Every morning for the last week there's been a guy in a Volvo 340 parked at the end of our road. Same guy, same car, same place, same time every Day. 8:25 in the morning. End of the road, on the other side, parked behind number 9's crapped-out Transit. An F reg Volvo 340 --- old and gray and scratched and dirty, with bust-up doors and green stuff growing on the trim. The guy in the car's kinda old and grayish, too. About 50, I guess. Raincoat, hat, glasses, ratty little moustache. He don't DO nothing, just sits there, looking like he's sposed to be doing something. One Day he's waiting for someone --- reading a newspaper. Next Day he's got a clipboard. Then he's fiddling with a map or a bag or a pack of cigs or something...

It's pretty creepy, and I don't like it much-but what am I gonna do?
Knock on the window, say "who're you?"
Tell the cops?
Watch him? See what he does?
Follow him?
How?
On my bike?

Nah...I ain't gonna do NOTHING, am I? I'm gonna walk on by every Day and wonder what's up. I'm gonna get to school and think about it...but not too much, just a bit...cos mostly I'm just gonna ease on through the Day, soaking up the absent RAIN, making the most of it, wallowing in the silent drought. I'm gonna eat, sit, drink, listen, walk...all nice and easy...Math, Engerlish, break, Sinckers, Biology, sex, sniggers...lunchtime...mash, beans, pork, fruity pie and custard for afters, pile it on, pile it up, pile it in...and the Day goes on...Frech, Phyics, break, Twix, Math again...and the afternoon dims, and I'm smiling inside cos it's nearly time for the bridge. It wont be long...soon soon soon...and then I'm walking back through the village, half-looking out for Brady --- not that I really WANNA see him, but...yeh, all right, I WANNA see him --- and there he is, look, bent over a brick wall at the back of the shop getting a face full of dog shit...getting it good from Dec Bowker and the boys...and there's Jicky Collins, giving me the wink, like I'm on THEIR side now...and I dunno what to do...cos hald of me's sad for Brady, but the other half's glad for me...so I just stand there for a bid, half-watching em, half-thinking I oughta do something...but I know I ain't got it in me...I ain't got the GUTS...

So I just start walking again.
Halfhearted.
I walk on by with my eyes down.

Back home the Volvo's gone and everything's NORMAL. House, bathroom, bedroom...go upstairs and get changed...big check shirt, big hoody hood, big pants...go downstairs...and the kitchen's hot with the smell of friend eggs and bacon and chips and beans. Dad's sitting at the table snorting at Carol Fordaman's hair, and Mum's wiping chip-fat sweat from her face.

"How many you want, Moo?" she says.
"How many what?"
"Eggs."
"How many you got?"
Dad laughs...coughs...turns red. He wipes his mouth and coughs again.
"All right?" he asks me.
"Yeh."
"Hungry?"
"Yeh."
We eat to the sound of coughing and Countdown.

He's something, my dad. I ain't sure what, exactly...but he's something all right. Too much for now. Too much for this. Too big, too many stories, too much to tell. But I'll tell you this much. He might no be perfect --- in fact, come to thing of it, he ain't nowhere NEAR perfect --- but he's MY DAD, and he's always THERE. No 2 ways about it. HE don't SAY much , and he don't DO much, and he don't make a big FUSS about nothing, but he's always been there. Always...for as long as I can remember. And when I say always, I mean ALWAYS. Not just evenings and weekends...EVERY SINGLE DAY. Money-wise, I dunno how he does it. I mean, he ain;t never had a JOB, exactly. He ain't never nothing with a NAME... you know --- like Postman or Milkman or Accountant. He just...I dunno...he just meets people now and then...does a bit of this, a bit of that...know what I mean? He does enough to keep us going. Plus there's always the welfare money he gets for his bad heart...which ain't much...but, all in all, we do all right. I mean, we ain't loaded or nothing, but we ain't exactly starving, neither. Well, we're starving, but not in that kinda way. We ain't starving cos we're poor-and-ain't eaten-for-a-week, we're just starving cos we're FAT and HUNGRY and we WANT SOME MORE...

So, anyway, there's some of Dad, as much as you need to know, and there's me, and there's this mysterious Volvo guy... and then there's the return of DI Callan.

And this is how it all comes together.

Excerpted from KISSING THE RAIN © Copyright 2004 by Kevin Brooks. Reprinted with permission by The Chicken House/Scholastic. All rights reserved.