Page 4 of After the Rain
“Pax!” my sister squeals. “C’mere, baby. Who’s a good boy? You are! You’re a good boy!” I swear, Pax is the only member of this family who gets the cutesy side of Wren to show.
Nash, Archer, and Cole stand up and walk over to me, each greeting me with a hug and a back slap. We’re all big and burly, with dark hair and varying degrees of stubble and/or beards. Nash keeps his hair short and neat, like you’d expect from a doctor, while my long, dark brown hair is generally tied up on top of my head in a messy knot. Quite the departure from the short back and sides I sported during my rugby days, although I do still shave the backs and sides into a bit of an undercut. Archer and Cole both embrace the bedhead look you might expect of men who spend most of their time in bed with their latest Tinder dates. Well, if the condom fits, I guess, as the adage goes. As for Wren, she’s a pocket-sized, dark-haired country girl who wears Dad’s old plaid work shirts, jeans, and Timberland boots like a uniform. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I saw her wear anything other than jeans, a T-shirt, and an oversized checked shirt tied artfully around her waist.
The twins and I work together on the Broads, building boats and managing our hire fleet of luxury cruisers and yachts at Dream Boats. Dream Boats was launched when we all decided that university was not for us. We all apprenticed with our uncle, Alan, our dad’s older brother, who worked as a boat builder on the Norfolk Broads for over fifty years. He taught us everything we know, and when he retired and moved to France, we decided to set up Dream Boats to offer more luxurious boat holidays for romantic getaways. The company name was not my choice; that would be Cole’s idea. But we’re stuck with it now since the business has taken off, and we’ve been featured in several high-end travel magazines and various travel blogs. Wren works in our office part-time to help, but really, she loves working on the farm with Dad while she completes her apprenticeship in agricultural management. But the business is growing, and with it getting busier and busier, it won’t be long before we need to employ someone more permanently.
My mother frantically wipes her hands on the dish towel always tucked into the string of her apron at her waist, and bustles over to me, pushing my brothers away. She reaches up and pulls me down for a hug. The scent of her envelops me. Lavender. Always lavender. She loves it. I truly believe it was a ploy when we wereborn that she started using lavender soap just to make sure that wherever we were, and however old we were, if we smelled lavender, we would think of her. It worked.
“My boy,” she whispers into my ear, and guilt lands like a lead ball in my stomach. I’ve been more stable with my mental health over the last few years, butshe still gets emotional every time I walk into the house. My mother has no conflicting thoughts whatsoever about my anxiety. She wants me to move home for good and has no qualms about it. She has many, many qualms, however, about the fact that I live in a converted boathouse and have only attended Sunday lunch– a weekly tradition in our family – a handful of times over the last three years, hence the guilt. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family. More than anything. But we are loud and demonstrative, and my anxiety makes it hard to drag my arse out of my house and up to the farm.
Dad makes his way over to us and hovers behind Mum before clearing his throat. She takes the hint and pulls away from me, before cupping my cheek and looking into my eyes for a second too long before nodding and moving away with a sniff. Dad pulls me in for one of his patented bear hugs before letting me go and grabbing me a beer from the fridge.
Anxiety is weird. Once I get my arse in thecar, drive to the farm, get through the hugs, and we just sit around the table chatting and talking shit while Mum and Dad serve dinner, my anxiety settles and I feel fine. It’s the anticipation of it that is so much worse than actually being here. My brothers and I mercilessly tease Wren about her date on Friday with Sam, a guy we all went to school with – a good friend – who now owns the pub in the village. Apparently, she snuck back into the house at zero-dark-thirty yesterday morning thinking she could get upstairs without anyone knowing, only to find my parents and the twins having breakfast at the table. Mum just picked up the teapot and poured Wren a cup. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that awkward cuppa.
“Fuck you all!” she pouts. “At least I’m getting some.” That shuts us up while drawing a raised eyebrow and stern glare from Mum. None of the Foster brothers has had a relationship in a while. The twins are too busy shagging literally anyone and living their best queer lives to even think about settling down. Nash recently got divorced from Shelley, his high school sweetheart, after she decided she didn’t want kids and wanted to move to a big city for a more exciting life than she could have in Fenside Common. Nash has always,alwayswanted kids. He’s still reeling from it, even though she leftover a year ago, but the divorce was only finalised last month. I think they’re still friends – Shelley’s a great person – but they just wanted different things in the end.
And as for me? I’m too much of a mess to look for a man who could even begin to handle my shit. I can barely handle it myself.
We finish dinner and take dessert, Mum’s homemade apple crumble with custard, to our customary seats in the living room. The fireplace is lit, and the warmth of the flames alongside the taste of spicy cinnamon, apples, and the buttery, crunchy topping has me truly relaxing for the first time in a few weeks. I go through times when my anxiety is worse than others. This last month has been a bad one, although thankfully, it’s the first bad one I’ve had in a while. Pax was a game changer in managing it, but I’m still a work in progress. I think I always will be. This time with my family today, despite my initial anxiety, has been incredible. I’m relaxed in my favourite seat, with a full belly, a sleeping Pax next to my feet, and everyone who matters to me within these walls. I look around the room, taking in the quieter conversations, and, for the first time in a long time, I get the feeling that one day, maybe one day soon, I will be just fine.
At a little after 7:30pm, I say goodbye to my family and walk out with my arms full of food in a collection of age-old Tupperware containers that Mum inherited. She swears blind that the clip-lock storage boxes you get these days can’t hold a candle to these old things. I dutifully pile them up on the passenger seat of the truck, and Pax jumps into the back as soon as I open the door, lyingdown to sleep almost immediately. He loves my family, but like me, he’s always exhausted when we leave. Mum, who followed me out, gives me one last hug, whispering in my ear, “I want to see you at Sunday lunch every week, my boy. I’m putting my foot down. If you’re not here by lunchtime, I’ll be sending the twins to come and collect you.” With that bombshell, she kisses me on the cheek and turns away, retreating to the house before I can say a word in retort. I shake my head at myself. It really isn’t a hardship to come to this each week, but when my anxiety kicks in, it feels insurmountable. I know I need to push myself more, and, in that moment, I make a promise to myself that I will do just that.
I turn on the engine, reverse the car, and head back towards my quiet little haven on the other side of the village. I pass through the centre of Fenside Common with the quintessentially English ‘village green’ and obligatory honest-to-God duck pond. The café, owned by my friends Poppy and Chris, a couple of shops, and several homes I pass, are lit up with Christmas lights, with more strung high across the street. For some reason, Fenside Common Parish Council decorates Main Street with Christmas lights as soon as Halloween is over, even though there are a solid two months before the holiday. I regularly get informed that my inner Grinch is showing when I complain about it, but seriously, I don’t want to get Christmassy when it’s not even December! My parents follow suit with the Parish Council and already have their tree up with decorationsand lights on the outside of the house. In fact, I think I’m the only member of my family who doesn’t decorate. I used to, but these days, living alone out by the water, it feels like a waste of time. Nobody will see, and it makes no difference to me, so why bother.
OK. I know that’s not a very festive attitude, but hey, it’s where I’m at.
I carry on driving out of the winter wonderland that is Fenside Common on the main road that acts as an artery for the village and am about a minute from home when I see something on the side of the road. Ah shit, someone must have hit a deer or something.
I pull over with the intention of checking whether it’s just injured. There’s an animalsanctuary a few miles away that cares for injured animals – a much-needed service considering the number of muntjac deer that get hit by cars and left to die. It’s criminal. I always check and take them in for care, or at the very least, a humane end with less suffering.
I park the car, leaving the headlights on so I can see what I’m doing, and jump out. As I approach, I realise – fairly quickly – that this is no animal, let alone a small muntjac, unless the local deer population has started wearing Converse. I break into a run and land on my knees next to what I can now see is obviously a person.
“Hey. Hey, can you hear me?” I ask, immediately slipping into crisis management mode – a fun side effect of my anxiety disorder is that in an emergency that is not related to me, I am almost always the calmest person around, and am able to manage a crisis with a clear mind. I press two fingers against the person’s neck to feel for a pulse. It’s there, but very slow. Too slow. And the skin is freezing cold. Out here in rural Norfolk, we don’t have a hospital or an ambulance service that will respond very quickly, so the best bet for medical help is my brother. I call Nash, but it goes to voicemail.
“Fuck. Come on, Nash. Pick up.” I hang up and dial again. Voicemail. Swallowing a frustrated breath, I make an alternative plan. Agroan from under my fingers snaps my attention back to the hunched-up ball of a person on the ground. “Hey, can you hear me?” Another groan. Thank fuck this person is alive. They start to roll over, presumably trying to get up, but I’m not sure if they should. What if they got hit by a car? They could have a neck or spinal injury. “Stay still, OK? You may have a neck injury. Did you get hit by a car?” I’m at a loss as to why someone would be out here walking on the side of the road in the dark in November, but that’s by the by.
“No. Fell asleep,” a soft, pained voice whispers as the person continues to roll over.
“You fell asleep? What the…” As he, as I now see this is a guy, rolls over, and his face becomes visible, I have to swallow the bile that rises like a scalding fire in my gut from the shock I feel at the state of his face. The guy’s eye is basically swollen shut, and his entire face is black and blue. It looks as though someone has beaten the ever-loving shit out of him. I can see the bruises continuing down his neck, where they actually seem to get darker. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s black and blue all over. He’s a smaller guy, and that alone makes the fire in my stomach burn even hotter. I’ve never been able to tolerate bullies who pick on people smaller than them, and this guy is certainly on the smaller side, physically.
He mumbles something, and I lean in to tryto hear him. I have no idea what he’s trying to say, but regardless, he cannot stay here.
“OK, mate. I need to get you off this ground and somewhere warm. My brother is a doctor, and I can call him to come and take a look at you, but we need to get you up. Do you think you can stand?” He groans again, and his hand grips mine with a surprising strength. His skin is so cold, I’m seriously worried about hypothermia. I lean over his face so he can see mine and lock my gaze on the one eye of his that is not completely swollen shut. It’s a light colour, but it is just too dark out here with no streetlights to see the specific colour for sure.Irrelevant really, I chide myself. The main thing is that he can focus on me. “I’m going to pick you up and take you back to mine. You can’t stay here. OK?”
He manages a weak nod, and I take that for all the consent I’m going to get. I let go of his hand only long enough to slip one arm under his neck, the other under his knees, and pick him up off the ground, jostling him as little as possible. He weighs almost nothing and, as soon as I’m standing, his head leans on my shoulder, and his cold nose touches my neck. I must be seriously fucked up, because as bruised and beaten as this guy is, holding him in my arms, I feel a sense of protectiveness towards him like I’ve never felt before. And that may just be the scariest thing I’ve felt in years.
Three
Rain
Voices. I can hear hushed voices. What are they saying? Ugh. My head is so fuzzy that I can’t actually make out the words. The next thing I hear is a whimpering, groaning sound, and it takes me a second to realise that it‘s coming from me. The other voices stop, and there are loud bangs. Nope. Not bangs. Footsteps. Getting louder. Closer. I tense and curl up in anticipation of Dan’s fists hitting me for falling asleep, but that’s not what happens. A calm, deep voice speaks softly.
“Hey. It’s OK. You’re safe. My brother is right here. He’s a doctor. Do you remember me picking you up earlier tonight?”
Picking me up? What the fuck? Did someone pick me up at the club or something? Another voice that sounds even closer says, “My name is Dr. Nash Foster. I need to check you for a concussion if that’s OK?” His voice is smooth,deep, and his accent sounds strange. Almost, like – I don’t know.
“Where am I?” I barely recognise my thick, raspy voice.
“You’re in Fenside Common in Norfolk, at my brother Aidan’s home. He found you on the side of the road a couple of hours ago. Do you remember?”
