A stranger gives me a new drug

On Sunday I was released from isolation. I felt a prisoner not of the virus but of Cath, who kept me in despite her taking us up to the local rugby club, getting tested, and both of us being negative. "But it's the incubation period," she argued.

I want to keep things sweet with her because I'm moving out soon, but seeing last Saturday's sun, brilliant on the snow, made me rock and pace like a lunatic confined. I'm reading a book about the history of corridors and the loony bin plays a big part in the way that corridors have become somewhat menacing spaces in our imaginations. By the end I was thinking "I'll be down the funny farm soon."

Mel came along with me to see the flat I've been offered. I'd been sent instructions about how to get the "key", a retro-fitted name for some sort of electronic device shaped like a huge teardrop. We stood fiddling with the key's lock box outside. A bus driver and two residents inside watched us through the glass-pannelled door as I tapped the fob ineffectually on various rectangular surfaces.

Eventually one of them let us in. I explained ourselves to the trio and we were pointed upstairs to what will soon be my flat. It was institutional, beige, with dilute cigarette smoke following us. The flat next door had a black and yellow sticker on its door warning that CCTV was in operation.

The flat's small, no separate bedroom, but with a cosy and worktop-rich kitchen. The floor is laid with some sort of composite panelling, and whatever you call the things that run round the perimeter of a room with tacks sticking up from them, that receive carpets. I've got various tatty bits of recycled carpet that might do in the short term.

Standing in the window, we held each other still, no stroking or effort to please, or to translate anything into movement. She was insulated thickly, but with my arms clasped round her, I knew what is underneath. "Don't just see it as a shag pad though looby. You've got to live here too."

On leaving, we had to ask to get through a crowd of people. I thought for a moment it must be a residents' meeting forced outside, but then I saw a wreath to "Gran".

I went round to Hayley's and met the man she's currently toying with. He walked in apologising for the smell of tarmac, him being a road worker. I said not to worry and that I don't mind a bit of solvent abuse myself. We got on well. He was a chatty Traveller with some enthrallingly horrible anecdotes of neglect and abuse from his mum, which he had the grace to turn away from quickly.

Hayley was tendentiously distancing herself from her boyfriend, criticising him in his absence in a way I found awkward. After Mr Tarmac had left, she was talking about the unexciting sex she has with K. "I feel like I'm on an extended German exchange trip."

She texted as I was on the bus. "He's nice isn't he? Needs grooming, but a bit more interesting than K." True, his hair was a mess, but I don't think that's what she meant.

I had a new drug last week, one which didn't even exist a year ago. ((4-hydroxybuytl)azaediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis(2-hexyldeanoate) won't give you anything more than a stiff arm for a day or so, but together with a couple of other chemical sesquipedalia, it'll protect you against a novel communicable disease. I got it early by virtue of still being registered as a casual cleaner with the NHS. I'm doing a night shift tonight, as I'll be paying two lots of rent for a short time.

I rang Trina. Relations are cordial at last. I asked her if she'd mind witnessing my will if I posted it to her. I could have asked Mel and Hayley to do it down here, but I thought it might please Trina to be entrusted with the task.

A minute or so after we'd finished talking, she rang me back. "It was just to say, I love you, and I think I always will."