On weekends my wife sometimes lets me accompany her on her trips outdoors with the dog. “I don’t know why,” she says, as we enter the park. “You never say anything.” “I’m too furious,” I say. “About all these people.” “You’re here,” she says. “You’re one of them.” “I know,” I say. “Some of it is self-loathing, but not all.” “Maybe not enough of it,” she says. “Look at this!” I say, pointing to the bottleneck at the gate. For someone as practised as I am in the delicate ballet of social distancing, other people’s attempts can seem painfully amateurish. I think: have you never crossed the street to avoid someone you knew before? Anticipate! “Hurry up,” my wife says. “We’re meeting Charlie by the pond.” “What?” I say. “We can’t do that.” “I wish I’d left you home,” she says. Our friend Charlie is waiting at the water’s edge. We acknowledge each other with subtle nods, like spies, eventually falling into a V-formation that brings us within earshot. “What’s the gossip?” says Charlie. “There is no gossip,” my wife says. “No one’s done anything.” We reach a path, closing up our formation a little to accommodate the runners overtaking us on both flanks. In a bid to maintain a triangle with six foot sides, I end up at the back, straining to listen as Charlie and my wife manufacture gossip out of thin air. A woman in sunglasses passes on our right, making a face and waving her hands as if to push back the invisible clouds of disease rolling off us. My wife looks over her shoulder. “Did you see that?” she says. I turn around. The woman has stopped to shout at us. It is a very English confrontation, in that she is already too far down the path for me to hear her, and I am backing away all the time. Runners flow around her as she yells and points. I recognise something in her overspilling rage: a sort of kindred spirit. It doesn’t seem like a good time to reach out. “Well, I’m never doing that again,” I say as we reach the car. “Don’t worry, you won’t be invited,” my wife says. At six that evening, I find my wife working at her desk. She types for a bit, then swivels her chair towards me. “Can I help you?” she says. “Where is the secret wine?” My wife stares into the middle distance. “Did you look on the shelf above the washing machine?” she says. “Behind the bleach?” “They found that,” I say, meaning the children. “Well then, you might have to go and get some,” she says. “Or you could try having a night off.” “Yeah, right,” I say, feeling for my keys. “Do we need anything else?” “Milk,” she says. “Twiglets.” At the shop I also buy beer for my sons, knowing it will be like chucking half a cow into a shark tank. The water churns; when it stops, there’s nothing left but recycling. Then the hunt for hidden wine begins. I take the long way home, through the maze of residential streets where I normally get my daily exercise. Lockdown may be officially easing, but I’ve felt it peeling up at the corners for some time: more cars, more people in the streets, more workmen on ladders scraping away at mullions. On my final leg, I pass through a phalanx of four women facing each other across the pavement, two at their respective garden gates, two leaning on consecutively parked cars. Each is holding a glass of white wine. “Sorry,” says one, taking a step back as I pass. “It’s my birthday,” says another. We had a chance, I think: a chance to make the world over as a colder, less friendly place. And we have failed.