Days and weeks blended together, each of them indistinguishable from the rest, apart from the occasional sounds of uninvited visitors upstairs, and a few other things.
One of them, more of a nuisance than anything else, was that the door next to the pantry couldn’t be opened. I suspected another storage area behind it, but none of the keys from Connie fit the lock and I hadn’t found any more keys in the shelter. The door was sturdy, couldn’t be taken out of the frame, kicked out or broken into. There weren’t any tools for that here. Soon enough I gave up any further attempts and let it go. Clearly The Collective hadn’t thought everything through that well, otherwise they’d allow me to somehow enter that mysterious room.
Since trouble often came in pairs, there was another thing. The hood above the stove might have been successfully filtering out all the fumes from fried meals, but the fan was replacing them with a faint odour of something which had nothing to do with our food. I remembered moving the dead bodies of the farmers to the freshly dug out grave, the smell of their rotting bodies was just as repulsive, so I had an idea of the source of this new smell. I was trying to think about it as little as possible, most times it wasn’t hard, because the smell was either becoming more faint, or we were getting used to it.
And then there was the second letter written in my daughter’s hand. Billy. Who could it be? I didn’t know anyone with that name and didn’t remember Connie ever mentioning it either. Although the letter wasn’t addressed to me, what did it matter? Who was there to tell me off for opening a sealed envelope and reading other people’s mail?
Billy,
My name is Connie. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, and yet you mean so much to me. The fact that you made it among the survivors means that you are a good, honourable person, that your heart is in the right place, you love life and respect it.
By the time you’re reading my letter, you will have gone through six months of quarantine in a shelter far from everything and everybody else. Being with other people again must be such a relief, but it can’t be easy either. Creating a new society and keeping it running must be a lot of work, no doubt about it. I firmly hope that all the good personalities that made it to the end of the old world as we knew it will actively work to enrich the new community. To create a home, a safe base.
It’s natural to seek rest, relaxation and entertainment after work. What better way to wash away a hard day’s work than to listen to beautiful music? And what could be more satisfying than to teach that music to others?
Everyone will bring something unique to your new community. You have a special task–to bring smiles to the faces of both children and adults, to allow them to lose themselves in another world, a world full of melodies. I wish I could be there and see all those smiles, I’m sure they will be wide, bright and enchanted.
Good luck, Billy. Take care of yourself and others.
Don’t forget, there is strength in unity.
Best wishes,
Connie
What was that supposed to mean?
So this Billy must be another survivor like I was. If he was supposed to bring music to the new community, what was my contribution? Surely not the thing I’d been busy doing the last two years, drowning in depression? I snorted.
Why the hell didn’t Constance send the letter directly to him, or handed it over in person? Why did it end up with me?
However angry I was with my daughter, I knew perfectly well where it was coming from. I wanted this second letter to be for me as well, I wanted her words to belong to me. I could have added it to the collection of treasured family photographs. In the end, I did in fact find a few more words meant for me and Ruby, although it was just a quick, short note rather than a letter.
Penny’s recipe book. I was going through my wife’s recipes, looking for inspiration. We were getting sick of canned food after several months and I needed to give things a new spin. Ruby and I had attempted most of the savoury dishes, as well as baked and raw cakes, pies and desserts. Thank goodness for Connie’s obsession with veganism, as she had taken the liberty to write out alternatives for yogurt, cow’s milk and eggs under every recipe. Who would have thought that I’d be grateful for soya, almond milk and chia seeds that The Collective remembered to prepare for us?
Either way, I was often flipping through the recipe book, as if it was my Bible. Sooner or later I had to discover Connie’s note on the last empty page.
Forgive me!
I love you more than anything in the world!
C.
At the beginning of quarantine I’d left Hugh’s fishing rod by the door, since it wasn’t in our way in that spot, but after a few weeks it ended up in the pantry. On the ground below the lowest shelf, tucked behind water and oil containers to keep it out of sight, because it reminded me too much of the freedom I’d lost. Despite that, I did sometimes see it, while moving the containers around or when looking for a place to store something else. Sometimes I quickly looked away, other times–the last two months more and more frequently–I sat in front of it, staring. I missed fishing as much as fresh air and nature, and maybe a bit more. Ruby and I hadn’t had any fresh meat for almost half a year and I was sometimes woken up from a dream in which fish were jumping into my boat of their own volition. My mouth
