He shrugged. “They couldn’t stop arguing about it so I told them to take it in turns.”
She thought about going up to see them, felt a desperate longing to see a pair of carefree smiling faces, but she didn’t. It would only irritate them, make them feel as if she was checking up on them. “Smells good,” she said.
The toast popped up and he pulled it straight from the toaster and onto a plate. They ate well for the time being. The fresh food would only last for so long so they might as well enjoy it. She wondered if she would eat bacon again before she died.
“What’s the plan for today?” she said.
He put two more slices of bread in the toaster and spun around to the frying pan. “Keep pushing on,” he said.
He placed a cup of coffee in front of her. She let the smell rise up and savoured it for a moment before picking it up.
When the bacon was cooked she took two plates up to the kids. Ben was the spitting image of his father and Cora had a lot of the same features too; the straight roman nose, the round jaw and high cheek bones. She had Hannah’s blue eyes and curly blond hair though.
“Thanks mum,” said Ben. He had grown out of calling her ‘mummy’ some time in the last six months and she supposed Cora wouldn’t be far behind. They had both aged more than they should have recently.
She stood on the stairs and drank her coffee, silently watching Ben devour his sandwich while Cora steered and then swapping over. They were her reason, they were why she hadn’t hung herself or put a bullet through her head, like others had done.
She left them to it and returned to her now cold bacon. It tasted as good as anything could at the moment. Her mood was starting to sour as she wondered what the future held for Ben and Cora.
In the afternoon she took over up top. A grey mist had settled low over the canal and the moisture in it soaked her clothes as good as rain. She watched the open countryside pass by at a steady ten miles per hour. She had never been much of a country girl. She preferred the hustle and excitement of the big city but she would have given anything to stop the boat and run through the green fields. Anything except what it would actually cost.
Alone with her thoughts she tried to remain upbeat but really, what was there to be upbeat about? The world was over, there was no more civilisation. The people who were left lived like gypsies, roaming from place to place in search of a safety that no longer existed.
As the sun began to set Dennis appeared with dinner. A steaming plate of meat, cooked almost to ash.
“You want to talk about it?” he said.
She shrugged and chewed on a mouthful of what might have been beef. “What’s the point? It’s not going to change anything.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “might make you feel better though.”
She kept eating but knew he’d get it out if her. She wasn’t putting up much resistance, she didn’t have the energy for it.
When she had finished eating he took the plate from her but didn’t go back inside.
“So what is it?” he said.
Hannah swallowed the last of the meat, playing for time. Then she spoke; “Don’t you ever wonder what the point of all this is?”
Dennis nodded as if it was what he had expected her to say. For all she knew it was, he could be surprisingly perceptive at times. For a long time he didn’t say anything. The world around them became dark. She could hear the kids inside shouting and laughing, playing some silly game they’d made up to pass the time.
“What’s the alternative?” he said at last.
She shrugged. She knew what her alternative was, it was up to him to find his own.
“We just give up? Stop the boat now, get off and wait for the first group of those things to find us?”
“There’s other ways. I mean, I’m not saying that I want to, but we don’t have to keep running.”
He shook his head and she thought he looked disappointed. “What about the kids?”
“We could take them with us.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” she was starting to get upset now, could feel the tears burning behind her eyes. “What is there for them here? They’ll spend their whole lives running, scared and alone. Is that the kind of life you want for them?”
“It’s better than no life at all, isn’t it?”
She wasn’t so sure but she didn’t have the energy for an argument. She just shook her head and said, “I don’t know Dennis. I just don’t know.”
He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a battered piece of paper. He started to unfold it and she saw how weak the folds were, like it had been opened and poured over hundreds of times.
“What’s that?” she said.
He held it out and she took it. It was a map of the canal network with pencil scribbles she couldn’t read. “I didn’t want to tell you, until I knew for sure.”
The fact that he had kept it secret from her was almost as surprising as the fact that he had a plan at all. “What is it?”
“Somewhere we can go. I think. I guess we won’t know for sure until we get there.”
She examined the map but didn’t really understand it. She hadn’t read a map since she was in the Girl Guides, sat-nav had been a common feature in cars by the time she was old enough to drive.
“It should take us another week,” he said and took the map back from her, folded it and put it back in his pocket. “If we don’t run into any trouble.”
He did not need to elaborate on the sort of trouble they might run into. “And if there’s nothing there?” she said.
“Then we can consider alternatives,” he said, which was as close as he ever got to saying there was merit in her idea of a quick and painless death.
Dennis took over so that she could put the children to bed. She washed them at the sink because they hadn’t figured out how to get the shower to work. While they were drying and brushing their teeth she pulled out the two sofas and put bed sheets over them. Ben got into bed wearing Spider-Man pyjamas that were getting too small for him. Cora was still little enough to be happy in a pink nighty.
They hadn’t brought any books with them which was a shame. She had a lot of books, leather bound editions that had been worth a lot of money. Not that it was the money that bothered her now. Now it was the knowledge that those books were gone, lost, as if they had never been written at all.
She had an ebook reader but without electricity to charge it was a lump of plastic. She kept it with her in the hope that one day they would be in a position to waste petrol running a generator and that the books it contained could once again be accessed. If that ever happened maybe she would copy the books out onto paper, to preserve them for the future. If there was going to be a future.
The only books she had to read to the children were those left by the boats original owner. Unfortunately most of those seemed to be smutty erotica. Not the sort of thing she wanted to expose her children to. Instead she told them the stories she remembered, making up the words and some of the character names. They weren’t really sleepy yet but they listened anyway, there wasn’t anything else for them to do in the dark.
At some point during Hannah’s version of Oliver Twist the door opened.
“Hannah?”
She looked back but she couldn’t see anything in the dark.
“Could you come up here a minute?”
She recognised the tone of forced calm. Something was wrong and he didn’t want the children to know about it.
“What is it mum?” said Cora, she sounded sleepy but she was fighting it.
“It’s nothing honey,” she said but couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation for Dennis calling her away from them. “Just wait here and I’ll go and see.”
She bent over and kissed her little girl on the forehead. She turned to do the same to Ben but he scowled so she made do with patting his arm.