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Pandemic

Brexit, Donald Trump, even climate change—aside from the very hot days when she was pregnant, so far not a single catastrophe had befallen her personally as a result of these apocalyptic harbingers.

Privilege alert! But it was true. All the stress and psychic energy of monitoring their daily developments had been an absolute waste of time.

The fact was, no amount of vigilance about “the news” did anything to alter or control it.

That was the hard-won insight she’d been left with. She was reluctant to give it up.

Roger’s canceled his visit because of the coronavirus , Coralie WhatsApped Dan, adding a restrained seven emoji thumbs-up.

Pussy! her brother replied.

But Coralie redownloaded Twitter and followed every journalist she could think of.

She had her Brexit stockpile still—the pasta and so on—and began adding to it every week.

She wasn’t some kind of freak , like a prepper!

She was strategically forward-purchasing things she had planned to buy anyway.

What difference did it make if it was stored in her pantry (and the spare room) instead of the Ocado customer fulfillment center?

She imagined, sometimes, a sparkly magnet, like Daniel and Barbie’s:

It’s not a warehouse

It’s a warehome

“Got any vitamin C in the stocky-p?” Adam asked one day.

A forwarded message had gone round both his university friends’ WhatsApp group and his Liverpool Football Club WhatsApp group saying it was clinically proven to halt progression of the disease.

“That’s directly from doctors in Lombardy,” he said.

(The news at that time was dominated by footage of overflowing Italian hospital wards where older people, mainly men, lay on their fronts hooked up to machines.)

At Montessori, the children were playing Corona, a version of tag where, if someone breathed on you, you lay on the ground and “died.” In the second week of March, a parent in the pickup line said it was time to shut the schools.

The words resounded in her head like a hit gong.

She swayed, faint. Disease she could handle, sickness, even death.

But no school ? No drop-off and pickup, nine and three thirty, the unalterable rhythm of her days?

The unknowns were so vast, and the terror suddenly so great, that—on the pavement, at the front gate, with Florence’s scooter ready and Maxi sleeping in the buggy—she found herself flying into the air; for a moment, she was a ghost, or an angel, weightless, shimmering, a vapor of pure fear.

Then she dropped back down to earth, Coralie again, a mother in a puffer coat with a tote bag full of snacks.

On March 18, a day when 33 people died of Covid in Britain, bringing the death toll to 104, it was announced that the schools would close on Friday.

Glastonbury was canceled. Forty Tube stations were shut down.

Just confirmed at lobby briefing , Adam texted.

London WON’T be sealed off. That was good to know!

On Friday, New York and California residents were ordered to “shelter in place.” When Coralie picked up Florence for the last time, the teachers handed over a pile of her (bad) art, as well as her Crocs, and all her spare knickers and clothes.

“She might have grown out of them by the time we see her again,” Miss Sarah said.

Coralie cried silently all the way home.

Adam, meanwhile, his draft finished and nothing to do until the edits came back, or his Times show started, urgently texted colleagues and special advisers to work out who was taller, him or the chancellor Rishi Sunak?

A chilling official message from a hospital in Harrow went viral on UK WhatsApp: We currently do not have enough space for patients requiring critical care.

Finally, at 5 p.m., the prime minister declared that all pubs, gyms, theaters, and restaurants were to close.

Over the weekend, which was sunny, Broadway Market and Columbia Road Flower Market were both heaving.

Angry people posted pictures of the crowds on Twitter: It was okay for them to be there, breathe the air, and take crowd pictures—but it was not okay for others to be there, breathe the air, and be IGNORANT of the danger the nation faced.

There was huge support for the formal lockdown, announced by Boris Johnson in his most serious, gravelly voice on March 23.

It seemed to make people feel good to know that no one in the United Kingdom could enjoy themselves.

Members of the new Wilton Way WhatsApp group (description field: In a World Where You Can Be Anything, Be Kind ) competed with one another to be the least free.

My dog needs walking twice a day for his arthritis.

Do you think I can take him on my government-sanctioned exercise and my government-sanctioned shop?

In what world would that not be okay? Why ask?

Even so, a few people gently tut-tutted, one stating they’d “erected an agility course” for their “doggo” in their garden, using low-cost, environmentally friendly materials available from Argos.

“Doggo,” Coralie muttered on the sofa.

“Erected,” Adam replied.

“Agility course.”

But neither of them was laughing the next morning. A cabinet minister went on Good Morning Britain to say children of separated parents had to stay in one house for lockdown. Zora was in Camden. They might not see her for weeks!

Adam found the clip on Twitter and sent it on to Tom: Exactly what is your pathetic government playing at?

Ten minutes later, on a different show, the cabinet minister said that he’d misspoken: Children of separated parents were allowed to see and stay with both.

Adam tried to delete the message, but there were already two blue ticks.

Fortunately (or worryingly), Tom did not reply.

When Boris Johnson, the health secretary, and the chief medical officer were all diagnosed with Covid on the same day, Adam messaged that he hoped Tom was all right.

Tom replied with an italicized red 100 emoji.

That seemed to be an English thing, operating on a small emotional chessboard with only four main moves: Jolly, Polite, Withdrawn, Cold.

What was a 100 emoji? Polite/withdrawn cusp?

At least Tom still drove Zora between their two houses, so she didn’t have to catch the train.

···

At the beginning of lockdown, they’d started a tradition of family lunch, sitting down together at half past twelve every day.

But it was a chaotic and loud affair: Maxi in his high chair, throwing or mashing finger food, and Florence tapping her feet against the chair, knocking her glass off the table with her elbow, sliding down onto the floor.

Zora looked more and more stressed every mealtime, the food on her plate untouched.

Coralie offered to bring up meals to her room.

But that shone a spotlight on her, only highlighting that most of the food came back down again.

Zora washed her knives and forks and plates separately from the rest of the household’s and dried them on paper towels, in case any meat (or meat steam from the dishwasher) had touched them, or meat water from the washing machine had touched the dishcloth.

Even after Coralie stopped cooking meat altogether, Zora still said she could smell it.

Coralie had never had a regular one-on-one text correspondence with Marina, but from the beginning of lockdown, they shared, without small talk, what was working.

Fage Greek yogurt full fat, plastic spoon not metal.

Waitrose blueberries organic, soaked to get rid of white stuff.

Broadway Market kefir, plain not fruit, I’ll send two bottles home with her.

Peanut butter crunchy, not smooth, glass jar better than plastic tub.

Calories were going into Zora; she certainly wasn’t starving.

But if there was any tension or noise in the room when she was eating, her throat closed over and she could hardly swallow or breathe.

Coralie had read so many books when she was young, because to read was to enter a different, and private, world, one her parents might have been suspicious of but ultimately had to respect.

She often wondered why Zora (with her clearly superior intellect and almost-unlimited access to books) didn’t read as much as she had.

Perhaps it was because, unlike Coralie, Zora didn’t have anything to escape.

She was content to exist in real life and didn’t need to be swept away for entire days at a time.

It was sad, then, when the trauma of the global pandemic plunged Zora into constant, insatiable, dissociative reading, all day and half the night.

Coralie spent Maxi’s naptime taking down favorite novels from the alcove shelves in the sitting room, dusting them, and arranging them to make them attractive and accessible to Zora: Love in a Cold Climate , I Capture the Castle , Bonjour Tristesse , Prep .

It felt odd to touch books again because she had barely read a chapter since the start of the pandemic.

And as for writing—ha! Scrolling the news was all she could do.