An Ordinary Epidemic (41 page)

‘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, she 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.'

Hannah went back over the fence first. It was an ungainly exit. She used the cross bars for footholds. Balanced like a
seesaw on top, she had to wonder if Stuart had been gone for long enough. Or what she could do if he hadn't. If there was even a ‘long enough' for a body. If the kids could manage, shut in, alone. She twirled herself half a circle and slowly eased to the ground, falling ungracefully for the last few centimetres. Sean handed two shopping bags over the fence to her.

‘What are you doing?' Ella's voice behind her made her jump. ‘Did my daddy give you them?'

‘Go inside.' Hannah couldn't help but sound cross as she took a step back, pressed herself as close to the fence as she could. ‘We got a change of clothes for you, sweetie, that's all. Why aren't you playing with Oscar?'

‘Ella!' Zac jogged out of the house. ‘Ella, come back inside.' His face was thunderous. ‘I told you to stay inside.'

‘And I told you to look after them.'

Zac's face didn't change. She was going to have to give him a few words on blaming your failings on someone else but the look on his face wasn't directed at Ella, it was directed at himself. He already knew. Nothing she said could make him feel his error more than he was making himself feel it now.

Sean dropped down beside Hannah, his voice unmuffled, his mask off. ‘Go back inside with Zac, Ella. We'll be in soon.'

‘I want to go home.'

‘No one's home right now. You have to stay with us for a while.'

‘I want Daddy.'

Hannah saw Sean flinch. She had to say something, something that wasn't
Daddy's dead
. ‘Hey, why don't you go back inside again and see if your mum's phone is answering now.'

‘I want Daddy, I want Daddy, I want Daddy.' It went from a demand to a wail, screeched over and over again. She threw herself on her back, chubby legs and arms flailing, her face red and scrunched. The sounds of the words were lost in the incoherent anguish pouring out of her.

Zac stood, stunned by the demonstration in front of him of how small a failure on his part could lead to so great a consequence. Hannah could see his mind turning over, casting around for a way to make it better, for the words to put it back to where it was three minutes ago. ‘Ella,' he spoke with heightened jollity, ‘why don't you come back in with me? We can't finish the game without you. Oscar's waiting. He really wants to play.' Ella couldn't hear a word he said. He shifted from foot to foot, put out a hand towards her and got caught by an arm flung out. He wedged his hands under his armpits and looked unhappy.

In one movement Sean pulled off his gloves, flung them over the fence, picked up her small body and pinned it against his, wrapping his arms around her tight. Her limbs could only bat against his trunk. She squirmed and cried but more from his embrace than her anger and fear. He marched inside, her noise subsiding, and Hannah hoped that meant she was calming, but all she could think was
too late for a decision, he should have used disinfectant before he touched her
.

Only Zac and Hannah were left in the garden. He looked so forlorn, she would have done anything to make him feel less useless, part of the grown-ups. ‘Could you stay out here for a minute, I could use a hand.'

‘Sure.'

She found some short planks of wood, the cordless drill and some screws in the garage, and clambered back over the fence, harder this time because this side had no cross members and Sean wasn't there to give her a boost, then got Zac to pass the tools over. He was eyeing her gloves and mask warily. She saw his gaze go to Stuart's open back door gently swaying.

‘Ella's dad wasn't there?'

She didn't have an answer ready but hesitation was as good as telling him. ‘No one home.' He was only an adult some of the time. She promised herself she would tell him the truth in
a different setting, when it wasn't so immediate. Through the kitchen window, she could see Sean sitting with his arms still wrapped around a now floppy Ella. ‘Hey, could you look after Oscar for me? Sean has enough to deal with.'

‘Sure, no problem.' He headed inside, if not happy at least useful.

She tiptoed and kept her eyes ahead through the living room. The keys were in the front door, thankfully. With them she could seal up the back of the house and still let herself out the front. She hadn't relished the possibility of having to ransack a dead man's house to find them. Back through the living room, harder this time not to look since the sofa was right in her eye-line as she entered the room. The curtains were closed and though the darkness helped, she could still make out his face. Pale, impassive. She turned her eyes away.

She retrieved the tin of cat food from under the barbecue, scanned the garden and garage roof for any sign of Mr Moon and emptied the contents of one into the Bunnykins bowl. One more meal from a tin was one less chance of him eating bat. It occurred to her that there were other cats and no guarantee that Mr Moon would be the first to reach it, so she looked around for somewhere to put the bowl, somewhere only Mr Moon would look. She shook her head, trying to clear the muddled thoughts. Anywhere Mr Moon would find it, any other cat would as well.

She pushed the door closed behind her as she went back inside. The drill in the wood of the back door made a racket, reverberating off the kitchen tiles. It battered her ears and made her deaf when the noise stopped.
Loud enough to wake the dead
. She pushed the thought away. Every few seconds, she turned to check that she was still alone. The drill became increasingly sluggish and the last two screws only went halfway in, and then only by pausing the drill for a few seconds between bursts to squeeze out the last of the charge. She tested it with
her shoulder, it didn't move.

As she came level with the sofa she stopped, too aware of what was behind her. She turned slowly to say goodbye. Stuart was holding a throw rug around him, lying on the couch, head rested at one end. Where his face touched the armrest he looked bruised, as if he had dropped his head hard, but it could have been shadows.

‘I can't forgive you yet,' she said to the mop of hair.

He had put her boys at risk. He could have killed Sean. Although she knew why and may well have done the same in his position, he had made decisions for them. That was like Stuart, to act and expect everyone else to fall into line. Under the top of the blanket, she could see a dark wine filigree of rash spreading across his chest. It was, she knew, the mark of the end. The imprint that said you were not going to be one of the lucky ones.

She put the back of her gloved hand against his cheek. It was too personal a gesture for a man she barely knew. Despite what she could see, she still expected to find warmth, a hint of life. Although Stuart's cheek wasn't cold, its eerie room temperature made her snatch her hand away.