I was simultaneously touched that she would make the offer and appalled that she would think it was ok. I tried to hide my shock but failed abysmally. ‘Um, thanks… but that’s ok… I like being on my own.’ I said, I looked at my watch and clumsily made my excuses. Then I turned and bolted back inside. I left through the alleyway, giving thanks for my bungalow and garden all the way home.
Back in my kitchen, I went online to do a bit of research. Crypto turned out to be cryptosporidiosis. A parasite that was contained in oocysts that were found everywhere and could survive months in water sources. Normally it was removed during the filtration process. I had never heard of it before. I knew cholera and dysentery were a problem in third world countries, but in the UK, it was crypto that was the issue. It wasn’t usually fatal but as I read further, I found it was the diarrhoea that was the problem; people died from dehydration. It was incredible, but it seemed to be true. People, especially children, were dying because they weren’t getting enough fluids when they were sick.
A couple of days later I accidentally sprayed a heavy jet of water over the fence onto the road outside. It was a beautiful sunny day and the water trail gleamed wetly, giving me away, I rushed up to the loft, sealing myself in, peering out of the Velux window at the street below. I was waiting to be discovered, but as the water slowly evaporated over the next couple of hours, the street remained empty. No man and boy, no teenagers, no lone women or groups of men. They had gone. I waited till early next morning before I ventured out, but when I went to look at the campsite, I found the place empty. There was a lot of rubbish left behind, but the people had moved on.
It was a relief. The strain and isolation had been getting to me. Trying to work silently in the garden, never leaving the house, sleeping in the loft, much of the enjoyment disappeared when I was constantly on alert.
That evening I cycled round the estate, calling on all the people on my water route, but they had also gone. Only Frank was left, still in his home, looking a little frailer but still politely greeting me and accepting the water. I tried to apologise for running away that day, but he brushed it aside. ‘It was much better that you ran, the young man was not quite as nice as I had hoped when I let him in.’
‘Was he a friend?’ I asked, ‘Did you know him from before?’
‘Yes, well actually no’ said Frank, he suddenly seemed slightly embarrassed. ‘He said he was a friend of my nephew, and he knew a lot about him, but I had never met him before.’
I nodded in sympathy. I was glad I hadn’t had to deal with such a dilemma. None of my friends or acquaintances had come knocking at my door. I always claimed I was part hermit, and the situation was proving me right. It was nice though, that Frank was still around. The time right after mum and Vik disappeared, when I had been completely alone, still haunted me.
Frank and I methodically worked our way through all the houses on the estate searching for the others, but we drew a blank. We did find quite a lot of food rations that were obviously being horded by someone but had been abandoned when they left. These we split between us and stored away as an emergency reserve.
It seemed that we really were alone, but as the electricity and internet still worked and neither of us had anywhere to particularly go to, we decided to remain. Frank had cultivated his garden, much like I had. His visitors had eaten most of the available food, but the plants remained and he still had green tomatoes, tiny bean pods and various other immature veg.
I shared what I harvested when I visited in the evenings. I had a glut of everything at the moment, even the maincrop potatoes in the ground had done well. He, in turn, taught me how to store them properly for winter.
‘It’s like this, see?’ he said, arranging the tubers on the trays, ‘each one needs to be separate from the next, so disease doesn’t spread, and air can flow freely.’
‘I get it’, I said, ‘but where do you store them?’
Frank smiled and then led me back to his shed. Inside were banks of freezers, at least five, floor to ceiling on two sides. He opened a door. They weren’t plugged in, so it wasn’t cold, but the air inside didn’t seem as hot as outside. ‘They are mice and rat proof, and the insulation keeps the frost out,’ he said, ‘the only thing you need to do is check the veg periodically and remove any that look like they are going off.’
I was impressed. Frank was really prepared. I wanted to do something similar but couldn’t imagine how. Frank’s side gate was still useable but mine was now totally overgrown. I felt secure in my secret garden, but winter storage was going to be a problem.
I did a thorough audit of the bungalows surrounding mine, to find ones that were weatherproof with no broken windows. The row of terraced houses at the top of the road had solid wooden doors and, by dint of a crowbar and a lot of muffled swearing, I managed to lever a couple of them off their hinges. I used them to replace the broken UPVC doors on the bungalows and by the end of the week I had three houses, close to mine, that were secure. I used my sack trolley to move the doors around, which made it just about doable and avoided any houses with more than one step but even so, after that exertion I took a break for the next couple of days and relaxed in the hammock enjoying the September sun.
Over the next month, between tending the garden, harvesting food and visiting Frank in the evenings for my daily dose of human contact, I emptied and cleaned the freezers, moved them out of the kitchens into different rooms and tried to disguise them. It wasn’t a lot, but hopefully, if we had visitors again, they might not find my food stores.
I won’t lie; the winter was hard, really, really hard. It turned out that I had plenty of food. It wasn’t particularly interesting eating pasta and tomato paste or baked potatoes with a bit of oil drizzled on, with an apple for dessert or a piece of Cornish fudge. But there was plenty. Frank and I had cooking competitions to try and pass the time. One evening I would bring over a dish, the next he would cook. He was a much, much better cook than I was. Some of the things I came up with really didn’t work, but we ate them anyway; we couldn’t waste the food. The chilli bottle selection I amassed actually came in quite handy for making my dishes edible. It was a good thing that Frank quickly grew to like the taste of hot pepper.
The thing that made it so difficult was the cold. I’ve always hated being cold and no matter how many layers I wore, if felt cold. The gas supplies from Europe had been fluctuating for a while and eventually they ceased entirely. We were still getting gas from government run platforms in the north sea but the fluctuating supply and power outages damaged a lot of boilers. Mine went first, Franks shortly after. By November I couldn’t find any houses on the estate with working central heating.
One of the houses next to me had a wood burning stove, and if I closed the internal door, I could get the room nicely warm. I still had to go back to a cold house and bed though. Luckily, even after all this time, the electricity still worked. I could use the microwave to warm up my wheat bags. I amassed quite a collection but still, every morning woke to a freezing room.
I had eventually moved back to sleeping in my bedroom as it was slightly warmer than the loft. But one day, after a rather stodgy dinner stew of beans, potatoes and carrots, I was moaning to Frank about the cold when he asked whether I had a chimney.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but there is a gas fireplace which I’ve never used, the ignition doesn’t work.’