her bedroom door shut.

  Louise now realises her mother’s spectre is always there, trying to force its way back into her life. She’s built her life on a bed of sand. Everything she is derives from the lonely little girl sitting with her knees tucked under her chin, listening through a crack in the darkness to her mum and dad arguing in their bedroom. Everything comes from the little girl abandoned, not good enough to be loved.

  On her first day back at school after her mum left, Louise knew things were going to get harder for her there, too.

  “I’ll be your best friend for a month if you tell me,” Narinda had said, her eagle eyes spotting something different about Louise – perhaps the un-ironed blouse.

  “Promise not to tell?” Louise had whispered, knowing already it was a mistake. Narinda always told.

  “You can have my rainbow rubber if you tell,” Narinda had said solemnly. Less than twenty minutes later, Louise’s whole class had known her dad had hit
her mother, who had in turn run away – and somehow, it was like that had given everyone permission to bully her even more. It was little things at first; knocking her books onto the floor, spilling orange juice on her lap. Then Narinda and the other girls would stand in corners, whispering and laughing and pointing at Louise.

  “Please, leave me alone,” she’d said desperately to Narinda.

  “Did you hear something?” Narinda said, looking through Louise at Sally.

  “No, I don’t think so. I can smell something, though,” Sally said, making Narinda snigger.

  “Narinda,” Louise pleaded, clutching her schoolbag to her chest for fear they’d steal it again and empty it all over the playground.

  “Come on, Sally,” Narinda said, walking past Louise and knocking her out of the way as if she wasn’t even there.

  After school, Louise had waited outside the school gates for her dad to pick her up. She’d counted the leaves on the oak tree ahead of her and she’d spotted how many red cars she could number as they passed on the street. Anything to occupy her mind so she didn’t have to listen to the taunts from Sally and Narinda.

  “Pikey,” Sally had shouted, “stinky pikey.”

  “No wonder her mum left her,” Narinda had chimed in, “who’d want to look after that?”

  Narinda and Sally hadn’t always bullied Louise. They hadn’t always stolen her things, or stamped on her crepe-paper lanterns or spat in her semolina. When Narinda had moved to the school, she and Louise had even been friends. Narinda had asked her to her birthday party and they’d played pass the parcel, sardines and hoola hoop. All the girls from school were there but Narinda had stayed by Louise’s side all day.

  “Best friends forever?” she’d whispered as they hid in the bath behind the shower curtain.

  “Best friends forever,” Louise had replied, her heart beating giddily with the thrill. Finally, she had a best friend, a real-life best friend that nobody could take from her.

  “When’s your party, then?” Narinda had asked coyly, peeking around the corner of the shower curtain as she heard Sally Duncan coming up the stairs, seeking them out. Louise hadn’t had a party – her mum hadn’t wanted the hassle of it. She’d had candles and cake with her mum and dad and hadn’t told anyone at school that it even was her birthday. But she didn’t want Narinda to know that. Narinda would think she was weird and wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore.

  “I’ve had it already,” she said. As soon as she said it, she realised what she’d done. Narinda withdrew from her, pulling her hand away. She’d been upset, of course she’d been upset. She’d thought Louise, her new best friend, had held a party and not invited her.

  “We’re in here, Sally,” Narinda had called, blowing their cover. As quickly as she’d found her, Louise had lost her new best friend and found a nemesis instead.

  Getting through the school day became an ordeal for Louise. Each afternoon, when her father pulled up in his old Ford Escort, Louise’s chest would thrash and punch in excitement as she ran towards safety.

  “I can’t do this every day, love,” he’d said once, when she got in the car. “I’ve got work, I can’t drop everything for you.”

  She’d looked at him in horror, her heart lodging in her throat, choking her into silence. It was only when she saw his gentle smirk that she’d realised he was joking.

  “I can walk home on my own,” Louise had said, big and brave.

  “Don’t be silly.” He’d winked, turning the car over and listening to it wheeze, wheeze, wheeze before it finally growled into action. “I wouldn’t miss this time with my little girl for anything in the world.”

  Louise always remembered what he’d done, though. She never forgot that he’d hit her mother. She’d always harboured some fear and resentment because of it. And deep down, she thinks he knew that. But in the end, Louise had forgiven her father for a simple reason. He’d stayed and her mother had left. He’d been the one that made her feel safe again.

  Eventually, they found a new rhythm, they moved on. Every Friday after school, they went to the park and she sat on his lap by the pond, feeding the ducks. He’d gently rocked his knee and indicated a point in the water where he’d just thrown a pebble in.

  “What do you see, little one?” he asked once, his voice warm and reassuring.

  “Water,” she replied.

  “What else?” he said, smiling.

  “Ripples,” she said eventually, her soft brow furrowing. He smiled again and jiggled her up and down making her giggle.

  “Better eyes, little one,” he said.

  “Sunlight,” then more quietly, “bouncing off the water. And little rainbows, where it’s shimmering.”

  He hugged her close and they sat for a while, content and silent. It had been a beautiful day, in a way that only remembered days can be.

  “The world’s always shimmering if you know where to look,” he said sadly. “But sometimes we forget. Some people forget to look for years and years and years until it’s too late. But you know what? It’s important to remember, Louise. Better eyes, we’ve all got to use better eyes.”

  Chapter Eight

  Pick up Maria from school, play in the park, pick up Matthew from nursery, go home for dinner, ‘I didn’t want pasta, I wanted chicken nuggets’, ‘I wanted the blue fork not the green one’, ‘You said I could have a yoghurt’, ‘I want ice cream’, ‘I didn’t want that one, I wanted that one’, run the bath, shampoo their hair, ‘Do Matthew’s hair first, you did my hair first last time’, ‘No you didn’t, you always do mine first’, ‘I don’t like that toothpaste, it’s too spicy’, ‘I want the strawberry toothpaste that Grandma uses’, ‘I want Gruffalo’, ‘Matthew always has Gruffalo it’s boring. I want Princess and the Pea, it’s not too long, can you read that?’ Story time, big cuddles and kisses, bring up an extra glass of water for Matthew, ask Maria if she needs another wee before she gets in bed, more cuddles, ‘I love you Daddy’, ‘When’s Mummy coming home?’

  “Soon, sweetheart,” Adam says, stroking Maria’s forehead and kissing her again. “Just a couple more sleeps. Now lie down and close your eyes. School in the morning.”

  Adam checks Matthew again on his way down – he’s snuggled up with his massive stuffed toy dog in his arms.

  “Nu-night daddy,” Matthew mutters, already drifting on his way to sleep.

  “Night, sweet boy,” Adam says, kissing him gently on the forehead.

  * * *

  When Maria was born, it made sense for Adam to stay at home with her. He worked from home anyway and Louise had the café to run. So without much discussion, Adam did the night feeds so Louise was fresh enough to go to work. He could fit his freelance work and writing around the childcare.

  Parenthood isn’t easy, but Adam loves it. The shift from being an individual, a husband, a person who had reclaimed his life after the loss of his brother, to immediately becoming a sleep-deprived servant to his daughter and son has been challenging but Adam wouldn’t change it for the world. The love he feels for Maria and Matthew is sometimes utterly overwhelming, like he has no space to feel anything else. He knows parenthood has changed things between him and Louise, he knows they don’t have sex like they used to, they don’t talk like they used to. But he doesn’t mind, he knows these things will pass. It’s the stage they’re relationship is at with two young children. The love they have for each other is as strong as ever. At least his is.

  Adam pours himself a glass of wine and puts the oven on. He assumes if Imogen is bringing a casserole, he’ll be expected to eat it with her, despite the fact he can think of nothing he’d like to do less. He’s never thought much of Imogen, she’s always seemed such a mean-spirited woman, so much so that the whole casserole thing doesn’t make any sense unless she has an ulterior motive.

  Plonking himself down into an armchair in their living room, listening for sounds of movement upstairs in case one of the kids needs him, he thinks again about his wife, wondering again if t
his conference is all it seems. His mother seems to think something else is going on. Imogen seems to think something else is going on. He knows she finds the children difficult and that she feels pushed out sometimes, but she wouldn’t run away, would she?

  He can see how it hurts her when both kids continually say: ‘No, I want Daddy to put my shoes on’, ‘No, I want Daddy to get me dressed’, ‘No, I don’t want Mummy to do my seatbelt up, Daddy do it’, ‘No, Daddy needs to push the pram.’ With Matthew, Adam is never sure if he means it or if he’s copying his sister, but the end result is the same – Louise feels like an outsider, someone who can do nothing right for them. But to Adam this is normal. When he listens to Louise’s friends from antenatal class talk about their own children, it’s exactly the same in reverse:

  “Oh, Gavin isn’t allowed to do anything for Timmy, he wants me for everything, it’s exhausting.”

  To Adam, the solution seems simple – time. He’s the stay-at-home parent, the one they look to for their needs, the one they see more of. As they get older, things will adjust and they’ll attach more to Louise. But he supposes this doesn’t address the problem immediately enough for Louise. Part of him feels that she resents him for not putting her first like he’d always promised to, but he can’t see a way to change things. They are parents now, things are different.

  “Little tip when you’re doing the shopping,” Louise said a few weeks ago, screwing the lid back on the peanut butter and throwing it in the bin. “Don’t buy the cheap crap, it’s vegetable oil and salt. And it tastes like shit.”

  “But I nicked it from your café.” Adam grabbed her from behind and tickled her, trying to make her laugh and offset the oncoming storm.

  “It’s all right for the punters,” she said, shirking him off, “but I wouldn’t give it to the kids. You’ve got to think about their meals a bit more carefully, Adam, it’s important.”

  Adam knew why she was stressed; the kids had refused to let her bath them earlier, wanting Daddy to do it.