When the rain started – the warm, blattering summer rain – Ella poked her head out from under her desk and looked out of her window. She cocked her head to one side a little and stared at something far away at the end of the garden, beyond the compost heap and to the right of the shed. After a few moments of staring into the thick darkness of the gloss-green rhododendron leaves she gave a curt nod.
She flew down the stairs as if they were hardly there, all shirred body and billowing skirts in shades of the earth, bare feet skimming over the steps. Down a long dark corridor, across the linoleum patch of kitchen and out of the hand-painted back door before her mother could look up from her Erica Jong. A whisp of cigarette smoke tried to escape after Ella, but she had long since slammed the door shut.
Ella’s mother looked up from her novel and gazed through the french windows. The frown line between her eyes smoothed briefly and then reappeared as she watched her alien child streak down the garden path through the rain, dancing down the steps to the lower terrace, past the vegetable patch and on to the dark purple and green shadows at the end of the garden.
Sheets of warm rain made the distance between them seem further than the physics of their semi-detached universe ought to allow. Then the wind shifted and the window became a river. Ella’s mother turned back to her book.
The first few times Ella had gone ‘rain-dancing’ her mother had tried to stop her. The next few times, after Ella had come back happy and unaccountably clean, she had tried to ask her where she went.
“They’re waiting for me,” Ella had said.
This was in the days before parents knew about the bad men and the strangers lurking behind every bush and so Ella’s mother had not been as concerned as she would be today. Still, she kept a watchful eye on the window and the kitchen door.
The shower passed. The sun came out from behind the clouds. The door creaked open.
Laying down her novel and crushing her cigarette in the heavy crystalline ashtray, Ella’s mother untucked her flowing skirt from around her bare feet, stood, and padded through to the kitchen.
Ella was standing in the center of the tiny room, all her weight on one grass-streaked leg – undecided. She looked up at her mother as she walked in. The older girl (wasn’t she still a girl?) felt a smile flood her face. Its warmth reached down towards her chest and she crouched down to take Ella’s cold hand in hers.
“Were they there today?” She asked, pretending she knew what she was talking about.
Ella shrugged and smiled in a dreamy way.
“Is it children from the neighbourhood?” her mother ventured, having, on previous occasions ruled out gypsies, grownups, badgers and slow-worms. Ella shook her head, then stopped to think.
“They are very small,” she said. “But they don’t seem like children.”
Ella’s mother had cocked her head to one side, very much in the way Ella often did and asked,
“Is it imaginary friends that you’re meeting?” but Ella seemed to have forgotten that they had been talking about something and merely blinked at her mother. She was unreachable. Another metal plate slid into place around Ella’s mother’s heart. She pulled herself upright and stared down at the girl. The woman’s lips were a thin, straight line.
“Well, I don’t want you catching cold, going out in the rain like that. For God’s sake put on some boots next time.”
Ella, eyes wide, murmured,
“I can’t catch cold, there. It’s so warm and dry and they always look after me. Silly Mummy.”
But by then, her mother was back in the next room lighting another cigarette and staring at the same page of the same book that she always seemed to be reading.
Ella crept up the stairs trailing behind her a strange tune that never quite came to an end.