Nelson’s drive to work feels very strange, almost surreal, as if in a dream world where everything is the same yet subtly different. Nelson often dreams about driving and usually it involves not being able to get to where he wants to be, hampered by road-blocks and traffic jams and Norfolk drivers in Nissan Micras. But, today, the roads are almost completely empty. Nelson finds himself gliding through junctions where, normally, he’d be grinding his teeth and accusing other drivers of being followers of Onan. When he has to stop at a red light, it seems almost like a bizarre ritual. There are no commuters, no children jostling for school buses, no taxis, no old men in hats driving in the centre of the road. It should feel like heaven but, as Nelson drives through the old city gates, he’s reminded of science fiction films where towns have been taken over by lizard people or filled with replicants. If this is the future, he doesn’t like it.
His day had started with a call from the dog walker, Maura. Was she still allowed to work for him? Was she a key worker? Nelson hastily assured Maura that she was but he thought he might have to make alternative arrangements for Bruno. He has no idea how busy he’ll be and maybe he shouldn’t be encouraging Maura to come to the house. The thought of being locked down without Bruno makes him feel even more depressed as he climbs the stairs to his office.
Even here, everything has changed. The cleaners have been hard at work and the clump of desks in the open-plan area has been wrenched apart and the furniture placed at strategic intervals, reminding Nelson of a game that he’d played as a child with his sisters where you have to get across the room without stepping on the floor. There are arrows indicating the way that you should walk to the loos and kitchen. Judy is standing in the middle of the room. She’s wearing a black mask which looks shockingly wrong, as if she’s been gagged.
‘Hi, boss,’ she says. Her voice is, at least, unchanged.
‘Should we be wearing masks?’ Nelson has a pack in his office. He must remember to send some to Ruth.
‘Cathbad says it’s a good idea to wear one inside,’ says Judy, ‘so I thought I’d get used to it. It’s very strange. I keep thinking that I can’t see or hear with it on.’
‘Is Cathbad in charge of Covid regulations now?’
‘Well, he is a scientist,’ says Judy. Her tone is defensive but it’s strangely hard to tell with the mask on.
He was a scientist, thinks Nelson. Now he’s a freelance druid. But he doesn’t say this aloud.
‘Team meeting when everyone gets in,’ he says.
‘Jo says we should only have Zoom meetings from now on.’
‘What the hell’s zoom?’
‘Didn’t you read her email?’
Nelson lets his silence answer this.
‘It’s a video conferencing platform,’ says Judy. ‘A bit like FaceTime on your phone.’
Nelson’s grown-up daughters like to use FaceTime. Nelson prefers a phone call. He rang both girls last night. Rebecca, living in Brighton with her boyfriend Asif, sounded quite upbeat about lockdown. They would both work from home and go for long walks by the sea. They might even get a dog. Laura, a primary school teacher living in King’s Lynn, was more nervous. She wasn’t sure how she could teach eight-year-olds online. She wasn’t sure how she’d get on with her flatmates when they were all in the house all day. It’s going to be one of the hardest things, thinks Nelson, being so close to Laura and not being able to see her. It’ll be hard for Michelle too, he knows. She’ll feel torn between her mother and her daughters. Even so, says a little voice in Nelson’s head, it’s strange for Michelle to have stayed away so long. She could have come home before lockdown was announced. Now she’s trapped in Blackpool.
‘We’ll have a proper meeting in the open plan area,’ says Nelson. ‘I’ll even wear a mask.’
Cathbad and his children are doing yoga in the garden. Miranda, aged seven, spends most of her time trying to stand on her head. Michael, aged ten, takes it more seriously. He dislikes games at school but is actually well-coordinated with a good sense of balance. Maddie, Cathbad’s grown-up daughter, has unexpectedly joined them and she is like a poster for yogic prowess, standing on one leg in tree pose, her golden hair shining in the weak sun. The rescue hens, Darcy, Shirley and Motsi, watch her admiringly. The children chose the names although Cathbad still secretly thinks of the chicken sisters as Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera, after the Eumenides, or Furies, the Greek goddesses of vengeance.
Cathbad has a pretty shrewd idea why Maddie has materialised this morning, but he says nothing until he has finished the session, raising his thumbs to his third eye and lowering them to his heart. Michael copies him. Miranda has wandered off to find Thing, who is excluded from yoga because he finds downward facing dog unbearably exciting. Maddie whispers a reverent ‘namaste’.
‘We’re going to start every day with yoga,’ Cathbad tells Maddie, as they walk back to the house. ‘I’m trying to make home-schooling a real adventure. We’ll tell a continuing story and illustrate it with things that we find on the beach or on our nature walks. The school have sent some work sheets but I don’t think we’ll bother with them. Michael and Miranda can learn science, history and geography from the world around them.’
‘I can help,’ says Maddie. ‘I’m good at telling stories.’
‘Have you come to stay then?’ says Cathbad, measuring coffee carefully into his Italian espresso machine. The children have already got out the flapjacks. Thing is hoovering up crumbs.
‘If that’s OK with you and Judy.’
‘You’ll have to ask Judy but I’m sure it will be. We’d love to have you.’ Cathbad feels an atavistic satisfaction at the thought of having all his children with him during lockdown. With the hens and the vegetable patch they’ll be almost self-sufficient. There’s no need for any of them to venture into the terrifying world of coronavirus. Except Judy, of course.
‘I think I’ll go mad if I stay at the flat with no outside space,’ says Maddie. ‘The lease is up next month and Jody’s going to move back home too.’ Maddie’s flatmate Jody is a nurse. Cathbad thinks that she’ll need all the creature comforts she can get in the weeks ahead.
‘I expect I’ll be furloughed,’ says Maddie. ‘But I can still do freelance work.’
‘What’s furloughed?’ says Cathbad. The word has a baleful agricultural sound, a cross between furrow and plough.
‘You keep your job, but on less pay,’ says Maddie. ‘I suppose it’s better than nothing. But it’ll leave me time to help with the home-schooling. We can start our own newspaper. The Cathbad Chronicle. The Norfolk News.’
‘The Weird Times,’ says Cathbad.
‘These are weird times, all right,’ says Maddie.
Nelson holds his meeting, in defiance of the new regulations. He does wear a mask though and is surprised how claustrophobic it makes him feel. You can breathe, he tells himself, it’s all in your mind. He remembers Ruth telling him about a panic attack she once had whilst swimming. ‘Suddenly I just forgot how to breathe.’ He realises now that he never asked what Ruth had been panicking about.
It’s a shock to see the team wearing masks too. Tony’s, like Nelson’s, is standard NHS issue but Tanya’s is a rather jaunty tartan affair. ‘Petra made it for me,’ she says. ‘Masks are going to be in short supply.’ Nelson has already had a memo about shortages of PPE. It makes him feel slightly guilty about planning to send masks to Ruth.
He tells the team that the investigation into the death of Avril Flowers is still a priority. ‘Just do as much on the phone as you can,’ says Nelson. ‘We’ll keep looking into the other suicides too. We can’t expect much back-up. Uniform might be required to help the emergency services.’ He doesn’t add that, according to Jo, one of the tasks that might fall to the police force is ‘burying the dead’.
‘What about civilian staff?’ asks Leah. ‘I’ve heard of people being furloughed.’
‘Some will be furloughed,’ says Nelson. ‘But you’re a key worker in my eyes.’
‘Who else would work the printer for you?’ says Leah.
Everyone laughs a lot at this, glad at the release of tension, but Nelson sees something else in his PA’s face, something that makes him feel a little worried. He identifies it later: relief.