An Ordinary Epidemic (20 page)

Daniel had reverted to sitting up straight with his hands neatly folded. When it became clear there would be nothing left on Oscar's plate, Zac slouched back. Daniel shifted a little. ‘Could I be excused from the table?'

Sean looked at him with surprise and awe. ‘Did you hear that, Zac? Daniel has manners. He asks if he can leave the table.'

‘That's only because he's a guest. He doesn't do it at his place.'

‘Is that true Daniel? Because if it is, you shouldn't be a guest, behave as badly as you would at home. But if you're just well-mannered, try to influence my son.'

‘I wonder whose job it was to teach me?' Zac grinned.

Daniel was still looking politely at Sean.

‘Of course you can go.'

Hannah cut in. ‘Stack your dishes in the dishwasher. We can live in hope that the power comes back on.'

Zac's shoulders dropped, so much responsibility was placed on him. ‘But if it doesn't, you'll have to take them out again and we wasted our time.'

‘If it doesn't you'll get to do the washing up, so why don't we assume it will?'

Despite the grumbles, the boys threw themselves into the
stacking with vigour, and Hannah bit her tongue. They were doing what she asked, so if plates got broken, it was no one's fault but her own.

‘Great job.' Sean stood sentry as they finished up. ‘Go run around for a bit, burn off some energy. You could play murder in the dark or something.'

Oscar and Zac were gone but Daniel held back at the door. ‘I'd like to ring my mum, if that's okay.' Sean, behind him, shook his head at Hannah slightly.

‘Sorry, Daniel, I don't think any of the phones work without power. Because they're all cordless, you know.' An excuse with so many holes in it, she could only imagine that Daniel was too polite to point out all the mobile phones they had.

‘And, you know mate, it's getting late,' Sean jumped in, ‘and we don't want to wake your mum up. She needs all the rest she can get just now. We'll ring tomorrow. That'll be better. That's what we'll do.'

Hannah held the words in until Daniel had followed the other boys out. ‘And we're not ringing, why?'

‘She's pretty sick. I got an email from his dad today. Maybe tomorrow she'll be on the mend. There's no need for him to worry until he has to.'

They watched the boys from the kitchen door. Oscar had endless energy, pent up from so many days with only his feeble parents for company and Daniel was a new playmate. An unknown quantity to be tested to destruction. As Daniel sat in the middle of the lawn, pulling strands out of the grass, Oscar threw himself at Daniel's back, as if to climb it. Daniel gently rolled himself sideways, depositing Oscar on the grass. Oscar took another leap and held on tight. Daniel patiently prised Oscar's hands from his shoulders, and once he had himself free, moved to the wall of the garden bed, out of the field of play. Hannah wished for something in the pantry that could distract him from whatever inner conversation he was engaged in.

In one of the kitchen drawers, she unearthed a scrunched box of bent sparklers, left over from Oscar's last birthday. ‘Hey guys,' Hannah called from the doorway, ‘look what I've got.'

Sean helped Oscar hold his steady in the flickering flame of the candle. Zac and Oscar leapt and whooped, made afterimage circles and wrote their names with light. Zac challenged Daniel to a sparkler duel and the two boys danced around each other, thrusting and parrying, Daniel without much enthusiasm, for the few seconds the sparklers spat.

The transitory joy was broken by a wail from Oscar. ‘I stubbed my toe. I (sob) stubbed (sob) my (sob) toe.'

‘Hey mate, I think you've had too much fun. You haven't cried like this since you started school with the big kids. It's nothing.' Sean held out his hand to stop Hannah rushing to comfort Oscar. ‘It's nothing. He'll be fine.'

But as his sobs subsided, Oscar crept into Hannah's arms. She didn't think his tears were for his sore toe, rather for the strange and unpredictable world he was in and the ideas that were beyond his understanding, threatening his peace of mind, threatening his body.

‘Right, time for bed.'

‘Oh, what? It's too early. Come on, Dad.' Zac was filled with moral outrage at having his new freedom arbitrarily removed. When it was barely dark.

‘Okay then, not you two, but definitely you.' Sean picked up Oscar from Hannah's lap and tossed him over his shoulder. ‘Time to wash this sack of potatoes. You can't eat dirty potatoes.' Oscar was grinning again.

Zac and Daniel were company for each other and she could use the moment of freedom to find out what was happening about the electricity. At least the battery in her laptop had power. She set herself up at the kitchen table, by the light of a candle. The hum as she turned the laptop on was reassuring but she couldn't get any further than opening a browser. The
phone line, and hence the internet, was still connected but the router needed power. The bits and bytes she needed were right there, in the wires behind the wall, she just couldn't tap into them.

People got information before there was an internet. There must have been—must still be—information lines. Except that she no longer had a phone book because any number she needed was on the internet and she wasn't prepared to use her mobile if there was a chance she couldn't charge it.

She stood outside Oscar's door, listening to the end of the story. The lights came back on as dramatically as they'd gone off. She pushed open the door to let Sean know he didn't have to strain his eyes. He blew out the candle, Oscar burst into tears again.

‘What's wrong now?'

‘I liked it dark. It was so much fun. We'll never have a night like this again, and it was so good.'

‘The lights will go off again, I can just about guarantee that.' Sean tucked the sheets tight around Oscar and slipped teddy into the bed even though Oscar had left him on the floor for months. ‘We don't need to wait for fun, we can make it ourselves.' Oscar suspended his tears as he gave this proposition careful consideration.

Sean's arm lay along the back of the sofa, his hand resting on Hannah's shoulder, a small patch of body warmth. He held her tighter, pulling her in. The two of them looked out of the cave of their house through the small portal of the TV screen at the strange world they had left.

The minister made a statement trying to paint the outage as just one of those things that happen, even at the best of times. An unfortunate coincidence. His image gave way to the
opposition spokesman, wearing an equally audience-tested costume of sober suit and dependable tie, declaiming that the day's events only served to demonstrate how woefully underprepared this government really was.

Images of tired men and women at a power plant. The face of a woman, searching for the invisible presence at the other end of the camera. The grainy picture froze and jumped, presumably an interview by webcam.

‘Do you resent your colleagues who didn't volunteer?'

The dark shadows under her eyes gave her a look of exhausted desperation. ‘The people here, we're mostly the ones who don't have family depending on us. We all agreed to be locked in. I don't resent the others. I know them, I've been to their houses, I know their kids. We get food brought to us, we're being looked after. In some ways it's easier. Everyone has to make hard decisions now, do what's important to them. Here, we're working hard now but we can catch up on sleep when this is over. My friends are on their own, I only hope they are all right.'

Sean had the remote in his hand, finger resting on the channel button. ‘She should go home.'

‘The power plant's probably safer than her home.'

‘The newsreader. Look at her eyes. She's been on every news report this week. She needs to sleep.'

The mayor stood on the empty steps of the Town Hall and cheerfully declared, ‘I can tell you that today the council has unanimously voted to remain here, in the city, until this crisis is over. This city, our city, has the best hospitals, the best infrastructure in the world.' Footage of the mayor glad-handing smiling patients in hospital beds. No footage of her being doused in antiseptic the second the cameras were turned off. ‘And I challenge the Prime Minister to join us here to show his support for the citizens of this, the most vibrant city in the world.'

‘I've had enough.' Sean kissed Hannah's hair and smoothed it down with his hand. ‘You look done.'

‘I miss going to work. No, I miss having downtime when the kids are at school, even if it's at work.'

‘I know. They're so... there. All the time. I ended up bribing Oscar to stay quiet this morning. A biscuit for every five minutes he didn't talk to me.'

‘You are the worst parent.'

His eyes softened as he smiled at her. ‘I am.'

‘How many biscuits did he get?'
From my pantry
.

‘One. And that was an incentive, he didn't last two minutes.' Sean stretched as he stood. ‘Come on. Bed.' He pulled her up from the sofa, snaked his arm around her hip and rubbed his face into her neck. It sent a shiver down her side and made her laugh.

She tilted her head in the direction of Zac's room. ‘We'll disturb them.'

‘God forbid his mother should laugh.' He was still smiling. ‘Come on, bed.' With his arm still wrapped around her, he guided her to the hallway.

She liked being so close to him, feeling him through her clothing, smelling him. The time they spent the last few days wasn't together, it was side by side. It was mum and dad, always monitoring what she said in case small ears were overhearing.

She looked closely at him, wondering if some remnant of this morning's bad mood still hid in his face. ‘Is everything okay?'

‘In the whole wide world?'

‘In your world.

He didn't answer right away, but opened his mouth to speak, stopped, then gave a mirthless ‘ha' and shook his head.

‘What?'

‘You're going to tell me you told me so.'

‘Told you what?'

‘A bunch of people from the office are sick.'

He watched her face for her reaction. She felt an icy anticipation. ‘How sick?'

‘Two in hospital. Three more got turned away.' She could see him struggle to dam the words in his mouth, hold them back. ‘Apparently being turned away is good, it means you're not going to die yet. There's no room in the hospitals for anyone who isn't dying.'

She didn't have any more emotion to call on. The cold dread that sat between them was not part of her and she had no words to dispel it.

‘I didn't know whether to tell you about them. It's been on my mind but there's nothing I can do.'

Voices in the street. Natalie under the streetlight, facing her house. Stuart holding Ella, perched on the wall of the verandah. Ella leaning forward with her hand out, squirming in Stuart's arms.

Hannah moved sideways, shifting the slice presented by the curtains from the street to the verandah and back.

Ella twisted around and said something to Stuart as he leant into her. Natalie blew a kiss to Ella who caught it and kissed her hand where it landed. Ella wriggled down from the wall and away from Stuart's grasp. Natalie took a step towards her and then one back with her hands up. Ella was halfway down the steps before Stuart caught her.

Natalie wiped tears off her face. She took a chocolate bar out of her bag, gave it a kiss then put it in the mailbox. She gave a wave and walked off in the direction of the hospital.
Through the window, Hannah could just hear Ella, struggling to get out of Stuart's arms, ‘Mummy, Mummy.'