Natália Gomes - After the Rain

NATLIA GOMES has an MLitt in Literature & Creative Writing and an MEd in Education. Inspired by her teaching experiences, Natlia started writing fiction with a focus on mental health among young adults. Her debut novel Dear Charlie is endorsed by Amnesty International and was longlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award and We Are Not Okay was selected for Nottinghams Big City Reads in 2019. Natlia is currently a full-time writer, PhD student and mummy to a crazy toddler.

Follow Natlia on Instagram @ndgomes and on Twitter @nd_gomes

Dear Charlie

Blackbird

We Are Not Okay

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

Copyright Natlia Gomes 2021

Natlia Gomes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition June 2021 ISBN: 9780008291822

Version 2021-07-09

For Scott and Eilidh xx

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

• Change of font size and line height
• Change of background and font colours
• Change of font
• Change justification
• Text to speech
• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008291815

To ensure Jack and Alices chapters are completely authentic to their voices we have matched the spelling to their backgrounds. Therefore Alices chapters use American spelling and Jacks use British spelling.

Smith & Thell Alice

Of Monsters and Men Wild Roses

First Aid Kit Its a Shame

Juke Ross Shadows in the Dark

Phoebe Bridgers Georgia

Birdy People Help The People

First Aid Kit Emmylou

Joy Williams Ordinary World

Gabrielle Aplin Home

London Grammar Strong

Dermot Kennedy After Rain

Imagine Dragons Birds

Lord Huron The Night We Met

The Head and the Heart Another Story

Seth Talley New Day

The Collection Beautiful Life

Vance Joy Mess is Mine

The Head and the Heart Lost in my Mind

AHI Ol Sweet Day

Of Monsters and Men Human

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Theres nothing like the smell of a library.

A combination of dust, musk and ink.

Many of the books found in libraries, especially in the UK where they tend to be pre-nineteenth century prints, use materials like cotton, linen and groundwood pulp to make the pages. Even though it smells a bit like coffee and cigars, its really cellulose decay were smelling when we get to the heart of a library space. Most position their study tables here, right in the middle, to allow its most devout booklovers to bask in the smell whilst being surrounded by stacks and pillars of reading material, most of which theyll never get through in their lifetime. Because a human lifetime is too short to read all the amazing books in the world. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Twain, Joyce, Woolf, Orwell, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Austen, Dickens, the Bront sisters.

The best libraries have all of the above.

Dont get me wrong, Im not a book snob. I read pretty much anything, and I am a self-proclaimed sci-fi and fantasy geek. Im not ashamed. I would just as easily pick up a Tolstoy book (if I had months to spare to get through one) as I would a novel by Wells, Bradbury, Tolkien, Brooks, Gaiman or Martin.

To me its all the same. Its not the material, or how high it ranks in the bestseller lists or whether its featured in Cambridge Universitys handbook of Faculty Recommended Texts issued by their English department each year. Its much simpler than that.

For me, its the act of reading. The process of picking a book that you really want to jump into immediately, then the finding of the perfect space in which to do so. Now, the latter is much more difficult than the former. Finding the right book has never been a problem for me. I know what I want even when I dont know. Ill browse the shelves at the library, occasionally shifting between floors, genres, and alphabetical collections. But when I spot a title, I just know. The search is over. Most people have stacks of books by their bed; TBRs, book bloggers call them To Be Read. But me, Ive always had just one sitting on my bedside cabinet. A sole literary journey. That one book I commit to until Im done cover to cover and need to choose another. Then I keep going. I keep a log of all the books Ive read and each year try to beat my record. Stephen King reads eighty-four books a year. Ive yet to beat him. But I will one day.

So the perfect reading space. It has to be quiet enough where you can really immerse yourself in the story world being presented to you by the author, but not so quiet where the world gets invaded by your own wandering thoughts Do I feel like another latte? How many have I had today? Whats worse for you a muffin or a Danish? What did Mom say she was making for dinner tonight? Whats that tapping sound, who has a laptop here?

So the perfect amount of background noise to assist you, then the perfect temperature. If the space is too hot, you get restless and pulled away from the pages of your book, and if its too cold you get preoccupied with trying to warm yourself with additional clothing, hot drinks, and maybe a blanket if you have access to one. Then the seat youre on not too soft where you melt into it and suddenly feel a nap coming on, and not too hard where backache strikes you at a pivotal moment in the narrative. Yes, this sounds like an impossible task finding the right space to read in. But considering how much Ive moved around in my rather short lifetime, Ive always found one. In Texas, it was this little book nook in their local library, on the East Coast there were many coffee shops to choose from, usually around the Harvard or MIT campuses. Those students are also searching for the perfect space, but to write scientific essays in or jot down philosophical musings. Having only lived in London for three months, I have already narrowed it down to two spaces the library on St Jamess Square and a coffee shop in Southwark.