DAY 12
In keep with everything; the lack of any real form of weekend, the absence of colourful rainbows in the house windows, no clapping for carers, Monday morning is still shit. Raul can’t remember why he wanted to move to the UK, how he ever managed to convince anyone he was worthy of a university place, or why his girlfriend has not yet abandoned him for greener pastures. By 1pm, he sighs and laughs at himself.
The things we allow ourselves to think when trapped in these windowless negative thought cells!
By 2pm, Biyu leaves the house and dumps him via text message, halfway through the maiden episode of Winning Combination, stating she can’t spend any longer playing 2nd fiddle to TV gameshows. He merely gurgles with humourless laughter, tosses his phone across the floor and begins handwriting a postcard to the host, Omid Djalili, saying why he didn’t love Biyu anyway, why he’s better off without her. Omid will understand.
Viridiana is a party girl. Before the pandemic, she worked a high-intensity job at an investment and stock broker company. Weekends were sleepless blasts of bug-eyed hedonism; buckets of obscenely-expensive champagne, blizzards of the purest cocaine money could buy, waking up in the beds of high-flying men and women. Then a global pandemic gave her what she would never have sought: the chance to get off the one-way train to somewhere dark and deadly. But compulsive people need to focus on something. With no intention of ever reproducing, she grew bitter throughout the 1st lockdown, angry at all those so-called friends who holed up with their insufferable brats and forgot about her. That’s why she bought a heavy-duty NERF gun for Cindy’s restless 8-year old, Luke, a set of life-size cardboard cut-out set of Hogwarts night-creepers Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger for Bryan’s daughter, Billie, in his Croydon one-bed shoebox flat and currently browses for the messiest indoor recreational kit she can get her hands on for her clean-freak cousin’s twin girls, Sarah and Jayne. The key to all of this of course, is ensuring the children see the gifts before the parents can do anything to stop it and Viridiana ensures her hit by taking the offerings round in person, smiling gleefully as heads pop like bubble wrap. This is her high now.
While trawling the recruitment websites each day, Robbie likes to take short breaks to stoke fires in the minds of ignorant people in the social media comments sections of the local newspaper Facebook page. Today, he sips his Peruvian blend coffee through a satisfied smirk as Ned, Pearl and Eddie chase their tails, spitting blood for being called out as racists for their disdain of Black Lives Matter campaigners in their town. Their grammar is awful, replies increasingly incoherent the more Robbie gets up in their confused, hostile faces. He leaves them hanging for hours at a time, suspended in unfinished confrontations before replying to their string of unanswered, increasingly abusive barks with a wink, or a thumbs up emoji.