Page 52 of Crying in the Rain
“OK. I’ll go and make dinner.” Shaunna stood and picked up his undrunk tea. “Are you finished with this?” She was halfway to the door before he registered the question.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Actually…” She backtracked and took his hand. “Come and help me.”
Too tired to fight and quite sure he’d lose anyway, Ade let her pull him up from the sofa and lead him through to the kitchen. She released him, and he stuttered to a stop. Shaunna sighed fondly.
“See? You’ve run out of fuel.” She pointed to a dining chair. “Sit.”
Ade sat, his gaze falling to the pine kitchen table. With its multitude of scrapes and worn dark knots, it had clearly been in service for many years. He traced his finger around a faded circular scorch, along an ancient groove. The table seemed to have a warmth all of its own.What a story you could tell, full of happy family life, Sunday roasts, homework, chats with friends—
Ade’s view was suddenly interrupted as potatoes, a peeler and a pan were set down on a sheet of newspaper in front of him.
“Peel,” Shaunna instructed.
Ade picked up a potato and started peeling.
“What do you do for fun?” she asked.
“Fun?” Ade was bamboozled by the question.
“Let me rephrase that. What did you used to do beforeItstole all your fun?”
“Ah.” Ade attempted a smile. He appreciated her candour. “I went to warehouse raves a lot when I was younger, but I prefer nightclubs these days—places with live performances.”
“Strip clubs?” Shaunna teased.
“No.” Ade’s smile broadened. “Although I’ve seen some marvellous sights.”
Shaunna went comically wide-eyed, her mouth forming a delightedooh, then she laughed. “I bet,” she said. “You can tell meallabout them later. Do you like chicken?”
“Who doesn’t?”
She took a bag out of the freezer. “How are you getting on there?” Like a teacher checking a pupil’s work, she peered over Ade’s shoulder on her way to the microwave. “Good job.”
Ade chuckled. “Thank you.”
“It helps, I find,” she said, pausing to set three chicken fillets on defrost. “Having things to do. Like, when Krissi was giving us hell a couple of years ago, I just kept going, you know? And we’d have guests round, and they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re coping really well,’ when I was actually just keeping my head occupied with baking, cleaning, gardening or whatever. I mean, there are worse ways of getting through, right?”
“Right,” Ade said. He’d done the same himself—filled every void with activity to crowd out the pain—and it worked pretty well in the short term. Not so much when the problem never went away.
“So what kind of live performances do you like?” Shaunna cut in before he drifted off again. She had a knack for that.
“Any, really,” he said. “Musical theatre and stage plays are my faves, but I enjoy dance too. How about you?”
“I’m not into dance the way you mean, but I love going out dancing and live music. We used to go to a lot of gigs—not sure why we don’t anymore, actually. We’ve been to all sorts. Big stadium concerts, little shows in pubs. And it doesn’t matter which it is, guaranteed someone always asks Kris for his autograph.”
“How do they know who he is?”
“What do you mean?”
“With him being on radio.”
“Oh! No, I meant because of him looking like Morten Harket.”
Ade did a quick mental comparison. He couldn’t see it, but he wasn’t going to say so. “I suppose he does a bit.”
“He was the spitting image of him till last year…” Shaunna became quiet, her expression shifting with her thoughts—trouble, sadness, fear. She sighed. “Kris has always been very slim, but for a while, he completely stopped eating. He lost so much weight, it was frightening. I don’t know if it was the depression or the medication doing it, but it was like something was stopping the signals between his brain and the rest of his body, which I suppose is how antidepressants work. Anyway, I discovered if I stuck food in front of him, I could get him to eat. One. Forkful. At. A. Time.”
