Chapter 1
Friday March 20th
Today all schools were closed, and public worship suspended. Pubs and restaurants have been ordered to shut their doors along with nightclubs, theatres, cinemas, gyms, and leisure facilities. Rishi Sunak hosted the government briefing and announced a significant package to prevent job losses and lay-offs. Other measures were set out that are designated to bolster the welfare system. The amount of money involved is truly eye-watering.
I arrived home late afternoon. My journey from the Boarding School took less than two hours. Alighting from the train at Tretholney, I hired a taxi for the five-mile journey home.
My aged parents greeted me with a fond wave but chose not to rise from their card game. They asked if I required Mrs Mannaway to make me some tea and scones. I told them I would rather unpack first. With that, I wandered off in the direction of my room.
Unpacking my rather battered suitcase took less than twenty minutes. I then emptied the ratty old rucksack, which was mostly full of books and a loose array of stationary. The books I arranged on the sturdy oak shelf above my desk. The masses of pens and exercise books were placed in fastidiously neat rows next to the Chromebook and its Bluetooth speaker. I then sellotaped my password for the school’s online learning site to a corner of the large desk and went to lie down on the bed.
It has been a strange, upended week for everyone. Maybe it was this latter fact that made me feel so insufferably tired. The idea of living with my parents was a drag on my spirits, of course, but I needed to stay positive. Everything should sort of work out, I told myself. In fact, with the right sort of routine, I could probably thrive here.
I tried to rustle up a little optimism. For a start, I have a Tudor manor house as a home. Tregethen was – and had been for nearly 500 years - a hauntingly beautiful place. It would remain a comfort to me through the worst of what was to come. More importantly, its lavish proportions would all but guarantee the privacy I felt was essential.
Tregethen House, situated on the Cornish coast, has a total of fifteen bedrooms. True, my own room remains one of the smallest throughout (it probably served as one of the maids’ rooms). However, this is the same room I slept in as a small child (before I was sent away to boarding school at the age of eight). Therefore – and rather predictably perhaps - it has a sentimental hold on me.
There are a few other compensating factors one would have to mention in relation to my natty little room. Amongst the most prominent is that it is a comfortable distance from my parents much larger suite of rooms on the opposite side of the house. This state-of-affairs is taken as a boon to both parties. It means that we get to see less and not more of each other.
Another advantage of the room is that the mullion window has the most remarkable view of the sea. It is a joy to break off from my work and just stand there drinking in the opalescent waters of the bay. The changing seasons alter the tonalities of colour, but the beauty sieves one’s soul in just the same way - whatever time of year it is.
My form tutor said I should make a start on my online studies first thing tomorrow. She made the point that it would all be rather makeshift to start with. However, we were warned not to be too critical of the system the school had devised. There would be plenty to carry us forward, including virtual tutorials, essays, and assignments. Our coursework was to be submitted over the internet as an email attachment.
I had one day’s respite therefore and ambled over to the window. Showers had been intermittent throughout the day and were spitting the glass. I watched a gust of wind surge through the gorse and bracken bordering the coastal path below. Sometimes, with more inclement weather, it was a joy to watch the rain dragging itself in huge sheets across the glimmering expanse of water. It hangs there like a dull grey spectre over the gathering swell.
I ruminated on the vast contingencies afoot in the world. In every country on earth, across all continents and without distinction paid to wealth or infrastructure - there was anxiety and planning.
‘How extraordinary to be living in such times,’ I thought. In fact – and speaking as a girl of just gone seventeen – the virus has already changed so much. And yet, one does feel slightly challenged by the unreality of what is going on. Until quite recently, pandemic was just a word in a book. And yet, here we are in a situation where everything is so worrying - so unbelievably serious.
Coronavirus is like the plague. It recognises neither rank or riches, borders nor ethnicity. It is a thing that seeks its own preservation through the deaths of countless millions. It has cut across my own life and that of all my friends and is now threatening to change the world as we know it.
