When I was young, my mum would read to me from those ‘Fun Fact’ books. In the soft sunlight of English springtime, filtering through the cascading wisteria, she would whisper to me the wonders of the universe. Do you know? Pigs can’t look up. Do you know? Jellyfish are 98% water. Do you know?

Do you know? On Neptune it rains diamonds. Giant, sparkling diamonds, I imagined. The size of my fist. They must look like cold comets streaking through the atmosphere, each containing within it refractions of      Neptune’s blue light. Fiercely burning like tiny stars, they puncture the planet’s opalescent skin and plummet through the atmospheric lattice of greens and purples and blues. Like a handful of pearls tossed onto an oil slick.

My mother always used to call me a pearl. “The world is your oyster” she would tell me, raking her fingers through my hair, deftly weaving it into a plait like a web-weaving spider. “You could do anything you set your mind to,” while holding my right hand, filing down the bitten crags of my nails. “I’m so proud of you,” gifting me her diamond earrings, ones passed down to her by her mother, and in turn her mother before her. Neptune’s tears trickling down the branches of our family tree and pooling at my earlobes.

Do you know? The Atacama is the driest place on Earth. In England, however, the sky is grey, blushed by charcoal bruises. I take my tea with a splash of milk, no sugars, and ten rivulets of water trickling down my back. The downpour buffets my umbrella as I run to class. I write my exams to the steady backdrop of a leaking sky. If I close my eyes for long enough, I dream of Neptune and the diamond rain. I hold them in my palms. Giant, sparkling, and tangible.

The wet, late-spring air rises to a sweltering, sultry swarm of humidity. I wear my mother’s earrings. I never take them off.

The suffocating heat densifies into a simmering storm cloud. The sky grumbles with thunder and I open my exam results in the rain. The envelope turns to pulp in my hands. I walk home.

The yawning firmament cracks open to release a torrent. The raindrops collide with the slick, shining tarmac like fireworks. I throw my mother’s diamond earrings on the pavement. I lie down in the middle of the road. I imagine the rainwater rising, swirling, picking up the earrings and sweeping them away down the road. They fall in between the slats of a grate. Do you know? London’s sewage system was developed by Joseph Bazalgette?

I wish it was springtime and I could sit underneath the wisteria, and I could whisper to you “I’m sorry mum.” Do you know? How sorry I am of the daughter I have become? Do you know? How badly I want to sit on your lap and sob with the force of the pelting rain? Do you know? How hard I tried? Do you know? Do you know?

Olivia Richardson is an 18 year old student from Staffordshire, England. She enjoys expressing her creativity in many ways, and always carries her sketchbook and notepad with her wherever she goes. During the weekends, she spends her time walking in the countryside surrounding her village and painting the local wildlife.