I sat on the bed, trembling. How could she attack me like that? If anyone was weird, it was Azra, with her phoney voice and dressing-up-box clothes. My friends had always found her peculiar, hadn’t they? A bit of a fraud.

Basically, she wasn’t well-liked. Some of the time I didn’t like her. What business did she have, to criticise me so brutally? Especially about my children. She’d changed, no doubt about it. Now I was locked down with her, unable to escape, she was becoming something of a bully. I’d noticed this recently. More proprietorial. That hand up my leg—she didn’t own me. I wasn’t her sex slave. Once I’d found it thrilling, the way she’d suddenly ravish me, but now she kept misreading my mood.

Nor was I her skivvy. For I was starting to resent the way she bossed me around. Of course it was her flat and she wasn’t used to having somebody else there, especially somebody with an incontinent cat. Lockdown seemed to be bringing out another side to her, a fearful, fretful side I’d never seen before.

So I blamed it on the virus, and comforted myself with thoughts of the future. When we emerged into normal life and found somewhere to live, our new home would belong to me and the balance of power would shift. And thank God we’d have more space. For it was fast becoming apparent that we each needed a room of our own, to sulk in. Doesn’t everybody?

I had no idea what was coming. No idea at all, of the secret Azra had been harbouring, or the bombshell that was about to explode. I was too busy brooding about my children. Azra refused to explain herself and it became a sullen black weight between us. By now it was late April and she insisted that we wore face coverings when we went out. The masks wiped the smiles off our faces, if indeed there were any smiles beneath them. All they exposed were our gimlet eyes.

This was happening all over the country, of course. We were all in it together. Yet we were alienated: masked strangers in fear for our lives. It both pushed us apart and drew us together. Friends disappeared and old, unexpected connections were rekindled, like messages through wartime static. I had an email from Evan: ‘Are you all right? Stay safe.’ What a darling man! Life with him would surely have been less volatile, and he would have sorted out Flossie’s bowels.