SEVEN MINUTES OF RAIN

The drive took 15 minutes. Mary had timed it once, in her first week after moving into her flat, to prove to herself that it was nothing.

Fifteen minute. Out along the ring-road, left at the petrol station, down Springer Lane with its speed bumps and its row of identical porches. Her father’s was the one with the gate that jammed. He had been meaning to fix it since 1998.

She did not drive it.

The first week, well it was too soon. That seemed reasonable. You couldn’t simply walk into a house three days later, after what had been said at that kitchen table. He had said she came when it suited her. She had said that at least she didn’t stand in the garden and pretend the coats had never existed. He had given away her mother’s coats in a single morning, in bin bags, to the hospice shop, before the dirt of her grave had even had time to settle. Mary had arrived on the Saturday to to find the wardrobe doors wide open, and empty hangers on the rail.

So the first week, she let it be. People needed time to cool down. At least, that’s what everyone said.

The second week, she began a message: “Hi Dad, just wondering if—”. She looked down at her phone for some time. Wondering if what? She deleted the message and put the kettle on.

By the end of the month, she had a system. Though she would not have called it that. On Monday, she was too tired. On Tuesday she had a team meeting and came home with a jaw sore from smiling. On Wednesday she thought, *I should ring first*, because turning up unannounced was kind of an ambush, and he hated when people did that. She held her phone in her hand for most of the evening, and once she accidentally pressed on his number, which dialed for a whole second before she hung up.

He did not call back. He would have seen the missed call. He was a man who checked things.

*Fine,* she thought, *then he knows I tried.*

On Thursday it was traffic. A truck had broken down on the ring-road and everything was moving at a crawl. By the time she was level with the petrol station, it was already ten past seven, and the sky had turned the color of dishwater, and she was not going to roll up to his house hungry and in a bad mood. She would only say the wrong thing. She always said the wrong thing when she was hungry. So she went home, made pasta, and at it standing up.

On Friday, she did not want to arrive angry.

She wasn’t angry on Friday, exactly. She had been angry at work, at a man called George who had copied her boss into an email, and the anger had not quite seeped out of her body. In fact, it remained trapped under her ribcage, like she had somehow manage to swallow a large stone. You could not go and mend something that was broken when you were carrying a large stone. That would only make things worse. So she took a long bath, and afterwards she felt much better. But afterwards was too late.

May came around, and Mary bought pears.

She was not looking for them. She was walking through the market on a Saturday, and a man had a crate of the hard, green ones. The kind her father liked. The kind nobody else seemed to bother with. He ate them with a knife, peeled them in one long strip, and he would not touch them until they were almost past. *They’re best when you think they’ve gone*, he used to say.

She bought four. She carried them home in a brown paper bag and set them on the windowsill, and for a few days she looked at them with real purpose. Then they went soft. Then they went brown. She ate the last one herself over the sink, barely tasting it.

That same week there was a program about sailboats on television. 45 minutes about a man restoring a hull on the coast. Her father had wanted a sailboat for as long as she could remember. He had drawn them on the backs of envelopes and napkins. She turned the volume up and sat on the couch to watch properly. About halfway through, she thought, *I should tell him about this.*

She did not tell him about it. She listened to the end.

In the glovebox of her car, there was a small yellow torch, the heavy kind with a rubber grip. He had given it to her when she had passed her exam. *Everyone should have one in their car,* he had said, as he handed it over in a freezer bag. There was no card, no message. There never was with him. Every few months she would check if it still worked.

It always worked.

There was a turning off the ring road, a slip lane just before the petrol station, that led toward Springer Lane. She passed it every evening on her way home from work. In the beginning, she drove past it with a kind of hot, knot in her stomach, as though it was something she was trying her hardest not to look at. By the time summer had arrived, she hardly noticed it at all. That frightened her slightly when she thought about it, so she tried not to think about it.

In September a card arrived.

It was her birthday, and the card had been posted 3 days late. It was one of those cards with a watercolor image on it. A heron. Inside, a printed verse she didn’t care to read, and beneath in square, blocky capitals, three letters:

DAD.

Nothing else. Not *love,* not *hope you’re well,* nothing. Just the word, pressed down hard enough into the thin cardboard that she could feel the letters on the back.

She stood in the hallway with it for a long time. Then she put it on the fridge, under a magnet shaped like a lemon. Every morning when she reached for the orange juice, it was there.

*He sent a card,* she thought. *That’s him moving, going first.*

But she knew even as she thought it that it wasn’t enough to answer with a letter of her own. A card was but a small thing, and it could be ignored or misread, and then where would they be? She would wait until she had something better. Something that said what she really meant. She started a list on a post-it: *Things to say*. By October, it had two things on it. Both of them were crossed out.

The rain came on a Wednesday in October.

She had decided, honestly, truthfully decided, on the drive home. She was at the roundabout, indicator already ticking, when the first drops hit the windscreen. Fat, slow ones. Then the sky opened.

She pulled in under the petrol station roof, and sat with the engine running.

*It’s pouring,* she thought. *I’ll go when it stops.*

It was a sensible thing to think. You did not just turn up on someone’s doorstep after so long dripping wet, hair plastered to your face, trying to say the hardest thing you ever said while wind tore at your clothes. That’s not how you did it. You waited. You arrived dry, steady, with something prepared.

She looked at the clock on the dashboard. 7:12.

The wipers swept and swept. Someone ran from the shop with a coat over his head. She watched as sheets of water traversed the sky, with something like relief, *Well, there we are. It’s out of my hands.*

At 7:19 it stopped. It did not taper off. It stopped, as if a tap had been shut.

The petrol station steamed. A strip of light pierced through the clouds. She looked at the clock again.

7:19. It was only seven minutes. That was barely time to finish a coffee. And yet somehow it was nearly twenty past seven. And by the time she got there, it would be half past, and he would be settling into the evening, probably with the television on. She would be walking into the middle of something. It was getting late. And she had work in the morning.

*Sunday,* she thought. *Sunday would be better. Properly, with the whole afternoon.*

She indicated, pulled out, and turned left for home.

He died on the third of March.

It was a Tuesday. She received the call at then past nine in the morning, from a woman at the hospital with a gentle, practiced voice. Mary had stood in the office kitchen holding a mug of tea she would not remember putting down. A neighbor had found him, the back door was open. He had been in the garden by the shed. His heart, the woman said, it would have been very quick.

“Right,” Mary said, “thank you.” She the asked if she could see him, as thought it were a shop with limited hours.

She did not remember the drive. Fifteen minutes. She must have taken it, because there she was.

The funeral was small and cold. Eleven people. She stood at the front and felt the urge to apologize to someone, but she could not think who.

It took three weekends to clear the house.

On the first Saturday, she found the sailboat envelopes in the drawer under the phone, dozens of them, soft as silk. On the second Saturday, she found the wardrobe in the back bedroom, the doors shut, and inside it, folded in tissue paper on the top shelf, one coat. Her mother’s green wool one. He had kept it. He had given away every other coat but he had kept that one, and not told anyone.

She sat on the edge of the bed with it in her lap, and did not make a sound.

On the third Saturday, a woman from next door called over the hedge. Mrs. Brightly, seventy-something, in gardening gloves, a trowel in one hand. She had been the one who found him. She and Mary had spoken briefly at the funeral, in the way of people who both wanted to say more and could not.

“Not much left to do, is there?” Mrs. Brightly said.

“Nearly done.”

“Good. Good.” She pulled off a glove. “He was a quiet one, your dad. Never a bother. Always raised a hand. I’ll miss that, the hand.”

“Yes”, Mary said.

“Funny thing he started doing this last year. I used to see him from the kitchen.” Mrs. Brightly gestured with the trowel, vaguely, down the path. “Every evening, about ten past seven. He’d walk down to the gate. And he’d just stand there. 10, maybe 15 minutes. I said to him once, you know, the post comes in the morning, Frank. And he said, I know.”

The wind rustled the hedge. A car door shut somewhere along the lane.

“Rain or shine”, Mrs. Brightly continued. “Honestly, I thought it was his knee. I thought, he’s stretching it.”

“Which way did he face?” Mary asked.

She had not known she was going to ask. Mrs. Brightly looked at her, and for the first time something shifted in her face. A small, late understanding, quickly folded away.

“Up toward the roundabout, I suppose,” she said. “Where the road comes in.” She put the glove back on. “Well, I’ll let you get on, love. Lot to do.”

When the last box was in the car, Mary locked the front door and walked down the path.

The gate jammed, as it always had. She had to lift it slightly and push with her hip. She stood on the pavement side of the gate and looked up the lane, toward the roundabout, where the road curved out of sight. From here you could only see one headlight at a time. You would know a car was coming, but not whose, until it was very nearly there.

She got into her car and did not start it.

The house stood in the late light with its curtains open, and nothing behind them. The clock on the dashboard said 7:10. She watched the gate. It was shut. A leaf was caught in the latch.

Then, a sharp, heavy tick on the roof. Then another. The glass went went grey and spotted, and then the rain came properly, running down the windscreen and blurring the house.

She did not turn on the wipers.

She put the yellow torch on the passenger seat, beside the green coat, and rested her hands on the wheel.

“Dad”, she said. It sounded strange, wrong in the small, confined space. She tried again. “Hi, Dad.”

The rain drummed on.

“It’s me.”

She stopped. Wet streaks slid down the glass and joined and went on. At the gate, the leaf in the latch stirred and lay still.

She breathed in, and said it slowly, the way you would say it to someone standing in the road.

“It’s me. I know it’s late.”