Dearest daughter
I do vaguely remember being a child and going to school, in a building, with the facilitators, but they were actually there...stood at the front of the room and I had friends there too, lots of them. When we weren’t in the room learning, we would go out into the sunshine and play games – real games – not on our contact screens – running games, where we would bump into each other and fall over and laugh hysterically, cry sometimes if it hurt but...I miss those kind of tears now...they were transitory, not like these ones...
It is hard to explain all of this to you, as you look at me excitedly and ask, for the gazillionth time what life was like before. Hard because, I don’t want you to feel you have missed out but, the reality is that you have, and also... I don’t really want to remember. Or maybe I do and it’s that I can’t, I’ve blocked it out. Either way it amounts to the same thing; I generally made up stories or told you the widespread anecdotes that have become like fable; the endless summers, having more friends than I could count, having friends come over and us doing each other’s hair on my bed and listening to music till dawn and dancing... Oh...yes, dancing... i do remember that, quite vividly. The taste of my own sweat, running from my face into my mouth as I writhed in a darkly lit crowd to muffled yet booming sounds, rubbing up against numerous other sweaty bodies, most of whom I didn’t even know... I loved dancing! It felt wild, feral, untamed...
In the weeks preceding the final blow, that led us to our current present, I was at one of those dancing parties – that was what we used to call a gathering with lots of people. In the days before the virus came, they were just a normal part of everyday life. People had parties for birthdays, Christmas, for any reason really, sometimes just to have fun and dance. At first people didn’t listen, us young ones mainly, because I was young then daughter dearest, not far off the age you are now. We would meet for secret parties because, we didn’t really believe the virus could be that bad and felt angry at being told we had to stay locked up in our homes... It all seems so silly now; that we felt our right to party was more important than the thousands of people that were dying. Silly and yes, selfish. Maybe that’s why I’ve found it so hard to talk to you about what life was like before because...I find it hard to reconcile my actions with all that came next...
I remember telling you the story of how you were made, how babies were made back in the days before. You were so shocked, I wonder if you are still...but really it doesn’t hurt... didn’t hurt...it was a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things two people can do together. I was 19 and at University ( a type of school for older children when they finished their online key stages, before operation rebuild began) when I met your father at that party and the virus had been around for about a year already at this point, for the whole year I had been at University.
Like with the school I tried to explain to you earlier, that had a real teacher in a room with other children, University was like that too but because we were older, we could live with some of our school friends.... Yes, it was a lot of fun, although at the time we were just angry that we couldn’t just do what we wanted and have even more fun.
I had only recently, in the first few months of starting University, begun having that kind of intimacy with men. It was so exciting! And back then, everyone was doing it, with anyone. I mean, it seems almost unthinkable now, the idea of just meeting people, strangers sometimes and... touching them. I can barely remember it, I just know it felt nice, otherwise we wouldn’t have done it I suppose but yea, after the lockdowns began and people got lonely and bored, the young ones like us who didn’t have someone special like that, that they lived with especially, whenever we had those secret parties, it would turn into...well, I’m almost embarrassed to say but it would just turn into a big sex party! Everyone was so starved of affection and intimacy...we just went mad... You see, we grew up in a time when physical contact was normal, being around other people, not just the people we shared a house with, but going to big rooms with food to buy (shops we called them), some of them sold clothes, but different to the ones we wear now; they were all different colours and new and sparkly, and there were places that made food for you and you could sit down at a table with friends or just go to other types of rooms where they sold that stuff like Uncle Barry from next door makes from the apples in his garden that makes mummy go a bit giddy, and we’d all get giddy together and laugh... That was our lives... before the virus... So it was hard to transition, especially for us, because, we were young and, back then, being young was about having fun and not thinking about tomorrow...
Yes, that’s how I met your father... As I’ve told you before, all I knew about him was that his name was Daniel, he was in his last year of his degree at the university – he was studying Law and he wasn’t from this country, I think he said he was from what used to be Spain... Many of those countries in Europe had to become one territory after the final blow and locked themselves off and down. I know he said he was intending on going back within a few days after that night but would be coming back to the UK at the end of summer, because he wanted to get a job here... I have no idea if he made it back to Spain because it was literally 2 days later that we had the news report that the hosptials were all so overwhelmed that mass outbreaks were occurring inside them and then the military presence appeared...
I stayed in my student flat and didn’t leave. I realised I was pregnant with you very soon, as I missed my period and just started being sick. That scared the last of my two housemates off, they thought I might have the virus, so they went back to stay with their parents, who lived not far from them. My mum and dad lived in Scotland and it wasn’t as easy to get that far, so I stayed in the house. Getting my food parcels from the military each week, watching the news, seeing the numbers wipe through the population... We used to have around 60 million people in this country back then you know... Frightening to think that in the time it took for you to grow, that number was cut to a tenth. Having you inside me made me so careful, I ended up being one of the lucky ones. I literally didn’t leave the house and washed everything with soap and water that was delivered to the house. At the time my mum said she thought I was loosing my mind and suggested I just go out for a short walk once a day. That was allowed. But I was too scared. My fear it would seem saved me, because once the virus mutated and effected the trees, it was in the air constantly. We lost both your grandparents before you were born, they never got to see you...
I remember one week, my food delivery parcel didn’t turn up... It was ok because I’d been saving bits of food in case of an emergency but it transpired that the military had been removed for their own safety. Fortunately I had a neighbor who very kindly agreed to get my ration direct from the shop for me when he got his... We spoke on the phone quite often, got on really well and in fact, he was still living there, still alive when you were a wee girl but eventually the virus got him too...
