An Ordinary Epidemic (27 page)

She rested her hand on his shoulder, both their backs to the boys, and whispered. ‘They understand. They know it has to be done. You won't be the bad guy for long.'

He lifted the frying pan to the sink and wiped it quickly with a damp cloth. ‘We should have lunch some time. I'm going to do some work and then we should have lunch.' He went through the door without looking back.

Daniel grabbed the blaster. ‘Hey, Oscar, let's get Zac.' They backed him into the corner near the door. Zac cowered with his hands over his face, a wide smile behind. He could grab the blaster from Oscar if he wanted.

‘Get him, Oz, get him.'

Oscar pumped the trigger, laughing. Zac took the jet of water as he made a run around Oscar for the bucket beside the sink.

‘Hey, hey, what on earth do you think you're doing, wasting water. Don't you have any sense? What are we going to drink if you squirt each other?'

Zac stood his ground directly in front of her. ‘Dad does.'

‘That's different, you know that. We're not talking about that now.' Squirting a cat was straightforward. It was something that needed to be done and so you did it. This was the hard bit, the explanations, the accepting responsibility for it and Sean had bailed on doing that.

‘Outside.' Hannah unlocked the door again. It had been kept locked since they shut Mr Moon out. The cat couldn't open the door but Oscar could. And no matter how many times she explained why, he still couldn't always resist the impulse. The key was one more obstacle to keep him in check. Hannah looked around the yard to make sure Mr Moon was gone, and murmured to Zac as he passed her, ‘Come straight in if you see Mr Moon. Don't let Oscar touch him.' The boys ran into the empty space where the cat had been.

One pane of glass, two layers of fabric, that's what separated her from the miasma of the street, the fresh, free air swarming with germs.

‘I thought you were working.' Sean stood in the bedroom doorway.

‘I'm taking a breath.'

Sean pushed back the curtain—a pane of glass and now only one thin layer of fabric. The scrim gave a misty sheen to the view despite the full daylight. Something down the street
caught his attention. Hannah strained to listen and thought she heard the sound of a distant diesel engine. Whether it had been there for a while, she couldn't be sure.

‘Can you see anything?'

Sean lifted the scrim. Nothing but the brittle pane of glass between them and the world. The sound of the engine stopped. Light from the street, bright and glary, bounced off the bonnet of their car, the bitumen. To the right, the view was blocked by the wall to Gwen's. Across the road she could only just see the corner of the house where the family lived. To the left, nothing. She strained to make out anything in the cross street by Mr Henderson's house.

Sean's arm leant against the top of the window, Hannah rested her arm on the sill, their breath kissed the glass. The road radiated the last of the autumn afternoon heat back at them, the thin warmth reached, feebly, through the pane.

Sean's arm dropped. Hannah swivelled round to follow his look. Climbing their stairs was a balloon figure in gloves, mask, boilersuit and paper booties. The figure clutched a clipboard to their chest and waved some sort of I.D. in the other hand. From the way the figure walked, Hannah guessed it was a woman. She came close up to the window and pressed the I.D. against it. Her gloves left trails in the dust on the glass.

‘From the government. Could you come to the door so we can talk?' She spoke loudly and distinctly, as if to an old person, the sound fighting to penetrate the mask and the window.

‘We can talk here.' Sean shouted, his hands cupped to the glass.

‘It would be easier on my voice at the door, sir. I'm no danger to you, we've all been screened.'

‘Here is fine.' There was a stiffness about Sean, an anticipation.

The woman's shoulders sagged, she took a deep breath and leant right into the window. ‘I am going door to door to let
people know their options. We are aware that the water has been off in this area for more than a day now.

‘So it's just us then.'

‘Sorry, sir?'

‘Everybody else has water but us.'

‘Viral contamination was detected in routine testing of client supply. The supply was shut down as a precaution until the situation could be assessed. Areas are being reconnected as they are verified as safe. In the meantime...'

‘What does that mean?'

The woman looked at her clipboard to gather her thoughts or her strength, or just more information.

Sean pushed on. ‘So all the water in the rest of the city is safe, except ours. Why is that? How long's it going to take?'

‘Well, sir,' the woman's eyes drifted to the empty road, ‘we are still testing in a number of areas and everything that can be done is being done.'

‘But it's not coming back on for us, is it? Or you wouldn't be here. What's so special about us?'

‘I just know what they told me and I can tell you that.' Even in her balloon outfit, the woman looked out of scale. Either she was tiny or the outside world was too large. ‘There has been some contamination. Most areas have been cleared.' She fiddled with her clipboard, as if uncertain whether to continue. ‘It's just what I heard people say but they think maybe bats got into the local system somehow and contaminated the supply but they're not sure where.'

‘So what do they need to do to fix it? When will that happen? And why can't we just boil it?'

‘No one wants to take a risk with people's lives, sir. They would have to be sure they've located the source.'

‘Why aren't they filtering it or something?'

The woman looked past them into the room, avoiding their eyes. ‘I think, I'm not an expert, they just gave me a sheet
of paper to read, but I heard someone say, I'm not sure I'm right about this, that there was some equipment they could get from overseas and, you understand, no planes are flying here, although the Air Force, I mean, of course, since it's an emergency and you know, but the places that they have to get them from, they're having their own problems, with the,' her paper mask inflated and deflated as she spoke, ‘outbreak.'

‘When?' Sean bellowed so hard it hurt Hannah's ear. ‘Just tell me when.'

‘We're doing everything we can. They've turned the school into a shelter,' she'd found a way back onto her script and slipped into a well-worn groove, ‘and we will be providing water, food, everything necessary. So we're urging you, if you have any doubts about your ability to stay in your home, to come to the shelter. We ask that you don't bring any belongings other than a change of clothes and sleeping bags or blankets. New arrivals should expect to be separated for two days. '

‘Why aren't you bringing water around?'

‘There's water at the shelter, sir.'

‘If you brought water round, people wouldn't have to leave their houses.'

‘We're doing what we can, sir, it's not easy. If you decide to stay, we are organising water trucks, but I have no information on how long that will be. You are strongly urged to make your way to the shelter. Can everyone here walk that far?'

‘We're staying.' Hannah didn't give Sean a chance to answer.

‘I've got some information.' She pulled some sheets off her clipboard.

‘Leave it near the door.'

The woman pinned the paper down with the doormat but hesitated. She trudged back to the window.

‘There's someone next door, an old lady or something. She wouldn't answer at all. You try to help, because that's the right thing. I'm knocking on people's doors to help and she
screamed without even opening the door. Someone like that, someone who can't look after herself, needs to be in the shelter. I left some info, but if you talk to her, try to make her see she'd be better off there.'

‘She's got us.' Sean said firmly.

The woman made her cumbersome way down the steps, along the footpath and then up to Natalie and Stuart's door. They watched her knock. She waited, knocked again. Sean let the scrim fall, frosting the view. He walked towards the front door.

‘You don't know who she's touched. Leave the pamphlet there. We can read it tomorrow.'

He stared at her with a strange look of sadness. ‘The cat can't understand.' She tried to make sense of the words coming out of his mouth. ‘Things just happen in a cat's life. They don't have a reason. Someone gives you food, they don't give you food. They rub your tummy or they kick you. A cat can't have a concept of compassion or betrayal. It has habits. Someone gives it food, it keeps coming back. When the food stops it's not emotional for the cat, it's about finding another source of food. Do you think he's getting food?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then cats are not very bright, because they don't understand betrayal or loyalty. It's about having to do the least worst thing, even when that thing sucks. Do you think it's worse to do a bad thing, or to do nothing and risk a terrible thing?'

‘We did the best thing.'

‘I did it. The least worst. And now the boys know their dad doesn't care if Mr Moon dies. They don't know that I only care that they live.'

‘I think they understand.'

‘I don't want them to. This shouldn't be part of their lives. I know worse things happen every day but not to my kids, the ones I'm supposed to look after.' He wiped his face with the
back of his hand. ‘I hope Daniel doesn't understand. Because his mum is like the cat. If they'd rung and said she was dying, we wouldn't have let him go to see her and he would have hated us. And I don't know what's in his head. He's just here, being polite and well-behaved...' Sean fell silent before the words burst out again, ‘If I thought I was dying, if I thought I wouldn't see Zac and Oscar again...' He couldn't follow the idea through. ‘We've been acting like it's a long sleepover. He's a smart kid, he knows what's going on.'

‘Maybe he talks to Zac.'

‘Every decision I've made so far, I've messed it up. I don't seem to be able to grasp the real stuff. What's wrong with me that it takes this long to work out what that kid's going through?'

She took his hand and stroked the back. It was still damp from wiping his face.

Pulling the tins to the front didn't hide that the shelves were half empty. Two tins of tomato soup for lunch now left only two more. One more lunch, one more reasonably unsatisfying lunch. Every meal eaten now was one that wasn't there later. Every meal she managed to conjure out of leftovers was another half a day they could stay inside. She forced herself not to count how many tins, how many packets of pasta, just closed the pantry doors.

Not every meal was leftovers, despite what Zac thought. Odds and sods from the fridge and the cupboard—a couple of flabby carrots, a stick of wobbly celery, some dried beans she used for holding down baking paper, half an onion—lay on the bench. Together they looked like soup. Some barley, which she had no recollection of buying, would do instead of bread.

This was what her grandmother used to talk about, saving jars and making soup. If only she had a chicken carcass or a ham bone. Hidden at the back of the fridge she discovered a couple of dried sausages that Sean had brought back from a farmers' market and for six months they had been waiting to be made into something sophisticated. Now they completed a farmers' market depression soup. The sausages probably cost more than her grandmother spent on a whole meal. She smiled.

At the kitchen table, Oscar coloured-in. Lots of the colouring, not so much of the in. This was the last of the activity books Sean had bought on the first day. Left for last because
it was the most uninteresting, rote, uncreative. He did it only as an excuse to sit near her, and to watch for Mr Moon. The instant she laid out the ingredients, he hopped down. Something, anything else, was more interesting than the book. ‘Can I help?'