Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  “Food poisoning. All that technology and your mother could have told you that.”

  “And you could have searched the Internet. You’re the one with the smartphone.” He muttered under his breath, “They all have smartphones.”

  “How often do you text people?”

  “I don’t know. Whenever.”

  “I guess it’s not much fun for you now Daniel’s gone. Do you text him much?”

  Zac shrugged.

  As the fog and lethargy of illness left Hannah, it was replaced by a gnawing fear—that their food wasn’t safe. She was supposed to be resting on the sofa. Her feet lay, comfortingly, in Sean’s lap as he read, and her eyes were closed but her mind revolved through possibilities. Although it seemed, in cool reflection, that the men from this morning were more interested in conning their way in than breaking their way in, she kept coming back to the thought that if they abandoned the house, the food was lost. She opened her eyes. Sean was watching her instead of reading.

  “You should be sleeping.”

  “I was.”

  He gave her a skeptical look.

  “We have to do something. Maybe a more secure house…”

  “You want to break into someone’s house and squat? Seriously?”

  She got up and walked to the pantry, as if staring at it could somehow solve the problem. As she stood there, hugging herself tight, Zac passed on his way from the kitchen. He faltered in his path when he saw his silent sentinel mother, then kept going. Hannah felt as if she couldn’t leave, as if the very act of not staring at the pantry would put them in danger. Her trance was broken only when Zac dropped a motley heap of wooden planks at her feet.

  Sean and Zac’s quiet industriousness was amplified by the din of the cordless drill and the clatter of the hammer. She wouldn’t let herself question whether their fortifications would be of any use. It was all they had. And when they were finished, the edges of the pantry doors were haphazardly reinforced with an assortment of planks. At the middle edges, Sean had drilled large holes through both the reinforcing and the doors underneath, threaded through the D-lock from Zac’s bike, and locked it with a click.

  “You are the official keeper of the key. Keys. I also put a padlock on the side gate. And we are officially out of locks.” Sean handed them to her. “No one’s getting to our food without smashing the doors.”

  She wanted to say, And what if they smash the doors?

  “I know, I know, the front window is a problem, but I can’t magic up longer planks without dismantling the fence.” He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “I will, if you want me to.” She shook her head. “Next time we can upend the bed.” He looked her in the eyes. “Not worth a smile?”

  “Go on, Mum, try it.” Zac gestured at the pantry, not looking as happy as he should.

  She tried to slide the key in, but the angle was awkward. “I can’t see the slot. Could you turn the light on for me?”

  Sean flicked the switch. Nothing happened. “Damn. Do we have a spare bulb?”

  “Inside the locked pantry.” Hannah tried to tilt her head upside down and sideways to get a better look, but was hit by a tired dizziness.

  “I’ll get you the torch.”

  She heard him click the living room switch on his way through, but no light came on. As she stepped into the kitchen, the fridge was forebodingly silent. Ella and Oscar looked up from the jigsaw on the kitchen table. The pieces were too small for Ella’s fingers, but she was happy perched on a chair, her legs swinging, as long as Oscar was nearby. Hannah pulled open the fridge door—no light there either.

  “It’ll be a fuse.” As if she was reassuring the two little ones. They went back to the jigsaw, unalarmed.

  Hannah walked back through the house, flicking switches. By the time she reached the front door, she couldn’t pretend it was just a fuse.

  Sean hesitated. “We should go around the side. The torch is going to stand out like a sore thumb in the street.”

  In the tunnel of the side passage, Sean unlocked the padlock, pulled back the bolt, and tugged at the gate, which groaned and protested, swelled by the rain. He wrenched it far enough to squeeze through. Hannah watched the street warily. There was no light from any of the houses—even the streetlamps were out. Only the last rays of twilight illuminated the scene. On the other side of the fence, Stuart and Natalie’s house was as dark as theirs. No light showed through the closed curtains.

  Sean glanced at the street and then back into the fuse box. “I think we can be fairly confident it’s not a fuse.” As if this hadn’t all been for show.

  It needed both of them pushing with their shoulders against the gate to get the bolt home. With each heave, she expected to feel someone on the other side, pushing back. She didn’t feel secure until the padlock was on again.

  Sean marched back up the passage and she was forced to talk to his receding back. “The food in the freezer will spoil.” Sean didn’t reply. “But if we keep the door closed, it should stay cold for a day or two.” He was still silent. “So, maybe we should start with anything left in the fridge. And we should turn our phones off too, save the batteries.”

  He reached the corner before he relented. “Yeah, all that.”

  “But, and?”

  “Wouldn’t solar panels be handy right now?” She wasn’t going to answer, however much he made it sound like a passing thought. “Like the water tank. Didn’t that turn out to be useful?”

  “I never said we shouldn’t have a water tank.”

  “But you had to be persuaded.”

  “It’s too big. It’s still too big. I look out the back every day and it’s too big.”

  “Yet it’s keeping us safe. And we could have had solar panels, enough to run the freezer, charge the phones.”

  “How were you going to pay for it? We didn’t have the money. Do you remember how much it all cost? We spent every cent we had on living, remember? And even if we had, it was never going to be enough to run the whole house.”

  “The freezer and the phones.”

  “We don’t have them, we don’t have them, we don’t have them!”

  He looked at her the way he looked at Oscar when there was no talking to him.

  “It’s my fault, I’ll admit to that. It was my fault for being sick and using up all our resources. It’s my fault that we didn’t hold off the renovation until we could afford it all. My fault. I was the one in a hurry, I was the one who soaked up all our savings.” Her confession was an accusation.

  Hidden by the dark, Zac and Oscar were staring out the kitchen window. Zac with concern, Oscar with wonder.

  “Get off the counter, Oscar,” Sean roared through the glass, and Oscar almost fell backwards.

  Hannah pushed past Sean and ran to the kitchen. Ella stood in the middle of the room, looking lost. Oscar was hunched over the jigsaw, staring at a piece in his hand. Zac looked at her defiantly.

  “Get your phone.”

  “What! Why?”

  “Just get it. I’ll need yours too, Sean.” She didn’t look at him or alter her dealing-with-a-recalcitrant-teenager voice.

  The phone screens cast a small sphere of light. She checked the battery icons—hers had the most charge. The other two were less than half. She redirected Sean’s and Zac’s to hers and turned them all off. “We’ll check my phone twice a day.”

  “And what happens when you run out of charge and we’re all still redirected?” Zac wasn’t really asking—he was trying to prove her wrong.

  “Then we swap the SIMs.”

  “But it’s my phone. I can use it how I like.”

  “It’s not your phone, Zac.” Sean broke in, an uneasy ally. “It never was your phone. And there won’t be any calls. You can send one text each time we turn it on.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Live with it. What do you think happened before email? People sent letters. It could take days.”

  “Yeah, I forgot you lived with the dino
saurs.”

  “Watch it, Zac.” Sean glowered at him and then spread his glower around the room. The whole scene appeared to wash over Ella, still lost in the shadow. Hannah noticed Oscar wiping at his eyes. She put her arm around his shoulder.

  Zac spat contempt at her. “He’s not a little kid, Mum.”

  “That’s just what he is.”

  “Well, he should grow up. When I was his age—”

  “When you were his age,” Sean snapped, “you were an only child who didn’t have to worry about anything yet. He’s lucky because he has an older brother to help him. That’s how life is, the luck of the draw. You want us to make sure that every bad thing that happened to you happens to him?”

  Hannah was pinned against the hallway wall by the mattress.

  “Bend it a bit.” Sean pushed the other end, still wedged in Zac’s room.

  “Back up and come at a shallower angle.” The top sheet was hanging down, only loosely held by the edge draped over the top, and each time she blindly stepped, it caught her feet. Sean repositioned and she pulled herself and the mattress along the wall. Her face pressed into the bedclothes, redolent of teenage boy, a little overpowering but almost warm and comforting. Even if they had electricity, she wouldn’t have washed them. It was hard to imagine that Ella could care enough to make it worth wasting that much drinking water.

  They manhandled the mattress around the corner, across the living room. She listed side to side as she walked backwards, hugging it to her, keeping it up by the friction of her arms. Every time she stumbled, Sean piled headfirst into his end.

  They flipped it down on Oscar’s floor. Oscar and Ella watched entranced from the edge of Oscar’s bed.

  “Okay, you two”—Sean rubbed his hands together—“there’s some water in the bucket in the bathroom. Give yourself a rub over where you’re grotty.”

  Hannah followed to jostle them along, wetting flannels and scrubbing when they lost impetus. Oscar grumbled about how cold the water was, how dark the room was. Ella followed the instructions impassively. As she herded them past Zac’s room, she noticed a faint glow leaking under the door.

  Although it was still early, the twilight was deep enough that Oscar’s room was dark and she could barely see Oscar and Ella snuggled down into their beds.

  She fell into the sofa next to Sean. “What happened to monkey boy?”

  “He wanted to be alone.”

  Hannah yawned and squinted at Sean. “Would you mind if we passed up the opportunity to sit here in the dark and went to sleep instead?”

  Hannah started to make her way up the hall. Behind her, she could hear Sean at Zac’s door. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “’Kay.”

  “When the battery in your torch runs out, I’m not giving you a new one.”

  “’Kay.”

  The bed received her into its soft protection. Sean climbed into the empty space next to her. The street was quiet—all was right again. His outstretched arm closed around her. She shut her eyes, felt herself fall into sleep and wake as she fell. His side was warm and she snuggled her back against him, cradling his hand in hers. His arm reflexively pulled her in. She lay for a few minutes before again falling and jolting awake. She fell and woke, fell and woke, fell and slept.

  And woke, a sound she couldn’t place forcing itself through her dreaming mind. Oscar at the door, half asleep and grumpy.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “Ella woke me up”—he sounded peeved—“she’s crying.”

  She rolled over to Sean, choosing to assume he was already awake. “Do you want me to go?” She willed him to say no.

  “She’s used to me, I’ll go.”

  Seemingly moments later, without any consciousness of having fallen back to sleep, she was woken by the door and Sean’s voice, whispering loud. “Ella’s a bit scared, so I said she could come into our bed.”

  “Really? Oscar’s there with her.”

  “She promised to sleep in Oscar’s room tomorrow, because she’s a big brave girl, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Ella’s voice was small.

  Hannah shifted over to make room for her, as she once had for Oscar and, before him, Zac. Ella’s tiny body took up almost no room, but her presence drove Hannah to the edge of the bed. The way Ella seemed so at home made Hannah feel like the intruder.

  She could tell Sean was still awake by his attempts not to disturb her, but attempting not to disturb her did. Her body had had a quantum of sleep. Her mind jumped between analyzing the day and conjuring problems that might never happen, problems she couldn’t solve in the middle of the night. However hard she distracted herself, her brain insistently brought her back. She finally fell asleep working out a complicated plan for barricading the front windows and the side passage with recycled tin cans.

  Sean waved around a small square of newspaper. “I said one, not two, not three, not a whole handful.”

  From where Hannah sat at the kitchen table, pretending she wasn’t listening, she could see the kids lined up in front of Sean, a silent audience. Oscar’s eyes roamed anywhere but the Kabuki mask of anger on Sean’s face. Zac lounged against the door frame looking shifty, planning a quick getaway. Ella stood her ground, gazing up, wonderstruck, at the display of emotional fireworks.

  “This is the third time in two days that I’ve had to unblock the toilet. And waste more water. It’s disgusting. One square of paper. If you do what you’re told, I won’t have to unblock it. If you don’t do what you’re told, I’ll make you unblock it.”

  Zac nodded his head and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, easing himself through the door.

  “Hang on a tick there.”

  Zac paused like a button had been pressed on a remote.

  “We now have at most a week’s worth of newspaper left. Do you want to tell me how you are going to wipe your bum then?”

  Oscar shook his head the tiniest amount. Ella stared open-mouthed. Zac pretended he was somewhere else.

  “You’re not. That’s how. Because there is no more toilet paper and no more newspaper. When it’s gone, that’s it.” Silence. “Are you listening to me?”

  Oscar and Zac murmured an indistinct chorus.

  “And do I have to demonstrate to you, Zac, how to flush again? Half a bucket, just half a bucket, poured into the bowl. From a height. Dribble it in and you’re just wasting water. Not you.” Sean pointed at the two little ones. “You ask me or Mum. But only if it needs it. Yellow water in the bowl doesn’t kill you. But if we run out of water in the tank, you’re going to be drinking it.”

  Zac scowled and muttered something Hannah couldn’t make out.

  “Oh, really? Stupid? The next time any of you goes to the loo, I’m coming in to check on you.”

  A look of outraged horror covered Zac’s face. Oscar looked down, embarrassed, but Ella was still mesmerized.

  “Go away, just go away. I don’t want to see any of you again today.”

  Zac and Oscar scattered. Ella stared at Sean’s back as he marched to the kitchen.

  “Unbelievable. Un-be-bloody-lievable.” He fell into one of the kitchen chairs. Hannah kept her eyes on her book. She was not going to get involved.

  “They can’t follow a simple instruction. What if their lives depended on it?” Sean fiddled with the cutlery still on the table from breakfast. “Which they do. It’s basic hygiene. Remember when we used to get the paper every day? We would have been okay for months. You can’t wipe your bum with an iPad.”

  “Next time I’ll remember to stock up on tabloids.” And an unwelcome thought parked itself at the edge of her mind—that she was taking for granted the future presence of tabloids and iPads.

  She was going to let the kids stew on it—because Sean had a point about the toilet paper. But there was one thing she could do for Zac. “You are not going to go into the bathroom with them.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Watch me
.”

  “Zac will burst before he goes to the loo.”

  “What would you have me do? Because something has to be done.”

  Even though she knew Sean wasn’t prepared to listen, she was going to try anyway. “It’s coffee withdrawal. You think you’re hiding it, but I know you have a headache. Take something for it.”

  “I’m not going to waste a painkiller.”

  “Then have a cup of tea.”

  “I don’t like tea. I don’t need tea. I need them”—his hand took in the front of the house and the silent, absent children—“to take some responsibility.”

  “Have a Panadol for my sake and the kids’. Or stay away from everyone until you’re bearable.” Sean’s face was set but she continued. “Unless, of course, you want a headache.”

  “What I want is to walk to the café at the corner, even though they don’t know the difference between a café latte and a cappuccino. I want to sit on the footpath, watch people going by, have a chocolate chip cookie with my coffee, and not share it with Oscar.”

  She had sneaked a look at her phone in the privacy of the bedroom this morning, just to find out. Caffeine withdrawal lasted three days. As she watched, waited for the search to return, she thought she saw the level on the battery icon drop. Right now, the electrons in those batteries were the most precious things in the house. Although she was the one who had made a big deal about only using the phone for life and death, it was a crisis of sorts, and there was no one she could ask in a nonelectronic way. Natalie would know if she ever answered her phone. Hannah tried again this morning, even though she knew it was futile. She wanted to be able to tell Ella that Mummy was still busy but she’d be home. More electrons gone.

  The words on the page, the ones she wasn’t really reading, started to move around. She tried to focus on an individual letter. It shook like a miniature earthquake. She felt the shake propagating from the table through her elbow. Sean uncrossed and recrossed his knees, jiggling the other one. The table took on a deeper tremor.