John Frederick Walters reached for the red Lark packet by the radio. There were two cigarettes left in it and he shook them, wondering if he ought to have one now, or if he ought to save both of them for later. In the end, he slid one out, tucked it between his lips, and lit it one-handed with a folded matchbook. He puffed smoke.

‘There’s nothing left, Elizabeth. That can of franks we gave the kids today, that was it, and from what the news has been saying, we shouldn’t even have risked that. They could go down with disease, die.’

Elizabeth stayed where she was in the doorway, nibbling at her lower lip. She peeled the skin off it in strips until it bled. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t anybody care? You’d think they’d come around with food parcels. I mean – we’ve got three children here. What are we going to do?’

‘The whole town’s a wreck,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘No police, no ambulance service, nothing. How the hell can anybody expect them to bring around food parcels?’

‘But we’ll starve,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘The three girls will starve.’

John Frederick Walters stared at the burning cigarette in his hand. He felt giddy from nicotine and lack of food. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess we will, unless something happens.’

‘But what do people do in India, places like that? Cambodia? They starve, sure, but they sometimes scratch some kind of a living.’

‘They know how, that’s why,’ said John Frederick Walters. ‘They know how to live on a small bowl of rice, how to make it last. They’ve never seen a T-bone steak in their lives, and they’d probably puke up at the sight of it if they did. They know how to grow the damned rice, too. Do you know how to grow rice? I mean, if you do, get out back and get planting. We’re all gonna need it.’

Elizabeth stared at him as if she hadn’t heard or understood a word he was saying. She probably didn’t. She said, slowly, ‘There’s some Alpo I bought for Florence’s dog. There’s a can of that left.’

‘Alpo? Are you kidding? You can’t eat dog-food.’

‘But how can I produce milk if I don’t eat? Can’t you hear her screaming up there? What am I supposed to do? Stand by and watch my children wasting away? I don’t know how you can sit there apd smoke and listen to that stupid wore-out radio and let it happen!’

John Frederick Walters stared at her coldly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess you don’t know, do you? You don’t know that this whole world’s fallen in on us, and because we’re at the bottom to begin with, the entire weight of everything falls on us cripples and incompetents first.’