DAY 25

Nine days into isolation, Arshad feels a great kinship with his fish. He’s been staring at Ike, a black one with bulbous eyes, who nibbles algae off an ornamental skull.

***

Fiona changes the channel without knowing why. What she was watching was fine.

***

In the absence of sugar, Ginny scrapes at the dried-out dregs of honey and manages to get enough to put in her coffee.

***

Marcel doesn’t make it back from his 5.40pm nap.

***

A host of angry suburbanites peep from behind their curtains at the travellers who pitched up on the already carved up playing field. They splash outrage around the neighbourhood WhatsApp group to offset their fear of this new perceived threat. It is, in some ways, a justified fear; one of the younger travellers threatened to cut the fingers off a school kid on Friday afternoon.

Frustration is the prevailing characteristic of a lockdown named firebreak, which is lukewarm at best. It seeps through even the most secure of front doors as morality hangs above head height like an evening fog. There, but distant. Barely noticed, something to be pointed at and referenced only when all other conversation fails.