Wednesday 22 April

"How are you coping?"

Cal, a doctor in London, contacted me on the Wednesday. I wasn't as close to Cal as I was to Josie. By the time I was born, he was 17, and he'd left Glasgow a year later to go to University College London, staying there when he started work at St Thomas.

As the UK's biggest city, the pandemic had hit hard, and I'd shared Josie's concerns about his welfare, particularly because they had drafted him into intensive care to help with all the serious cases coming in. Tanya, his wife, had exchanged frantic phone calls with Josie, worrying about him.

But so far, so good. And thanks to his work, Cal now had extensive knowledge and experience of what coronavirus did to the body and at what point people should start to worry.

"Josie tells me," he added, "that this Tom fellow seems nice. Not the fortune hunger she feared."

Cal didn't share Josie's over-protective urges, but he had issued the odd, vague warning over the years about the men who might flock around me when they found out how wealthy I was.

"No. Tom's definitely not a gold digger," I said. "He's coughing a lot, but his temperature has come down. Cal, is there any point me not going into the bedroom? If he was going to pass the virus on, I've caught it already, right?"

Cal steepled his hands together. Tanya was right to worry about him. He might have escaped the virus, but he looked years older than a man in his late 50s. His skin had turned waxy and there were pouchy bags under his eyes. Apparently, he was working 16-hour days, staying at the nearby Premier Inn that had thrown its doors open for doctors and nurses, so they didn't need to travel or risk passing on the virus to their families.

He was there now—a rare half-day off. Behind him, I took in the familiar purple and yellow branding, the room's blandness comforting.

"Tom caught the virus from a supervisor, I believe?" Cal asked. "But the man had been in work for a few days before he tested positive?"

I nodded.

Cal lifted his hands. "Well, then. You'll have caught it already if you're going to get it. And there is no-one else in the house for you to pass it on to. Any symptoms?"

"Nothing."

Cal smiled. "I know I don't need to lecture you on the importance of hygiene. And the virus seems to favour men for those it wants to take out—ah, that might not have been tactful. I meant it as reassurance for you."

I smiled back. My half-brother had a reputation for putting his foot in it. But at least he'd given me 'permission' to go into Tom's room. I hated that closed door and how powerless it made me feel. The coughing tugged at my heartstrings—all of me longing to barge in there and hug him.

"Is his temperature still up?" Cal asked. When I replied in the affirmative, he told me the fever should break in another day or so and after that, Tom should begin to get better. But if it didn't, I was to call 111 and ask what they suggested.

About to ring off, I thought of something else.

"Cal, what can I donate to?"

My brother didn't need further explanation. He knew I meant, who can I bung loads of money? Me bargaining generosity for Tom's health, perhaps. Cal rattled off charities that were doing their best to support the NHS. An organisation making meals for busy nurses. Another group set up to sew scrubs and facemasks in the continued absence of personal protective equipment. A fund to help immigrant workers in the healthcare sector forced to pay an upfront fee for their own healthcare if they took ill with the virus.

Upstairs, I knocked on the door. "Tom, my doctor brother tells me I'm allowed in to say hello. Are you decent?"

Agreement given, I pushed the door open. The room stank of sweat and vomit—the smell of it so sharp, I gulped back nausea myself. The man himself lay in bed, the duvet half-on, half-off him, white-faced and covered in a sheen. Eyes too big. He smiled.

"You see me at me best."

I knelt beside the bed and took his hand in mine. "Have you been sick?"

As he hadn't eaten anything the day before, throat too painful to contemplate swallowing, I'd made him chicken soup earlier, boiling the bones to make stock the way health gurus told you made it a super food.

"'Fraid so. I didn't quite make it to the toilet in time. Sorry. And I'm too wiped out to clean it up."

Yesterday, I'd Googled coronavirus symptoms. The NHS said a high temperature and a continuous dry cough, but on the World Health Organization's website, they'd listed additional ones, including vomiting and diarrhoea.

"Could have been worse. You might have shat all over the bathroom."

I said the words lightly, making him smile. Murmur that having to clean up another person's vomit was the ultimate challenge to my domestic goddess status. But the dread that had gathered at the pit of my stomach ever since he'd returned yesterday tightened. His appearance shocked me to the core.

I stood up. "I'll get you some water first."

Even though he had forewarned me, the state of the bathroom came as a shock. He'd splattered vomit everywhere—the floor, the shower screen, the bottom of the shower, around the toilet bowl, in the sink, up the walls and on the towel rail. I rubbed Vicks under my nose to help with the smell and rolled up my sleeves. It took me an hour to return the room to its normal pristine standard.

By the time I'd finished, Tom had fallen asleep again. Exhaustion was another symptom—that and aching limbs. His legs, he told me, hurt him no matter what position he tried lying in. Vowing I'd return as soon as he was awake again to strip off the dirty bed linen, I let myself out, shutting the door softly behind me.

Kathleen.

I must phone her. She had the right to know her son was ill. Since Tom's revelation about moving in with me, she'd phoned him another couple of times. As he wasn't allowed to leave my house, even if he'd wanted to because of lockdown, she knew it was pointless railing at him about where he was living. Didn't stop her criticising the earlier decision and promising him she was praying for his soul.

When the current situation ended, she'd told him he must leave at once. Or marry me.

I'd stared at him when he repeated those words, not sure what to think. An enormous admittance throwing the 'm' word around like that.

"Irish mammies, eh? I did warn you."

Tom's phone was in the kitchen. It had a passcode, not thumb recognition. I took a deep breath. What I was about to do was a serious breach of privacy, but when I'd asked him earlier in the day if I should phone his mother and tell her what was going on, he shook his head.

"No. She'll make a fuss. And worry too much."

Fair enough, but he'd taken a turn for the worse now. It wasn't fair for her to remain in ignorance.

Most people were careless with four-figure passcodes, choosing numbers easy to remember, such as the year they were born. Tom was no exception to that rule. I entered 1992, and the phone unlocked—his screen saver a picture of the two of us that warmed me.

I scrolled through his contacts and found his mother's number.

"Tom, just as well you've phoned me. I've been speaking to Father Joseph about you and your situation and he—"

"Mrs Docherty"—I still didn't feel I qualified to use 'Kathleen' to her face—"this is Sophie, Tom's, ah, girlfriend."

"Oh. Is me son too ashamed to speak to me himself?"

"He's ill. We're pretty sure he's caught the virus. He didn't want you to know, but I'm quite... worried about him and I thought you had the right to know."

The resulting wail pierced my ear. "Go and get him! Let me speak to him."

I persuaded her he was sleeping and that we should disturb him. I listed the symptoms and what I'd done—lots of water, chicken soup, pressing a flannel wrung out in ice-cold water on his forehead the way you saw them do in black and white films.

"My brother—he's a doctor—says the fever should clear in a day or so, but I'm not so sure I—"

My voice cracked. She started to cry, endless repetition of oh my wee boy. Her actions forced me into the role of comforter. All the fears that haunted me, I discounted. I ran through what my brother had said and repeated everything that worked in Tom's favour—his age, his health, him not having any underlying health conditions, those words news presenters had kept reiterating back at the start when the first UK deaths happened.

Better check, though. "He doesn't, does he?"

Things I didn't know about Tom again. Though I would have noticed a health condition.

"No. Fit as a fiddle," she replied. "That's what the doctors said years ago when he ended up in A&E after that assault..."

Wait, what?

"... before he moved to Scotland. He was lucky."

She paused. Sniffed hard. "I only hope he's as lucky again."

And with that, she was off again, weeping and wailing, me throwing in banal words of comfort here and there.

Funny that Tom had never told me about an assault serious enough to put him in hospital. Just before he'd left Ireland too.

Still, I hadn't the energy to worry about that now. Promising Mrs Docherty I'd phone her regularly to update her, I hung up.