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of cheese. At least the cold would stop it from going off.
    ‘This sucks,’ said Max as he picked up a sausage, dunked it in tomato sauce and bit the end.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Where’s Dad, Fin?’ There was a waver in his voice.
    I swallowed. ‘They’re probably staying at Kara’s mum’s.’
    ‘But you don’t know, do you?’
    ‘No, Max. I don’t know.’
    ‘What if he’s dead?’
    ‘He’s not dead, Max. Why would he be dead?’
    ‘Radiation poisoning.’
    ‘Too soon, takes a while for radiation to kill a person.’
    Max’s eyes widened.
    ‘I’m kidding, Max. He won’t have radiation poisoning.’
    ‘But you said . . .’
    ‘Look, I know, but . . . Max, look at me.’
    He turned his face to me. He has one of those faces that never really grows up. Big rosy cheeks and eyebrows that tilt up slightly in the centre, giving him an expression of permanent bemusement. At twelve he looked pretty much the same as he did when he was three and I reckon he won’t have changed much by the time he’s thirty.
    ‘Max,’ I said. ‘I need you to stay with me, man. Whatever happens. We can do it but we have to do it together.’
    ‘Do what?’ His lip quivered.
    ‘See this out. Can you do that for me, Maximum? Trust me. Okay?’
    He nodded soberly. The torch threw a stark pool of white light onto the wall, like a spotlight. Max and I ate the rest of our dinner in silence.

Four
    When morning came the sky was like a shadow. It had snowed again, more this time, the same colour as the sky. There were cars missing from driveways, cars that hadn’t returned from the night before. That made me feel a bit better, it meant the roads must have been closed. Dad wasn’t the only one who hadn’t come home. I imagined him in a community hall somewhere drinking weak tea and eating Milk Arrowroot biscuits.
    Max was quiet and didn’t ask about going outside. We spent most of the day playing cards or Trivial Pursuit. I told him to pretend we were camping. We had tomato and cheese sandwiches for lunch. We even ate Kara’s tahini and hummus. When evening came around again I lit some candles and put the torch on. We ate more sandwiches for dinner. (I wanted to use the perishable food first.) After dinner Max read comics and I worked on my drawings. I drew Starvos at the store, counting the money in the till with a cigarette behind his ear.
    Days passed. Still, long days. Time bled into itself. Snow started falling during the day as well as at night. I didn’t see any cars drive past. We didn’t have any dry firewood because we’d hardly used the fire that winter, it had been too mild. Now the cold settled into the house, filling it out. We started to wear more layers of clothing and the cold was made worse because there was nothing much to do, nothing to keep us warm. The boredom and waiting hung over us and made us snap at each other. Most of the time we were quiet, though. There was nothing to say. We ate to punctuate the time. The living-room window with its view of the street became our television. Occasionally a neighbour would walk past. I saw Mr and Mrs White from two doors up walking their labradors.
    My mind whirred with useless imagined scenarios: Dad decomposing on the side of the highway having crashed his car; Lokey slowly dying of radiation poisoning; Lucy starving to death because I didn’t encourage her to buy more food; My mother . . . who knew what had happened to her. I couldn’t even form a picture of her to worry about. How were we supposed to know if ‘things changed’ and she was coming for us? How long were we supposed to wait? And how was she planning on getting here with the roads iced over? Was she going to borrow an army truck? Fly a chopper? The only way I could quieten the endless worry was to draw. I drew Dad in the car. I drew my mother in a chopper. I drew Lucy.
    One afternoon, about four days in, Mrs White came to our front door. It was pathetically exciting to have a visitor. Max was asleep