“How long were you in?”

We’d talked for a while before I asked her. I thought it came up naturally but as soon as I said it, as soon as I saw her eyes glance at the floor, I knew it’d been too soon. And now it was too late.

“I..,” she started.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my business.”

“It’s okay,” she said. There was a pause, her eyes now scanning the ceiling, a drawing in of breath, before she looked back at me. “I thought it was in the records but I can understand why you might want to know. I was in for six months. It was the 27 strain. I don’t know if you remember but it was a bad one.”

I nodded. I felt like I wanted to reach across and touch her hand. Something to signal that I understood but that felt too soon as well. Everyone was more guarded about their personal space now.

“Well, at the start they wanted me away from people for a good two months to be sure and then I turned out to be asymptomatic so they held me longer. Hardly anyone got off without symptoms on 27 so then they kept me to run tests. Just bloods and monitoring. Regular stuff. I got some scars to show off.” She rolled up the loose sleeve of her shirt, showed me the inside of her arm. It was criss-crossed with faint scratches and one longer, angry looking red line towards the crook of her elbow. She saw my face, I must have looked shocked. “It’s cool. It never hurt. The big one was just a new nurse, they all trained up on people a little less pale than me I think. Always took them a bit of time to work up a vein when they were new.” She laughed.

“Six months. Jesus. That must have been rough.”

“It wasn’t too bad. I’m pretty good in my own company and they gave you like the fastest wi-fi you’ve ever had. You never been in an ICU?”

I shook my head. “I got lucky. Tested every week and never seemed to pick anything up. I do remember 27, there were a few in our year that went in but nobody for six months. We all kept in touch with them….”

“At the start. You kept in touch at the start, right?”

She was smiling and I didn’t feel like it was accusatory, or at least not directed at me. I nodded. “Yeah, I guess. It was easier at the start. We were just kids. I like to think I’d be a bit more considerate if it was happening now.”

“It is happening now,” she replied. “Just not to us anymore. We’re clean, right? Too old to be a high risk spread and too young to be a high risk victim. There’s kids in ICUs every day.” She paused and seemed to note my look of apology. “I’m not blaming you. I’m not in contact with anyone in a unit, it is what it is. I guess we could all do more.”

There was an awkward silence. I broke it by pushing back my chair and offering to make tea. I hovered by the kettle, waiting for it to boil, whilst we continued talking.

“How come you didn’t know I wasn’t in a unit?” I asked. We’d all had our records shared.

“I didn’t look,” she said. “It’s not important to me.”

“Because you’re immune?” I started.

“Not that. It’s just not important to me. And they don’t know about immunity. They said I was so unusual in how my system responded to 27 that they thought I might be okay against all strains but I don’t think they know.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this all up. It was clumsy. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Honestly, it’s okay.” She smiled, held out her hand as if she sensed my earlier desire to physically connect. I crossed the room as the kettle clicked, at boil, behind me and touched her. She gave my fingers a squeeze and released. “Listen, all of this is hard. No-one gave out rules for how you’re supposed to navigate this stuff. I don’t take offence and I get why you’d be curious.”

“Thank you. I thought I’d blown it on day one.”

“No way. You kidding? Us April’s have got to stick together, right?”

“Too right. About that. Isn’t this going to get confusing?”

“What? You want me to be April 27 or virus April or something?” She raised her eyebrows, tilted her head. I thought she was joking. “I’m joking,” she clarified. “Just in case you haven’t figured me out yet. My sense of humour can be a little dark.”

“Let’s just play it by ear, then. Anyway I suppose it’s not a problem for us. It’ll just be the other two that might get mixed up.”

Almost on cue the buzzer rang. We both looked up and April indicated that I should go and answer it. I looked into the intercom camera for the second time that day and saw a short, slim woman, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, finger still poised over the door bell. A gloved finger. Disposable, surgical gloves.

“Hey,” I said into the intercom. “You must be Cora, right?”

There was a brief moment of static. “Yes, I’m Cora. Can you let me know which April you are? I’d prefer to be let in by the one that never isolated.” A slight pause. “No offence but I just like to be careful.”

I looked across at April to see if she’d caught the exchange. She shook her head, smiling. I couldn’t tell if she found it funny or insulting. She stood up and went across to the kettle to finish up making the tea. Pulled out three mugs. Just as I pressed the button to let Cora in April spoke:

“Let her drink some first but please let me tell her that it was me that made the tea.”