‘Your mum!’ I said. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked yet. ‘Is she OK?’
‘She is now,’ Dawn said. ‘Yeah, she’s fine. She’s in complete remission.’
‘Thank God,’ I said.
‘Nah. Just thank the NHS.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And while we’re on the subject, I’m fine as well. Boob-wise, I mean.’
‘Why? Was there a doubt? Because if there was then you didn’t tell me that either.’
‘Yeah, there was a bit,’ Dawn said. ‘Because of Mum. These things can be, you know… whatever the word is. I can’t think.’
‘Genetic?’
‘I was thinking of the other one, butgeneticwill do.’
‘Hereditary?’
‘Yeah, exactly. Only it wasn’t, isn’t, in my case. So that’s good.’
‘Yeah, that’s the best news of all,’ I said. ‘I wish I’d known. I wish you’d told me.’
‘And now I’m going for that walk,’ Dawn said.
‘Enjoy,’ I said. ‘I’ll have lunch ready by the time you get back.’
‘Wow,’ Dawn said. ‘Someone reallyismaking an effort.’
The evening was a strange one and it still kind of felt as if we’d just met. We were polite and helpful to each other –overlypolite andoverlyhelpful – and the jokes were as unfunny as the smiles were fake. I hoped that we just needed time to bed back into our relationship, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel worried that something had been definitively broken.
The next morning I waited nervously to see if things would feel better over breakfast, but though I delayed leaving for work until nine-thirty, Dawn didn’t appear and when I finally swiped my keys from the bowl I actually felt relieved. Her absence took the pressure off, though I also felt guilty that I felt that way.
During the drive in to work I listened to the radio and the coverage was all about the pandemic. France was entering a kind of preventive quarantine they were starting to describe as alockdownfrom Tuesday morning onwards. It was no longer just a case of closing schools and hospitals. Everything non-essential would now shut down.
I wondered if electronics wholesalers might be considered essential and betted mentally that they weren’t. I wondered how the business would survive if we had to close but continue paying salaries, and how our employees would survive if we didn’t.
Employees. That included Cheryl. I tried to think something coherent about Cheryl but failed, so instead turned my attention back to the radio. A government epidemiologist was saying that it might be best to let the disease run its course. Yes, there had been outbreaks in some care homes, and yes, hospitals were being stretched, but for the moment it was nothing worse than winter flu.
I frowned at the radio when he said that, because as far as I knew Italy, Spain, France, Denmark and, of course, China, had never shut down for winter flu.
When I got to the Ramsgate office, I was surprised to find Pete, one of our two customer-facing staff, wearing a mask.
‘That’s a good look, Pete,’ I joked. ‘Suits you.’ Up until that morning, with a couple of exceptions, the only people I’d seen wearing face masks had been Asian.
His colleague, Sue, pulled a face at me. ‘Can you tell him?’ she asked. ‘Can you tell him he’ll scare the customers off? Cos he sure won’t listen to me.’
‘You’ll all be wearing them in a week,’ Pete said. ‘Or you’ll be in hospital rigged up to one of them breathing machines. Your choice.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Sue,’ I said. ‘I’ll, um, try to find out if there’s any guidance.’
As I said that, the sliding door opened and customer entered. He was an elderly man, and he was wearing a home-made face mask.
‘Hi,’ Sue said, discreetly grimacing at me before turning to face the client.
But the man, after freezing for a second to study both myself and Sue from a distance, slipped past us in the direction of Pete’s counter at the far end.
