My friend turned up wearing a snorkelling mask, beneath which she had tied a bandana around her mouth. On her hands were crinkled latex gloves that looked like they had seen better days.
She removed the mask once she had got herself settled in the garden. Needless to say, she had brought her own refreshments.
‘How long have you had those gloves on?’ I asked her. ‘You do know they’re only any good if you change them after everything you do?’
‘I know, I know!’ she snapped, lifting her bandana to take a suck at her vaping machine, or crack pipe as I call it, disappearing into a haze of stage smoke, like a magician mid-conjuring trick.
‘It’s so nice to see you!’ she shrieked to the spaniels, who wagged their tails at her as though they were not sure what to make of it.
She had brought her dinner in a carry crate, a big bowl of mixed salad which she began to coat in salad cream from a squeezy tube. ‘I’ve lost loads of weight during this lockdown.’
I’ve hated every last minute of lockdown and I believe that to be the correct response
I watched her empty the contents of the quarter-full bottle of Heinz and decided to nod my head. ‘You look… shapely,’ I said. She had been living on her own in a caravan in the middle of a field in Hampshire. She had seen no one. She had done the right thing, she said, because she hadn’t got the virus.
‘You may have had it and not noticed,’ I said. ‘I bloody well would notice because I’ve got an underlying condition.’ ‘Oh? What?’ ‘Asthma!’ she shouted, as if that was obvious. Then she took another drag of blackcurrant-flavoured nicotine and disappeared into a cloud of vapour.
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