Holy Saturday

Bink, I said. We have two hot tubs in the garden.

(We have let our house out for the day for a 13th birthday party… for seventy guests. So we’ve organised a walk, for the whole street, to the park to get away.)

I’m too dirty, Bink said. I haven’t washed for months.

(This is partly why she can’t come home. She’ll contaminate everything, and then not be able to come home when she’s clean.)

But they’ll be taken away on Monday, and all your contamination with them.

Did you say two?

Yes.

Are we allowed to get soap in them?

We haven’t been told we can’t.

Oh my goodness! I could have dirty wash in one and then a clean wash in the other.

And then, Bink, they’ll be collected and taken away, and no one you know will ever be in contact with them again.

Ohhh! It’s very tempting…

Same chance many never come again.

But I just can’t do it.

Later.

I don’t know whether to tell you this, Bink. I don’t want to put any pressure on you.

Try me anyway.

Grandfather has been really miserable these last few days. He’s going to the ear clinic next week, but in the meantime can hardly hear anything. And missing Granny dreadfully. Very, very lonely.

Oh, no! Bink said.

Weeks ago we all arranged to get him downstairs for Easter Day, and we were all looking forward to it... but now he’s saying he’ll just go to church and put flowers on Granny’s grave, and go straight back upstairs again.

That’s so sad, Bink said.

Please don’t feel any pressure, Bink. But the only thing in the world I can think of which would cheer him up enough to have Easter lunch with us, is seeing you. Should I not have told you?

No, you should have done.

Does it make it harder for you to come home, because you feel pressurised? Or easier, because you have more reason to?

It doesn’t make it any harder or easier.

It just makes me even more sad when I can’t.