Page 30 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘Yes.Exactlylike solar panels,’ he says in a mocking tone. ‘It’s off grid here. There’s no… you know…? I don’t know the word.’
‘No mains?’ Jill offers. ‘No grid, I suppose you could say.’
‘Yes. Exactly! No grid. Off grid,’ Enzo says. ‘Just panels on the…’ He points to the ceiling. ‘And batteries. I think maybe you used a lot of electricity last night?’ He looks around the room as if searching for proof of the crime, but the blow heater has been hidden in a cupboard.
‘No,’ Jill says, reflexively, habitually denying everything. ‘We didn’t do anything except cook dinner, did we, Wendy?’
The man raises one eyebrow disbelievingly, then flips open his laptop and frowns at the screen. ‘Thirteen point three kilowatts in one night. From twenty hours yesterday to four this morning. That’s a lot.’
Wendy rolls her head and sighs. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ she says. ‘We didn’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘But how?’ Enzo asks, scanning the room again. ‘How do you use thirteen point three kilowatts in one night?’
‘Um, an electric heater, that’s all,’ Wendy tells him, wincing. ‘We didn’t know, so I bought one. From Intermarché. We won’t use it ag?—’
‘An electric heater!’ Enzo interrupts her, as if this is the worst off-grid crime he’s ever come across. ‘You can’t dothis. Never!’
‘Yes, I get that now,’ Wendy says. She’s beginning to feel like a child being scolded by the headmaster and is beginning to resent being made to feel that way.
‘No, never! Never!’ Enzo says, wiggling his finger at her to emphasise the point.
‘OK, OK! I got it!’ Wendy says, raising her voice despite herself.
‘And no…’ he makes a weird gesture near his ear, ‘for the ’air.’
‘For the air?’ Wendy repeats.
‘Yes. No drying the ’air.’
‘Oh, oh. I know,’ Jill says, sounding like she’s found the answer to a game-show question. ‘Hairdryer!’
‘Yes. No ’airdryer. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe after, if it’s sunny, maybe five minutes, it can be OK. But you must let the battery fill before this, otherwise it will happen again. The sun will maybe come this afternoon, so this is good.’
‘And if it doesn’t come back on?’
‘It will, when the battery hits 17 per cent.’
‘But what do I do if it doesn’t?’
He pats the top of his laptop. ‘It will. In one hour. Maybe two. I check. It’s already 11 per cent. At seventeen it’s all OK. I promise.’
Once he has left, Wendy slumps onto the sofa. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Solar panels. Who knew?’
‘And they didn’t warn you about this? I’d be asking for a refund.’
‘No, they didn’t, really,’ Wendy says. She grimaces and sucks through her teeth. ‘If I’m being honest the place is listed as an off-grid eco-cabin. I mean, that’s the actual title. So they weren’t exactly hiding the fact. I just didn’t think enough about what that meant. So it’s partly my fault, I think. A tiny bit my fault, at any rate.’
Jill fiddles with one of the light switches and twists hermouth sideways. ‘Maybe a good time to go out?’ she offers after some thought. ‘While we wait for the stupid battery to charge?’
‘Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking.’
‘So a drink in a nice bar somewhere, to cheer ourselves up, and then a posh dinner somewhere with a sea view.’
‘A meal out sounds good but I’m a tad concerned about the electricity,’ Wendy says. ‘I mean, suppose we get back – it’ll be night-time by then – so what if it still doesn’t work?’
‘We can leave the fire going, can’t we? So the place won’t be freezing cold. And if we’ve eaten then it won’t matter that we can’t cook. And if we’ve had enough to drink then we won’t care much about any of it.’
‘This is very true,’ Wendy concedes. ‘But if I can find one, I might buy myself a torch.’
