He looks at me, head to one side, suspicion in his eyes.
Go… go downstairs… I’m fine, I’m fine…
‘All right,’ he finally relents with a sigh. ‘It’s late, Chlo. I’ve brought you a curry. Come on down and get it while it’s hot.’
‘’Kay!’
I move back from the opening and wait until I hear him go back down the stairs before I shake painful life into my frozen limbs. I leave the blanket where it is, and promise myself that tomorrow I’ll bring up a duvet, some cushions, and a couple of those little electric heaters I always used to have aimed at me in the flat – if I can find them.
He’s at the table when I come down, and the rich, spicy smell of the curry sends my stomach into a noisy growl-fest that kills the tension and makes him laugh, instead of lecture like I was expecting. I sit down to a plate piled high with riceless chicken madras, and tuck in. It’s still weird, being able to smell the spice but not taste it. The warm chunks of meat are heaven. There’s a pint of water set for me, which I down almost in one as I’m around halfway through my plateful. I hate to think what I must look like: some drunken rugby fan woofing down a massive curry and necking a pint after a game. Not exactly the most ladylike of approaches; yet another reason I can’t see myself ever being girlfriend material. One meal, and I’d be dumped. Plus I dread to think what Mum would make of me if she saw me like this.
‘How’s the chicken?’ Dad asks, presumably noticing I’ve stopped stuffing myself senseless.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, reloading my fork. ‘I just… my taste…’
He looks thoughtful for a minute before replying.
‘I think we can get it back,’ he says, although he looks down at his food instead of at me, which isn’t a promising sign. ‘There must be a way we can regenerate the cells on your taste buds. Once we’ve got everything else taken care of, I’ll work on it, I promise.’
‘It’s fine,’ I lie. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fuss about it. It’s just… everything tastes like… chicken.’
He’s laughing again, and it’s contagious this time.
This is nice, spending time together like this. We’ve been so on top of each other for so long lately that getting some distance like today – however bad it felt this morning – is probably going to do us both the world of good. We might actually learn to enjoy each other’s company rather than just putting up with it.
I attack the rest of my chicken with renewed vigour.
‘I might get you a vindaloo next time,’ he chuckles. ‘See how far gone those taste buds really are!’
I see that drunken rugby fan again, and try to sit up a little straighter and eat a little slower. I’ve never been much of girly girl, but I mean, there are limits.
My relationship with Dad, one that was never strong to start with and that disintegrated into a hateful, unspeakably broken thing when it happened, starts to improve a little every day. I think that’s the main reason the loneliness and frustration take a while to build up. Once I get over the initial shock of the changes, and with the cottage really being a million times nicer than the flat, it starts to feel a lot more like freedom than I was expecting. I spend most of my days locked up in the attic reading, where nothing in the world, inside or out, can get to me. It’s like having my own ‘tallest tower’; metaphorical dragons circle the roof above me, and no prince, however charming, could ever get near. This is an infinite comfort rather than a cause for tears. Disney would hate me.
The hatch feels like a steel door, and I leave my worries at the bottom of the stepladder every time I clamber up it. And as the days begin to pass with no sign of trouble, I eventually start to grow a little braver, and begin to widen my territory, like some kind of nervous woodland animal. I don’t really have any way of keeping track of time. My days are structured around the growls emanating from my stomach, but in terms of the number of days that are passing, I have no idea. Dad works as many weekends as weekdays, it seems, and without being able to see outside, or feel anything other than cold, it could be mid-winter, or early spring for all I know. The number of books I get through becomes my only way to guess at the time passing. I read one, sometimes two novels a day, and as my ‘read’ pile grows I can make a rough guess at how long we’ve survived here. I try not to look too closely though, because the more books that teeter on the pile, the more times I remember reading each one, the lower my supply of vaccine dips.
When I can’t take the cold of the attic any longer, I start to read down by the fire, keeping low on the sofa under a blanket, and tensing at every sound from outside to begin with, but with each chapter I make it through safely I begin to relax a little more – and eventually I come to enjoy the warmth and the comfort. The windows and doors are locked, the curtains are pulled tight across heavy blinds, and I finally start to feel safe in the house itself, rather than just in the attic. The urgency and the panic Dad manages to maintain more quietly now starts to slowly, dangerously, slip away from me.
I start to do exercises every day to help with my limp and my general level of fitness. They’re ridiculously repetitive and boring, but once I get comfortable having the radio on, enjoying the company it provides without worrying too much about every little outside noise and threat it could be masking, they don’t feel so bad. And the worrying dwindles with every song I start to sing along to; because if they were out there, surely they would have come for me by now?
With my new muscles (ha, ok, not quite) I drag the furniture around in the living room so the TV faces away from the window, that way none of its tell-tale colours can possibly shine through to the outside world, and I can watch back-to-back DVDs all day long, never even needing to change out of my PJs. My life is one long, open-ended sick day. After a full rotation of my books, and an impressive run at Buffy on DVD, I feel myself kick down a gear, and relax more thoroughly, to settle into it – to enjoy it even. The more days that pass with no one hammering on the door, or hassling Dad at work, the safer, and the more untouchable I feel.
I should have known the feeling could never last. Holidays, sick days, anything like that, they should all come to an end. If they don’t, they eventually up end being every bit as frustrating as whatever it is they were an escape from.
*
I don’t see much of Dad, but when I do, I can tell by his outfits that summer must be drawing to a close out there, and that’s around the time when I inevitably start to get tired of my own company. The pattern of the days and the weeks becomes all too familiar, and the DVDs and books follow suit. No matter how much you adore a book, there’s a limit to how many times you can re-read it in quick succession. Same goes for your favourite films and TV series, there are only so many times you can re-watch them back-to-back before they start to lose their magic. Dad’s always offering to get me more – he’s never happier than when I’m reading or watching TV because I’m ‘resting’. That’s all he ever wants me to do. Stay still, stay safe.
He leaves before six in the mornings, and he’s rarely home before ten in the evening. We eat together whenever he gets in, and then he quietly heads down to the basement to put in even more hours, while I make my way up to bed. It’s become a strange existence; like being in limbo almost, just sitting here waiting to see if he can create the compounds and produce the vaccine from scratch. There’s this big, invisible timer ticking away in the background the whole time. Sometimes I can turn it right down, like when I’m reading; not just normal reading, but when I totally, one hundred per cent lose myself in a book. The problem is that it’s getting harder to lose myself in ones I’ve read a hundred times. The less immersed I am, the louder the ticking becomes. The louder the ticking becomes, the more it stops me losing myself, and the vicious circle begins, and self-perpetuates.