Category Archives: Flotsam Jetsam

Trace

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Cora remembered getting her first Medlet a little differently to the others. There had been a steady improvement in health tracking devices from ’20 onwards but none of them ever hit critical mass across a big enough part of a population to be useful in contact tracing. Governments argued with technology suppliers, nobody could agree a common platform, and some people just refused to wear them. Cora’s own view as a teenager was a more attenuated version of the prevailing mood in Scotland, sceptical and slightly distrustful. After the big Covid-27 outbreak in ’24 things changed. They mass produced the cheap but reliable Medlets and legislated that everyone should wear one, public mood had changed enough that it didn’t raise much debate. Scottish law changed later, holding out for an aligned approach across the EU that never came; there was a straight fault line between north and south.

Cora’s memory was acute because the moment she’d worn it on her wrist she’d felt nothing but guilt and remorse. She had sat in pubs with Rob, talked about freedom and the state and a whole load of bullshit about how nobody was going to tag and trace her. He’d been more laid back about it all, like he was about everything, but he’d said he’d agreed with her. She sometimes wondered if he’d liked seeing her all fired up like that: you’ve got the spirit in you, right enough, Cora. And he’d smile, watching her. She had been convinced that she was right, convinced in the way that only a seventeen year old can be convinced, all black and white before the world shows you that it’s grey. She was sure. And then he died, without warning, and she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

They had told her afterwards that there was no guarantee that it would have made any difference. It was just there as an early warning signal. Most times it’d be a false alarm, some usual temperature fluctuation, some mis-read fever. Most times. The sceptics still said that the point of the Medlets was never really about the personal warning, it was about the geo-tagging and the tracing, the links to the MedApp and what it allowed local enforcement to do in isolating and locking down pockets of communities. It wasn’t just the sceptics saying that, the scientists were too: they just disagreed on whether that was a good thing or not. Cora didn’t much care about the civil liberties arguments afterwards, she just wanted Rob back and if she could have made that happen, even if it meant everyone else had to stay at home forever then she wouldn’t have thought twice.

She watched the others freeze at the sight of the flashing red warning light on Aps’ Medlet. She knew they were torn between their impulse to reach for her, enfold her, reassure her that it’d be okay, that it was just a warning, torn between that and their fear. It was this abstract fear that they all had, that there was this thing out there that they couldn’t see and it might kill them, but now it wasn’t abstract: it was her. It was a momentary thing. Almost like the briefest inhalation of breath, a heartbeat, and then it passed. They all rushed over to her and smothered her in a jumble of arms and hands. Leah had come out from her room and had half run, half slipped down the stairs to join them in the solidarity of their embrace.

Within five minutes Aps’ phone rang. They all knew that it should but the efficiency of it still felt strange, intrusive. She picked up and had a short conversation with a Community Trace Officer, answering a standard set of questions about her symptoms (“none”) and where she was now, who she was with. That stuff was just for show, they knew exactly where she was and who she was with.

“CTO?” asked April as the call ended.

Aps nodded. “Yep, they’ve registered the warning and said that we can’t leave the house. They’ve dispatched a mobile unit to come round and assess me.”

“You okay?” said Leah.

“I… yeah, I’m okay. Just a bit shocked. I feel fine, maybe it’s a mistake.” She shook her wrist. “This is the new one they gave me this morning, maybe it’s not calibrated right or it’s faulty or something.”

“At least you weren’t long without one,” said Cora. “It’s better to know, right?”

“I guess,” said Aps. “I don’t understand. James left me a message, saying he’d found my old one and it was all showing ‘green’, everything was okay. How can it change so quickly? Don’t they normally cycle through ‘amber’ and stuff first?”

“They’re pretty sensitive now, I think,” said Cora. “Better to be safe than sorry. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“God, I’m sorry guys,” said Aps. “You should probably all stay away from me or something.”

“Not happening,” said Leah.

“Nope,” said April. “If you’ve got it, we’ve got it. Anyway, I’m Miss Immunity, remember? They tested me practically to destruction so I’m prepared to take my chances on a probably rogue Medlet reading.”

“Do you think I should ring James? Tell him?” said Aps.

“You won’t need to, they’ll do a full contact trace if they follow protocol. Everyone you’ve been near in the last ten days. If you’ve been enough of a social butterfly you might put the whole town back in lockdown.”

“Jesus,” said Aps.

“Really?” said April. “When did you meet him? That’s going to be a bugger to contact trace. At least you know he’ll forgive you.”

“Hey, lapsed Catholic here,” said Leah. “You don’t hear me making jokes about your religion, do you?”

“Satan’s just not that funny,” said April, smirking. “No offence meant. I was just trying to lighten the mood. It’s a new thing I’m trying.”

“Say ten Hail Mary’s and we’ll say nothing else about it,” said Leah.

They saw the flashing lights through the window, the room winking in blues and reds, illuminating their faces as they turned towards the door. The bell rang and Leah, Cora, and April stood first, forming a barrier between Aps and the world outside. The bell rang again, followed by a knock, and a voice calling CTO. 

“It’s okay,” said Aps. “It’s going to be okay.” She slipped in between them and walked to the door, lifting her hand to open it, red light flashing on her wrist.

Better red than dead

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“Where’s Leah?” asked Aps. When they’d returned from the police station she’d headed straight for the shower. She’d been in there so long that Cora had knocked on the door, asked if she was okay. She’d been leaning against the tiles, letting the water cascade down on to her head, letting it wash her eyes clear of tears, hoping she could just rinse the whole experience away. She’d told Cora that she was fine and they’d left her to calm down and waited for her downstairs.

“I think she went to call home,” said April. “She was pretty shaken up.”

“I know how she feels,” said Aps. “Have we got any wine?”

Cora reached into the fridge. There was a folded piece of paper in front of a solitary bottle of white at the back on the top shelf; someone had scrawled ‘in case of emergencies break glass’ on it. Cora pulled out the bottle and held up the paper to the others: “This must qualify, right?”

“It’s the exact set of circumstances I had in mind when I put it there,” said April.

They drank and talked. Aps told them what had happened the night before with James, she gave them a version that was sympathetic to him, she didn’t even really know why except that the thought that the night before her worst ever morning after had been a bit of a letdown was too much to cope with right now. They poured her more wine and she told them about the arrest, about the journey in the police car, and the subsequent questions and tests.

“What tests?” said April, leaning forwards. “What did they do to you?”

“Just bloods I think. And temperature, it seemed pretty standard,” said Aps. “They had me a secure isolation unit, a nurse did them. I guess she was a nurse, anyway.”

“Can they do that?” asked Cora. “Just run tests.”

“I think so,” said April. “I think it was one of the changes a couple of years ago. If you’re under caution I think they can take fluids and insist on a full viral check. If you’re out without your Medlet then it makes everyone get pretty twitchy.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” said Aps. “I think I was in shock. I just went along with it all. I barely remembered to ask to make a call and then I phoned you guys. Thank you, by the way. Thank you for coming.”

“Don’t be soft,” said Cora. “Of course we would come.”

“Yeah, it was your turn to clean the bathrooms on the rota,” said April, smiling.

“This must get me out of that,” said Aps. “Come on, what’s a girl got to do?”

“Oh, you’d need to have at least spent a night in the cells to get out of that,” said April. “You just had a scary arrest, some mildly intrusive medical tests, and a caution. That barely offsets your night of passion with Jamesy boy.”

“Yeah, and we’ve totally gone easy on asking you about that,” added Cora. “Details will be required at a later date. All the details.”

Aps listened to them talk for a bit, swapping slightly lewd observations about what her night had been like, most of them better than the reality. She picked at the strips of tape holding the cotton wool in place on her arm from where they’d scraped at her skin for a blood sample. She teased up the end of the tape and pulled it away quickly. There was a small, red circle on the inside of her arm. It had all happened in a blur and she tried to sort the fragments of her memory to form a clearer recollection of what had happened. She’d rolled up her sleeve, that part was clear. Then she’d looked away. It was something she’d done since she was a kid, she’d never really liked needles and blood. Just look away. There’ll be a small scratch and then you won’t feel a thing. Just like the night before. When she looked back she was being taped up.

Aps’ phone started to vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that it was James trying to call; she let it ring through to voicemail. “It’s James,” she said to the others, acknowledging their enquiring looks.

“He’s certainly keen,” said Cora. “You going to answer?”

Aps shook her head and waited for her phone to ring again if he’d left a message. He had. She picked up. “Hey, er, Aps, it’s me, James. Thanks for a lovely night. I just thought you should know that you left your Medlet here. I can drop it round if it’s easier for you. Nothing to worry about, it’s all flashing green.”

“Voicemail,” said Aps. “He’s found my missing Medlet and wants to drop it round.”

“At least it wasn’t your pants,” said April. “Could have been way more embarrassing.”

“That will be covered in the details required at a later date,” said Cora. ” And, for the record, I don’t believe that what Aps was wearing that night would have been described as pants. The lady has some class.”

“Best pants, then,” said April. “Probably not the ones with the bunny rabbits on.”

“How do you know about those?” said Aps, sitting up suddenly.

“Shared house. Shared washing machine. No secrets,” said April. “They’re cute. I mean, I wouldn’t wear them, not being, you know, seven, but they’re cute. Very you.”

Aps was about to reply when she felt a vibrating sensation on her wrist. An urgent tightening. She looked down at the new Medlet they’d given her at the police station and instead of the soft green light she’d seen for as long as she had worn one – green equals clean – she saw an angry, blinking red pulse. It had been drilled into them for years. Red was a warning. Red meant lockdown, seek help. Better red than dead.

Babbo, bambina

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She could still remember how frightened she had been. She had been thirteen years old, her first time in Milan, a late birthday present from her parents. The stadium tour at the San Siro seemed to be more of a present for Papa but, later, he had followed them first round the shops and then the Duomo without complaint so they had all visited their own cathedrals. The trouble had started as they spilled out into the piazza.

There was a crowd of protesters gathering in the square, maybe three hundred or so people, dressed in a dazzling rainbow array of colours. Hoisted placards for Sinistra Italiana and Giustizia e Liberta jostled for attention and various chants and songs broke out, stalled, and eventually settled on a repeated call for freedom. Liberta, liberta, liberta. Leah’s parents exchanged a glance and her father pointed over to the other side of the square where a similarly sized group was beginning to form. Similar in size but immediately different in tone; scarves pulled up over the bottom of faces, balaclavas, flags, a few signs proclaiming for Lega Nord, some other banners Leah didn’t fully understand. Someone lit a flare, it fizzed into a red, steaming light, and launched it into the middle of the square.

Her parents pulled her across the square as quickly as they could as the groups converged. For years her father berated himself for not thinking, they should have just turned and gone back into the cathedral, waited it out. More flares were thrown and then, unseen by Leah until now, groups of Carabinieri armed with riot shields and batons charged the freedom group. They didn’t bother to disguise their allegiance and the square descended into panic as the ragtag representatives of the left were either beaten or chased away by the police and a mob. Her father wore a small lapel button in support of Sinistra Italiana. It was something he’d taken to wearing since they’d returned from Britain, his small gesture of defiance against what he saw as his country sliding, lurching to the right in the confusion after the outbreaks. As the Carabinieri passed them one lifted a baton as if to strike him. Papa! Babbo! She had shouted and tried to put herself in the way. Another policeman stopped, gestured at the Inter shirt he was still wearing under his jacket, and they exchanged a few words before opting to leave him alone. She heard them repeating ‘Babbo’ and laughing.

Her father had left Britain, taken them all back ‘home’, after the Brexit vote. Leah had never noticed anything really change but she didn’t have an accent, nothing changed in the playground, nobody told her it wasn’t her country. When Italy left the EU in ’23 her father seemed to retreat in to himself, as if he wanted to turn his back on all of it, bunker them down in their little corner of Lake Como and pretend that none of it affected them. And mostly it didn’t, not really, day to day. The lockdown protocols became stricter, the border controls tightened, they got used to curfews, sometimes understandable, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, and they got used to wearing a health tracking bracelet. But virtually the whole world got used to that. Italy wasn’t so special.

For her it had all seemed the other way round. She’d grown up in the Italy that he grew to despise but without any of the memories of how it’d been before. It was hard not to love the mountains around the great lake but all of the rose-tinted nostalgia she had was for her earlier childhood in Britain and she knew that was partly why she’d wanted to come back. It had broken his heart but it was breaking hers to stay.

The experience with Aps and the police station had shaken her more than she was prepared to admit to the others. Too many memories. She read the news, heard the stories, so she wasn’t sure why she’d been so shocked. Everyone knew you couldn’t be out without your Medlet, everyone knew the gist, if not the detail, of the Viral Health Act and the extensions to the Criminal Justice Bill. For her generation it had been like one of those sets of terms and conditions you get when you download an app, something you trusted was okay and clicked ‘accept’. For the greater good. Even when the health services were built back up after the neglect in the early ’00s and contact tracing was sorted out they never seemed to row back the changes in the legislation. She’d just gotten used to it like they all had as they cycled through the repeated outbreaks of the last nine years.

Leah picked up her phone and placed a video call home. Her mum picked up and they talked quietly, just like they usually did. She knew that Papa would appear briefly at some point, wave and then pretend that he had something that he was in the middle of. She’d never called him Babbo since that day in the square, it had felt like that day was her line between childhood and adolescence. It felt baby-ish. Bambina. She’d told him to stop calling her that.

He appeared over her mother’s shoulder, bent down and waved into the camera, almost immediately turning to move away.

“Babbo,” she called, almost without thinking. He stopped, half turned, and looked back at the screen. Leah was crying, the phone shaking slightly in her hand. Softly, over and over, she said ‘babbo’.

He put his hand on her mother’s shoulder, something in his grip must have signalled to her to move as she relinquished the chair so that he could sit and face into the computer screen they had set up on the kitchen table. The one where Leah had sat poring over her homework.

“Bambino,” he said. “Sono qui. I am here. I am here.”

Aps arrested

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I had thought about walking the long way home in the early sunshine, taking an extended morning after walk of shame or stride of pride depending on your point of view. I wasn’t ashamed to be honest but it hadn’t been a night to take much satisfaction in either. The amble of ambivalence? Whatever. My desire for a shower trumped all.

I was half way back when they stopped me. Two police officers approached from Redland Park, I didn’t think much about it until they got a little closer and I realised they hadn’t shifted their gaze from me. They were wearing the mask attachments on their helmets, I’d only really seen that in footage of what they did during lockdown, patrolling. You didn’t see it on the streets; if they needed masks you were usually indoors.

“We need to take you back to the station, Miss Daniels,”

I’d read about the CCTV and ID bank upgrades but it still took me by surprise to be addressed by name. “I don’t understand…,” I started.

“We’re placing you under arrest under the Viral Health Act, 2024….” It was the guy that continued talking, reading out my rights, but I didn’t hear the words. I felt exposed, rubbed at my arm and wished that I hadn’t taken my jacket off. It was the other one, the woman, that placed a firm, gloved hand on my shoulder and began to escort me up the street. They didn’t say much and I was too shocked to make much sense, just repeatedly asking what I had done. “We’ll tell you more when you’re secured from the public, Miss Daniels.”

They had a car parked around the corner on Whiteladies Road. I sat in the back, a screen sealing them off from me. It must have been soundproof because I could see the guy talking into a walkie-talkie but I couldn’t hear him. She drove. No sirens, no flashing lights, just me sitting in silence as we passed the University. I thought there was a police station down near the Royal Infirmary so I assumed we were going there. I only knew where the Infirmary was because directions to the nearest hospital had been in the student welcome pack we’d all got, part of the viral awareness literature that had been pushed on us since we were at school but updated a bit now we were older. Mainly stuff about risks through fluid exchange, the old romantics. I was feeling a little calmer, the strange quiet in the back of the car had helped me gather my thoughts. It must be a mistake. Or something silly. It’ll be fine.

In the station they took me straight to a temporary ICU. I didn’t even know they had them but so many places had isolation units for emergencies now that it didn’t surprise me. Technically it wasn’t a cell and they didn’t seem to lock the door but someone stayed outside the whole time, I could see him through the porthole window. They told me that someone would attend to me soon and to make myself comfortable. I paced up and down for a bit and tried to think through what I needed to ask, what I was entitled to. Most of my police procedural knowledge was from that night me and the girls had watched those VSI re-runs and I was pretty sure screaming for my attorney wasn’t going to help. I didn’t have one, for a start, unless Jane Atkins, a girl I’d met in the first term who was studying law counted, and I had a nagging feeling they weren’t even called attorney’s in the UK. All the times someone had asked for a phone call on the show seemed to have worked though so maybe that was legit.

Eventually a woman came in, asked me a few health questions, and requested to take a blood test.

“Listen, you can refuse,” she said. “But then I just have to get a warrant processed as part of your arrest and we do the test anyway and all you’ve achieved is some time and pissing everyone off.”

I let her scratch into my arm, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She even managed a thin smile and a muttered ‘thank you’. As she was finishing up, blotting a small piece of cotton wool onto the place she’d made the incision, deftly taping it down, she moved her hand down my arm and tapped my bare wrist.

“You know why you’re here, right?” She tapped again and looked at me and I realised I wasn’t wearing my MedLet. The good parts of last night came back to me, the kissing parts, the undressing parts, the taking off my MedLet part.

“It’s just a mistake,” I said quickly. “I haven’t got any symptoms, I’m not hiding anything. I just stayed at a friend’s house last night, I must have taken it off to sleep and forgotten it. You can’t be serious?”

She smiled, glanced up at my slightly disheveled hair. “Well I hope your ‘friend’ was worth it because, unfortunately, failure to wear a health monitoring and tracking device is serious and can carry a big penalty. Let’s hope you’re not carrying. You might just get a caution if you’re clean.”

“What do we do now?” I said.

“I need some time to run the test diagnostic. In the meantime you wait here.”

My earlier calm had evaporated now and all I could think to lean on were some of the lines I’d rehearsed in my mind earlier. “Can I make a phone call?”. She nodded, said to use my own mobile but she’d wait while I just made one. I didn’t know who could help or what anyone was allowed to do. I called Leah and burst into tears when she picked up. She listened as I explained what had happened, forcing the words out through sobs and shortness of breath. There was no hesitation on the other end of the line.

“Hang on, Aps, we’re coming.”

No kiss and tell

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“So how was it?” asked Leah as soon as Aps let herself in to the house.

“I am not taking questions at this time,” said Aps, slipping her denim jacket off and slinging it across the bannister in the hall. The last couple of weeks had been warm, late Spring looking like it was going to full bloom into Summer, and they’d all been grateful that lockdown had been short.

“Oh, you so are,” said Leah, grabbing her by the shoulders and guiding her into the kitchen. “Check you out with the strapless dress and the perfume and the hair cascading just perfectly across those exposed shoulders. It must be getting serious. Tell me everything.”

“Are you hitting on me?” said Aps, smirking. “It wasn’t for him. I dress to make myself feel good.” Leah raised her eyebrows and nodded sarcastically. “And anyway this is just an old halter my sister didn’t want anymore. Nothing special.”

April had heard their voices and set aside the essay she was working on to join them. She  stopped in the doorway to the kitchen and turned to Leah throwing her arms up in exaggerated surprise. “Leah, who is this pretty, pretty lady? You did not tell me we were expecting a guest?”

“We’re really going to have to do some more work on those gestures,” said Leah. “You need to give it the full Italian. Like I showed you. I’m only half Italian and even I can give it full.” She stood up and threw her arms explosively, catching the lightshade above the kitchen table, leaving it swinging in the ceiling.

“Hey, I’d quite like to get the deposit back when we leave,” said April, reaching up and grabbing the shade, stopping it from moving. “I’m prepared to sacrifice fully playing out a stereotype for that.”

“It’s only a stereotype because it’s true. I can say that, you can’t.” said Leah. “We’re an expressive people.”

“Expressive is not my strongest suit,” replied April. “Anyway, I think we’re getting sidetracked. You were going to introduce me to this mysterious, beautiful stranger. She looks sort of familiar. Like someone I used to know… just, I don’t know, just shinier.”

Aps ran the tap and poured herself a glass of water, listening to them continue their performance. She said nothing until she was reasonably sure they’d finished.

“Alright, I’ll spill,” she said. The others pulled up chairs.

“Wait, I need to prepare myself,” said Leah. “What are we talking, here? Is this all going to be strictly rated PG, mild peril, moderate swearing, or are we settling in for an 18?”

“Well, spoilers, there’s no scenes of a sexual nature,” said Aps. “There may be violence soon though if we make it to a fourth film.”

“I’m not going to pretend I’m not a bit disappointed at the lack of adult themes in this story but impending violence sounds interesting. Continue,” said Leah.

“There’s not that much to tell. It was nice. He was nice. Is nice. Listen, I do think I like him, he’s sweet and attentive and he’s pretty funny when he remembers that he doesn’t have to be nervous,”

“How many dates now?” asked April.

“If you don’t count the online chat in lockdown then this was number three. So there’s nothing to stress about, right? It’s early days. There’s something there. Or at least I think there is. Maybe he doesn’t feel anything. Maybe we’ll just be friends.” Aps smiled at them.

She had enjoyed the time with James again, a walk across the Downs and a coffee in Clifton. He’d told her about a couple of bands he wanted to see over the summer, they’d talked a bit about what it must have been to like to go to Glastonbury, what it must have been like to be in any big gathering outside of a place where all the usual health checks could be run on everyone attending. They’d talked a bit about their families, his parents were both in medicine but he didn’t have the grades and was studying Politics. He’d started to talk earnestly about the balance between individual freedoms and what was good for society but had stopped himself. Aps thought he’d misinterpreted her reaction, mistakenly thought she wasn’t interested but he’d changed the subject even after she’d said that her listening face looked a lot like her bored face. She told him about her sisters, joked that he’d probably get on better with her eldest sibling. They could make playlists for each other.

“Surely he took the hint when you said he might prefer your sister?” said April.

“Not so much,” said Aps. “The stupid thing is that I think he is interested, he’s just pretty shy and pretty bad at picking up signals.”

“Do you want us to intervene?” said Leah. Aps looked genuinely horrified.

“God, no. There’s a reason I haven’t suggested he comes back here. It’s taken me three dates to get him to hold eye contact for more than three seconds. I’m going to stick with it a bit longer. You have to promise, by the way, to behave on Saturday. He’s going to the Kandi and I said I’d see him there.”

“I’ll keep them in line,” said Cora. The others didn’t know how long she’d been there, she must have slipped in whilst they were talking and was stood leaning on the doorframe. “He sounds promising. Quiet and slow can work out good. Take it from me, Rob was like that early on.” She said it quietly, eyes down, but she lifted her head back up and smiled at Aps.

“You know we wouldn’t really freak him out, don’t you?” said Leah, contrite. “Unless you want us to, obviously.”

“Don’t worry,” said Aps. “I’m going to let him take it slow I think.” She paused. “Or I might see how many drinks he has Saturday and then just push him into a dark corner and kiss him.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Leah. “We’ll cut off his escape route.” She caught Aps’ frown. “Sorry, not that he will want to escape, of course.”

“Nobody would want to escape the pretty lady,” said April, clutching her hands together and shaking them in front of her face.

“Still not enough,” said Leah. “More expression.”

“They’ll be carving that on my grave,” said April.

 

Lockdown: Aps

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I hadn’t told the others yet that he’d started messaging me. I don’t think they’d noticed us talking in the club, it was the week after April had hit that idiot that had been harassing Cora at the bar. They can’t have noticed because there’s no way they would have kept their mouths shut. It had seemed to happen quite naturally in the end, I’d turned away from the bar and bumped in to him, spilling most of my drink over his arm. It seemed natural although I was a bit suspicious that he’d finally decided that the only way he could work up the nerve to speak to me was by forcing us into a collision. He’d insisted it was all his fault – it wasn’t – and bought me another drink. I think the others were dancing to Marilyn Manson but I didn’t like the heavier stuff.

“His real name’s Brian,” he shouted over the noise.

“Your name’s Brian?” I shouted back, mishearing.

“No. I’m James,” he said, leaning in slightly closer to be heard. “Marilyn Manson. His real name is Brian. Kinda funny isn’t it?”

I shook my head, decided to have some fun with him. “Not really, James. My name’s Bryony and I’ve got a brother called Brian. It’s been in my family for generations. My dad can trace us back to Brian’s in the seventeen hundreds.”

For a moment I thought I had him. He looked down, raised his palms in apology, and was just about to stammer an apology when he caught the smile on my face, noticed the eyebrow raised in what I hoped gave me a look of arch amusement and not one of someone who’d had half a botched face lift. He laughed and apologised anyway. He spent quite a lot of the conversation apologising but I found his gentle nervousness kind of sweet. Unthreatening. And he had kind, green eyes that peered out from under a mop of curly brown hair. I wasn’t sure if I fancied him but there was something about him that I liked.

We’d swapped numbers at the bar and he’d left with a bunch of friends before the others reappeared from the dance floor. He’d messaged me the next day. I thought that was kind of sweet as well but I left an industry standard two days before I texted him back. Since then we’d been in touch pretty much every day and just before lockdown I was going to suggest we meet up, it was becoming evident that I’d be waiting quite a while if I wanted him to make the first move. It was still sweet and way preferable to the guy in the first term that had started sending me unsolicited dick pics but I did want him to show a bit of courage. Some backbone. Just, you know, no other kind of bone.

Lockdown had brought a different intensity to the messages. I figured he’d done the same thing as me and was using his laptop to write instead of his phone and it had meant that our exchanges grew longer. It felt almost old fashioned, like we were in a Jane Austen novel. Was that right? Were they the ones where formal gentlemen wrote stately letters of courtship to regal ladies? What did I know. I was a chemist and checked out of English at GCSE. Anyway, we moved from half sentences, emojis and gifs to paragraphs and punctuation. I had a suspicion that he was looking to hit me with some poetry.

On the third night he sent me a link to a livestream happening in a couple of hours. Phoebe Bridgers. I knew her a little bit, my eldest sister, Hannah, used to make me playlists to, in her words, educate me when I was younger. She tended to have songs that she’d regularly string together in sequence, little patterns that she was obviously pleased with, or maybe she just forgot that she’d put them on some of the other mixes for me already. One went from Fiona Apple’s cover of ‘Across The Universe’ in to Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Motion Sickness’ and then out to the whole of Emmylou Harris’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ album. It was a great record but I wasn’t sure if she meant to add all of it or just made a mistake. I never asked her because she got a bit prickly if I questioned anything to do with her music. I always thought she was a bit snobby about it; she still hasn’t really forgiven me for going to that Little Mix reunion gig last year.

It was pretty late by the time the stream started but it was coming from the East Coast in the States so we must have been a few hours ahead. I had my screen divided between the music and a chat window with James. I didn’t really notice at first but after the first few songs I realised that he wouldn’t message me whilst she was singing, like he was at a real gig and didn’t want to talk during the songs. If I was honest I was finding him a bit too intense. It was getting a bit claustrophobic in the house as it was, I knew Cora was particularly finding it tough, and I was looking for an escape, a connection. In a way it wasn’t fair to try and judge how this might go when things went back to normal, everyone coped with the lockdowns differently, but then I guess that these periods of community quarantine were part of ‘normal’ now so maybe it wasn’t so unfair after all. I think I just wanted to imagine that if we ever really watched her play in concert that, at some point he’d reach for my hand and not let go until we were both clapping her back for an encore. It was late and I was tired. I left the laptop running but crawled into bed as she was finishing up another one I knew from my sister. It was another sad one but that was Hannah. I drifted off with the song’s coda whispering me down into sleep: anyway don’t be a stranger, don’t be a stranger.

I guess that was our first date.

Lockdown: Cora

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The second day was always the hardest. There were too many memories bound up in day two, too many things had happened, too fast, that each time she was locked down now Cora knew she would relive them. This time almost too slowly to bear. Day two was the last day she’d spoken to Rob.

‘That’s some cosy looking isolation, wish I could join you’. That first morning he’d called her from the ICU in Inverness, pretty much as soon as he’d cleared the decontamination process and been admitted. They’d talked. They’d both kept it light. People went into isolation all the time, people came out all the time. Cora hadn’t seen inside one of the units before and so Rob gave her a mock tour of the room, flipping the camera from front to back on the tablet they’d given him and walking it round. From some angles you might have thought he’d moved to some new student digs, was settling into a one of those small halls-of-residence bedrooms, maybe ten square feet, bare walls waiting to be covered in posters, single bed, a chair, a desk. The details gave it away though. If you saw the bottom of the bed you could see the metal frame and the hydraulics that would lift and move its mattress; you’d see the wheels locked by brakes; you’d see pristine sheets tucked tight under the corners with a precision that didn’t belong to a first year undergraduate. If you saw the floors you’d see them flow up and into the walls, all nooks and crevices that might host dust or debris sculpted away in the design. If you were shown the tiny wet room adjoining, separated by a hanging, plasticky curtain, then you’d see the pull cord next to the toilet marked emergency, and you’d see the fold out shower chair attached to the wall. Most of all, as the camera swung around, Cora saw the medical monitor, a black LCD screen criss crossed with lines and numbers she didn’t understand. 

Cora had some old video on her phone of the day they’d gone up to Fort George. It was the footage she always came back to when she missed him; she liked to see him move, it was how she remembered him, full of energy and life. It was just a couple of sequences of them goofing around: Rob marching across the wooden slatted bridge at the Fort entrance and swapping salutes with a party of young kids being shepherded out by their teacher; Rob sitting astride one of the cannons overlooking the battlements out to the sea, her calling ‘if only’ and then the film shaking, briefly flipping to a view of the sky, as he jumped down and ran across to lift her in a hug. The video stopped but the memory ran on in her mind.

All through that first day they’d been in contact. There were times that he’d have to dial off, the hiss of the door decompressing signalling the arrival of a masked nurse or doctor. She never saw what they did, never really saw them at all, not properly at least. All she could see was just a pair of eyes behind protective goggles. In those gaps whilst they couldn’t speak she imagined their lives, sketched out a fictional version of these people that she had never met, these people that were looking after Rob. She gave them names and friends, lovers, family. She sent them on holiday, stripped them out of their scrubs and put them in swimming trunks and bikinis, let them splash in a hotel pool or swim some stretch of deserted shoreline. Somewhere hot. She made them endless cups of tea. She stole into their houses on Christmas Eve, after they went to bed, and padded out the pile of presents under their trees. She knitted them scarves, gave money to their favourite charities, watched them cheer on their football team (she always made it Caley), listened to their dreams, and whispered hope in their ears when they got scared. The first couple of times it was the same nurse. Cora had managed to blurt out her thanks before he’d made Rob switch off the camera, he’d waved to her briefly and said sorry that he had to cut them off. The others never had time to acknowledge her but that was okay. She understood. She was the one with all this useless time and so she imagined them all, talked to them all, thanked them all.

However many lockdowns she’d been through Cora knew that they’d all, always, be about that first one. When they’d taken her to soft isolation – no symptoms, all screening clear, just a precaution – she’d been so numb that she could barely process what was happening. There was someone inside of her screaming, scorched in agony, but she had hidden her away. She wasn’t for anyone else to see. Nobody could help her anyway. Everyone said the same thing, that it would take time, that it would get better with time, give it time, take your time, time heals. She didn’t believe it then and, now, she knew that time didn’t change how you felt about what happened: you just learned to carry the pain better.

The second day they only spoke once, early in the morning. Contact was restricted during the night so that patients could rest. Cora hadn’t really slept, impatient for the time that they were allowed to restore their link. She was tired from her restless night and from keeping up the face they’d both, undiscussed, agreed on as their way to see this through. When her phone started to vibrate she almost dropped it in her eagerness to answer. She slid the ‘call accept’ button on the screen and Rob’s face appeared. All her pent up anticipation melted into anxiety. He looked pale, stubble on his cheeks standing out in contrast to his grey-white pallor. He was coughing almost as soon as the call started and seemed to need a few moments after each sentence to catch his breath. She told him to rest, to not speak, just lay down and listen to her voice. She stumbled over repeated reassurances that everything would be okay, that he was in the best place, that he was young and healthy and there was nothing to worry about. It’s just a bad strain, this one, everyone’s saying it. Just a bad one but we’ll get through it. Just lie down and rest. She didn’t know whether she was saying it all for him or for herself. They spent a few minutes in silence. Rob had rolled on to his side on the bed and had propped up the screen against the wall, facing him. It seemed to help his coughing and she watched his chest settle into a steady rise and fall. They stayed like that until she heard the door open in his room and a gloved hand reached over to switch off the screen. 

She’d never told him that she loved him. That was what she remembered in lockdown now. That second day, in those few moments on that call, she hadn’t told him. She knew that he’d known, he must have known, but she hadn’t told him. On the days that she was kinder to herself she knew it wasn’t anybody’s fault, that neither of them could have known that they wouldn’t speak again, but she didn’t always have days when she was kind to herself. And she never had them during lockdowns.

Lockdown: Leah

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The lockdown started on Good Friday. They’d all seen the pulsing amber light on their Medlets, all checked the subsequent notifications on their phones. It was community based, nothing national, the sort of thing that cropped up every few months. More often than not they were false alarms.

“Looks like we’re spending Easter in here, together,” said Leah.

“How convenient, I’d been giving up staying in for Lent,” said Cora. “What is it? Standard trace and erase?” She mimed pointing a gun with her fingers, hands clasped together, brought them up to her lips and blew.

“You’ve been watching too much VSI,” said Leah.

“I love that show,” said Aps. She’d joined them in the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, hair bundled up in a towel. “You know the ‘erase’ is an anti-viral delivered through an injection? They just gave them those stupid dart guns in VSI to make it more dramatic.”

“Next you’ll be telling me real hazmat suits aren’t skin tight and cut to the cleavage.”

“Sorry to spoil it for you. Male Med Police officers don’t regularly have to strip to the waist because their suit’s been compromised either,” said Aps. “And I think they took a fair bit of license with the decontamination showers.”

“True,” said Leah. “I thought the point of a shower was to get clean. Some of those scenes are downright dirty.”

“We’re watching it tonight, right?”

“God, yes,” said Leah.”

In the end the three of them sat up watching old TV shows. April stayed in her room until later, finally coming down to join them as the credits rolled over some hospital drama she didn’t recognise. The others had gotten used to her taking time out to be on her own; just need some time back in my coffin was her stock response if any of them asked if she was okay. It was getting late and the room was dark save for the images on the TV. April lit the pair of candles they had set up above the fireplace and then flicked on the fairy lights that they’d draped around the picture above it. When they’d moved in it had been something the University had left, a picture of balloons lifting off over the Clifton Suspension Bridge, but they’d replaced it with a Rothko print that Cora had picked up in the village. A swathe of red paint with a careless blue rectangle at the bottom. As the weeks had passed they’d each started to stick photos on it, usually just mini print outs of pictures of their nights out.

“April bringing the vibes,” said Cora.

April bowed her head. “I will be your guide through this enforced vigil. I will tend the flames and be the keeper of the holy fairy lights from Wilkos.”

“We used to sit up at home on Good Friday,” said Leah. “It was the most Catholic my dad got. Nothing for the whole year, no confession, no mass, not a whisper, and then Easter would come around and it was like he’d had a visitation. I bet him and mum are sitting there now. He will have dusted off the painting of Saint Pio. It’s the only time he takes down his signed photo of the Inter squad from 2010.”

“You must miss them,” said Aps. “Has he come around yet?”

“It’s complicated,” said Leah. “I do miss them but me and dad are still barely speaking. He’ll appear sometimes in the background on mine and mum’s video calls. Ciao piccola. That’s about as much as I’ll get, maybe a wave, and then he’s gone again. I don’t know. When he gets his mind set he’s pretty hard to budge.”

“Like father, like…,” started Cora. Leah pulled out the cushion she was resting on and flung it across the room at her.

“Hey, I am not at all like that!”

“So, that whole performance last month when you made us stop the Uber because the driver had a Britain Rising tattoo on his neck and we had to walk home across the Downs at half one in the morning, wasn’t, you know, a bit like that?” said Cora.

“Not at all. He was an asshole. You guys need to take that stuff seriously. I know you think all these little far right nationalists are a bit of a joke but that’s how they start. They nearly ruined Italy. Dad hated what happened after all the first waves of infections. Everyone was scared and they took advantage of it, no-one really stopped to work out what we were signing up to,” said Leah.

“You were close, weren’t you,” said April suddenly. She’d taken her usual position on the floor, legs curled up underneath herself.

“Yes, we were. It’s a cliche but I was his princess, he was my papa. He taught me everything about his home – the language, the culture, food, football – and he used to take me out boating on the lake, just so we could talk I think. It was like he wanted to infuse Italy in to me, like he thought he had to make up for the fact that I wasn’t born there. And I loved it. I still love it. In all sorts of ways it is my home but it just got… I don’t know, it just got small.”

“You should call him,” said April. “Not tonight, not whilst he’s enraptured with Saint… what was his name again?”

“Pio,” said Leah. “He’s a biggie. Stigmata, healing, the works. Actually, with the whole stigmata deal you’d probably like him…”

April grinned. “I am a multi-denominational goth. If you insist on labelling me a goth.” She looked down at the long black dress wrapped around her legs, intricate lace detail decorating the hem. “Okay, I am looking pretty gothy today. But I’m interested in all faiths, all creeds, and all peoples, bleeding wrists not essential. Seriously, you should call him. While we’re in lockdown. Call him.”

It was late. Aps had already been yawning for the past half hour, so, one by one, they turned in for bed. Leah was last up, pausing to switch off the fairy lights, leaving their mosaic of pictures scattered across the Rothko illuminated just by the candles. The faces of her friends flickering in and out of view in the dancing light. One of the photos was a passport sized shot of Menaggio, one of hundreds she’d taken from the lake that summer she’d helped out running the ferries. The sun was slipping down past the mountains behind the town leaving it bathed in a warm, darkening orange glow. She touched the image with one hand, executed a half-remembered sign of the cross with her other, and whispered good-night.

Leah

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Her father didn’t understand and his English was good enough that it wasn’t the language barrier that separated them on her decision. He will come around. Her mother had tried to bridge the divide, like she always did, but perhaps she felt like this one was all her fault. Leah didn’t blame her but she didn’t want to stay either. She loved them but it wasn’t enough.

The ferry was back running after the temporary lock-down and she wanted to ride the loop around the lake one last time before she left. Ciao Lia. Andrea was running the boat today and smiled at her as she embarked, waving away her offer the fare. Gratuito. She touched her fingers to her lips by way of thanks. She’d helped out last summer, it had been a good season uninterrupted by any significant outbreak. There’d been a stretch of two months that had almost felt like the kind of summers that her father had told her about; the ones he’d been chasing after when he dragged them back from England. The town had needed the visitors. The subsidies weren’t enough.

The boat was almost empty so she slipped through the door at the stern. Pooled diesel spills on the surface caught refracted rainbows and she stared at them, lost in thought, until they abruptly disappeared in a surge of spray as Andrea gunned the throttle. She inhaled, wanting to hold that smell, rust and oil and the dirty water around the dock, in her memory. It reminded her of when they’d first arrived. An eight year old girl, bouncing in excitement, one hand on the rail, the other clutching her father’s hand as they watched the picture-perfect rows of yellow and orange houses loom larger and larger as they approached their new home. She remembered the mountains framing the town and asking if they were living in a fairytale. Am I the princess, papa? He had ruffled her hair and laughed. Sempre. Sempre. She hadn’t realised he had meant it quite so literally. She rode the ferry across to Varenna, on to Bellagio, and then back.

When she’d told him she thought that her choice of University might soften the blow. He knew Bristol, it was where him and mum had met, they’d even settled there a couple of years after she’d been born. He’d worked as chef whilst mum had juggled looking after her and studying for an accountancy qualification she never finished. They’d always wanted for him to open his own restaurant – I will show them the real Italian food – but it was tough to save in those early years. After the vote in 2016 something changed. Leah never understood why he stopped learning English, why she spent so many evenings lying on her bed listening to raised voices downstairs, or why, one day, her parents sat her down and told her they were going to move. We’re going home. She’d always thought that was an odd thing for her mum to say: she was from Clevedon.

At first it’d been everything her father had promised. He’d taken back on running the family pizzeria, making good on his boast to show off the authentic cooking of his homeland, mostly to tourists but respected enough locally to generate a steady flow of covers even in the off seasons. Leah had gotten used to everyone spelling her name Lia and had quickly picked up Italian. In some ways those first couple of years were the closest her and dad ever were, their conversations running faster and faster as she raced ahead of her mum in her understanding. She even learned to swear in Italian before English, listening to him with his brothers watching Inter on the TV, shouting words she only deciphered by sharing them in the playground to delighted laughter and then explanation. It was the sort of explanation that involved graphic mimes with fingers poked between a circle made with the other hand which, eventually, had meant that her mum had needed to explain a number of other things to her. It was also the end of her being allowed to watch I Nerazzurri. Or, at least, to watch them with her father’s commentary.

It was only after the outbreaks that things changed. The first lockdown in ’20 had hurt the community – they lost friends, the visitors stopped coming, businesses closed – but they’d all assumed it would end. That things would return to normal. The town would bear a scar, they’d always remember, but eventually they would settle back into being the bustling summer hub on the banks of the Como that they’d been before. But then the mutated strains began to appear, each time they thought they’d dampened down the embers there’d be a fresh fire. It was years before the region even settled down into what they now understood as their regular rhythms: open for business, temporary lockdown, open for business, lockdown. At least we are healthy. Her parents put a brave face on it and, somehow, the three of them never fell ill, physically at least, but the staccato patterns of their new existence took its toll on them all.

Leah had decided to leave after the lockdown in ’27. It had been strain 31 or 32, she had given up keeping track, and she’d resolved to take up a place at University in England. In the end she’d deferred for another year, thinking that the promise of helping out in the restaurant and on the boats for one more season might placate her father. It just seemed to make her eventual departure harder, as if he’d read her postponement as a cancellation and felt twice as betrayed when she followed through on her plan to go.

Back from her farewell ferry trip she packed and prepared to leave. He was out and she didn’t expect him back before she had to get the train to Milan. Mum would walk her to the station. The last thing she packed was an old photo of the three of them, taken just after they’d first arrived, down at the front with the lake shimmering behind them. Mum and dad flanked her on either side, the three of them holding hands, smiles radiating in the late summer sun. She kissed the picture and, instead of placing it in her case, she flipped it over, grabbed a pen from her old desk, and wrote on the back of it.

Perdonami, papa. Your princess. Sempre.

 

April, Cora and Aps

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April moved seats so that she was as far from the door as possible. She wanted to give Cora some space; it wasn’t the first time that people had been uncomfortable around her.  She could hear voices in the hall, a soft Scottish accent lowered so that the words were inaudible. The other April speaking at a more natural volume but with a forced politeness, insisting that Cora came in and that there was nothing to be concerned about. I judge my own risk. April heard that.

April knew what Cora would be doing. Sure enough when they finally came through into the kitchen she was holding her phone, eyes moving from the screen to take in the room, and then back to the screen again. April’s arm was still exposed from where she’d shown her namesake her scars earlier but she wore her MedLet on her right wrist. She rolled up the sleeve and held up the black band, a pale green light emanating from a small face on its outer edge.

“Your phone would have lit up from the street, you know, if I was showing symptoms,” said April. She paused. “Hi, I’m April. But I think you alredy know that.”

Cora sighed and held up her hands. Still ensconced in their gloves.  “Look, I’m sorry. I just like to be careful. I know it’s not the best way to meet people.”

“I guess it’s more honest than those air kisses our parents told us about, right?” said April, smiling. “Listen, I wouldn’t ever put anyone at risk. I never skip a test. I wear my MedLet with pride. My CT is zero.” April knew that Cora would already know her contact trace number: your records showed your viral history and the number of people they thought you’d infected. If you’d had any of the strains it was very unusual to show a CT of zero. Some people liked to see their whole sequence of contacts but most stopped at the straight CT number because they didn’t want to know their CD rate: contact deaths. The official messaging was always the same: it’s not your fault as long as you followed the guidelines but it was hard not to feel culpable.

The other April had busied herself distributing the tea that they’d made just before Cora had arrived. She put two of the mugs on the table and took a sip of her own. Nobody else moved to drink theirs. There was an uncomfortable silence. April rolled her sleeves back down and muttered that she need to sort out her room, unpack. She left, circling Cora, allowing her to step further into the room so that there was always a distance between them.

The two of them left in the kitchen picked up some halting small-talk. Cora’s journey had been long but uneventful; they had both picked Bristol for science courses, April for Chemistry, Cora for Zoology; they had done similar A levels; neither of them had lived away from home before. Cora had no siblings. April did. They got on to nicknames and April let slip that her sisters had always called her ‘Aps’ for short and that maybe the house should do that, save the confusion with two of them having the same name. Cora nodded. She didn’t particularly want to be known as Cor. Only one person had ever called her that. Sensing that Cora had quietened again April – Aps – felt obliged to show that she wore a MedLet as well although she felt sure that she would have done her homework and known that she’d never been in isolation. She remembered something.

“You were never in ICU, were you?” Aps asked.

Cora lowered her gaze but Aps caught the momentary look of sadness in her eyes. “Not ICU, no, but I was in soft isolation once. Just a month. Precautionary, never had anything. Doesn’t go on your record. I don’t really like to talk about it, if that’s okay?”

“It’s not really okay, is it?” came a voice from the door. It was April.

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

“But it’s okay to come in with all your I judge my own risk and your gloves and your suspicion? It’s okay to refuse to meet me at the door until you’ve run your checks, got the all clear from MedApp?” April saw the untouched tea on the table. “It’s okay to refuse the drink? Let me guess? You’ve got your own mug, haven’t you?”

Cora looked at the floor. “It’s not like that. I just…”

“Just want privacy the rest of us don’t get to have, is that it?” April was shaking her head. “Come on, I’ll leave it alone but at least tell me I was right about the mug.”

The air in the room seemed to have been sucked out. April was staring at Cora, Aps  had turned away, went to rinse the remnants of her tea out in the sink. Cora was slowly shaking in her chair, picking at her fingers until she suddenly peeled off the gloves and lay them on the table. She looked up at April, eyes pricked with tears but she didn’t break her gaze.

“I was in soft isolation because my boyfriend died. He picked it up. He should have been alright, he was healthy, no underlying conditions…” She punctuated each syllable of un-der-ly-ing-con-dit-ions by stabbing her finger into the table in time with her speech. “He should have been alright but he wasn’t. I was in isolation when they cremated him. Alone. He was alone. I was alone. So, now, you just leave me the fuck alone.”

April started to try to say something but Cora stopped her.

“And, yes, of course I’ve got my own fucking mug.”