‘That’s our house,’ says Kate. ‘Why’s it pink?’
‘I think it was taken a long time ago,’ says Ruth. ‘Can you tell why?’ It’s never too early to start home-schooling.
‘Because of the car,’ says Kate, as if it’s a stupid question. Which perhaps it is. ‘And there’s no satellite dish on Sammy and Ed’s house.’
Ruth hadn’t even noticed this. Kate likes the weekenders who sometimes invite her in to watch their superior home entertainment.
‘Let’s have breakfast,’ says Ruth, in her new jolly lockdown tones (lightly tinged with hysteria). ‘Then maybe we can go for an early morning walk.’
‘I hate walks,’ says Kate. She and Flint look at Ruth with identically mutinous expressions.
At nine o’clock Ruth sets out for the supermarket. She leaves Kate watching a Harry Potter DVD. So much for the ‘no screens before lunchtime’ rule Ruth devised last night. But Kate finds the wizarding world very comforting and Ruth hopes it will make her forget that this is the first time she has ever been left alone in the house. At least Kate has Flint, sitting on the sofa watching Dumbledore narrowly, and Zoe next door. Ruth has texted Zoe and put her number in Kate’s phone. ‘NP,’ Zoe texts back. ‘Here if you or Kate need anything’. Ruth is halfway to Lynn before she realises that NP means ‘no problem’.
At the supermarket she is momentarily distracted by the people standing, spaced at odd intervals, around the periphery of the car park. Then she realises that they are queuing. The shop is only allowing a few shoppers in at a time, so the rest are waiting patiently, resting their legs like weary horses, for their turn amongst the consumer durables. Ruth joins the line. She is wearing a scarf tied around her nose and mouth and feels rather ridiculous. Most people are not wearing masks although some have plastic gloves, which immediately makes Ruth think that the handle of her trolley is crawling with coronavirus germs. She must make sure that she doesn’t touch her face before she has a chance to wash her hands whilst singing a suitably revolutionary song. Right on cue her nose starts to itch.
Once inside the shop Ruth catches the panic-buying bug and starts loading her trolley with cat food, toilet roll, wine and other things that suddenly seem essential. Calm down, she tells herself. Most items are in stock, although the pasta and rice aisle is almost empty. She can shop once a week and order things online. She can’t stop herself adding two paperbacks and a jigsaw puzzle of Norwich Cathedral. It takes a long time to get through the checkout but Ruth finds herself feeling almost tearfully grateful to the smiling woman who scans her groceries. She’s not wearing a mask which strikes Ruth as very remiss on the part of the supermarket.
‘Thank you,’ she says, as she pays an eye-watering sum of money on her debit card. ‘It’s so good of you to keep working.’
‘I haven’t got much choice,’ says the woman. ‘But thank you. It’s nice to have some appreciation. People have been shouting at me all morning.’
Ruth drives home feeling grateful that she doesn’t have to go out to work and despairing at the state of the world. Kate, deep inThe Prisoner of Azkaban, hardly notices her return. Ruth goes to wash her hands (they already feel chapped and sore) and then starts to put away the shopping. It takes some time because there’s so much of it but, eventually, most things are stowed away. Ruth gives Flint some of his new Kitty Treats, which he ignores, and makes herself coffee.
The film has ended so Ruth prints out a maths worksheet and gives it to Kate.
‘I don’t want to do maths,’ says Kate. ‘I want to read my book.’
‘Oh, all right,’ says Ruth. It’s only eleven o’clock and already she’s failing at home-schooling but she needs to get ready for her eleven thirty lecture.
She feels a rush of satisfaction when she manages to sign into Zoom and another when she sees the faces of her first years appearing. They pop onto the screen, some in kitchens and studies, some clearly still in bed. One youth looks like he’s on a tropical island. ‘You can get special backgrounds,’ he explains in the comment box. Ruth has taken the trouble to angle her laptop so there’s a studious backdrop of bookcases. Unfortunately, it makes her face look huge. She’ll just have to try not to meet her own eyes. Two squares remain black. Does this mean those students haven’t switched their videos on? It’s curiously disconcerting.
At least Ruth knows now to tell the students to mute when they’re not speaking. Her first Zoom session was a nightmare of competing voices, students appearing in startling close-up if they so much as coughed. They are getting better at listening too, though some are clearly on their phones at the same time.
Today’s subject is Artefacts and Materials. Ruth projects pictures of pottery, ceramics and stone tools onto the shared screen and sends the students into breakout rooms to discuss them. Whoosh. It’s like a particularly satisfying magic trick. In real life, even post-graduates make a huge fuss when asked to divide into groups. ‘Can I be with Annie? I need the loo. Have I got time for a coffee?’ Now, one click and they disappear. In the ten minutes’ peace before she summons them back, Ruth checks the attendance list. Everyone is here. Who are the students who won’t show their faces? Ruth checks the list again.
Eileen Gribbon and Joe McMahon.
Chapter 16
Judy sits at her desk, feeling self-conscious in her mask. Should she take it off? Tony is sitting at least two metres away but he is still wearing his. Suddenly, Judy misses Clough who would have brought some normality to this abnormal situation simply by being himself, eating junk food and pretending to be an American gangster. On impulse she sends him a text, ‘Strange times eh?’ Two minutes later, Clough replies: ‘Im bulk buying frankfurters. Its a wurst case scenario.’ Judy sends back an eye-roll emoji but she does feel very slightly better.
Nelson said to carry on with the Avril Flowers investigation but that’s going to be hard when everything is locked down. Judy looks at her notes. She has spoken to the people closest to Avril and is no nearer to understanding what happened that night in February. The vicar has said that Avril had been worried but seemed unable, or unwilling, to be more specific. Judy thinks of Mother Wendy saying, ‘That’s what the church is here for. For worried people. That’s why we’ll always be here.’ What is Mother Wendy doing now? Judy wonders. The churches are all closed. She was surprised how shocked she’d been to hear this news. Judy might be a lapsed Catholic, but she’d always assumed that, all her life, mass would be carrying on somewhere. Thinking of the silent churches, the unconsumed communion wafers, the empty chalices, makes her feel strangely panicky. What about her grandma, who goes to mass every day? But Judy’s grandmother, an eighty-year-old diabetic, has been told to ‘shield’ and stay in her house. Judy doesn’t know when she will see her again.
The last item in her notes is a reference to Maggie O’Flynn, Avril’s friend who died in January. There didn’t, on the face of it, seem anything suspicious about Maggie’s death, which was apparently due to ‘myocardial infarction’. But Maggie was another woman on her own, someone who went to church and did good works in the community. And now she is, unexpectedly, dead. It’s still part of the pattern.
Judy decides that the best use of her first day in lockdown would be to follow up on one of Liz’s suicide cold cases. She starts, as they always do these days, with Facebook. There are no results for Rosanna Leigh or Celia Dunne. Either their pages were closed when they died, or they are in the minority of people who are not on the social networking site. Even Judy has a profile, although she hasn’t posted in five years. Cathbad doesn’t have a personal page but he does have one for his yoga teaching. Miranda is already asking to join and lots of Michael’s friends are already there, despite the age limit. Maddie has hundreds of Facebook and Instagram friends who all post identical pouting pictures of themselves. Clough posts pictures of his dog and his children. Tanya shares fitness tips. Almost the only people Judy knows who aren’t on Facebook are Ruth and Nelson. Perhaps they have more in common than they realise.
Karen Head does have a page though. Her family have kept it open as a memorial to her. Judy supposes it’s a new kind of immortality but it’s still disconcerting to see Karen’s smiling face looking out at her. Judy scrolls through the messages.
Rest in peace angel.
Sleep well Kaz sweetheart.
Can’t believe you are gone.
We love you Miss Head.
This last reminds Judy that Karen was a teacher. She makes a note to talk to the school. Presumably, even if schools are closed, there is someone to take messages? Michael and Miranda’s school is still open for the children of key workers, which presumably includes Judy. She’s not going to suggest that they go to school, though, when she knows that they’ll have a wonderful time being educated by Cathbad. As if prompted by an otherworldly power, her phone buzzes. Maddie.
