An Ordinary Epidemic (38 page)

Too long. Too long. That was the only yardstick she had. She leant against the inside of the front door. The clock in her hand rested against the wood, transmitting a tiny vibration across the door with every second.

And each second that ticked by was another too many. She needed Sean, she needed him beside her, for all their sakes. Without him... there was no without him, it was a future she couldn't conceive. If she just opened the door, looked outside, up the road, by now she must be able to see him coming back. And where was the risk in that?
She turned her back to the door, leant against it and slid down to the floor. Sean's keys lay in a metallic pile on the floorboards where she had dropped them, the silver teeth glinting in a ray of sunlight from the front door glass. She picked them up and flung them back down the hall. The few steps from the door to the keys would give her time, even if only a little, to find sanity if she couldn't resist the urge to escape out the front. A chance to remember her duty was to Zac and Oscar.

‘Is everything all right, Mum?' Zac appeared in the doorway at the other end of the hall.

‘Sure. Fine. Nothing to worry about.' Although she could barely get the words out.

He shrugged and closed the door as he went back to Oscar and Ella. Hannah stared at the clock. Five past. He would be knocking any moment. The second hand bounced as it moved forward, a jaunty flourish. Each bounce marked off risk. To him, to the kids, to all their preparations. Each one brought to mind some catastrophe that she wasn't out there to prevent. Through the door she felt the throaty vibrations of a car roaring up the street, too fast. It meant nothing to her but bad news, potentially the return of the three men from last week. In the street, Sean would be an easy target for them, or someone even less scrupulous. She took a deep breath, there was no earthly benefit to them in mugging Sean. The cash in his pockets was worth nothing, he didn't have keys on him. She fantasised briefly that they lived in a world where a gang of thugs would enquire as to the value of their victim before attacking. Perhaps they would if they balanced the spoils against the chance of infection.

Ten past. She lost herself in the curlicues on the dark hands of the clock, a cartoon imitation of another age. He had been gone nearly fifteen minutes and Lily's could be no more than five minutes' walk. There should be nothing to distract him, no friendly neighbours to bump into. She could feel the thoughts
crowding at the edge of her mind, the many things that could go wrong. Sick people in the streets, turned out of their homes by frightened relatives. Bodies dumped on the kerb. Around the corner, beyond sight of the porch there could be a scene imagined in any number of end of the world movies. Without crossing their threshold, she had no way of knowing if the quiet emptiness ended at the intersection. Maybe the minute he turned the corner, a mask and gloves were not enough. Maybe there were roaming bands of the dispossessed. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe she should go out, just as far as the corner, another pair of eyes to keep him safe. Or maybe she was just spooking herself.

Whatever was out there, there was one thing she had to hold firm to—he was not coming back in. He might be lucky, she might be letting her imagination run away with her, but lucky wasn't what got you through. Easy didn't keep danger at bay. A mistake in judgement wasn't an excuse, it was the kind of failure that they couldn't afford. Every disaster in human history started with a bad judgement call and calling them that didn't ward off the consequences.

She turned the clock over, flicked the battery door with the end of her finger. If she pulled the battery out, the ticking would stop. It would no longer tell her he had been gone for twenty minutes. Then how long would she wait, when waiting was all she could do? An hour, two hours? Then, would she decide to stop waiting for a knock at the door? When was the moment to leave the safety of the threshold and move back to the house? When was the time to tell Zac and Oscar where he had gone? Where did she draw the deadline to admit to herself that something had gone unthinkably wrong?

She let her head fall back against the cool wood of the door. The floor was hard underneath her, it urged her to get up, do something but she couldn't leave this spot. If she stayed at the door, the moment was frozen between him leaving and
returning. He should know by now there was no luck in it. Luck was the excuse people gave when they didn't plan ahead. Just because you don't know how the die will roll, doesn't stop you knowing that it will be cast. On a different throw, Manba might have passed the city by, randomly, as it had around the world but cancer had taught her that there was nothing to be gained by pretending the worst wouldn't happen. Only optimists were taken by surprise.

Twenty-five minutes. She breathed with the second hand, a meditation of panic.

The door shook her as someone knocked. She took two deep breaths and answered as calmly as she could, ‘Who is it?'

‘Some random person knocking on your front door when you were expecting your husband.' His voice sounded small. ‘I don't have any chocolate. Or coffee. Or toilet paper.'

She told herself to hold firm.

When his voice came back, it was stronger but more hesitant. ‘I didn't go in, there was nothing left. I'm safe.'

‘You're just saying that.'

‘Why would I say that? If I had coffee and chocolate and toilet paper, I'd tell you.'

She scrambled down the hall on her hands and knees to where the keys lay lifeless under a new dent in the plaster. They were like hope in her hands, the temptation of a gamble.

‘Hurry up. I can hear another car. Just let me in and you can shut me out again when it's gone.'

She unlocked the door but not the grill, looked him up and down, looked behind him. There was no sign of food. She would have let the food in. ‘You're not wearing the mask and gloves.'

‘There wasn't anything left to touch and there wasn't anyone to see. I don't think they're even collecting the garbage anymore. All the rubbish bins were still out. I'm virus free. And that's all there was, garbage. Someone did a job on Lily's
a while ago.'

She was still standing back from the grill. ‘It doesn't take that long to walk to Lily's.'

‘I needed to breathe so I went around the block.' He shrugged and held his hands out, a sheepish confession. ‘All I got was air, uncontaminated, unshared air.'

‘What the hell. What the absolute hell. You went for a walk?'

‘I talked myself into a state, okay? There was a car and I ran the other way. And then there was this pile of garbage on the footpath. It had a smell so strong I could almost see it. Food scraps and tin cans and I thought I saw some old clothes and a pair of shoes. I swear that was all it was, some old clothes and shoes but I freaked myself out. And then one of the shoes moved. I think it was a rat, I'm not sure that's much better. I just had to clear my head. Please just open the grill.'

‘You want me to open the grill, to open the grill and let in a big fat idiot.' All the worry, all the steeling herself for the worst, all this he had chosen to put her through. ‘I told you not to, I asked you not to. But you didn't think, you didn't think about anybody or anything.' Her righteous rage for Lily's, for letting Ella in their house, for all the times he had put her plans at risk carried her away. ‘And what was I supposed to say to Oscar and Zac if you didn't come back? That their dad's a moron? That he didn't have the common decent sense to keep himself alive?

‘And now you want me to let you back in. Tell me, when during your pleasant walk did you think about Oscar and Zac? When did you decide that the rest of us were happy to risk death so you could go for a stroll? Seven and a half thousand people died yesterday. In driving distance of this house and you think you're bloody Superman.'

An obstinance settled on his face. ‘A number doesn't change what is happening in this street now.'

‘Then what does? What on the face of the earth would it
take for you to know exactly what is outside our door? Because going out and looking is the most short-sighted, dumbest answer to that question.' She unlocked the grill and stomped into the bedroom, threw herself down on the bed, the tension in her body spent.

‘I'm sorry I wanted to loot Lily's.'

‘That means nothing. You didn't because you couldn't.'

‘Yeah.' He sat down next to her on the crumpled bedclothes. ‘We're still going to need more food. How many more weeks can we survive on nothing but beans and rice?'

‘Beans and rice will keep you alive. Why is this not clear to you? This isn't the time to go out shopping. That time is over, I did that when it was safe. This is the time when you stay inside and shut up about the beans and rice.' It was his fault that she had lost her resolve, his fault for being himself. ‘And don't talk to me. I don't even know why I let you back in. Don't talk to me, don't look at me. Just go away.'

‘I don't have a present.'

A few more steps and Hannah would have made it to the back door. She held the phone in front of her leg and cheated it behind her as she turned around. Trying to keep it out of both Zac and Oscar's eye-line would be easier if they sat closer together. So much for brotherly companionship. ‘That's the way it goes, Oscar.'

‘But you have presents on birthdays.'

Ella looked up at the sound of the word.

‘We could make a cake, Oz.' Zac really was trying to be helpful. Hannah caught Zac's eye with a warning look, because she didn't need that kind of help, and used the moment she held his gaze to slip the phone into the pocket of her jeans.

‘A cake?' Oscar's face lit up.

‘I don't know,' she glanced at the ceiling as if help might descend, ‘the stove doesn't work and we don't have any flour.' A dark cloud was moving onto Oscar's face. ‘You have to understand, Mouse,' she looked to Zac to help undo what he had done, ‘we would make a cake and have presents but we can't.'

‘Then it's not a birthday. It's just a day.' Oscar turned his back on her.

‘Mum, there must be something in the pantry we could make into a cake.'

‘I'm not hiding packet mix and a generator behind the beans.' Now Zac stared at her. ‘Daddy won't mind. He
understands.' Their silence communicated how much she had let them down. ‘You could make him something for a present.' Zac rolled his eyes. ‘You could try.'

‘And you could try to find something in the pantry.'

Oscar turned around looking disappointed and angry. ‘We have to have presents and a cake and a special dinner. Not beans and rice.'

She sighed and felt a headache coming on. ‘You've got a shelf full of craft books and materials. If you make something I promise I will try to find some way of making dinner different tonight. Agreed? Now go.' She shooed them off.

She looked across at Sean in the office, saw him pointedly not looking in their direction. Since the power went off its only purpose was as a refuge for the two of them. The children still respected its status as a workspace even now that there was no work to be done. She waited until they were all reabsorbed into their colouring books or reading and, with her hand in her pocket covering the bulging phone, nonchalantly strolled across the yard to the office.

She closed the door behind her without looking back. ‘Are they watching?'

‘Zac keeps looking over.'

The phone bit into her hip as she sat down. The denim folded tight across the top, sealing it in. ‘We weren't at all planning your birthday but if we were, try to be surprised and delighted. It means a lot to Oscar.' She slowly and awkwardly turned her head to look through the window to the glass kitchen door. ‘I can't see him.'

‘His head is down, it's safe. Give me the phone.'

‘I don't think so, looty boy. I'm still mad at you.' She stood up to free the phone, held the on button and put it on the table next to Sean.

‘Do you have the emails to send?'

‘Sure.' He pulled out a scrap of paper from under a pile of
books. She stood next to his chair and he sneaked his hand into hers, watching the start-up screen, impatient with its stylish and colourful animation. Finally the home screen came up. The battery only had a sliver of orange at the bottom. They stared at the signal strength icon, waiting for connection. There it was, five bars. The screen flashed bright, went to black blazoned with ‘No battery remains' in white and shut off, all in a few seconds. Hannah felt a little sick. Sean squeezed her hand.

‘I'll get my phone.'

She sat anxious, waiting, playing with the dead phone. She prised off the back, re-seated the battery. There was a possibility, a very remote one, that it had worked itself loose. She stared at the blank screen, wondering if Sean's battery might have run down even while it was turned off, wondering just how many days of connection they had left. Once his phone died, they were down to Zac's and all it could do was text. She heard Sean's voice from the house, booming and overly reassuring. That had to raise Zac's curiosity but Sean came out alone, hand on phone in pocket. She pulled the battery out of her phone again to get at the SIM.