She stood silently looking up at the door. Her arms hanging over the side of her travel cot, her face unsure. It was the look she gave when trying to decide between a laugh or a cry. Slowly the edges of her mouth turned upwards into a smile. I felt terrible. I was overjoyed that she had survived the night without me, but felt terrible that I had left her in the first place.
Rosa looked a mess, her face was covered with dried tears and phlegm, her hair usually a tidy mop of curls looked something more akin to Albert Einstein’s. I tried to hold back tears. One betrayed me and rolled down my cheek. I rushed to wipe it away not wanting her to see me upset. I picked her up, and her little arms surrounded my neck and squeezed so hard that I almost fell over from the pain. I grabbed the door frame for support.
“Ok baby you need to be careful because Mummy has a poorly head.” She looked straight at me.
“Mumum” This was the first thing which resembled a word she had said since the bombings. I pulled her to my chest and smiled.
Even in my battered state, it felt amazing to be home. After seeing the way things were outside, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to bring myself to leave it again. So much had happened in such a small distance and less than half a day. What must the rest of the country be like? I pushed the images out of my head as I sat quietly rocking my daughter to sleep.
Days turned into weeks which passed by in a blur. The bump on my head had given me some painful headaches since that morning when I had woken up in the driveway. But apart from that my injuries had healed well. The dog had made himself at home in the utility room, his wounds were healing well. He had even allowed me to get close enough to see that they hadn’t become infected.
Each morning I would open up the back door for him and showed him the gate which led out onto farmland at the back of our garden. At first I thought this would be the last time we would see him, his shaggy black coat of fur fading in the distance as he chased his dinner across the fields and out of sight. But to my surprise, like clockwork, each afternoon he came back. Pawing at the back door to be let back in. The first day he had returned, it was so unexpected that I had been scared someone was trying to break in again.
I opened the door to see him wagging his tail in his excitement. I had been keeping him at arm’s length. I hadn’t even let him into the house. It was a strange dog after all. I was startled when he jumped up to greet me, but he repeated the ritual every afternoon. Soon I felt my hesitation evaporating as I was adding to this routine myself. Kneeling down I stroked the dog’s head and scratched behind his ear.
“What’s your name? We can’t just keep calling you buddy.” I had resisted the urge to give the dog a name. Something in me had felt that once you named a dog, it became yours. This dog had saved my life, he could do as he pleased. He wasn’t mine to keep. If he wanted to leave, then that was his choice. I lent over to take a look at his neck, and he delivered a slobbery lick to the side of my face. It was the first bit of loving contact I’d had from anyone but Rosa in so long that it made up my mind for me.
“Sod it, come in then if you’re coming in.” I stood to the side of the door, and he ran straight past me and settled himself in his bed of sheets and blankets on the utility room floor. “Let’s call you Shadow shall we? Since we can’t seem to get rid of you.”
The supplies which I had managed to gather were keeping Rosa and me going but they would soon run out and finding the next batch was only going to get harder. If we hadn’t been evacuated by then I would have no choice but to make the same trip again, this time it was likely that I would be forced to look further afield. I knew that I couldn’t keep leaving Rosa alone. It wasn’t safe, but then it wasn’t safe for her out there with me either. I could barely look after myself as Shadow had proven.
In truth, I had expected Matt and some kind of evacuation effort to have arrived after our first month in the shelter. When that didn’t happen, I told myself it would be any day now. As the days turned into weeks, I began to doubt the likelihood of anyone coming for us at all. Matt would have been here by now if he was alive. Each day that past without his appearance was another blow to the hope I still held in my heart.
I listened in to the radio broadcast from the Bunker at noon each day, but It had changed to a pre recorded message which didn’t tell us anything new. Instead of inspiring hope it had now become a taunting reminder that things had not progressed in all of these weeks.
Gradually I realised that I needed to be better prepared for what lay ahead. I knew now that I was not able to protect us. In the mornings while Rosa drank her bottle, I did body strengthening exercises on the kitchen floor. She looked on giggling and would often mimic my movements. I needed to be ready to fight someone off, and right now I wasn’t.
The rationing of food had meant that I had lost some of the weight I had still been carrying from my pregnancy. However, the lack of exercise and staying indoors had made me lose strength. Discovering a rack of weights at the back of the garage encouraged me to do more. I began to use them each night once Rosa was asleep. Goading myself each time to work harder and at the same time watching our rationed food supply depleting.
On fine days when the air felt safe I took Rosa out into the fields behind our house and walked with her on my back and Shadow by my side. I took heart from my body gaining in strength. I was determined that I was going to be ready for my next trip to find our food. It had become a matter of survival. Of life or death.
10
I LAY MY head back on the cushion beside Rosa who slept soundly in the pantry. I wasn’t sure why we were still down here, apart from that it felt like the safest place in the house. Above me in the torchlight, I could see the crude marks on the back of the door. A fresh one scratched at the end each night. I was developing a permanent blister on my right hand from the constant effort of carving them. The back of the door was beginning to look like a never-ending picket fence, I stared at it until my eyes closed and finally, I drifted off to sleep.
I woke with a jolt. I sat up and heard a smash coming from the top of the house. The noise was come from inside one of the bedrooms upstairs. Fear invaded my body. I stood being careful enough not to wake Rosa, picked up the roll of fishing knives and slid out a long slightly curved thin blade. I left the pantry and closed the door firmly behind me. My heart was in my mouth. I made my way to the foot of the stairs and stood to listen.
The noise sounded too muffled to be coming from the first floor, so it had to be the spare room on the roof. Maybe an animal had gotten in? I told myself that I was being foolish, no animal could have broken a window and got into the house. It was someone looking for something, water or food.
I needed to protect Rosa downstairs. I weighed up my choices. We could have fled but this was our home and the only safe place I knew. I felt I had no option but to defend it. I began to take the stairs up to the first floor. Just as I reached the top step I froze, invisible in the darkness of the stairwell. I looked ahead just in time to see a large figure stalk from upstairs and across into the bedroom in front of me. That’s when I knew he was looking for people, not for food. If he was looking for food, he would have broken into the kitchen, or at least be heading down there. Not checking to see if anyone was in the bedrooms.
My mind raced. I was breathing so hard I am surprised he hadn’t already heard me standing on the other side of the wall in the dark. As I waited for him to leave the bedroom I felt paralysed, I had no plan. Although I felt much stronger than a month ago, I had no illusions that I was a match for this guy, and I was right in his path. Waking me from my panic he appeared again on the landing and moved across to the opposite room, I seized my chance and swift as a cat stepped into the doorway of the room he had just exited.