The Year of the Rat Read online

  It’s raining so hard I get the bus to meet Molly. As I stand at the bus stop, I wish I hadn’t agreed to meet her after all. Maybe I should text her and say I can’t make it. But then the bus pulls up and the old man in front of me says, ‘After you, dear,’ and ushers me on so there’s no getting out of it.

  The bus is pretty empty when I get on, but after a couple of stops it’s crowded and the air is thick and damp. A very wide woman laden with shopping sits down next to me so that I’m all squashed up against the window. Her wet carrier bags rest against my leg, making my jeans clammy and cold.

  I think about the last time I met up with Molly; remember the two of us stumbling out of the dark cinema that day, into the dazzling afternoon. It was only a few weeks ago. That’s weird, I’d said, switching my phone back on. Dad’s phoned fifteen times. What’s he playing at? He knew we were going to see a film . . .

  The bus windows are so steamed up it’s like being in a cave and I start to feel claustrophobic. I make a small clear square on the steamed-up window with my finger so I can see out to the rainy streets. The doctor’s surgery, the chippy, the petrol station. Everything, inexplicably, just the same as it’s always been my whole life.

  This bus route goes past the end of the street where we used to live. There’s a little boy in yellow wellies at the corner, holding his mum’s hand and jumping in puddles. I peer at them through the gap on the window which is starting to cloud up again. As I do, I see the back of someone, a dark figure with an umbrella, turn into our old road. Was it Mum? Yes! Wasn’t that a glimpse of red hair I saw before she disappeared from view? Suddenly I’m certain of it. It must be her. I know it was.

  ‘I’ve got to get off!’ I blurt at the wide lady. I jump up, pressing the bell and clambering over her shopping as she tuts at me.

  ‘Watch it,’ she says as I dash for the doors. ‘There’s eggs in there.’

  Outside, the rain’s still bucketing down. I don’t have an umbrella and before I’ve even sprinted across the road, a car blaring its horn at me, I’m soaked. I don’t care. I run round the corner and down the street and, spotting the dark figure ahead of me through the rain, I speed up.

  ‘Mum,’ I call out, but she’s too far ahead to hear. I’m out of breath, but getting closer. ‘Mum, it’s me,’ I call again as the figure turns to cross the road—

  —and I realize it’s a man. Way taller than Mum. No red hair. How could I have thought it was her?

  My whole body burns with humiliation as I slow my pace to a walk and try to catch my breath. How could I have been so stupid? What if someone had seen me? They’d think I was mad. And worse than that – my stomach lurches – they might be right. What am I doing? Am I really losing my mind? People were always going mad from grief in history and Shakespeare. Maybe that’s what’s happening to me.

  I look around me and realize I’m standing right outside number 16, a house just the same as all the others, in the middle of the terrace. It doesn’t look like our home any more. In the few months since we moved out they’ve painted the door white and paved over the small square front garden. All trace of us is gone.

  The rain plasters my hair to my head and drips from my eyelashes, my nose. My reflection looks back at me from the bay window: a ghost girl. Sometimes, when I can’t get to sleep and it gets to that shadowy, unreal time of the night, I think that somehow I split off from the real me in that moment in the wintery sunshine outside the cinema when I listened to Dad’s message on my phone and everything changed. The other me is living my real life with Mum and the perfect, pretty baby sister that should have been mine. And I’m trapped here with The Rat, unable to escape.

  The ghost girl in the window watches me, water trickling down her face. I turn away from her and walk slowly back up the road.

  When I get to Angelo’s Cafe, Molly is already inside, sitting at a table in the window. She looks almost luminous through the rain, tucking her long blonde hair absently behind her ear as she watches anxiously for me. She waves frantically as she sees me and my stomach flips and my nails dig into my palms. I want to be pleased to see her, but I just want to turn round and go home.

  As soon as I walk inside, she jumps up, sending a tomato-shaped ketchup holder rolling across the floor, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Pearl.’ She hugs me and even though I’m soaking wet she won’t let go. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she sobs. I stand there stiffly, staring over her shoulder at the endless traffic on the main road. I don’t want Molly to cry over Mum. She’s got no right.

  Eventually, she lets go and looks at me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Pearl.’

  ‘I know.’ I sit down, dripping on to the wood-effect plastic table. Molly sits too and takes hold of my hand.

  ‘Look at you. You’re soaked to the skin. I’ll go and see if they can bring you a towel or something.’

  Before she can move, a waiter dashes over, all smiles. Waiters always want to impress Molly. In fact, the whole male population wants to impress Molly. Not that she notices. She thinks they’re just being nice, that they’re like that to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to be tall and blonde and extremely attractive. Mum always used to worry that it would bother me. You’re beautiful too, she’d say. Just in a . . . different sort of way. But it doesn’t bother me. People assume there’s nothing more to Molly than being pretty. That’s why we’ve always been best friends: I’ve always known different.

  ‘I can help you?’ the waiter says hopefully in an eastern European accent, even though everyone else has to order at the counter.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Molls, I’m fine,’ I say, clenching my teeth to stop them chattering.

  ‘You’re not,’ she says, full of concern. ‘You’re wringing wet. Look at you. You’re shivering.’

  ‘You want me to bring a towel? It’s no problem,’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  But he’s not even listening to me, he’s transfixed by Molly.

  ‘Could you?’ she says. ‘Thanks so much.’

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ I say too loudly. A man on the other side of the cafe looks up from his plate of egg, bacon and beans and I huddle down into my wet clothes, trying to look inconspicuous. ‘Just a cappuccino thanks,’ I mutter and the waiter drags himself away, still grinning stupidly at Molly, though she’s far too busy fussing over me to pay any attention.

  ‘I’ve been so worried about you,’ she says. I can’t think of anything to say. I’m still half thinking about the house, the girl in the window, the figure I thought was Mum. I was so sure it was her.

  ‘I wanted to wait and speak to you after the funeral, but Mum said we should just go,’ Molly carries on. ‘I’ve been thinking about you all the time. What you must have been going through.’ She shakes her head. ‘It must have been so awful, Pearl. I’ve been so desperate to speak to you.’

  ‘Well, sorry,’ I say harshly, thinking of all the times she’s phoned and I haven’t answered, all the texts I’ve ignored, sitting on my own in the house waiting for Mum. ‘I’ve been kind of busy.’

  She stares at me and goes red.

  ‘I know . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ she stumbles, confused. ‘I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do . . .’

  Water is still trickling from my hair, cold down the back of my neck.

  ‘You can’t do anything,’ I say.

  She watches me, her eyes big and puzzled.

  ‘I thought you might want to talk. I know I can’t change anything, but it might make you feel better to talk about how you’re feeling.’

  We’ve always talked about everything. Right from when we were little kids. But how can I now? What would she say if she knew what I was really feeling? I hate the baby. It should be her that’s dead. Even lovely, kind, understanding Molly might find that a bit hard to take. I saw my mum at her funeral and now I’m waiting for her to come back again? I don’t think so.

  ‘I was going to come round, but I didn’t know . . .�
�� She trails off and her eyes fill with tears again. I look away. I know I’m being cruel, but I don’t seem to be able to stop.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ she says again.

  The smiling waiter brings our coffees. I make patterns in the top of my cappuccino with my spoon.

  ‘How’s the baby?’ Molly says at last. My heart thuds. I knew she’d ask eventually.

  I shrug. ‘Dad thinks she’ll die.’ I hold a sugar cube in the coffee and watch the brown stain climb till it almost touches my fingers. ‘She won’t though.’

  ‘No.’ Molly pounces on something she can be positive about. ‘Course she won’t. She must be a fighter, to have survived till now. Every day she’ll be getting stronger.’

  The sugar cube disintegrates and falls into the coffee.

  ‘How long will she be in hospital?’

  ‘Dunno. Weeks. Months probably. That’s what they told Dad.’

  ‘It’s like a kind of miracle, isn’t it? That she’s alive.’

  I knew I shouldn’t have come. I want to just get up and run out, away from Molly and the lurking waiter and the smell of frying bacon, into the rain. But I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one day. I look out of the window and watch the cars go by.

  ‘Mum used to bring me here when I was a little kid,’ I say, more to myself than to Molly. ‘This really old Italian guy used to run it then. Angelo, I suppose. He was funny.’

  Mum used to practise her Italian on him. She used to tell him he was mad for moving to London. She said one day we were going to run away to Italy, me and her and Dad, and we’d live in a crumbling villa and she’d have an artist’s studio surrounded by lemon trees and live on olives and red wine. I remember how worried I was. I was too young then to know that most of Mum’s grand schemes were just talk. I didn’t want to move and I didn’t like olives or lemons or red wine. Angelo would wink at me and say, ‘You like the gelato though, no?’

  I can feel Molly watching me, wondering what I’m thinking. ‘You OK?’ she says tentatively.

  ‘She’d always sit at one of the window tables and tell me to see how many red cars I could count. She told me if I counted thirty she’d buy me an ice cream.’ I almost smile. ‘Took me ages to realize it was just so she could read a book in peace.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘Pearl. That day—’ Molly stops and I know from her face which day she means. ‘After we’d been to the cinema . . .’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘After you got the phone call from your dad . . .’

  I remember again how I listened to my voicemail outside the cinema in the bright sunshine, and how something in Dad’s voice made me stop so sharply in the middle of the pavement that a woman ran into my ankles with her buggy. The bruise lasted for days after, but at the time I hardly noticed; all I could think of was Dad’s voice. It sounded so – wrong. Pearl, you need to get to the hospital. It’s Mum. Get a taxi. Just be as quick as you can. He didn’t sound like him. Time slowed down. I just stood there in the busy street full of Saturday afternoon shoppers with their kids and dogs and cans of Coke, and it was like I was on my own.

  ‘Did you get there in time to see her?’ Molly asks.

  I close my eyes and I’m back, running down those green hospital corridors, lungs bursting . . . I open them again. I watch the cars, but they’re all black and silver and white. No red ones.

  ‘Yes,’ I say to Molly eventually. ‘I did.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Yes. She gave me a hug and told me she loved me.’ I feel like I’m listening to someone else saying it. ‘And then it was like she just fell asleep. Peaceful. She was even smiling.’

  ‘Oh, Pearl.’ Her tears flow again.

  The besotted waiter looks over, maybe hoping to offer his shoulder to cry on.

  ‘Can we pay?’ I say. I feel faint suddenly. My stomach is empty and the coffee is making my brain buzz. ‘I need to go.’

  The rain has stopped at last. We stand awkwardly outside the cafe, neither of us knowing what to say.

  ‘I’m going to meet Ravi,’ Molly says. ‘But I can walk back with you first if you like?’

  ‘Ravi?’ I say, surprised. ‘You’re not still seeing him, are you?’ Molly had met him at a party we’d been to just before Mum died. I’d assumed she wouldn’t see him again. Molly could have her pick of anyone. Ravi looks like his ambition is to be the youngest ever Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  ‘I am actually,’ Molly says shyly. ‘It’s been more than a month now. It’s going really well.’

  ‘Oh.’ Strange to think of life going on without me.

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ Molly says.

  ‘It’s not that,’ I say. ‘I don’t know him. I only met him that one time at Chloe’s party. He seemed a bit . . .’ I try to think of a polite way of saying ‘dull’, ‘. . . serious.’

  ‘You’ll like him when you get to know him,’ Molly says. ‘I know you will.’

  We walk along in silence, the noise of the traffic loud around us.

  ‘School was weird without you,’ Molly says, filling the gap. ‘And the holidays have been a nightmare. My family’s driving me mad. Liam plays his music really loud all day. Jake wants a pet snake, keeps on about it the whole time. Callum keeps wetting the bed. Mum and Dad aren’t talking to each other. Again. I’ll be glad to get back to school. And it’ll be great to have you back.’ She takes my arm.

  I’ve never really heard Molly’s mum and dad say much to each other, except for stuff like Where are the car keys? or I told you I’d be late tonight, it’s not my fault if you don’t listen. But Molly looks really down.

  ‘I’ve really missed you,’ she says, linking arms with me. I wonder if she expects me to say I’ve missed her too. A massive lorry thunders past, spraying the puddles at the side of the road up towards us so we have to dodge out of the way. Molly lets go of my arm and we walk side by side.

  ‘Do you go and see her every day?’ Molly asks. ‘The baby?’

  ‘Dad does. He practically lives there when he’s not at work. I never see him.’

  ‘Don’t you go too?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve been revising.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘But it’s so noisy at my house. Everyone’s rowing all the time. Once we’re on study leave, we should go to the library together.’

  We walk in silence for a while.

  ‘Maybe I could come with you to visit the baby some time,’ Molly says. ‘I can’t wait to see her.’

  I imagine Molly seeing The Rat for the first time. I imagine her face lighting up, softening into a smile as she whispers to her—

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You can’t.’

  Molly looks confused. ‘When she’s well enough I mean.’

  ‘You might as well leave me here,’ I say. ‘I’ll get the bus.’

  ‘You sure?’ She’s disappointed. ‘I really don’t mind walking with you.’

  ‘There’s one coming now,’ I say, spying a bus in the distance, and before she can say anything more I dash out across the road. Molly waves as I stand in the queue, and then turns and walks off in the opposite direction. She’s out of sight when the bus eventually pulls up.

  I decide to walk after all.

  By the time I get back to the house, the sun is shining. I go inside to peel off my damp clothes and get dry ones on, still thinking about Mum, how sure I’d been that it was her. I feel panicky suddenly. She’s slipping away from me, every second taking me further away from her. What if I wake up one day and I can’t remember what she looked like? Already, sometimes, I have to concentrate to think of what she sounded like when she spoke, to try and hear it in my head. I have to keep her with me.

  I remember the box in her study. PERSONAL it had said. I hurry through and stare at it. What’s in there? I shoo a deeply unimpressed Soot off the lid of the box. Then I take a deep breath and carefully peel back the brown tape that seals it.

  Inside, there are letters an
d cards, photos and postcards, bunches of them tied up with string or ribbon or held with elastic bands, some in old shoeboxes, others loose. There must be hundreds of them. I stare at them, overwhelmed, hardly able to breathe. It’s like the story of Mum’s life all here in this box. I pick out one of the envelopes of photos and look through them. They’re all muddled up, some of Mum when she was a little girl and then a teenager, one of her with Nanna Pam before she got ill. Looking at them makes me cry, but I keep on looking.

  The last picture is of Mum lying in a hospital bed, looking young and exhausted, holding me, all new and crumpled. Not like The Rat though. I look like a real baby. I think of The Rat in her funny plastic box with the tubes going in and out of her. Is she still in it? Does she still look the same? I examine the photo carefully. Dad wasn’t there; he and Mum had been friends since before I was born, but they didn’t get together until a few months later. My real father hadn’t been there either. He and Mum had split up before I was even born. I think of how Dad looked at The Rat when we first saw her and I wish suddenly that someone had been there to look at me like that.

  I put the envelope back in the box and press down the tape. There’s plenty more to see, but I can’t look any more. Perhaps another day.

  The sun’s shining now and I go outside into the garden. It was a mess when we moved in and now spring is here it’s grown completely wild. I pick my way across the overgrown meadow of the lawn, yellow with dandelions, to the little bench under the trees at the end, surrounded by a mass of lily of the valley in among knee-high weeds. I close my eyes, just like I did in the church when Mum appeared, and I try to reach her with my mind.

  This was where it all started: where she told me about The Rat, that day we first looked round the house last summer. I picture it in my head, trying to remember every tiny detail. The estate agent had taken Dad up to look at the loft space.

  ‘Plenty of room for a master bedroom and en suite up there if you ever wanted to convert it, Alex,’ he said as they started up the stairs. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Alex, do you?’

  Mum had done a disappearing act. I thought maybe she’d gone outside for a cigarette so I went out to explore the overgrown tangle of back garden and found her, sitting where I am now, almost hidden from the house. But she wasn’t smoking.