R. Allinson: The Last Day on Earth

The phone rang. Everyone jumped. Liz fumbled with the satellite phone, and nearly dropped it in her rush to answer.

“Claire!?” Liz yelled into the receiver. “Oh, I’m sorry, hi, Mary.”

Lucy and Bill looked at each other, crestfallen.

“No, no, no, of course it’s wonderful to hear from you, we just haven’t heard from Claire for a while… we’re fine, considering. How are you and the kids?”

Liz wandered out of the kitchen as she talked with her older sister. Mary lived up in Queensland with her three kids. Lucy looked at her father. He was an only child and barely knew his cousins, so she doubted that he was expecting any calls other than from his eldest daughter.

“Dad?”

“Yes, my precious?”

“Do you have any regrets?”

Bill scratched his beard and appeared to think for a few minutes before answering.

“I always thought I might like to climb Mount Everest,” he finally said.

“Really? I never knew that.”

“Mmm, I never really told anyone except your Mum.”

“Why didn’t you do it? That would be pretty awesome,” Lucy said as she emptied the vegetable scraps into the chook bucket, and then wondered why as she’d already fed the chickens and ducks for the day and they wouldn’t be around to get this tomorrow.

“Life got in the way. I had the farm, you girls, it costs a lot of money, plus your mother was terrified I’d die up there,” he said while he took the lasagne out of the oven.

“You should have done it.”

“Yes. I should have… too late now. Even if we do survive, I don’t think they’ll have the infrastructure in place for an Aussie farmer to go and climb Mount Everest anytime soon.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Lucy looked around her for something else to do. She reached for the bowl of fruit and started chopping pieces up and throwing them in a bowl for fruit salad.

“What about you, Goosey?”

“Hmmm?” Lucy asked, so engrossed in cutting the nectarine just right that she barely registering her father’s childhood nickname for her.

“Regrets. Unfulfilled dreams,” Bill prompted.

Lucy put the knife down and stared at her father. I’m only twenty five years old, of course I’m full of regrets and unfulfilled dreams , she thought. She took a deep breath and blew it out.

“Where to even begin? Travel’s a big one, I guess.” Lucy paused and thought for a moment. “I always wanted to go backpacking like Mum did when she was young, and like Claire did.”

“Why didn’t you?” Bill asked, a frown creasing his forehead. Lucy shrugged then scowled.

“I guess I was always waiting for someone to go with me,” she said. “I wish I’d had the guts to just go by myself like Claire did.”

“Yeah, well, your sister always was more of a loner than you are. She’s not the most… co-operative… of people either. I don’t think Claire travelling with one of her friends would have ended very well,” Bill mused.

“She went travelling with Tom a lot,” Lucy pointed out.

“That’s different. They’re married. It’s a different dynamic.”

“If you say so,” Lucy said. Privately, she regretted the thought that she’d never find out for herself what the dynamics of a marriage were. She tried to thrust the thought from her mind. So far, for the most part, she’d managed to keep most of those negative thoughts at bay. She didn’t want to start indulging in them now. “I dunno, Dad, I finally build up the courage to book my trip to Spain by myself, and then this happens before I get the chance to go. I also finally meet a guy who doesn’t seem to be a total dud like all my other boyfriends, and now I’ll never know if he was the one or not. It’s not fair, Dad.”

“No, it’s not. Wait, what guy?”

“Steve. I told you about him. The one I met at the beach.”

“Oh… the one with the motorbike?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He was… he is nice. He told me he loved me the day after we found out about this.” She waved up at the ceiling.

“Oh. Bugger.”

“Yeah. Bugger.”

It felt a bit strange for Lucy to be talking to her father about Steve and love. She usually saved this kind of talk for her mother. She picked the knife up again and resumed chopping.

“I wish you could have met him. I think you would have liked him.”

“Hmmm. We’ll see.”

“No, Dad. We won’t.” Lucy sighed. Bill started to say something, but the look on Lucy’s face cut him off. He stared helplessly at his daughter.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I know you think we have a chance. I just… I don’t know. I don’t think we do. And even if we did, what’s the world going to look like on the other side? Would it be worth living in?”

“I can’t answer that, Luce. I’m just not ready to see my wife and daughter die and I’m not going to go down without a fight.”

Lucy put her knife down, went around the table and hugged her father.

Two months ago…

It usually took Lucy two and a half hours to drive home to her parent’s farm. Two hours after leaving their flat, Lucy and Mitch had only just made it over the West Gate Bridge. They’d wanted to leave the night before, but Mitch had heard on the radio that the West Gate Bridge out of the city had been closed due to a series of bad accidents. Volunteers were clearing the wreckages, but it would take a while, and the other routes out of the city were barely moving, so they’d decided to get up early and leave the next morning.

Apparently, so had a lot of other people.

Lucy looked nervously at her petrol gauge. She still had half a tank, but this kind of stop and start driving wasn’t kind to her tank.

She glanced over at Mitch. He was tapping his fingers on the dash and sighing every now and then. It was starting to get on Lucy’s nerves.

“Wish I had a private jet. We’d be home in a jiffy,” Mitch sighed again.

“You’d still need to drive through this to the airport.”

“Hmm. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if we were waiting in a limo.”

“With champagne.”

“And Pringles.”

“Pringles?”

“What? I like Pringles. What’s wrong with Pringles?”

“Nothing. As long as they’re the green ones, I’m cool with Pringles. They just don’t usually go with champagne and limousines.”

“Strawberries then.”

“That’s better,” Lucy laughed.

“I wonder if there’s been another accident? I haven’t seen it this bad since they did a bunch of roadworks last Christmas,” Mitch pondered.

“Could be… Jess told me you finally told her you like her,” Lucy said, taking her eyes off the unmoving car in front of her to look at her long-suffering housemate. He squirmed.

“Yeah… terrible timing, I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell her before? You know, when you could have actually done something about it.”

“I don’t know. I tried. It never came out right though. Or came out at all, really,” Mitch mumbled. Lucy thought he might even be turning red.

“You’ve liked her for years.”

“What! No I haven’t!”

“Don’t lie,” Lucy teased.

“I’m not! Maybe I am. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“You never know. This’ll probably all blow over. Some hot shot American will save the day, and you and Jess will live happily ever after.”

Mitch just snorted and stared out the window at the traffic that was not budging.

Ever so slowly, they inched their way out of the city. The traffic started to move faster once they hit the Princes Freeway and began leaving the suburbs behind. Lucy kept looking at her petrol gauge.

“I’m going to need to fill up at Little River,” she told Mitch. He just nodded.