After the Rain Page 10

  At home he shifts through each room, surveying the change, the distance that’s suddenly formed between him and this place we now call home. I lean against the doorframe watching him, still dressed in his uniform. ‘How are you doing?’ I ask.

  He stops pacing and turns to me. ‘I should be asking you that.’

  I shrug my shoulders and kick gently at the rug beneath my feet. ‘You back for long?’

  ‘For as long as I can.’

  He sits finally, pulling up the knees of his trousers first. He doesn’t lean back in the sofa Mom’s covered in an array of colored plaid cushions, but perches on the edge like he’s waiting for something. He stands suddenly as Mom enters the room with a tray. She balances glasses filled with juice and a plate of chocolate chip cookies from Marks & Spencer that she’s about to tell Dad she freshly baked this morning. She pauses, the tray in her hand shaking slightly, then laughs nervously at the unusual formality between us. It’s Dad, just Dad. He laughs with her and takes the tray from her hands, placing it down on the coffee table.

  ‘I’ll go change,’ he says. He leans in and gives her a soft kiss on her forehead. Then he walks over to me and does the same. ‘We’ll go for a walk when I come back down? You can show me the neighborhood.’

  We walk with the warm breeze at our backs and the sun on our faces. It’s a gentle sun here that tickles our cheeks and caresses the tops of our noses, not like the sun we have back in the US. I lead my dad down towards the river, passing through Kneller Park where dogs run free from their lead and do a quick circular of Mereway Nature Park which takes about fifteen minutes. It’s pretty congested here with residential streets, large chain grocery stores like Tesco and gas stations on every corner, but the few grassy areas are lovely and quiet. The ground crunches under the soles of my trainers, as low-hanging branches skim the crown of my head.

  ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve walked just the two of us,’ he says finally, breaking the silence.

  ‘It’s been a long time since you’ve been home,’ I mumble, looking away.

  ‘It’s been hard for me too, Alice.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. What you do is really important.’

  He leans over and rubs my back, like when I was a child and full of the flu.

  ‘Your mom told me about your friend Jack.’

  ‘He’s not really a friend. I didn’t know him at school before – before …’ Before It.

  ‘Your mom says you’ve been visiting him quite a bit since.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t really see him anymore.’ I kick at some stones on the path. My mind wanders back to the hospital, to the van that took him away after he was discharged.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was discharged.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we said at the time that I’d come hang out at the hospital until he got discharged, and well, he did.’

  ‘And you’re sticking to it? Who set that rule?’

  I screw up my face. ‘I think I did?’ It sounds silly now. Did I even ask him if he still wants to hang out after he was discharged? ‘I don’t know. But anyway, he probably doesn’t need me now that he’s home.’

  ‘He needs you more than ever now.’ My dad sighs and looks to the stream on his right, partially shielded by a large willow tree that hangs low. ‘Do you remember in Malaysia when your mother and I went through that rough patch?’

  I nod, my body recoiling at the memory. I used to hear them fight from my bedroom. I’d lie on my bed, headphones on, music blasting trying to drown out the voices. It didn’t always work. Sometimes the sounds from the hallway would snake in under the door, past the hum of the air-conditioning unit and creep up to my bed where I lay. Sometimes I heard exactly what was said, other times it was muffled voices and the occasional door slam. I’d never seen my parents argue like that before. My dad had just returned early from a two-year stint and was recovering from a shrapnel injury to his left shoulder.

  ‘I’d spent a week in the hospital getting stitches then fighting that infection, but that was the easy part. It was coming home that was harder. Coming home to normality, knowing I’d just seen my friends shot at in a raid, knowing I was one of the few that survived. I saw men, close friends, die that day. I had nightmares about it for months. Still do.’

  I stop walking. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I didn’t know how to talk about it. I felt like I couldn’t talk about it to you or your mom because you hadn’t been there. It’s hard to talk about things like that to someone that wasn’t there. So I kept it in, until I couldn’t anymore. Going home was harder than I’d ever expected. Especially when I knew there were families out there who’d never see their dads again. I just felt …’

  ‘Guilty,’ I say. I reach up and skim my cheek with my fingertips. They’re wet. I hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘Jack needs you more than ever. He’s going to be struggling getting back to what everyone else thinks is normal for him. Because it’s not. Especially with the injuries he sustained. Everything will be different for him. Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Yeah, his mom gave me their address. I have his number too.’

  ‘Well, call him.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to speak to me?’

  ‘He will.’

  When we get back to the house I write out a message to him. My fingers hover above the ‘send’ button. Uneasiness washes over as I imagine his face when he receives a text from me. He won’t want to hear from me. He already has friends. A lot. So I delete the text and drop my phone on the bed.

  Jack

  Lauren sits opposite me, too far back in the sofa so she looks tiny and uncomfortable. She wriggles but only seems to wedge herself between the stiff pillows more. There are a lot of pillows on the sofa. My mum likes decorative, lacy, frilly, boxy pillows. The stiffer and more nonfunctional, the better. She finally unwedges herself and scoots to the front of the sofa. She clasps her hands on her lap and continues looking around the room, anywhere but at me.

  ‘So, how’s school?’ I finally ask. It’s been twenty minutes of silence. I can’t take any more. I wish I was still pretending to have my hearing blown out.

  ‘It’s summer.’

  ‘Oh right. Sorry, my days are all mixed up.’

  She smiles, sympathetically, like keeping track of days is understandably a very challenging task for me now. ‘You look … good.’

  And there’s the first polite lie of the conversation. I most certainly do not look ‘good’ by any standards. I’m skinny, having spent over three months in a hospital bed, I have chin stubble, and I’m in joggers that have a stain on the thigh. She, however, does look good. She always does. We used to look good together. But now if someone were to take a photo, it would be laughable. Her and me together. It just doesn’t work anymore. And this awkwardness and distance that’s grown between us confirms that.

  ‘I’ve sent you a few messages.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, been busy,’ I mutter. And there’s the second polite lie. Busy is the opposite of what I’ve been.

  She scoots further down the sofa, closer to me. ‘You know, if you ever want to talk, Jack, I’m here.’

  My belly flips and I clench my jaw to make it stop. I know she’s trying but there’s nothing she can help me with. I don’t know how to talk to her. She couldn’t handle some of the things that I want to say, want to vent, want to scream. She couldn’t understand the rage inside me. So I simply nod, and ignore her offer.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, Jack. You don’t answer my calls. You don’t text me back, and now you can barely say two words to me.’ Her cheeks flush and her eyes water at the corners. I hate seeing her like this. Even if there’s nothing between us anymore, she’s still a friend and I still care about her.

  But I don’t tell her that.

  She stands and loops her handbag over her shoulder. She stands, waiting for me to tell her to sit back down. But I
don’t. I don’t say anything, and she leaves. When the living-room door slams, I hear polite murmurings in the kitchen between her and my mum and then she’s gone.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ my mum asks after.

  I shake my head. ‘If Lauren comes back, can you tell her I’m not seeing visitors or I’m sleeping or something?’

  There’s a long pause before my mum clears her throat. ‘OK,’ she says quietly, then shuts the door, leaving me here in this cold, stiff, formal living room that we don’t even use on special occasions like birthdays or Christmas.

  I slam my hand on the armrest and feel a shooting pain up my arm. Feels good to feel something again. I need to get out of here. I need space, I need air, I need … something to change. I take a deep inhale and pull out my phone; I still have a photo of Lauren and me at a party last term as my wallpaper. I immediately jump to my settings and open up my recent albums to choose from. Travel images, nature shots and photos of me skiing, hiking and cycling come up. None of which I want to see daily, and be reminded of. So I select one of the default images, of what looks like the inside of a bubble. I’m not sure but at least it doesn’t remind me of anything from my past life. Now that Lauren’s gone from my homescreen, I scroll down to my WhatsApp group with Will, Euan and Alex. I want to tell them about my conversation with Lauren, about how I’m feeling, how I want to throw this chair against the wall and then myself. But when I start typing, I suddenly don’t know what to say. I’ve never needed advice before or an opportunity to vent. I’ve never had any issues or stress in my life, therefore I’ve never needed anyone to talk to. How do I voice what’s going on inside my head right now? And if I do, what if they don’t know what to say, what if I make them feel awkward. Or worse, what if they just don’t care? It’s silly, I’ve known those guys for years. I went to primary school with them. I should feel comfortable enough to say absolutely anything to them. But ‘this’ is something they know nothing about. They can’t help me, even if they wanted to. Everything they say, all the advice they have, will be meaningless because they don’t know what I’m truly feeling. They don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’m going through. Like with Lauren, there’s this huge gap between me and the guys right now, and I don’t know how to close it. This isn’t something I can simply ‘get over’ with a cold beer and a game of golf or a 100km cycle with them.

  I delete my message to the group and instead scroll through my phonebook, looking for Alice. Then I type and press ‘send’ before I change my mind. She responds right away.

  Alice

  My dad drops me off by the road, the engine still running just in case I change my mind. Jack’s house is easy to identify, it sticks out amongst the fields and country lanes. It’s huge with whitewashed stone walls blanketed in Virginia creeper and a long, gated entrance up to the front door. I count at least four chimneys dotted along the roof and a crushed-stone path leading from the drive and disappearing around the back of the house. I wonder what’s housed in the back, perhaps tennis courts or a pool, maybe even a second home? In the driveway are three black cars and an array of potted flowers in full bloom. I’ve seen houses like this back in the US, especially in Texas where everything is bigger. Properties like this are owned by NBA stars or privileged politicians, and feature on TV shows such as Million Dollar Properties and Live Rich: Real Estate Special. My hands are shaking as I approach the front door. I was buzzed in at the front gate after a ten-minute explanation of who I am and why I’m here. I had to disclose my name, address and date of birth. I’m surprised they didn’t ask for my CV and social security number. Then I stared into a small round camera lens, like I was having passport photos done. Getting in here is harder than getting through Heathrow Airport.

  I press a finger on the bell and wait for a deep gong to vibrate through the ground I stand on and all through the house. Or maybe a tinkle of bells like in Downton Abbey. But nothing. Is it broken? I push it again, and again, and well, I guess just for fun, one more time. The door swings open and a tall man stands in the doorway, wearing a black shirt tucked into gray trousers that look like they’ve been ironed by my dad and his regiment for a training drill. ‘Alice Winters?’

  I nod, and wonder if this is the butler, a distant relative, or a bodyguard about to take me down.

  ‘Come in. Jack has been expecting you.’

  I stumble through the door into a large entryway with tiled flooring and fleur-de-lis motifs. A side table sits by the wall, stacked high with unopened cards and letters. All for Jack, I’m sure. Framed photos line the opposite wall, mostly of Jack but there’s the occasional one of his parents – wedding day, possibly honeymoon, and then them standing beside … wait, is that—

  ‘Prince Charles.’ Jack sits in his wheelchair under an archway that seems to lead into another branch of the house. He looks different out of the hospital. He looks … smaller.

  I point at the photo, framed in antique bronze. ‘Your parents know the royal family? What, are they close friends? Do they have a WhatsApp group?’

  He laughs, ‘Not exactly. My mum does a lot of charity work for the Prince’s Trust. This was taken at a fundraising gala a few years ago.’

  Mrs Addington looks beautiful, as usual. Her slender frame is silhouetted in a long, fitted emerald green dress with matching jewelry. Her hair is tied back neatly in a bun to show off the earrings which seem to sparkle even in this photo. I wonder if she could ever be friends with my mom – would they find common interests, shared passions? Or would their only connection be us – be the bombing that brought Jack and I together?

  I know my mom’s been finding it hard to meet people, to socialize since moving here. Unlike me, she seems to care about that. I’ve always been a bit of a loner. I prefer my own company. No one really understands what it’s like to move around so much, to never really feel at home or settle anywhere, to always feel detached from everything. But my mom struggles with the military family life. She’s always had a lot of friends. She was really popular at school. High school prom queen – that’s her. She had a crown and everything. But then she met my dad and he joined the army, and his first relocation came faster than either of them expected. She’s been active as a ‘military wife’ as much as she could be. When we lived in Texas she hosted book club evenings, wine and cheese nights, and dinners with the other military wives. When we moved to the East Coast, she organized fundraisers like bake sales and Fourth of July BBQs for the military community. But since coming here, she’s not found her place. She didn’t really connect with the other military families. She feels like an outsider, much like me. But whereas I’m used to that feeling, I’m familiar and honestly quite content with that, she’s struggling. Some days I find her going through old photo albums of her high school days, of the days before moving vans, cardboard boxes, shipping containers and airline tickets. Facebook doesn’t help. While she busies herself with profile posts of yoga outside and of the odd solo robin that flutters into the garden, there’s always someone from her old friendship circle that boasts pictures from a recent girls’ trip or reunion dinner. She used to ‘like’ all those posts, occasionally comment with a ‘Have fun!’ or wine glass emoji, now she just scrolls through the photos then pretends she never saw them, that they don’t bother her. I told her to reach out to her old friends, but she just shrugged and said, ‘They’ve probably forgotten about me now.’ This move was the hardest. In the past, when bake sales and book clubs didn’t cut it with the stationed military wives, she could turn to work colleagues for friendships. But she couldn’t get a visa here to work. Other parents at my school aren’t that friendly. It doesn’t help that I’m one of the few low-income ‘scholarship kids’ there. And our neighbors kind of keep to themselves. We’re different here. We stand out. People look at my mom’s tie-dye leggings, occasional pink-tinted hair, and judge her loud American laugh and yoga-hippie lifestyle. They don’t know how lucky they’d be to have her as a friend.

  ‘Do you want to come out
the back?’

  I turn and start wandering towards him. ‘I don’t know, what’s ‘out the back’ in a house like this?’

  His wheel gets stuck in the doorway as he tries to turn around. He curses under his breath, his cheeks turning a light coral.

  I discreetly nudge the wheel past the wooden doorframe with my trainer as I gesture up to the wall behind him. ‘You play squash too?’

  ‘Captain of the school team,’ he says looking up.

  ‘Of course you are,’ I scoff. ‘Anything else I don’t know about you?’

  He pushes the heel of his palm against the wheels and thrusts forward. We move through a large kitchen with a center island made of gray swirled marble or granite of some kind, and enter a thin hallway with three doors on each side. He opens the first door, and wheels in. ‘I sail too, and I speak three different languages. I meet with language tutors in my free time.’

  ‘Free time? Do you even know what that is? Don’t you ever just want to veg out on the sofa with a pizza and a good book or some trash reality TV?’

  ‘Sitting bores me.’

  ‘Not me. I quite enjoy it.’

  Jack points to a blue journal sticking out my open bag. ‘Is that your poetry?’

  I immediately move my bag away. ‘Maybe.’ I’m not ready for people to read my poems. They were never meant to be reviewed by others. They’re mine, just for me. A way to write down words or sentences that float in my mind with nowhere to go. I don’t always use the journal, sometimes I just scribble on napkins, backs of envelopes, stray paper, whatever I can find. Sometimes I keep them, glue them into the journal, and sometimes I throw them away.

  Jack pushes the door open to a large games room. ‘Where are we?’ I ask. White leather stools circle the wooden bar table that houses most of the beverages we’re not supposed to know about at this age, let alone be left unsupervised with. Brown leather armchairs and a sofa line the walls and are angled towards a large pool table in the center. Hunting rifles are mounted in glass on the wall in front of me.