The Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

come you don’t mind spending hours in the shower, but you’re bothered about a bit of rain?
    Me: I have to spend hours in the shower because the shower is useless.
    (This is me having a go at Simon because he refused to get a new shower.)
    You get the idea.
    Then there were the historical ones, which were his absolute favourites; he had millions of them . . .
    Example No. 3
    Simon: Supposing Sir Edmund Hillary had looked outside his tent and said, ‘You know what, it’s raining. I don’t think I’ll bother conquering Everest
after all.’
    Me: It doesn’t rain on Everest – and anyway Sherpa Tenzing got there first.
    (I didn’t really know whether that was true, about the rain – it just seemed it ought to be . . . but the Sherpa Tenzing bit? Ronnie had told me that. Some things he said were
true.)
    Example No. 4
    Simon: Imagine if Winston Churchill had said, ‘You know what, it’s a bit rainy in Europe, let’s just let Hitler get on with it.’
    Me: Actually, this country is part of Europe . . . and, anyway, I’m not going to war, am I? It’s only a stupid guitar lesson.
    Simon: Which you asked to go to, and which we’re paying for.
    Etc.
    That one ended up with me grounded for the rest of the week –
after
I’d been forced to go to the guitar lesson (in the rain).
    I just want to tell you one more.
    Example No. 5
    Simon: Imagine if the Americans and the Chinese and the Russians had said, ‘Oh no! It’s raining! Let’s not launch the missile that’s going to blow up the
asteroid and save the planet until it’s nice and sunny.’
    Me: Great! Then we’d all be dead and I wouldn’t have to live with you!
    I really did say that. My mum heard me, and she was quite upset. She told me, for the zillionth time, that Simon did have feelings. I didn’t believe her. I hated him. I
thought I meant it, what I said, but I didn’t
mean it
mean it; it was just how I felt at the time.
    Since then, there have been times I’ve felt that way and I have meant it. Not the bit about Simon, but about how it might have been better if the Earth had been blown to smithereens. At
least it would have been quick. Less suffering.
    That night, locked in the front room, I thought I was suffering. I didn’t ask what was happening, or why. I went nuts. I really went crazy. The Henry Rule went right out
of my head.
    Oh. Oh no.
    I do not want to have to do this. I need to tell you who Henry was.
    My own sweet liberator.
    My babiest brother-brat beloved: one year old.
    When my mum told me she was pregnant with him, know what I thought? I thought that because of the secret-y way she said it – when there was just me and her in the kitchen – and in
spite of the fact that she and my dad had been divorced for centuries and despite the fact that my dad had had Dan with Kara and they’d split up too and he was now dating
‘floozies’ (that’s what I heard my mum tell my Auntie Kate), when she said she was going to have a baby I thought she meant that she was having a baby with my dad.
    DUR.
    When I realised she meant Simon, I went up to my room and cried my eyes out.
    BUT!
    If I had understood what a brilliant thing Henry would be in my life, I would have jumped for joy . . . because Henry, dear Henry, set me free. It’s true; even before he was born, Simon
and my mum got so obsessed with him that they got less and less obsessed with me. I got given my OWN set of keys to the house (although – luckily – we still kept the Ruby Emergency Key
in case I had a dizzy fit, which might have happened sometimes) and best and most brilliant of all: MY OWN MOBILE PHONE.
    So: The Henry Rule . It was a total, complete and utter no-no any day – possible global-disaster days included – to make any sort of noise
that might wake him; that was The Henry Rule – to which, up until that moment, I was fully, totally, completely and utterly signed up because once Henry got going . . . he could bawl for
England. Yes, my babiest