As always, while I saw to the kids, I was also on WhatsApp. Because of the time difference with the UK, I usually wake up to a flurry of messages. This morning, a friend in London asked me how I was feeling about Caroline, she was checking in. I told her the truth: it still hurts like hell, but I am powering on because I have no choice. I mean, I do have a choice – I could totally fall apart. But I have a family to hold together, so I can’t do that. Sometimes it feels like my WhatsApp groups are the places where I can sink my true feelings. If I feel tears coming, I message a friend, maybe even a few at once, and say, ‘I’m having a bad moment. I can’t do this. I miss her too much.’ And almost immediately I am met with support. Words that pull me together. Or sometimes their own sadness is reflected back, which reminds me I am not alone in mine. I think one reason I have never really committed to therapy is because I don’t see what more I could get out of it than what I get from my girlfriends. Whenever there’s a heavy hand pressing down on one of my shoulders, I feel it lift a little the moment one of my friends gets in touch to ask me if I am OK.

Anyway, on to the rest of the day (what day even is it?). I did twenty minutes on the Peloton. I think that is my limit on the amount of time I can work out before I get really cross and hate everyone. It’s as if that twenty minutes releases just the right amount of pheromones, or whatever the fuck exercise releases, and it suits me just fine. If I try to do more than that, I just won’t keep it up. I promised myself that I would do twenty minutes every morning while this isolation continues.

We all know that this will never happen.