‘Now,’ he rubbed his hands together in exaggerated anticipation, ‘what’s for birthday dinner?’
Oscar burst, ‘Mum made spaghetti bolognese.’
‘We have spaghetti? We have bolognese?’
‘Well,’ Hannah carried a bowl over to the table, ‘the request I got from everyone was not beans and rice. So,’ she whipped the tea towel off the top of the bowl, ‘ta-daa!’
Sean stared bemused at the mound of food then broke into a deep belly laugh. A thick red sauce smothered the top of a large pile of popcorn.
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
Tears were streaming down his face as he pointed to the food. ‘Is that mince?’
‘It might not be mince.’
‘Mum,’ Oscar looked at her outraged, ‘is that beans?’
‘If one couldn’t get mince, one would most certainly not mush up beans and pretend they were mince. It’s popcorn bolognese, a special birthday treat. For Sean. Happy Birthday.’
After the pile of food was ladled out and, however incongruous the flavour were, eaten and enjoyed, after the leftovers were fought over among the kids, after the last glass of wine they had left was split between the two of them, Zac cleared away the plates and Oscar hovered next to him, shadowing him from the table to the sink. Sean pulled Hannah into a bear hug and they kissed in the corner, just outside the circle cast by the candle.
‘Gross.’ Zac muttered loudly.
‘You’re a legend.’ Only Sean’s smile caught the flickering light, a Cheshire cat. ‘Best birthday ever.’
Oscar was hopping up and down next to them. He looked at Hannah, waiting for her sign, but he couldn’t hold it in anymore. ‘There’s a cake, we made a cake. It’s chocolate but Mum said we didn’t have to use the chocolate for our milk but I said you have to have a chocolate cake.’ Ella and Oscar had considered the issue so seriously, she’d been afraid of a hung jury.
‘When he says cake, you know, it’s a loose interpretation of a cake.’
Sean looked around. ‘Where are you hiding it?’
‘In the fridge, it’s not like you’d have any reason to look there.’
She brought it out, a small pile of thick wobbly rice boiled with powdered milk and cocoa. They’d included anything they could find in the cupboards—the last of the dried fruit, the dusting from an empty packet of shredded coconut. The whole thing was covered with silver dragées, and hundreds and thousands. On top, they had put the stub ends of birthday candles found at the back of one of the kitchen drawers. Even Zac smiled. But the happiness was bought dearly, she knew. The popcorn, the last tin of tomatoes, the rice and the milk powder. It was more food than they could afford to eat at one meal.
Half of what had to be said took place sotto voce in a quiet corner, leaving out all the nouns, the other half they held onto until the kids were in bed. They took whatever opportunities they found. One presented itself as the kids played loud rough and tumble on the square of lawn. Hannah and Sean stood under the patio roof with their backs to the garden, leaning against the uprights. Soft voices and unseen lips.
‘So, now it’s not my birthday, what’s for dinner?’
‘I’ll give you half a guess.’
‘We can’t keep doing this.’
‘We have to.’
‘I know you want to think that and I know it’s true as far as it goes but we have no idea how much longer this will last. Just because we have to doesn’t mean we can.’
‘They’ve been able to look at the thing for weeks, they have to find a vaccine soon. We only have to hold out until that’s available.’
‘Which may or may not work. Thousands are dying every day. We might last long enough, we might not.’
‘And what? You’ve come up with some clever solution that I haven’t thought of?’
She could see him considering how to put it. He might have a solution but from the look on his face, whatever it was, she wasn’t going to like it.
‘I think it’s time to consider all the resources at our disposal.’
Hannah was puzzled, they had made full use of all their dwindling resources, they had nothing else. It slowly dawned on her which resources he was referring to. ‘But they’re not at our disposal.’ She couldn’t find the energy to argue over this, not again, not after Lily’s. ‘A few more days.’ She cocked her head in the direction of Stuart’s house. ‘He might come back.’
Sean was staring at the ground, considering. But not, she knew, considering her point. ‘Someone is going to do it. Every day we wait it’s more likely that it won’t be us.’
‘It’s wrong, you can make any argument you like but it’s just plain wrong. It’s not ours.’
‘You’ve got plans and pantries and principles. That stuff is great but surviving trumps it all. I’m not sure ownership means much right now and even if it does, we have Ella. It’s her house too.’ Sean turned back to the kids. ‘Zac, can I have you for a moment?’ Zac jogged over. Sean dropped his voice again. ‘I need you to keep the kids indoors for a while. Try to keep their attention occupied with something.’
Zac nodded. ‘Hey Oscar, Ella, want to play a board game?’
‘Can I choose, can we play a game I want?’
‘Sure, Oz, whatever.’
‘Can we play snakes and ladders?’ Even Oscar knew it was an ambit claim. Hannah waited for Zac to roll his eyes but he smiled. ‘Sure, of course. Ella goes first, ’cause she’s littlest.’
Hannah had brought the kitchen knife with her, just in case. She hoped her bluff wasn’t called. Hoped it was a bluff. In her other hand she had a couple of green shopping bags, as if she was popping up the road.
The house looked empty from the back but so did theirs and so did Gwen’s. The only life was a brief glimpse of Mr Moon on Stuart’s garage, surveying them contemptuously before disappearing down the back of the roof. She would be able to tell Oscar she had seen him and he was all right. Or maybe it would be kinder not to. She felt a slight shiver of relief that there were no surprises in the garden, though what she had been dreading, she wasn’t sure.
Sean’s hand rested on the back door handle. It seemed like a long moment before he started to turn the knob.
‘Hang on.’ Something was making her anxious—this was the last chance she had to circumvent whatever came next. ‘We have no way of knowing if it’s safe to go in.’
‘Ella came over a week ago. That’s five days longer than we need for the virus to be gone.’
‘But what if he didn’t leave right away? We think he did but we don’t know.’
‘So we have maybe four and a half days safety margin. Beans and rice. I’m going in.’ Sean turned and pushed. The folding doors trembled in the middle. ‘How did this get locked?’
‘The same way it got closed.’
‘The wind could have blown it closed but it had to be locked from the inside.’
Ella had come out this door and she couldn’t have locked it, even if she had the keys. They knew it had been open, after all, they’d heard the phone ringing. But Ella couldn’t have climbed over the fence by herself, Stuart must still have been home to help her. He must have been there when they were ringing. And he had locked up after himself.
Sean pumped the handle. When it didn’t irrationally jump open on the fifth try, he stood back and looked flummoxed. ‘What do we do now?’ He banged on the door hard with his fist. ‘Stuart!’ He banged again. ‘Stuart!’
‘Shhh. The kids will hear.’ She looked over their fence but no one moved. And no one moved in the other half of Stuart’s semi, either. She searched for sounds of people and found none. The quiet seemed to hint at houses filled with unseen listening ears. ‘If there’s any chance at all he’s still home, we’re not going in.’
‘He’s not home.’
They looked around, like the thieves and trespassers they were, for something hard or long and strong. All they saw was a square of grass like theirs, a featureless brick garage with only a single door an
d no rainwater tank and a raised wooden deck attached to the house. Hannah sized up the garden chair, the one Stuart had been sitting in when she last saw him. The metal was too flimsy to do any damage.
‘We could use this to break the glass.’
Sean blanched. ‘That would make a mess.’
Under the covered kettle barbecue on the deck, Hannah found only a small gas bottle and a long set of tongs. She wedged the tongs between the leaves of the folding door. The tip bent, bruising the wood of the frame without moving it. They were the two most incompetent housebreakers of all time. They didn’t even come equipped.
Sean was over the fence and Hannah watched the back of their own house, this time for any sign of the kids. In a second, Sean was back from their garage with a large screwdriver and a hammer. He hammered the screwdriver in between the door and the frame where the tongue of the lock was just visible. Everything about the scene told her they should stop. ‘How is this not stealing?’
‘It’s borrowing, we’re looking after Ella.’
‘Mask and gloves.’ She handed them to him.
The metal screwdriver parted the wood easily. Although they were breaking the peace for several hundred metres, they disturbed no one but themselves. Sean threw his weight against the handle of the screwdriver, the wood cracked loudly and gave. The lock stayed in place, surrounded by splinters as Sean pushed the door open.
‘We’ll nail that shut before we go.’ He wasn’t convincing himself. ‘We can nail it from the inside and go out the front door if we can find some keys. I’ll explain, they’ll understand.’ Maybe they would but Hannah wouldn’t if it were her house.
The door let into a large open living area with the kitchen wrapped around the far wall. There was a faint, musty, rotting smell. Hannah opened the curtains on the window that faced their kitchen, to the sight of the back of Zac’s head. She yanked them closed again.
A door banged and she jumped, guilty, ready with an excuse but it was the latchless back door swinging in the breeze. On the other side of the room, Sean was opening and closing cupboard doors, revealing only plates and glassware. Hannah noticed the neat rows of wine glasses in one. Six red, six white, six cocktail glasses. This was like going through Natalie and Stuart’s underwear drawers.
There could be nothing in the fridge that hadn’t spoiled by now but she had a perverse need to be sure. She took a deep breath before she opened the door, expecting to be hit by the source of the rotting smell. The fridge was clean, well-organised and almost empty. Tubs of leftovers, some jars and a couple of well-wrapped blocks of cheese, all carefully arranged. When she finally gasped for breath, she could detect nothing more than the slight scent that already pervaded the room. It was probably imagination but the air wafted by the fridge door felt a little cooler. She pulled out the vegetable crisper, anticipating a stinky sludge. Inside were two pristine onions and a wilted but intact head of celery.
Sean closed the cupboard with a sharp tap of his finger. ‘No space for food.’ He was bewildered. ‘Where do they keep the food?’ Hannah looked around. She’d only been into Natalie’s house two or three times. A narrow door in the corner of the kitchen caught her eye.
‘They have a walk in pantry.’ She folded open the door to find a person-sized space filled with shelves of old, shallow boards painted white, floor to ceiling. ‘Why don’t we have one of these?’
There was only room for one in the pantry, so Sean left her to ransack it while he filled one of the green bags from the fridge.
‘Only take things that haven’t been opened or don’t go off. In jars, not plastic containers,’ she called out to him. ‘You don’t know how long they’ve been there.’ In their fridge, take-away containers of leftovers often hid in the back and only reemerged weeks or months later. She lived with an anxiety that one day when Zac was browsing for snacks he would indiscriminately hoover up a tub full of contamination. Something, it had turned out, she should have taken a bit more care with herself. ‘And don’t even open the freezer.’
‘What about cheese and eggs?’ His head was in the fridge, his voice muffled.
‘Cheese if it’s not green. Eggs, we can do the float thing or just break them and make sure they don’t smell.’
In the light falling through the pantry door, she could barely see the well-spaced, orderly shapes on the shelves. She felt for a light switch, flicked it out of habit. Nothing changed. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out regular sized tins on one shelf—tomatoes and fruit salad. The first one she picked up, she checked the use by date. A month over. That was a risk they would have to take. A sealed, sterilised tin of peaches didn’t go from being good on the first to dangerous by the thirtieth. She dumped the rest in the bag without checking, as well as the neat stack of child-sized packets of sultanas beside them. On the next shelf down, there were jars. Pasta sauce on the left, in three different flavours, and packets of dried pasta lying parallel. She threw them all into the bag, noticing the flavours—rosemary and garlic penne, squid ink linguine. On the right were half a dozen jars of jams, all farmers’ market flavours with ingredients like ruby grapefruit and Campari. The kids were not going to touch fig and ginger but she put them all in the green bag. Although they didn’t have bread, if push came to shove they could eat jam with a spoon.
She had to bend to look into the next shelf. She smiled to herself, wondering whether it was Natalie or Stuart who decided that the odd shaped jars and tins which wouldn’t stack neatly should be below eye-line. A flat tin of octopus, a jar of dukkah, an oval can of pâté. They were calories, they went into the bag.
She got down on her knees to see into the dark at the back of the bottom shelf. And there it was, a vacuum-sealed kilo packet of coffee beans. She hollered out, ‘Gold!’ And behind it, a couple of small packets of flour and one of rice.
She waved her hand around the back of the bottom shelf, in case something was hiding. As if a tin could hide itself, as if Natalie or Stuart had considered as they stacked their shelves how best to protect their pantry from theft. But a stolen item required an owner, a loss and a sense of the conventions of civilised society. Surrounded by someone else’s groceries, she could find none of those things. She creaked herself upright to contemplate the top shelf. What, she wondered, could be so misshapen as to be exiled out of sight and reach? She gingerly used the shelves as steps. Holding on by the ends of her toes and the tips of her fingers, she raised her head above the top shelf, almost hitting the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. She could just see two tins and a twelve pack of toilet paper. She let go with one hand to bat the toilet paper closer to the edge of the shelf, grabbing hold again quickly to stop herself falling. She batted and grabbed three times before she tipped it off the edge. Posh toilet paper, not scratchy brown recycled stuff.
She did the same with the tins, leaving them teetering, then climbed carefully down, jumped and swiped at them, catching them as they fell. She held one of them in her hand as she came back into the kitchen. ‘They don’t have a cat.’
‘They did, before Ella was born, before Oscar was born, remember?’ The tins were slightly rusty. She placed the cans down gently outside the back door, trying not to attract Mr Moon with the Pavlovian sounds of tinned food and went back inside for a Bunnykins bowl she had seen in the drying rack.
‘We’re going to need some stuff from home to fix the door.’ Hannah spoke to the back of Sean’s head as he stared into the empty house. All she wanted now was to stop feeling like a bad guy. ‘We came for food, they’ll understand food. Now we have to go.’
Sean took a couple of paces towards the hall before he called out over his shoulder. ‘Clothes for Ella. And some toys. They want us to look after her.’ He was already through the door.
She scrambled after him. ‘Clothes, toys, nothing else. Pyjamas, she really needs her own pyjamas.’
She ran straight into Sean, who had doubled back. ‘Don’t come in, don’t come any further. You don’t need to see.’ As he spoke, s
he realised the subtle smell, the smell she had looked for in the fridge, was still there, she’d just become acclimatised to it in the kitchen. Here it was stronger.
She couldn’t help herself, she had to look in. Sean caught her with his arm, pushing her backwards. ‘Out, wait outside.’
‘Why are you going back? If he’s in there, you don’t need to check.’
‘He might not be the only one. And there are still Ella’s clothes.’
She opened her mouth to object, offer, remonstrate.
‘I’ve seen him. One of us has to be able to tuck in Ella tonight without Stuart in our eyes.’ Sean gave her a gentle push. ‘Out.’ In the fight to spare each other, he’d decided to win.
Crap, bugger, shit. Hannah was breathing hard into her mask, the reused air hot and fetid. She knew. She knew. She bloody knew, they all knew the risks. Even Stuart, even Sean. Especially Stuart and he had chosen to send Ella to them. She kicked the cat food so hard it cut with a searing pain. The cans bounced on the deck with a dull thud and hit the barbecue with a metallic clang and clatter, answered with a rumble from the garage roof as she caught a flash of Mr Moon’s tail streaking across. Shit again, she didn’t need a hungry disease vector of a cat as well. A cat who in the absence of easy meals had undoubtedly returned to his instincts. There were enough rats around these days to keep him fed. Much easier to catch than a bat. But if he found a dead bat, or ate a rat who had eaten...she made herself hold still in the exaggerated silence that flooded in behind the noise. Two seconds. The silence shrank to its normal size. Everything she’d done to make them safe, everything jeopardised just by walking into that house. Because of Stuart. He was dead, had been dead for a while, and she had known all along.
Sean emerged from the dark of the back door. She looked for some sign he’d heard the racket but he was shut down, preoccupied. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know the right way to witness something like that but it deserves to be witnessed, it can’t be ignored. Maybe it was easier when people wore hats. I could have just taken off my hat as a sign of respect. Maybe you were allowed to feel it less when the right rituals existed. He deserves to be respected.’ He looked beyond her and then his eyes snapped onto her face, as if just now realising where he was. ‘Let’s go.’
An Ordinary Epidemic Page 27