<\/p>\n
It was a week before Barbara\u2019s fifty-third birthday when the government announced the lockdown. She thought that the virus couldn\u2019t choose a worse time, given that this week she was meant to have a birthday party and fly to Madrid with Adam. The trip to Madrid was a no-go under these circumstances, but she decided to have her party by moving it from the following Friday to Sunday, as the restrictions were meant to be introduced on Monday. She quickly phoned her guests, asking if they were able to come and all agreed, except Beata, who left Warsaw to visit her mother before the lockdown. Barbara spent the whole Saturday cooking and baking cakes, as she prided herself on offering guests exclusively home-made dishes. They all came: Anna, Lucyna, Halina, Hubert and Franek. Adam wasn\u2019t there. She never invited him to her birthday celebrations because he was some of her friends\u2019 old boss; other knew his wife and it was awkward for them to meet, all things considered. Barbara and Adam usually celebrated her birthday separately, just the two of them, either abroad or in Adam\u2019s little summer house on his allotment, some twenty kilometres from Warsaw.<\/p>\n
This year, the party saw similar conversations, mostly about children and travel. Hubert was showing pictures of his youngest daughter who was three years old. Everybody agreed that she was beautiful, like an angel with blue eyes and blond curly hair. He also mentioned that his older daughter, who was in her twenties, was recently promoted. Hubert was Barbara\u2019s first boyfriend and it was always a bit sad to see his children, making Barbara think that they could have been hers. But it was her decision to ditch him thirty years ago and it was a testimony to the maturity of both of them that they remained friends and helped each other in difficult times.<\/p>\n
\u2018How is your niece?\u2019 asked Hubert, when they finished admiring his offspring. \u2018Tamara should finish her studies in Summer, with a two-year delay, but even now she has no sense of urgency, maybe because she is worried about what will happen next. She would like to travel, but has no money and now it\u2019s not possible.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Exactly. Courtesy of the Chinese. Their government infected its own people first and then passed it to the world, knowing that China would beat it easily, while the rest of the world will be mortally wounded. This would allow them to buy foreign assets at a reduced price and make us their slaves. European governments shouldn\u2019t fall into this trap. They should break ties with China and prioritise protecting their economies. Lockdown is madness,\u2019 said Hubert.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is a conspiracy theory. The priority of every government is protecting its people, especially the vulnerable: the old and the disabled. Economies can rise, while people cannot. Once somebody dies, she dies forever,\u2019 replied Lucyna. <\/p>\n
\u2018People always die,\u2019 said Hubert. \u2018This is a fact of life. And overall it\u2019s a good thing. Can you imagine what the world would look like if everybody was immortal? We would be fighting each other for every inch of land. Unfortunately, these days people are unable to accept any type of death; death is not just a tragedy, but a crime committed by a careless government. Yesterday I read that a 103-year old man died of Covid-19 and his grandson said that if our hospitals weren\u2019t so underfunded, his grandfather might carry on living. How long was he meant to live, according to his family, I wonder?\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u2018I agree, but it\u2019s only in the West and maybe postcommunist East that people see death as unexpected and immoral. I once met somebody who was researching the effectiveness of AIDS education in Africa and I recall her saying that in rural Zambia life was so precarious that the people found it laughable that westerners would not smoke cigarettes because it might kill them after thirty years of smoking. These were people who could fall ill and die with no explanation as to why, and this was an accepted fact of existence, so to be afraid of something years in the future was inconceivable to them,\u2019 said Franek. <\/p>\n
\u2018I admire this attitude,\u2019 said Barbara. \u2018Maybe this makes these people happier than us, as they cherish every moment of their life. By contrast, many in the West always invest in the future and overlook the present.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u2018This was discovered a long time ago by Jung,\u2019 replied Hubert. \u2018He described a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that most white people have tense faces, staring eyes and a cruel demeanour. He said: \u201cThey are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don\u2019t know what they want. We think they are mad,\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You are too hard on westerners. I see them as martyrs, who sacrifice themselves on the altar of progress. If not for them, Native Americans might still have not invented the wheel,\u2019 said Franek. <\/p>\n
\u2018Maybe they would be happier without the wheel,\u2019 said Anna. <\/p>\n
\u2018No, they wouldn\u2019t. This is proven by the fact that no society rejects technological inventions; everybody wants to have them. There is no way back, even hippies couldn\u2019t live in their communes permanently,\u2019 replied Franek.<\/p>\n
\u2018Where were you meant to go?\u2019 asked Lucyna, turning to Barbara.<\/p>\n
\u2018First Madrid, but we wouldn\u2019t stay there long. The plan was to visit smaller places, like Toledo and Segovia and we were meant to spend a week in a village whose name I forgot. I like small towns and villages in southern countries, especially Spain and Greece, as travelling there is like travelling back in time. You cannot do it in Poland, as nothing authentic is left. What tourists see in Poland is a cross between a skansen and a simulacra.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018This is not true,\u2019 said Hubert. \u2018We simply look differently at our own surroundings and those of other countries. We don\u2019t know how to be tourists in our own country or city.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Maybe this pandemic will force us to become tourists in our own houses if we won\u2019t be able to travel even to a neighbouring town,\u2019 said Halina. \u2018To be honest, when I opened my wardrobe last weekend, I felt like a tourist as I couldn\u2019t recognise three quarter of the garments I had accumulated.\u2019<\/p>\n
The guest laughed and carried on. Barbara left them and moved to the kitchen to check on supper. Lucyna wanted to help her, but Barbara replied that it was better if she was in charge, given how small her kitchen was. She was thinking that although all of them knew that she was meant to go on holiday with Adam, they talked to her as if she was travelling by herself. He was always bracketed off by her friends. She knew that the reason was that her friends didn\u2019t accept their relationship. \u2018He is not right for you,\u2019 they said in the past, till they stopped mentioning him altogether. He wasn\u2019t good, because he was married and never left his wife. He had lived in this bigamous relationship for almost thirty years, spending weekdays and official holidays with his wife and children and weekends and other holidays with Barbara. Yet Barbara accepted it from the beginning because a weekend with Adam was more precious for her than a whole week with anybody else. Indeed, it was so precious because it was so short. They were never bored with each other and they treasured every minute spent together. She tried to explain it to her friends, but they regarded her as a na\u00efve victim of Adam\u2019s manipulative behaviour. Ultimately she forgave them, as she knew that they cared for her and no friendship was perfect.<\/p>\n
The next day the woman who was in charge of a large editorial office which published over thirty magazines held a meeting for the employees, telling them that from the next day the journalists had to work from home until the restrictions were lifted. They needed to pack all their stuff because nobody knew when they would be back and some might not return at all. Moreover, the office might be rented out to cover some of the expected losses from the decreased sales.<\/p>\n
\u2018How optimistic,\u2019 said a colleague sitting next to Barbara. \u2018I hope this witch never returns.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u2018Indeed,\u2019 she replied. <\/p>\n
Barbara\u2019s younger colleague, Anita, who helped cover the culture and entertainment section in three magazines, asked Barbara, when they were queuing for cardboard boxes to pack their belongings: \u2018How can we write about culture and entertainment when there will be no culture and entertainment to write about? All festivals, concerts and theatre performances are to be cancelled.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018There is always culture and entertainment,\u2019 replied Barbara. \u2018Use your head. For a week or so we can write about how the virus affects the culture and entertainment sector at large and cover the events which were cancelled. Then we can interview some celebrities asking them how they are copying with the lockdown and tips for others. In the third stage we will write about stars who died from Coronavirus or committed suicide. Believe me, when putting food on your table is at stake, people get very creative. We will be too.\u2019<\/p>\n
Anita didn\u2019t say anything, but looked at Barbara with respect, but this did not flatter Barbara. It only made her think that it was her bad luck to always get incompetent collaborators.
\n
\n
\nTwo more days passed and Barbara got a message saying that in light of the pandemic and expected decrease in sales of newspapers in paper form, the publishing office considered consolidating its operations by axing less profitable titles and laying off part of the workforce. Barbara was thinking about similar messages in the past and how many times she didn\u2019t make the cut, but there was no point to despair. Maybe she would keep her job after all, given her competence. The journalists were also asked to come up with stories relevant to the pandemic which could be covered at length. Barbara wrote an e-mail that coffins could be such a topic, given that Italy and Spain were running out of coffins and Poland might be next. She said that together with Anita she could write about their histories and Polish traditions of coffin-making. They could interview by phone the most respected coffin producers and undertakers in the country and add humour to it, to make it entertaining.<\/p>\n
Before she went to bed, she texted Adam, asking him to fix a date for her birthday celebration in his summer house on the allotment. The next morning Adam phoned, telling her that things were not so easy, as his daughter wanted to move to the house during the lockdown, to provide more space for her family.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is not what we agreed. You always said this house is for us to use and El\u017cbieta accepted it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018She did, but I cannot tell my daughter to stay locked in her apartment because I use the house for meetings with my mistress.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Yes, you can say it.\u2019<\/p>\n
There was a silence, during which Barbara was thinking how hard it must be for him being torn between different loyalties and that she promised herself many times not worsen this difficult situation.<\/p>\n
Eventually he broke the silence and said: \u2018I will figure something out. I will let you know in the next couple of days. Take care, don\u2019t be depressed.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I won\u2019t. You know me.\u2019<\/p>\n
Barbara wasn\u2019t depressed, but she was anxious. Yet, she couldn\u2019t take a break as there was more to do at work. She got a spreadsheet to fill, listing all her jobs in the last year as preparation to be assessed for possible redundancy. She had been working as a journalist for over twenty years now, but she still needed to prove her usefulness and competence. She also got messages from two other magazines, for which she worked as a freelancer, informing her that they were suspending their operations for three months and would pay her only half of what they owed her. She sighed and said \u2018fuck\u2019 quietly in the direction of her two cats. One of them, Minna, looked at her with sad eyes, making Barbara smile. It occurred to her that she needed to stockpile food for her cats, because even in the deepest crisis she couldn\u2019t deprive her four-legged friends of their favourite food.<\/p>\n
The next day in the morning she went to the shop where she always bought pet food. She had to queue, but got what she wanted. When driving back home, she was listening to the radio news. The presenter listed more restrictions and how they would be enforced. It sounded like the announcement of martial law in communist Poland in 1981, except then everybody was against the government, while on this occasion 90% were in favour of lockdown and of those half thought that the government didn\u2019t go far enough. It was depressing how Poland had changed since her youth. Back then people were so rebellious and courageous; nobody was afraid to speak their mind and die.<\/p>\n
The next day Adam phoned to say that they could spend the weekend at the allotment house, as his daughter would move in only the following Monday. The weather was meant to be gorgeous. It would be best to go there by bike, taking a longer route, as it was likely that the police would check only cars driving on the main road. Barbara\u2019s cats would have to stay in the flat, unfortunately, but one night wasn\u2019t a problem for them. Barbara agreed and her mood immediately improved. She started to plan what to take with her, so that they had everything they needed, but making sure her bag wasn\u2019t so heavy so as to overburden her bike.<\/p>\n
When she arrived, Adam was already there, putting logs into an open fire. He took her into his arms and kissed her. She stayed like that, as she needed his help to recover from the stresses of the last week: the worry that she might lose her job and not being able to go abroad the whole year. Adam understood this without her saying anything and he didn\u2019t say anything either, just kept his arms around her.<\/p>\n
It was almost thirty years since she\u2019d come to the summer house for the first time. She had been a student of Polish literature with a work placement in the ministry of culture, where Adam was the head of the department. He was then the youngest man in such a position. She remembered how charmed she was by him, although he wasn\u2019t particularly handsome and already showed a tendency for putting on weight. But she didn\u2019t mind. Some people called Adam lazy, as he was never into sports, but for her this was a sign of his indifference to his own life, some kind of fatalism which she found romantic.<\/p>\n
She remembered how interestingly he talked about Cortazar and Marquez, in contrast to the boring professors who churned the same platitudes about Polish Romantic poets. Soon after he lent her his books and invited her to the cinema, where he put his hand on her hand and kissed her. Finally, he invited her to this house and that was it \u2013 she never escaped his spell. Her love for Adam never faltered her whole life. For her, this was the main reason to live, to carry on, apart from preserving life itself.<\/p>\n
Eventually Barbara disentangled herself from his embrace and said: \u2018We should go for a walk, while there is still sun, as it\u2019s meant to be cloudy later in the afternoon.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Sure,\u2019 said Adam.<\/p>\n
They went straight into the wood which smelled of rotten moss, perspiring trees, and blooming flowers. One of her favourite things about this house was the smells; each season of the year and time of day had its specific aroma and it was different from any other wood that Barbara visited in her life. Of those she liked most the smell of Spring and Autumn, as then the wood was working hard to give birth to something. In Spring these were leaves and flowers, typically small and discoloured, yet crying with their scent to notice them; in Autumn it was the smell of rotting moss and wild mushrooms, again inviting to find them and take them home.<\/p>\n
The sun was shining, but when they turned onto their favourite narrow path, along which they found probably thousands of boleti during their visit, Barbara started to shiver. Adam noticed it and said: \u2018Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.\u2019<\/p>\n
These words were very appropriate to Barbara\u2019s current state, including her mental condition, but she knew that they weren\u2019t Adam\u2019s, but Dickens\u2019, as he uttered them several times during their life together. Adam had always charmed her with his erudition, but also made her aware that there was a limit to it. He was good at finding an appropriate quote for an occasion, but less good with creating something of his own. At work he was good at the parties, creating a pleasant atmosphere, but struggled in creating a convincing strategy for his department or finding the right collaborators. He was also unable to fire people, as he had too much sympathy for them, even if they were hopeless. These shortcomings were noted both by his superiors and his subordinates. A couple of times he was overlooked during promotion and, finally, sacked from the ministry. Adam always blamed political changes for his demise, but Barbara knew that it was only part of the story. But she stood by him during the difficult periods and accepted that his misfortune made it difficult for him to leave his wife. This was even more the case when both Barbara and the wife got pregnant at the same time, and Barbara miscarried while El\u017cbieta gave birth to a healthy girl. Barbara\u2019s friends saw it as a bad omen and a sign that she needed to give up on Adam, but Barbara didn\u2019t believe in that.<\/p>\n
Barbara was so immersed in her thoughts that she didn\u2019t notice when they found themselves again in front of the house.<\/p>\n
\u2018I forgot to bring you a birthday present,\u2019 Adam said as they went inside. \u2018This corona business distracted me. I will bring it next time we meet. In your place, most likely.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It doesn\u2019t matter,\u2019 said Barbara. \u2018I will wait. Next week will also be our anniversary: thirtieth. Do you remember?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Of course I do,\u2019 said Adam. \u2018My god, how old we are now.\u2019<\/p>\n
Barbara smiled, thinking how things had changed. For many years he used to say to her: \u2018You are so young,\u2019 because he was nine years older than her and his wife was three years older than Adam, adding to Barbara\u2019s youth. Now these differences were obliterated, in part because El\u017cbieta aged very well; she looked better in her fifties and sixties than thirties. By contrast, Barbara\u2019s face was covered with wrinkles; a guide to her problems and defeats. Luckily, her body was still firm, even athletic, younger than her real age.<\/p>\n
In the evening they watched a film by Woody Allen, Irrational Man<\/em>, drinking wine and eating remnants of Barbara\u2019s birthday cake. The film was meant to cheer them up, but the story of a philosophy professor, who almost kills her young student lover when she discovers that he is a murderer, made Barbara uneasy. There was a cynicism in this film that hurt her. When she shared with Adam the pain of seeing how easily the protagonist jettisoned love for self-preservation, he replied: \u2018Charles Bukowski said that the difference between life and art is that art is more bearable. But for you life is more bearable than art.\u2019<\/p>\n This was true. She could take a lot, because there was no good alternative to not taking it. The bad alternative was a mental breakdown, solitude, poverty.<\/p>\n \u2018What about you?\u2019, asked Barbara with a trace of resentment.<\/p>\n \u2018I agree with Bukowski. I can survive any art. Its life which is destroying me. But maybe not for too long. Apparently this virus targets people like me: older overweight men with underlying health problems.\u2019<\/p>\n Barbara felt a bit angry, thinking that whatever the situation, Adam was always able to present himself as its victim. But she didn\u2019t say anything, as she didn\u2019t want to spoil their time together. <\/p>\n Finally, they had sex, which was slow and tiring. Adam\u2019s physical effort to succeed was diminishing the romanticism of the act. For some time Barbara was thinking that she would be fine with them meeting just for the pleasure of talking, touching and hugging. Yet, she was afraid that she would offend Adam by suggesting this to him, as it would mean that she treated him like an old man. Barbara knew that he stopped having sex with his wife some years ago and El\u017cbieta was fine about it.<\/p>\n Straight after sex Adam fell asleep, while Barbara couldn\u2019t sleep, either due to alcohol or the film. She got up, put the kettle on and with a cup of tea went outside. It was quite cold, but it was pleasant to sit on the bench in front of the house. She was thinking that the most important things of her life, good and bad, happened in this house. Here Adam told her that he loved her and her child was conceived. Here she also broke her leg, caught Lyme disease and her cat Tusia was killed by the neighbour\u2019s dog. <\/p>\n The house remained the same, yet subjectively it changed. When she came here for the first time, it felt modern and tasteful, with its walls covered with wood and posters from exhibitions of Pollock and Rothko. Now, however, it came across as old-fashioned and neglected. The wood which was light-coloured and fresh thirty years previously, was now dirty and dark and Rothko\u2019s posters looked like the decoration in an English toilet, as one guest remarked. The neighbours, who were young, self-confident and keen to socialise, now were old and defeated, like the communist system which they once represented. Yet, for Barbara, this summer house was still her home, the only home she ever had.<\/p>\n The next day they spent the morning walking in the wood and Adam collected for her a bunch of primroses and violets. First she thought about taking the flowers back to Warsaw, but in the end decided to leave them on Tusia\u2019s grave. \u2018Hello. You had an accident,\u2019 he said. \u2018You broke your nose and possibly something else. Can you move your arm?\u2019 <\/p>\n \u2018No, I can\u2019t,\u2019 replied Barbara. She heard her voice coming distorted from her mouth, as if she was talking via a vocoder.<\/p>\n \u2018I am a doctor, albeit only a junior one. I called an ambulance, but they have delays due to Coronavirus.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u2018I see,\u2019 replied Barbara.<\/p>\n \u2018Shall I phone somebody else? Your family?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Yes.\u2019 <\/p>\n She tried to give the young man Adam\u2019s phone number, but didn\u2019t remember it and, indeed, wasn\u2019t able to say anything as suddenly she was out of breath.\u2019<\/p>\n The man took her rucksack and from it her phone, asking:<\/p>\n \u2018Will I find it here? Can I phone?\u2019<\/p>\n Barbara blinked to give him permission and he quickly found Adam\u2019s number, as he was the person whom Barbara phoned most often. He asked again if he could phone him and then she saw him talking, but couldn\u2019t hear anything.<\/p>\n Barbara didn\u2019t know how much time passed until Adam arrived, as she lost sense of time. Her body was reduced to her head floating on a liquid substance which kept her just above the surface, like a spot of oil on water. Adam arrived just as she felt she was about to sink, but she managed to hold on. She saw him talking to the doctor, but only hearing fragment of their conversation: \u2018broken nose\u2019, \u2018injured neck\u2019, \u2018paralysed.\u2019 <\/p>\n Barbara looked at Adam\u2019s eyes and could see that he was sad, but he wasn\u2019t just sad about what had happened to her. His was sadness mixed with embarrassment that he was unable to help her. She knew this expression of impotence from earlier occasions, for example when unexpectedly she was kicked out from a flat she was renting and had nowhere to go or when she told Adam that she was pregnant. It occurred to her that he wouldn\u2019t look after her cats when she was in the hospital, so she needed to find somebody to do it. The best person would be Beata, who lived only two blocks away from her, but she wasn\u2019t in Warsaw, so it had to be Halina or Hubert. She wanted to tell the doctor to find their phones numbers in her contact numbers, but wasn\u2019t able to utter any words. Everything got blurry and she was falling asleep again. She was woken up by the piercing sound of the ambulance.<\/p>\n She heard the young doctor arguing with the driver, telling him that they were waiting for an ambulance for three and half hour. The driver said:<\/p>\n \u2018This whole week all ambulance staff in Warsaw have been on Coronavirus training and today is Sunday. We had only two vehicles to attend to all accidents in the city. Believe me, we did our best and be glad that we arrived at all.\u2019<\/p>\n Three men were putting Barbara on a stretcher and then into an ambulance through the back door. It occurred to her that it looked like a coffin. But she shrugged this thought off quickly and said to the young doctor: \u2018I might be locked in, but I won\u2019t be locked down. Ever.\u2019<\/p>\n He smiled, but she wasn\u2019t sure if he understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Locked and Down It was a week before Barbara\u2019s fifty-third birthday when the government announced the lockdown. She thought that the virus couldn\u2019t choose a worse time, given that this week she was meant to have a birthday party and fly to Madrid with Adam. The trip to Madrid was a no-go under these circumstances, but she decided to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4738,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/4738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
\nIt was Sunday afternoon when they packed their stuff and left. The cycling back usually took Barbara more time, despite the fact that the journey was downhill and there were fewer things to carry. Maybe the prospect of spending the following week without Adam, at work which she increasingly disliked, made her prolong the journey. They were cycling for half an hour together in the wood and then took different routes, each to their own apartments, which were in different corners of Warsaw. The sun was shining and there were no cars or cyclists around. Barbara was thinking that this lockdown wasn\u2019t so bad after all, as it felt as if nature was breathing a sigh of relief, thanks to being left in peace. This thought made her almost ecstatic and she sped up, in part out of joy and in part because she was cycling downhill. Then she lost consciousness. When she regained it, she was lying in front of a soundproof barrier. Her face was covered in blood, which was tickling her, but she couldn\u2019t move her hand to rub it off. In fact, she couldn\u2019t move at all, and her face was aching. It took her some time to realise what had happened \u2013 she hit the soundproof barrier and the blow must have been strong as she couldn\u2019t move. If she could get hold of her mobile phone, she could phone an ambulance, but her bag was two metres away and she couldn\u2019t reach it. There was nobody driving or cycling on this road, obviously due to lockdown. The pain was getting worse and Barbara again lost consciousness. When she regained it, she noticed a young man sitting next to her.<\/p>\n