Hi,
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to do this. Do you want to meet for a chat? I thought we could go for a walk together in Brockwell Park. Let me know if you’d like that. Cat x
And then, in a rush because I worry my message is too cold:
I miss you x
The messages burn in my pocket but after only two minutes, there it is. A reply.
I’d love to. How about Saturday at 11? x
I feel calmer and more centered, knowing I’ve taken the first step toward narrowing this fissure between Phoebe and me. Libby and I head toward the Barbican, where we’re seeing a “multimedia art installation” with pictures by Frederica Valli, the famous war photographer.
We make our way into the gallery and I’m looking in my bag for chewing gum when I hear Libby.
“Oh my God,” she says, her face caving in on itself in pain.
“What? What’s wrong—”
There’s no need for her to answer. I realize now why the room, full of people, is solemnly silent. The first picture is a huge black-and-white photo from the Oxenholme riots. A woman, giving birth on the tarmac of the train platform, surrounded by people and yet looking so alone. Where is her husband? I hope he was trying to find her help. Her expression is one of pure anguish and primal fear. It says both, “Somebody help me,” and “Please, please stay away.”
I had heard about the riots, I watched them on the TV, but this photo conveys more than any grainy helicopter footage ever could. The roiling mass of people in the background yet no one is stepping forward to help. This woman reduced, in the twenty-first century, to giving birth on a cold, dirty floor out of sheer desperation to escape the inescapable.
I’m desperate to know what came of her but there’s a queue to read the card by the photo. Eventually, endless minutes later, we reach it. Woman in pain, by Frederica Valli. January 7, 2026. That’s it. Nothing else. No mention of whether the baby was a boy or a girl, or if her husband survived, or if the mother was okay in the end.
We move along the corridors, awestruck by the photos. There has never been a shortage of images of the Plague and the pain it wrought but I hadn’t realized until now the absence of these kinds of images. Quiet, taken not for a news program but with care, in the moment. Art, in other words.
The next picture needs no explanation of the identity of the subject. Marcus Wilkes, author of Good-bye darling: A Memoir of Fear and Acceptance. Marcus was a popular journalist who recounted his life in journals from the day he first heard about the Plague in November 2025 to the day before he died, delirious and able to only write the words “Good-bye darling” to his wife of thirty-four years. It only spans six months but it’s a beautiful book. This is Marcus in three stages, all lined up. The first with his wife in November 2025, fearful but pasting on familiar smiles. They are the smiles of careful optimism; two people who can’t hope too much to be spared because it will be too painful when the disaster comes to pass. The second is in March 2026 after the death of their son. Their faces are old, weary, desperate. The third is in April 2026. Marcus is clearly dying. The picture is in black and white but a thick layer of sweat is visible on his forehead, his face a mask of pain. But it is not this illness that pierces me and makes me weep. It is the sight of his hand tightly held by his wife, who is looking at him with hunger. I recognize that look. It is the look that says, “Please don’t leave. Please don’t leave me all alone. I can’t bear it, so I really need you to try and stay.” It is unavoidable, the tears that tip themselves freely down my cheeks as I think back to the awful night when my kind, strong, calm husband had to leave me. To walk upstairs in our happy, love-filled house knowing we would never see each other again unless, by some miracle, he recovered. A tiny hope so small we never articulated it.
I wish I could have held his hand. If I could have anything in the world in this moment, go back to any point in my life, I would go back and hold his hand at the end. I would do what Marcus’s wife did, and hold his hand so he knew he wasn’t alone. Anthony died all alone, with no one to comfort him, hold him, reassure him, tell him that at the very least he was loved. He died alone and I can never go back to that moment.