Luckily, after I’ve spent over an hour swimming in the cesspool of other people’s self-indulgence, Emma Baptiste-Harbington saves the day with a simple email:

You’ll notice I locked all of your SM. (I hadn’t) Zach and I will ensure your online presence is coordinated carefully to avoid a backlash like Carmella Bianchi’s. Just sit tight and try to gain a few pounds. There will be a huge opportunity for post-lockdown diet and exercise transformations for us to tap into.

I google Carmella Bianchi. A few weeks ago she was the darling of Italian Instagram with over two million followers hanging off her every exquisite post, the aesthetic curated to personify casual continental elegance. Two days ago she posted a seemingly innocuous picture of her doing sunset yoga on the wrought-iron balcony of her effortlessly stylish apartment #mentalhealth #allinthistogether #italyunited. Overnight #italyunited began to trend and was leapt on by a group of far-right nationalists. What had been an off-the-cuff hashtag created for clicks and likes became a symbol of hatred and the slogan for anti-lockdowners raging against the curtailing of their freedoms. Carmella lost over a million followers in a day. It was a disaster. But still, Carmella’s downfall means I don’t have to juggle Leah’s social media without arousing suspicion and I’m grateful.

Late that afternoon, Chris, like the good community-spirited person he wants the world to think he is, goes to check in with one of the neighbors. Yasmin’s husband has a whole load of health problems and so they’ve been told not to leave the house, not even to pick up his medication from the pharmacy. When he gets home, I ask if he had thought to pick up any essentials for us. Obviously he hadn’t.

It gives me the perfect excuse to slip out of the house, ostensibly to see if there is milk and bread at the local shop—there isn’t, nor is there any at the petrol station—but really I just wanted to call Tom.

“How’s my favorite author?” Tom says as he answers the phone on the second ring.

“Feeling a little weird.”

“I’m not surprised. But you’re much better off there. London is going crazy with cases and reports that things are getting bad, like Italy.”

“Are the streets quiet?” Although we live just outside the main bustle of Guildford, our local streets are normally busy with people going about their everyday lives, kids whizzing past on bikes, students stumbling home at all hours. But now it’s deathly quiet. I imagine London feels like a ghost town.

“You know that film with the aliens, where he wakes up after the apocalypse and everyone is dead, but he didn’t know it was happening?”

“Err… No.” What is he talking about?

“That one where he was in hospital when the aliens destroyed everything, and then he wakes up and everyone is dead, and it’s just him left alone in London.”

“Do you mean 28 Days Later?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“It’s about zombies, not aliens.”