The Human Condition

left alive. There's no-one.

    The whole damn world is dead.

JULIET APPLEBY

    `So what time will you be home tonight?' asked Mrs Appleby, staring with frustration at her daughter across the breakfast table. Sometimes trying to get information out of Juliet was like trying to get blood out of a stone.

    `I don't know Mum...' she began to answer, in a quiet, mumbling voice that her mother had to strain to hear.

    `Because you know how your dad gets if you're not back when he's expecting you,' Mrs Appleby interrupted.

    `I know, but I can't help it if I have to stop back...'

    `He has to have his meal before half-six otherwise it keeps him awake all night. And you know how he likes us all to eat together. It's an important part of family life.' `I know.'

    `Dad just likes his routine, that's all. And he likes to know where you are. He likes to know that you're safe.'

    `I know that too, Mum, but...'

    `But what, love?'

    `I'm thirty-nine for God's sake.'

    Juliet Appleby closed the front door behind her and walked down the garden path to the car, pulling on her coat and brushing her long, wind-swept hair out of her eyes. She glanced back at the house before unlocking the car and getting in. There they were. She could see them both hiding behind the net curtains, pretending not to watch � Mum in front, trying not to be seen, and Dad standing just behind her. Hiding behind Mum, that was where he seemed to have spent most of his life, she thought. Inside the house he was king, and he let the two of them know that constantly and in no uncertain terms. Stick him outside and force him to face the rest of the world, however, and he couldn't cope. The accident twelve years ago (which was still a taboo subject that they weren't allowed to talk to him about) had destroyed his confidence and unbalanced his temperament. He didn't seem able to interact properly with anyone outside the small and tight circle of the immediate family. Outside Dad would always get aggressive or angry or confrontational with some poor unsuspecting person and it would inevitably be left to Mum or Juliet to smooth things over and sort things out.

    Juliet sat down in the car and started the engine. Poor Mum, she thought. She'd dedicated her life to Dad. She'd put up with years of his moaning and his mood swings and his tempers. Sometimes, though, she was just as bad as he was. As Dad relied on Mum, so Mum seemed to rely on Juliet. And who was there for her? No-one. On the few occasions that she'd been brave enough to start talking about leaving home and setting up on her own it was usually Mum who played the sickness card and who came up with a list of reasons why she couldn't leave and why she had to stay and why they needed her around. She believed it. Each and every time she heard it she believed it. Why would they lie to her? Her friends at the nursery told her that she should just pack her bags and leave. But it was easy for them. She'd left it too late, and now she was trapped, spending her time being paid to look after other people's children when she should have been raising her own. Fat chance of that ever happening. She hadn't ever had a `proper' relationship. Men were either put off by the fact that she behaved like a timid old-maid trapped in a younger person's body, or Dad managed to put them off for her. She'd long since stopped dwelling on all that she had gone without physically, but she often thought about the cruel irony of her situation � there she was, a thirty-nine year old virgin, surrounded constantly by the fruits of other people's sexual encounters.

    A quick wave to Mum and Dad (even though they thought she couldn't see them) and she was off. A ten minute drive into the centre of Rowley and she'd be there.

    Juliet always seemed to be the first one to arrive at work. She was always there ages before anyone else. At the time she arrived at the nursery each morning there were usually only one or two other people around � usually just Jackson the caretaker and Ken Andrews, the deputy head of the infant school to which the nursery was attached.

    `Morning, Joanne,' smiled Andrews, waving across the playground. Bloody man, she thought. In all the years she'd been working in and around the school he'd never got her name right. Occasionally she thought he did it on purpose to try and wind her up, other times she decided he was just plain ignorant. But the fact of the matter was he continually got her name wrong because he rarely