The Rain by Virginia Bergin Read Free Book Online Page A

MOBILE: priority mission. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That and I was thirsty – but the glasses of water were gone – and I was bursting, so I had to pee on top of last
night’s pee in the bucket and when I’d finished peeing I checked the computer; it was still on from last night and everything was still down. It still showed the time, though. I tried
to remember when I had come in, wondering how much longer I might get made to stay in that room if Simon got his way about keeping me locked up. It made my sore head muddle.
    Then I opened the curtains. It was raining.
    Surrounded by narrow beds of plants that sprouted crazily, there was a little square of grass outside; ‘the front lawn’, Simon called it. He mowed it, lugging the mower up the garden
from the shed and through the house – dropping grass cuttings everywhere – for the two and a half seconds it took to cut the patch. Then he lugged the mower back through the house
– dropping grass cuttings everywhere – and back down the garden to the shed. My mum said the front lawn wasn’t worth the bother – the grass didn’t even grow properly,
the way the shrubs muscled in on it – but Simon did it anyway.
    If I felt anything about it, I felt that front lawn
was
Simon. The order in the chaos, something like that.
    The front lawn, that small, tidy square of mown green, was muddy, torn up – clawed up, like an animal had been at it.
    Mrs Fitch was lying on it. She had her back to me. The box of tablets lay next to her.
    It was raining hard. It was raining on Mrs Fitch. Mrs Fitch wasn’t moving. I watched; Mrs Fitch didn’t seem to be breathing.
    You know what? Even then I thought . . . I dunno: that she had . . . stayed out in the rain too long or something? That she was old anyway, so she could have just had a heart attack. Died of
hypothermia. Or had a stroke, like Grandpa Hollis.
    I drew the curtains shut. I’d never seen a dead body before and I didn’t ever want to see another one. It was horrible; just horrible . . . and the curtains weren’t enough; I
shut ten thousand doors in my head and even then I couldn’t keep it out. I had no words to say to myself to make it OK; instead, it was my body that started to shout.
I’m
thirsty!
I’m thirsty and I’m hungry and I feel really skanky and . . . I am so not going to poo in a bucket. I want breakfast. I want a shower. I want my mobile. I want OUT.
    Before I called I turned the handle of the door because you just would, wouldn’t you? The door opened.
    ‘Simon?’ I called softly. The house was quiet, you see, and I didn’t want to wake Henry. Come to that, the world was quiet. I could hear a few stupid alarms still, but no
sirens, no car horns, no shouts – or shouts that could have been screams. That was all I could hear: a few stupid alarms. And the rain.
    I listened
hard
.
    ‘Simon?’ I whispered.
    Henry had to be asleep. I peeked my head out of the door. The door to the sitting room was open. The TV was still on, sound down. You could see the reflection of it in the glass of all the
family photos on the windowsill; Grandma Hollis, smiling, TV flickers on her face.
    Maybe Simon was crashed out in front of the TV?
    ‘
Simon?!
’ I hissed.
    I tiptoed a few steps down the hall. Tiptoed, so’s not to wake Henry. I knew I wasn’t sick like killer-rain sick, so I kind of felt OK about it. Only, actually, I wasn’t that
sure that I wasn’t killer-rain sick. I wasn’t all covered in blood and groaning, but I knew how much I definitely didn’t feel right. I felt really, really thirsty and my head
hurt. I was hungry, too, but I felt sick at the same time – and a bit dizzy. Not good . . . but I couldn’t be sick
that way
. Surely? Could I be? No. Maybe. No.
    The maybe made me scared.
    ‘Simon?’ I whisper-called.
    Yeah. My head felt really swimmy and swirly.
    I tiptoed further down the hall. I stood at the bottom of the stairs; I listened.
    It was so, so, so quiet.
    I