That’s not so much from me, maybe Matt or Kate but not me. I’m not really a fan of going it alone. In fact, I can’t even sit in another room if Matt is at home. I sit with him. Even if he’s in his study working, I’ll happily curl up in his armchair and read a book. Pathetic really.
Snuggling down into the blankets behind her Rosa lay there gulping down her bottle with one eye watching me. I wonder what she’s making of all this.
I hurried to switch off my phone to reserve the remaining 4% of it’s fading battery. Rosa hadn’t really made much noise in the last few days apart from a few bouts of crying. Nowhere near as much baby talk as we were used to. I’ve been attempting to keep things as normal and light-hearted around her as I could, obviously keeping that pretence up in such a situation as this one was proving difficult. It was bound to affect her. I had no choice but to accept that fact. Silently I worried that she would be missing her Dad as much as I was.
Once Rosa was settled I directed my attention to the voicemails which had been left by my husband and sister. What had I been able to glean from the message Matt had left me? One. He was on his way out of London, hopefully going around the M25 staying outside of the city to stay away from the danger, but would have had to stop and find shelter surely. Two. He asked us to stay here.
Kate’s message was typical of her, no sentiment, she’s nothing if not direct that girl. I thought about her plea for us to come and stay with her. An unexpected pang of guilt hit me that she was facing this alone and with her living in the middle of nowhere that’s likely how she would stay. At least she was used to it, being alone that is. Before Rosa was born I would make a point of visiting every other month for a long weekend. Once I became pregnant it began to feel as if we were drifting apart. I hadn’t seen Kate at all in the last 6 months. She’s never really been into kids. She doesn’t visit. I’m not sure of the last time she left Cumbria.
Hold on, didn’t Matt say he say he was on his way home? Did that mean our home or home to his parents who lived in Northeast London? Well, Essex.
Matt was an Essex boy, which made me cringe whenever I heard him say it out loud. It did explain a lot. His parents were adorable. Both of whom were in their sixties so it would make sense him going there to hunker down and at the same time check to see that they’re alright. After all, it was so much closer to the site in Wembley where he’d been when the warning was issued.
Maybe what he meant was he was finding somewhere safe to wait it out and then he was coming to get me. Thinking about it, that made much more sense. So wherever he was he may have to wait a month before going outside too, then he would make his way here. My hope sunk. I now realised what he had meant in his message.
“Stay where you are, stay inside…” It’s going to be at least a month before he can get to us. I reached up and dragged out a bottle of my own from the wine rack above Rosa’s head and sunk back down beside her.
5
A LOUD BANGING from the front of the house made me catch my breath as I looked up from the picture book I had been entertaining Rosa with. It would be Matt. I jumped up and took the steps up to the kitchen as fast as I could manage on my tender ankle and hobbled out into the hallway.
Just as I was about to put my hand on the key to unlock the door I stopped short. I hadn’t heard the bike. Usually, when he would come home I could hear him from 3 streets away.
“Hello?” I called out through the door. The banging stopped. “Matt? Is that you?” Silence. If it had been Matt at the door he would have said so. Who the hell was it? “Who is it?” My voice cracking with fear as I called out moving my ear closer to the door. I jumped with fright as the banging started again right next to my ear.
Why weren’t they saying anything? Red hot fear started up from the centre of my chest and seemed to spread over the rest of my body in a great wave until my hands started to shake. Whoever it was banging on my door was clearly determined to get in. I shouted out again. “What do you want?” The banging continued, it almost sounded like they were kicking the door, the whole thing was shaking. Please, God, don’t break down the door. Shit.
I ran into the kitchen and sat on the floor, avoiding the window. What could I use to protect myself if they get inside? Kitchen knife? I would probably end up being stabbed by my own chopping knife in my own kitchen! Thankfully it was a strong door. We’d been keen on going for the safest option when it came to preventing burglaries. That’s what comes of spending years of your life living in London. You become paranoid. How could I get this person to leave us alone, I know that opening the door is not an option. I can’t open the door.
If they wanted our food and water supplies then I doubted that I would be able to fight them off. Before I had time to answer my own thought, the banging stopped. Just as it had started. I held my breath and listened for any signs of movement.
It had been ten minutes, and I had not heard a sound coming from the other side of the front door. I got to my feet and leaned over the worktop towards the kitchen window to peek past the coverings and see out onto the driveway and further into the street. It was turning dark. Which meant that it was after 9 pm. The whole place was deserted. Not a soul on the street outside. Who the hell was trying to get into my house and why hadn’t they answered when I called out?
I felt foolish. I hadn’t been expecting it, but I should have known that this sort of thing would happen. Thinking about it now, I’m surprised that it’s taken this long. If we had been in a city centre there would probably be riots and looting, but obviously, that wouldn’t be going on. There were no cities left.
So it’s every man for himself out there. The thing that really concerned me was that this would probably get much worse in the weeks and months to come. Unless the Government were assembling themselves to help the general public, we would have to fend for ourselves. Which led me to one frightening conclusion: I needed to find a way to protect myself and Rosa.
That night I was so on edge, I stared up into the darkness, listening to the soft hum of Rosa’s snore. I lay there all night thinking of what I could do to make us safer here in our own home. Matt’s fishing knives were in the garage, but that required getting pretty close to your attacker, and I didn’t want to actually hurt someone. I just wanted to show them that I wasn’t to be messed with. A way to scare them off.
I could understand why someone might think a lone woman with a child would be an easy target. I had to make sure that was not true.
The next morning the feeling of being unsafe and unable to defend Rosa gnawed away at me. I gouged another line into the back of the door.
“Another day.” Marking yet another day of dwindling rations and another day in here since the attack. Quite the tally I was making. It had been almost four weeks now. The water supplies which I had rationed out would last at least another two days, but after that I was going to have to find more. Her baby food had run out last week. She had been on a tinned food diet with me for the last few days. At least she could break it up with her milk feeds. Meanwhile, my little hoard of tinned goods was down to two tins of Branston’s baked beans and a lone tin of tomato soup.
As I put down the steak knife I’d been using to carve the door I shivered as I felt a black cloud come over me. I needed to go outside, and soon. We required supplies and that was that. Water and food had to be found from somewhere otherwise we were going to starve. We’d done really well staying inside so long on what we had. The danger from the fallout would be over now as long as we didn’t eat fresh produce or anything which had been directly exposed to the air. We should be ok.