‘I’ve got a box of canned stuff. I’ve been saving it, rationing it in case… You… you can have it if you look after Zadie for me.’
I opened my mouth but he put up his hands.
‘I was going to ask Mrs White but she’s not well either. I’m worried that if I take Zadie and we get stuck in the snow, well, we’ll all be… cactus. Zadie likes you. She’s a good little kid. She’s out of nappies—’
‘I don’t know how to look after a kid.’
‘Please mate. Please. I’ll try not to be long. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t look after the three of them.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I’m up to my elbows in vomit.’
Beneath the beard and the big shoulders, Mick wasn’t that much older than me, maybe ten years. He stood with his feet set apart and let out a ragged breath.
‘Okay,’ I said. I didn’t let myself consider it too long. Max would think I’d lost my mind. I clearly had. After I told Mick I would look after Zadie and he went back to his place to get her, I reassured myself that when he came back I would tell him that I was really sorry, but there was no way I could do it. Except when he brought her around I failed to communicate this with the words that came out of my mouth: ‘No worries, it’ll be fine.’ I found myself standing in the living room with a three-year-old and a giant My Little Pony that was neither mine nor little. Oh, and Max who was somewhere between angry and amused at my stupidity.
‘What are we supposed to do with her?’ Max asked.
Zadie pointed to the fire and said in a very serious voice, ‘Das da fire. You don touch da fire tis vewy, vewy hot.’
‘Yeah, that’s right!’ I said to her in a happy voice.
‘Fin, we’ll have to share our food with her!’
‘We’ve got enough, Max. I couldn’t say no.’
‘No dah.’
‘Whosat?’ Zadie said and pointed to Max.
‘That’s Max.’
‘You Fim,’ Zadie said, pointing to me.
‘Yes, Fin.’
‘Iz snowing outside. Ba you don touch da snow. Mummy touch da snow too much and den she chucked up.’
Zadie sat down on the floor and started to play with the buckle on her shoes.
Max and I looked at each other.
‘Does that mean what I think it does, Fin?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Fin?’
‘Max, I don’t know.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah.’
Thirteen
I found our old Duplo in the garage and brought it in for Zadie to play with. That seemed to keep her occupied for a fair while and it was kind of nice having her there. It passed the time. In the afternoon she fell asleep sitting up surrounded by a sea of coloured plastic blocks, so I arranged the cushions from the sofa into a bed next to the fire and tucked her in with my old Transformers doona. She slept for over an hour and Max and I found ourselves just sitting there, waiting for her to wake up. When she did she saw us and started to cry. It wasn’t just a few sobs either, it was distraught screaming as if she was in pain. I checked her all over, looking for some kind of injury but then Max put her up on his shoulders and galloped around like a horse and she seemed to like that.
The darkness was coming earlier and earlier every day and by four-thirty it was pretty much night. We ate dinner at five-thirty because by then everyone had well and truly run out of things to do. I heated up a can of soup on the fire, poured some into a little plastic bowl and gave it to Zadie with a teaspoon. She barely paused for breath as she ate it. When she was done she licked the bowl.
I didn’t know when to expect Mick back. We had both stepped around the subject, knowing it could be hours or days. Part of me wanted to go with him to see what the rest of the world looked like. I couldn’t imagine it.
He wasn’t back by six-thirty so Max and I read Zadie a story and put her into bed. She insisted on hugging the storybook when it was finished and she went to sleep with our hardcover edition of
Later, before Max and I went to bed, I put some more wood on the fire as we could cope with the cold when it went out, but I wasn’t sure about Zadie. Max read an old
‘I reckon that’s probably gone up,’ he said and cracked up at his own joke.
I spent the night somewhere between awake and asleep, partially listening for Mick’s knock at the door. It didn’t come.
And the army still hadn’t turned up with more food.
Fourteen
He didn’t even try knocking first, just rattled the door handle and started shouting. We were reading Zadie a story before her afternoon nap. The shouting cut into the room just as we were about to learn what Maisy Mouse liked to grow in her garden.
‘Get out here, you little shits! You little punks! Where are ya?’
Then whoever it was thumped the door and I heard his footsteps leave the front porch and head up the side of the house.
‘Who the hell is that?’ Max asked.
Zadie started to cry. I heard the back door slide open. I got to my feet and met him as he was coming through the kitchen.
‘Where is it, you little shit?’
It was Mr White. The only words we had ever exchanged were a polite ‘hello’ when I used to see him over the fence in the mornings. Now, his hands were fists at his sides, his face twisted with aggression, eyes popping.
‘What?’
‘The wood, you mongrel. Where’s my firewood?’ He pushed past me into the living room. Zadie started screaming.
‘Where’s my firewood?’
He used to get
‘What firewood?’
He turned around and grabbed the front of my hoodie. ‘The firewood you little shits stole from my yard!’
Max jumped to his feet, chest puffed. A bantam. ‘Oi!’
Mr White shoved him away, provoking something inside that was curled up and lying dormant until that moment. I threw a punch. I missed. Mr White shoved me into the wall and I shoved him back. In my mind, detached, I stood outside watching the scene and it was hilarious. I was fighting Mr White in my living room. Okay, fighting might not be an accurate word but I was working up to it. I threw another punch. I got him this time, just
