Once the rain came it didn’t stop. The sky opened up and let out everything it had withheld for so long. It hammered the tin rooves and sloshed over the gutters. People were overjoyed. A true downpour—finally. Kids galloped to the creeks to see if they would fill. Ben stood in town, stubbie in hand and watched the dripping awnings, the steaming road. He inhaled the smell of rain, hot wet tar and damp clothes. The air cooled instantly. He rode his bike home slowly through the rain alongside the drains that were coursing like small streams. Water dripped down his neck.
He was thoroughly soaked by the time he walked in the kitchen door. Rain pelted the roof loudly. A bucket on the floor caught the drips inside. PJ huddled unhappily at Ada’s feet. Both Ada and his dad stood staring out the kitchen window. They turned to Ben as he stood there dripping.
‘It’s even cool,’ he said. He was the messenger delivering the sodden, soaking fact of rain. He grinned. The world was clean-scrubbed. And then he even began to shiver.
‘Have you seen Tilly? I can’t find her,’ Mike said.
‘She’s probably with Alice,’ Ben said.
‘No, she isn’t. You should go get out of your wet things,’ his dad said. ‘Your mum will be home any minute.’
Ben smiled lazily. He turned and headed for the bathroom. And then there was the fox. ‘Is Mum okay?’ he called over his shoulder.
Ada ran up close to him and touched his wet shirt. ‘Don’t tell Mum about what we did?’
Ben nodded. He was no blabbermouth.
Ada raced back to the window where she glued her face, watching for Tilly.
‘Yes, she’s fine, just a bit shaken,’ said Mike.
Ben peeled off his clothes, discarding them in a pile on the bathroom floor. He stood in a hot shower for longer than he was meant to. But the drought had broken, and he wanted to remember how it was when water wasn’t scarce, when they were kids and they played endlessly under the sprinkler and had their baths as deep as they liked. The rain still thudded down. The tank would fill. The dams would rise. Maybe even Cairn Curran would fill. He could stay under the hot water.
Mike thumped on the door and told him to get out. Ben, wearing a towel and holding his wet clothes, headed out the door to his room when he saw a car pull into the driveway. It wasn’t Martha’s car.
He called to Ada, ‘Someone’s here.’
Ada flew back to the window. They both watched. For a while it seemed no one would get out of the car. Finally the passenger door opened. It was Tilly. She sheltered her head with her arms, speaking quickly and smilingly at the driver, and then she ran towards the house.
Ada ran at her as soon as she entered.
‘Where have you been? There’s been a fire. William Blake is dead. We weren’t allowed to come home.’
Tilly wiped the rain off her bare arms and stared at Ada incomprehendingly. ‘Wait, so where’s Mum? Did Ada’s tree really burn?’
‘Who drove you home?’ said Ben.
Tilly ignored him and stared questioningly at Mike.
‘Your mum’s on her way home from Anne Dresden’s,’ he said.
‘Where were you, Tilly?’ Ada wore the gravest expression.
Tilly tilted her head and examined the room as if to make sure it was all really there.
Ben knew where she had been. He could tell. She was cagey, wide-eyed, distracted. He fought against it. Why should that ruin his mood?
‘I went to my piano lesson. That’s all. Raff drove me home. Because of the rain.’ Tilly eyed Ben with a forbidding glare. He wasn’t to comment, obviously. But Ada did.
‘Is he your boyfriend?’
‘No,’ Tilly blushed and plonked herself on a stool. ‘What started the fire?’
No one answered. No one knew yet. The sound of the rain seemed louder for a moment and they all looked outside. The sky was streaked with the metallic rain. Ada’s sneakers out on the grass were soaked through.
The telephone was ringing. Ben could hardly hear it. ‘It’s like Armageddon,’ he said. The rain belonged to him. He had seen the town dripping beneath it, and now it fell to him to tell it how it was. Neither of his sisters answered him or even registered his observation. They stood together at the window in a way that excluded him. There was a quiet between them. He could tell that there was something else there too, something unconscious and constant. Their instincts moved in relation to each other like a dance. Now it had drawn them to the window and pressed them into a gentle, silent awe. It irritated him because it joined them against him, against the moment he had meant to own. Mike spoke on the phone. The rain was so heavy Ben couldn’t hear what he was saying. He would wait for it to ease and then he would run out to his room as he had planned.
But Ada ran outside instead. No one stopped her. She stood on the grass with her arms up, her palms cupping the rain, her face bracing to receive the splattering of water as if everything in Ada was rising to meet the downpour, to join in with its drama, to claim its wildness and its might.