Then she remembered the modem would be dead. She stood up and found Helena’s handbag.
‘Your phone is still charged?’ she said, rootling.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Helena, digging through the bottom of Cressida’s wardrobe. She found a duffel bag and started throwing things into it. Cressida opened the settings function on Helena’s phone and switched on the wireless hotspot, groaning inwardly at the little blue circle while her laptop looked for the signal.
‘I’m just checking to make sure you have in fact gone mad …’
Ah. Five bars. Excellent. She clicked refresh on the page. Convulsively it loaded.
‘Ah,’ said Cressida. ‘Holy fuck.’
Terror Australis, the Sydney Morning Herald website blurted, in large white letters over a picture of flames and a close up of a firefighter in a gas mask. Overnight three major NSW power stations, servicing sixty percent of the Sydney metropolitan area, were destroyed by fire, she read. Police suspect terrorism …
‘Oh my God,’ she began. ‘This says …’
Then she realised she was about to say exactly the same thing Helena had. Maybe not the bit about the world ending, but at least the terrorist/power station part.
‘What do you think I’ve been telling you?’ Helena said, zipping the duffel. ‘Is that everything?’ She stood up, thinking. ‘I’ll go and pack some cans from your kitchen. We’ve got plenty at home, but you never know how long this is going to last …’
Cressida looked out the window, wondering why everything looked so normal. Her first thought was that at least the triathlon was off. Then she thought maybe it was odd to be thinking that at a time like this. There was something else. Then she remembered. Felipe. In seconds she was in motion, dropping her silk robe to the floor and pulling on shorts and a t-shirt, grabbing some sportswear from her bottom drawers, some undies and her hairdryer, her trenchcoat off its hanger. Oh God. The hairdryer. There was no power. She looked in the mirror. Despite all attempts to prevent it, her blowdry had been ruined by the rain, her normally buttery locks a puffy snakeskin mess. There was a wide headband on the dresser and she grabbed that, slipping it over her head and hair and tucking in the ends at the back so it looked like a turban. It would have to do.
‘Jesus, Cressida, don’t you eat canned food?’ she heard Helena exclaim from the kitchen. ‘All I can find here are dried mushrooms and diet drink powder. And about fifty kilos of carrots and celery in your fridge. What’s that?’ she asked, peering around the door jamb to the laundry where Cressida was wrestling a backpack off a high shelf.
‘My emergency pack,’ said Cressida, grunting. The heavy bag fell into her arms and she dragged it out to the kitchen like a corpse, leaning it up against a cupboard. She filled a glass from the sink.
‘No, don’t. You have to boil it. You have an emergency pack?’ said Helena, her voice holding a mixture of disbelief and approval.
Cressida unclasped the pack and pulled out a transistor radio from the top.
‘Sure. Don’t you? I think there are some purification tablets in here somewhere. What frequency’s the ABC?’ They both looked at each other as she tried the on button on the radio, sharing relief when the device burred into life. ‘Why do we have to boil it?’
‘133.5. No idea. Since when have you had an emergency pack?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, piling the vegetables from the fridge into a cloth bag as Helena watched. ‘I never thought I’d have to use it. I just liked packing it. Ah.’ She twiddled the dial on the radio and found the station, then turned the volume up. It was halfway through a bulletin warning them to stay away from train stations and shopping centres. They exchanged a look and Cressida swore and threw the tap water in the sink, then both of them ran into the hallway.
‘Can you take that?’ She pointed into her room at her laptop. ‘Wait a minute. Alessa. She was …’
‘Alessa’s fine,’ Helena said, touching Cressida’s arm. ‘She’s at home. Her plane got in yesterday afternoon. Not happy about the lack of hot water, of course, and her bags never turned up on the concourse. But other than that she’s fine.’
Alessa. Her sister, in town slumming it with the provincials. It was the obligatory fortnight in March and, as usual, or at least once the missing suitcases arrived, she would be fresh from a Singapore fashion mall in a new capsule outfit from some edgy new designer. Last time it was lots of leather and dangly earrings. Cressida looked down at her own ensemble. She’d have to change. Quickly she went to her room and shucked her shorts, slipping on instead the cream linen Leona Edmiston shift.
‘What are you doing?’ Helena said from the doorway.
‘A terrorist attack is no reason to look sloppy,’ she said, adding a pale silk scarf and her weekend pearls, yellow rather than eggshell. Quickly she applied tinted SPF and bronzer, three-second eyeliner and a dash of gloss, picked up the duffel and started herding Helena towards the door.
‘What about Dad?’
‘I know,’ Helena said and stopped, turning to her, eyes filling with tears. ‘I’ve tried ringing them all morning, but I can’t get through. I did once on the mobile and it went straight to voicemail.’ Her eyes were dark. ‘I guess they have contingencies for this sort of thing.’ Then she brightened. ‘Well. At least we know we don’t have to worry about Jerome. No need for power stations on ships.’
‘Yeah,’ Cressida snorted. Her brother had been on the Sea Shepherd for weeks. They’d have wall to wall solar, surely. Or was that hull to hull? ‘I guess not.’
When they opened the door the heat hit them like wind from a furnace, sweat stickying Cressida’s eyelids almost immediately. Helena held her handbag over her head against the sun’s blaze, took the duffel and ran towards the car. When she had popped the boot of the vast green Jag she ran back to take Cressida’s laptop.
‘Actually, Helena,’ Cressida said, lugging the backpack and the cloth bag of veggies into the boot of her Fiat, ‘we have to go via Felipe’s. I just want to check he’s okay. Hey – you’re looking a little peaky.’ She stopped and asked, ‘Are you alright?’
‘What? Oh. Yes.’ There was a pause and Helena lifted her sunglasses to wipe her eyes. ‘It’s just so awful,’ she said, looking up at Cressida. ‘I mean – what about the babies?’
‘The babies?’
‘You know. The ones in hospital. And the old people, on respirators …’
‘Oh Helena, yes,’ said Cressida, squeezing her into a hug. Children were usually first on her stepmother’s mind when anything happened. ‘Yes. I guess we don’t know what the damage is yet though.’ She tried to sound reassuring. ‘I remember Felipe once saying something about hospitals having backup generators. Anyway,’ she said, thumbing a stray tear from Helena’s cheek, ‘let’s pick up some ice on the way to your place, then we can have a cold drink.’ How long did servo ice fridges stay cold without power? ‘Then we’ll try and find a proper news bulletin.’
‘I’ve got some,’ Helena murmured, still distracted. Then her stepmother was looking up at her, small and scared.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘In my car? Of course.’
‘Oh but what about the Jag?’ she said, looking at the boot and then down the road. ‘Will it be safe here? There’s looters …’
Cressida looked uncertainly up and down the street. It was deserted, but the vast green vehicle was an eye-catching car.
‘You drive home and I’ll follow,’ she said, ‘then I’ll go and get Felipe by myself. It won’t take long.’
‘Are you mad?’ Helena said, grabbing Cressida’s hand,