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.