Forecast (35 page)

When her parents moved to Somerset to start a new life, Faraday went to university and lived on campus. She vowed to be just like her parents when she had children of her own because they were good people and because they had put up with a lot during her turbulent youth. After she lost her father, she got into the whole dating thing and had several partners, but never fell pregnant. She appreciated the fact that pregnancy was a mutation of two sparks coming together at a special moment so she didn’t really give it a second thought. Several years of disappointment finally led her to seek professional help, only to learn of the malfunctions in her reproductive system.

In the White Room, Faraday was playing with her engagement ring, spinning it mindlessly around her finger, lost in thought. She had her back pressed up against the wall with her head stooped and her arms draped over her folded knees. An odd calm had settled over her, as if her mind had pulled all the plugs that connected her emotions. Everything had weaned its way out of focus, not just from her past but her present too. As for the future, it was just a blur that she believed she would crawl into without reason or meaning. It went unsaid, but they all knew that barely enough food and drink remained for them to survive for the next six months.

Hennessey turned to Sutcliffe, whose hand she was holding. “I’m worried about her,” she whispered.

Faraday was sitting on the other side of the room and there was little doubt as to what her mind was trying to evade. But what was she thinking? Sutcliffe felt it his duty to say something motivating, but found himself hesitant, wanting to be spared from the torment of yet another one
-
way conversation. Faraday had turned him away time and time again.

“Simon had a valid point, you know.” Finally, Faraday was speaking and Sutcliffe and Hennessey joined her.

“A valid point?” asked Hennessey.

“As survivors, we are ultimately responsible for repopulating the world. That is why we are still alive. It is our duty to ensure that human life continues, don’t you agree?”

“I do agree, if we are indeed the last people in the world, which I doubt. Simon tried to rape you. Regardless of the circumstances, rape is still unethical and still against the law.”

“What about murder? Is that still unethical?”

Sutcliffe received the remark with little reflex. Never had he intended to kill Matthews. But now that he had, he wondered why he didn’t feel bad about it. He had seen enough devastation to last a lifetime. Amid the circumstances, his death had no real meaning.

“What’s your point, Claris?” he asked.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad he’s dead. He killed Trev and he would have killed you too. I’m simply saying that he had a valid point.”

An act of unfair fate had confined her to the White Room, she felt. She hated Matthews for what he had done to her and what he had done to Trev Gable and although she was pleased he was dead, she did miss him. He was the last member of her family. Now she had never felt more alone in her whole life. It made her miserable. Sutcliffe and Hennessey were emotionally attached. Lucky them. They had each other. Who did she have?

“There’s not enough food left to last the three of us. One of us should leave.” She said flatly. They were all quiet before she spoke again. “I think it should be me.”

“No.” Sutcliffe shook his head.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hennessey said. “We stay together. We can make the food last.”

“I agree with Jen. We’ve got about one hundred and fifty tins of food left. We can cut the rations to five tins a week. We care about you, we won’t let you leave. What Simon said about repopulating the world was out of order. He wasn’t trying to have sex with you so you could have babies. He just wanted to have sex.”

“I know what he wanted, but if it comes down to it you’re both capable of having children. I can never get pregnant. And the fact still remains that if we all stay here, we’ll all die hungry.”

That night, as Hennessey and Sutcliffe slept together beneath the insulation blankets, Faraday pulled herself up off the floor and lit a candle. Her back and neck were sore. Dressed in her spandex suit, she was still cold so she put on her cardigan, not bothering with anything else. The old newspaper lay folded on the floor. She picked it up and studied it, thinking about something, then tore a piece out and feasted on the words.

She opened the White Room door and into the room leapt cold air, extinguishing the candle. She felt something brush by her, as if an invisible presence had just entered from outside. She knew nobody had come in, knew she hadn’t seen anyone outside, but she looked back into the dark room as her friends slept, just in case. Just the wind, she told herself, despite the image of her dead cousin that sprang to her mind like an evocative presence. The vision, Faraday assumed, was that the queer lights and shadows of the White Room had deceived her. She wondered if she was perhaps at the beginning of some kind of breakdown, hallucinations perhaps the first sign of madness.

She could not stay in the White Room any longer. There were just too many bad memories and she couldn’t live in an atmosphere in which she felt on constant guard. A newfound connection with God came over her. He wouldn’t let her down. She silently prayed, having faith in Him and, as her old teacher had always insisted she do, she loved Him. She could feel Him deep within her soul where she also felt her parents, there, with her. Not being able to conceive a baby, her heartbreak over Parsons and her longing to be wanted had made her intolerably lonely and loneliness would bring her to her end. Suddenly, passionately, she really hated the White Room. And so, sticking the newspaper clip to the door using candle wax, she glanced back at her home one last time and sealed the door shut.

Hennessey stayed still once she grasped that Sutcliffe, still sound asleep, had snuggled up tightly behind her. His hand was resting on her breast and his other arm cradled her neck. She realised that she liked it and made no effort to alter their positions, despite the fact that her body felt uncomfortable. Even if she did want to extricate herself there would be no graceful way of doing it without waking him and bringing the situation to his attention. When he finally did wake up, she pretended to be asleep and slowed her breathing. She listened to him mutter something under his breath. He untangled himself and paced to the other end of the room where he sat down and the room fell quiet.

She heard him lighting a candle. Moments later, she heard him walking to the door where he remained quiet for a second. “No!” she heard him say.

She rolled over and saw him holding a piece of newspaper. “What is it?”

“Claris, she’s gone.”

The days long and lonely, the inhabitants of the White Room had dropped from six to two. Insulation blankets, scattered belongings and four dirty spacesuits hanging on the steel bar in the lobby all served as painful reminders to fallen associates. It deeply saddened Hennessey. Her best friend Faraday had been gone for five days, she wasn’t coming back.

Sutcliffe busied himself in the bathroom, trimming his wiry beard in the mirror with a pair of surgical scissors. Hennessey could hear the scissors snapping away as she thought about Faraday. She twirled the newspaper headline in her hand over and over. She had read it a thousand times, the words imprinted in her mind: CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE. Faraday had torn it from the front page of the newspaper, which had read: BRITAIN CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE IMMIGRANTS. She started to cry, the first time in a while. Sutcliffe could hear her sobbing. He came back into the room and sat beside her on the bench, putting his hand on her shoulder. For a while she cried so hard she couldn’t get any words out. Eventually, she said, “Look at me, I’m being a fool.”

“There’s nothing foolish about crying.”

“Oh yeah,” she said to him, wiping her eyes dry. “Then how come you never do it.”

“I’ve cried,” he replied. “I just didn’t let anyone see it. When people look to you for resolution and leadership, you have to appear strong, even when you’re not.”

She smiled and laughed softly. “You must think I’m a right idiot.”

“No, I think you’ve kept it together more than all of us, you just don’t realise it.”

That morning, tiredness and her longing for Faraday had made her weep. Her sleep had been plagued with dreadful dreams and thoughts, trying hard to forget all about Simon Matthews, but he had an aggravating habit of wheedling his way back into her mind now and again. Although dead, she blamed Matthews for Faraday’s departure.

“Claris was depressed about not being able to have children. She didn’t show it, but I think it bothered her every single day of her life.”

“I had no idea.”

“She didn’t like to talk about it.”

Neither of them had fully understood her turmoil. Apart from Keith Burch and his horrific injuries, she had suffered the most with the torturous knowledge of her infertility, which was followed by sexual assault by a member of her own family.

“I tried hard to keep everyone safe and content,” Sutcliffe said glumly.

“You did the best you could in an impossible situation. Without you, we’d all be dead.”

Sutcliffe had been a rock, especially for her. Without him, she believed she would have given up a long time ago and she told him just that. She touched his bearded face, her hands cold, yet warm with the gesture of a friend. In those few sweet seconds, he realised that his whole purpose for wanting to live was for her. They hugged and he felt an almost boyish pleasure from being in the arms of a woman. When he drew back, she kissed him, a long kiss, and he ran his hand through her hair.

She gazed into his eyes. “I haven’t been with many men.”

Sutcliffe’s face was hard to read. She looked at him carefully, his eyes wide and friendly. As she tried to decode them, she could feel herself being drawn to his lips and they kissed again.

Later that afternoon, Sutcliffe thought about the way his mother had passed away almost two years back, felled from a string of old age illnesses, which included a heavy bout of pneumonia, a collapsed lung and a bladder infection. She had died after more than a month of suffering. Sutcliffe wished his mother had held on for another ten months because she would have seen her son fulfil his historic voyage into space. But that was not why he wished she had stayed alive. Had she still been around, she would have died quickly in the explosions without pain or suffering with her devoted husband by her side and her last thoughts would have been proud ones.

Sensing Sutcliffe’s sorrow, Hennessey crossed the room and sat beside him smiling. “What’s on your mind?”

He smiled back. “Nothing, just thinking about my family.”

Her smile faded. “Tell me about your son.”

“Martin? Where do I start?”

“Start from the beginning. I have a bit of time on my hands.”

“Alright, well, he was very ugly as a baby. A few months after his birth he had this snarl on his face like little a Yorkshire terrier. Jacqueline, my wife, always joked he got it from me. Looking back, I’m not so sure she was joking. Anyway, by the time he was three he was diagnosed with autism. It put a huge strain on our relationship because he was very difficult to manage. As he got older, Jacqueline gave him less and less attention, I mean love, affection, that kind of attention. She talked to him as if he was someone else’s child, like she was just babysitting him or something. Martin wasn’t good at expressing his feelings. It didn’t really affect me the way it affected Jacqueline. It pushed us apart. And I think, in the end, she resented him and felt that he’d come between us. Maybe she was right. But, like a parent is expected to do, I stuck by him and gave him my all and Jacqueline, well, as you know, she left me and married a vet.”

“Yes, the caring man,” Hennessey joked.

“How about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you were orphaned, but you have never talked about your family before. Either they weren’t good people, or…something else.”

Hennessey exhaled sharply. She was looking at her lap when she spoke. “My parents died in a plane accident out in the Nevada Desert. Their bodies were never found.”

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t speak for a moment and her body stiffened. “Do you know what it’s like to pay your final respects to an empty coffin? Crying over an empty box? It’s a horrible feeling, not knowing what happened to them, not having closure. They are dead, no question, but I wish I knew how. I wish someone would sit me down and say, Jen, they died in each other’s arms in peace. They were happy and they suffered no pain.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Of course, your son. I’m sorry.”

Hennessey considered Sutcliffe very cute when he pouted. She observed his lower lip as it jutted forward very slightly and his dark but thin eyebrows lowered over his eyes, eyes that held mystery. She leaned forward and gently pushed him to the floor, crouching over him. Twelve long months had passed by and they had become companionably at ease with each other. On his back, his pleasure intensified when she put her arms around him and pressed herself to him, close enough to feel the hardness of his arousal on her thigh. She let him pass his fingers through her hair, enjoying his touch as it moved over her face, her cheek and her soft lips. Then he kissed her and she kissed back. Their tongues met and small mewling sounds came from her throat as they became more intimate.