The End of Men(71)

“Why, what—” I shake my head to get my thoughts in order. “What do you want to tell me about him?”

“Something that the entire world is going to know by the end of the day. In just under an hour it’s going to be announced that Donal Patterson is in prison,” Amanda says calmly. “His trial was carried out in secret under a piece of emergency legislation. The news has been kept secret since Donal was convicted a year ago in order to allow plans to be made.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Plans to prevent people trying to find him and kill him. If he hadn’t imported the monkeys illegally, the Plague might never have started.”

It’s a dizzying thought. “How long was his sentence?”

“Life with a minimum term of eighty years.”

“Not likely to get parole,” Heather adds.

“I can’t believe it was so simple. So stupid,” I say. “Sorry, Heather, but I mean, imported animals, a bit of extra money on the side. That’s what caused all this.”

Heather sniffs but says nothing.

“I’m sorry, it’s just. All of this, the pandemonium and it could have been avoided.” Amanda frowns at me and I know she doesn’t want me to keep talking but it is a simple truth. “None of this had to happen.” It is the most painful sentence I have ever spoken out loud. It wasn’t written in the stars. This wasn’t some unavoidable tragedy I couldn’t swerve. These men made a choice and it led to my husband dying. I can dimly recognize I’m being irrational but still, it’s true. Being in Heather’s house, in Euan’s house, is making it so stark I can’t ignore it. But for these men breaking the law, my husband and son wouldn’t be dead.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and leave. I can’t sit there for another moment.





STRENGTH





HELEN


Penrith, United Kingdom (England and Wales)

Day 1,168

Mum!”

Oh Jesus, if Abi and Lola are fighting again, I swear to God. I’ve had a long day fixing lights, climbing up and down ladders, I do not need to mediate a teenage fight.

“If you two are at it again, you’ll be—”

“Hi, Helen,” says Sean, bold as fucking brass, sitting at our kitchen table. Not his kitchen table, our kitchen table. Mine and the girls’.

The world is going a bit fuzzy and I’m about to ask someone to open a window when black dots move in from the sides of the kitchen and then next thing I know, I’m lying on the ground with Sean and Abi peering over me.

I struggle upright, batting Sean’s hands away but gratefully accepting Abi’s kind, strong help. “Abi, go to your room, please. Make sure your sisters don’t come downstairs.” She nods and goes upstairs without a peep.

Until I know what Sean has to say for himself, I don’t want him anywhere near the girls.

“I’m back,” he says, Captain Obvious, as I collapse into a chair and hold my thumping head in my hands.

“I’d gathered.” I would motion for him to sit down but he’s already helped himself to a seat and, oh fantastic, a drink.

“It’s so—”

“Sean, what the fuck?” He blinks a few times like an owl. Did I used to find him attractive? I remember him doing the blink-y thing—it used to drive me nuts. Still does. “You waltz in here, having left to live out the rest of your ‘borrowed time’ as if no one was watching, and now you’re back just like that. What the fuck?”

Part of me is asking Sean this question and the other part of me is asking the universe. What are the chances that my pathetic husband is immune? His friend, who died in his wife’s arms, wheezing out the word “love” with his final breaths, wasn’t immune. Ann-Marie from down the road’s gorgeous wee boy, Tommy, wasn’t immune. But my husband, the deserter, is immune. And he came back.

“We thought you were dead,” I bite out, trying and failing to keep my rage out of my voice.

“I know,” he says. “I’m so sorry, it never. I just thought I would get it and—”

“You disappeared! You switched off your phone as soon as you abandoned us and we never heard anything. Then, three years later, when the sight of a man is as rare as snow in July, who turns up at our door? You! Oh, and you’d better stop balking at the word ‘abandoned’ because it’s what you fucking did.”

He sits in silence and I get a chance to look at him. He looks . . . different and the same. Bit thinner, bit grayer, bit more drawn.

“Explain yourself.”

“I thought I might get a nicer welcome than this,” he mutters.

After looking up and seeing my face, he sighs a world-weary sigh he has no right to. “Our life was so, so claustrophobic, Helen. I was bored, weren’t you bored? Working in the same boring job, doing the same boring thing for dinner every Friday. And then the Plague came and it was like this is it! Now or never! My life is going to end, how do I want to end it? I needed to live the life I always dreamed of with the time I had left.”

If I wasn’t already, now I’m certain this really is Sean. He always had the tact of a rhino. Of course, he hadn’t counted on being immune; he was bored of living as though he was about to die and so wanted to come back to his old life and apparently, that’s me and his children.