The Rain Beginning

It rained the day they moved. The rain began early, with a great quietness, the beginning of the cloud, the small steps on leaf and leaf. It was an old tree, and just a privet, but it rose up next to the window and through it she could see a slate roof, the quietest-coloured roof in the world. A Burmese dove with a salt and pepper clotted neck hopped through its branches, then, suddenly as if it had forgotten something, darted away on a horizontal path behind the house. She stood there next to the open window, half asleep, not thinking of anything, just loving the way the noise of the rain was caught in the world of the privet like fingernails on a snare drum. Rain dripped off the end of one leaf onto another now. She watched for a moment longer and then she saw the van coming down the street, and then Theo called from downstairs.

She went up to him and kissed his forehead as she had done every morning of her life, since she became a grown daughter.

“The van’s already here,” she…