Page 8 of 59 Minutes

FRANKIE

The kitchen tap sprays back into Frankie’s face as she fills every bowl she can find, intending to fill every container in this unfamiliar house while the water is still clean.

She grips the sink and closes her eyes, struck by a sudden nausea which could be the pregnancy or could be existential doom.

To think, she used to actively lean into such concepts.

She shudders at the memory of her mum scrubbing off the gloomy lyrics she’d carefully penned onto her bedroom wall.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but if Dad sees this, he’ll flip his lid and I won’t be able to stop him. ’

‘You could try.’

Frankie leaves the next bowl filling and goes into the living room. The TV is their only source of information, and it flips through several messages, each as dystopian as the other.

‘… before water becomes contaminated, fill every sink and bath available, ensuring a tight seal is made by any plugs. Check for leaks and, if necessary, use plastic sheeting or anything available to …’

She turns off the kitchen tap and pants up to the bathroom.

This is not her bath; how can you tell if it’ll leak?

She pushes the rubber plug into place so hard her fingertips throb.

Then she pulls the plastic shower curtain off its rail in one angry motion, her ribs aching at the movement.

Laying it across the bottom of the bath, she turns on the cold tap.

Water trickles out slowly now, everyone around here must be doing the same thing.

She runs breathlessly back downstairs to find Otis holding a pile of blankets he’s found somewhere.

‘It’s going to get cold,’ he says. He dumps them on the velvet sofa, covering the brush marks made by whoever cleaned all traces of the last guests.

The TV rattles on in the background, the other message again now.

‘Further announcements will be made about the care of children in after school and childcare settings, your food and water supply, delivery of stable iodine tablets and care of animals and pets.’

Food and water supply …

‘Otis,’ she says. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

He looks at the blanket fort he’s been building. ‘The TV said to—’

‘No, no, not this, this is … no, it’s food. We can’t go out to get any once it happens and we don’t have enough to last.’

Otis, always the counterpoint to her pessimism, stares back but then lowers his head, defeated. ‘I think you’re right,’ he says.