[2nd January 2020]

“It is good to be back,” exclaimed Maxine as she unloaded the last of Hayley’s belongings from the back of the van that they’d rented.

“Yeah. Yesterday was hard going. My dumbass brother was out to cause trouble right from the start of the day. Mum texted earlier. She says thanks for not rising to his baiting.”

“He did rather broadcast his intentions for the day when he turned up half drunk.”

“My brother could never hold his beer, but it seems that recently he's been drinking vodka, and by what happened yesterday, lots of it."

"Your mum was giving him a right tongue lashing when we left last night."

"She was, but that was probably to make herself feel better. Knowing him as I do, it won't even go into one ear."

Maxine smiled.
“We both know someone else like that, don't we?"

Hayley laughed.
“You mean Dawn?”

“Give the lady a prize!”

“She had a great opportunity to get on in life but threw it all away. It was only a good tongue lashing… well a stern talking to from my mum that got me out of Dawn’s sphere of disintegration, and attend the interview in her place.”

Maxine laughed. Hayley looked at her slightly surprised.

“’Sphere of disintegration’. I’ll have to remember that. That’s a good one.”

Hayley saw the funny side of what she’d just said and joined in.

Christmas and New Year had seen them grow a lot closer. With Hayley only in Devon at weekends, while she worked out her notice at her job and flat, their relationship had had its ups and downs. Now that Hayley was living with Maxine both of them hoped that things would get very serious but, neither of them was rushing into things. Both of them knew that a lot of adjustments to their lives would have to take place before they were able to move forward with their relationship.

“Are we taking the van back today?” asked Hayley, who was referring to the van that they'd rented to move her things from Trowbridge and Bristol down to Devon.

"I think so. The site is open until six, and it has just turned three now."

“Do we have time for a drink first? That apology that is called coffee that we had on the Motorway is still sticking to my mouth,” asked Hayley.

"There is and, we can have one of those cakes that your mum baked for us at the same time.”

“Just what I was thinking,” replied Hayley, with a big grin on her face.

[8th January 2020]

“That went rather well,” said a contented Hayley to Maxine. She received a small grunt in response.

Hayley had to deal with the arrival of the containers that contained the Battery Systems on her own. Maxine was laid up in bed with a stinking cold and was feeling very sorry for herself. Thankfully, Michel had been on hand to supervise the operation. Hayley had let him run the show while she kept everyone warm by supplying copious cups of tea.

The delivery lorries had arrived almost on time to the minute and had deposited four containers in the area outside the former cattle shed at Maxine's house. Those vehicles were simply too big to put one pair of containers into the cattle shed. Thankfully, Michel knew a friendly farmer with a bit of machinery that could do the job, with ease. That expensive-looking bit of kit had arrived just after the delivery lorries had left.

In less than ten minutes, Maxine's containers had been moved into the barn. Now, they were waiting for the installation to be commissioned. That was due to take place in two days.

Michel’s system had been loaded onto a farmers flatbed trailer and taken by road to his home. They would be moved into place the following day and installed the day after that.

"Thank you, darling," croaked Maxine from underneath a thick duvet.

"Your Mum says to keep drinking the hot lemon. It will keep you from getting blocked up," said Hayley, who was having a hard time stopping herself from laughing.

"Mum always said that, and it never made any difference," croaked Maxine.
Her voice had been badly affected by the virus.

“I’ll bring you something to eat in a while.”

“I’m not hungry,” replied Maxine.

“Nonsense. Your Mum would say, 'feed a cold and starve a fever' which is just what I am trying to do, isn't it?”

Maxine cursed from underneath the duvet. The 'Mum's know best' thing was wearing a bit thin, in her opinion.

“I’ll tell her that when I report back later,” joked Hayley as she left Maxine alone.

Maxine just groaned in despair but was still thankful that Hayley was around. It was far better than suffering on her own.

---

[20th January 2020]
“Maxi, I think this might interest you,” said Hayley as she brandished a copy of that morning’s Financial Times.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“This report from their central China business correspondent,” said Hayley pointing to a short article.

Maxine read it and shook her head.

“If this is even half true, then we are fucked."

“How do you mean?”

Maxine sighed.

"Hey, I'm not at school now, you know?" said Hayley as she remembered the times that Tom would help her with her homework. Those sessions would usually involve a good deal of ‘sighs’ when Tom would get a bit frustrated with Hayley’s inability to grasp the problem that they were working on.

This was all the stranger because Tom left school with just one bare pass grade GCSE in Maths while Hayley got nine good GCSE’s.

“Ready for a history lesson?”

Hayley shook her head. She knew what was coming, so she sat down and waited for the lecture to begin. She sat with her hands crossed in her lap just like they did when they were ‘on the naughty step’ at school.

Maxine laughed and began her tale.
“Towards the end of the First World War in late 1918, and then into 1919 and on into the early 1920s, there was a pandemic of what was called ‘Spanish Flu’, even though it may well have not originated in Spain. It killed millions around the world, and that was what made it a pandemic. You have to remember that this was all taking place in the days before planes began crisscrossing the planet in hours. It is generally accepted that much of the spread was down to soldiers going home at the end of the War. Never before had there been so many men concentrated in one place for so long on the Western Front. More people died in late 1918 from the flu than died in the whole of the war. A staggering fact when you think about it. There were many millions of men and some women on both sides of the conflict. The sheer concentration of people both, at the front and on the transports that took them home again was the perfect vector to spread the virus around the world. By that, I mean that there were troops from all of the British, French and German empires plus those from the USA and a few dozen other nations. That was how it spread around the world. Are you with me so far?”

Hayley looked a bit bewildered but nodded her head.

“If you fast forward to now and unless the Chinese are really, really tough and can get this under control, we can look forward to this spreading around the world in weeks, not months. Then we’ll see the propaganda starting in earnest.”

“That’s a very fatalistic attitude?”

"It is and, it is just what a lot of scientists who specialise in the spread of diseases have been saying for years. Like the 'Big One' earthquake in California, it is according to some sources, well overdue. Ten or fifteen years ago, there was another virus that was called SARS. Many epidemiologists said that we got away lightly with that, and when the next one hit, we might not be so lucky.”

“What do you mean about the propaganda?”

Maxine shook her head.
"In the USA, the president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, almost banned the reporting of the pandemic, in case it affected the production of Arms for the war effort. Then various events happened that made it impossible to hide the size of the pandemic as the march in Philadelphia that caused more than 12,000 people to die in a week or so. OTOH, no one knew for certain what a virus was back then even though there had been vaccines for things like Smallpox for about a century. The medical system back then was out of the stone age in comparison to today's health system. Even so, I fear that vested interests will be out in force with fake news and fantastical conspiracies."

“How do you know all this stuff? This is a far cry from anything remotely related to the sort of businesses we have invested in.”

Maxine sighed again. Hayley reacted with a glare.

"Don't worry, darling. I'm just cursing myself for not getting you to read a lot of the things that Adrian made me do in the early days. When I moved on from working with Sally, I knew very little about economics and business in general, even less about economic history and business cycles. Adrian, made me read up the way economies go up and down and, in particular, the reasons why it happens. It might sound a bit strange but I found the period between 1911 and 1933 very interesting. The things that all came together to make the rise of Hitler so much easier, can be very fascinating if you like that sort of thing.”

Maxine took Hayley’s hand in hers.
“You are not me. There is still part of Tom in me and it was that part of me that understood Adrian’s desire for me to understand that sort of thing. I don’t know if I would be interested in doing that now.”

“Maxi… That is you! Be it Tom or Maxine you always had an enquiring mind. From what your mother told me about Adrian, that is a lot of what he saw in you. Who else would have dug and dug and found out the link to the Hotel group and what was going on with them?”

She smiled.
“Don’t ever change. Don’t mind my little foibles. Adrian moulded you in his image to take over from him. It is your destiny.”

Maxine managed a small smile.

Hayley had never liked history at school, but this was different. History had a bad habit of repeating itself that one thing had stuck in her mind for some reason.

“I’m ready to carry on with my history lesson.”

Maxine laughed.

“After a bit of hinting… Well, lots of hints and suggestions from Adrian, I spent hours reading about how the big industrialists exploited their workers allowed me to begin to understand why Adrian did business in the way that he did. Compassionate Capitalism is not easily understood especially, by die-hard profit at all costs capitalists. Many equate it to socialism or worse, communism. Don’t get me wrong, even 100 years ago, some Industrialists did care for both the health and welfare of their workers but most didn’t. That is even truer today than it ever was.”

It was Hayley’s turn to shake her head.
“I guess I’m going to have homework tonight?”

Maxine laughed.
“Not homework. When you have the time and the inclination, I can point you in the right direction. Then your inquisitiveness can take you in the direction it wants and, not in the one that I want it to. That is what Adrian said to me and applies just as much to you as it did to me.”

“This report from China? What can we do? Can we stop it?” asked Hayley deftly bringing the conversation back onto the original topic.

“We as individuals can’t but… we can monitor this very closely but in the short term, I think that we may need to modify a lot of our plans and prepare our businesses for the worst. We can support them but only so far.”

“Why?”

Maxine sighed again.
“You never paid much attention in History, did you?”

“Most of those dates and the like didn't even go into one ear, I'm afraid. I memorised the ones I needed for my CGSE. Once that was over, I mentally erased them.”

"I agree that most of it was irrelevant shite but, there were some interesting parts. The Black Death and the Plague that swept London just before the Great Fire."

“More killing? You must like reading about dead people?”

“It is true that a lot of people died but, the way those events were dealt with might just be a hint as to what is to come when it hits here. Out of adversity, comes strength.”

Hayley thought for a few seconds before replying.
“You dodged my question, didn’t you?”

Maxine just smiled.
“Then you said ‘when’ and not ‘if’?” asked Hayley.

“When is more likely if this thing escapes that part of China, then it will probably get here within a month or six weeks at the outside. Just ask yourself how many long-haul flights are there from China to Europe or the USA on any given day. Multiply that number by say 250 passengers on each flight, and you get some idea of the number of potential carriers of the disease spreading around the world.”

“How did they deal with the plague before?”

“Essentially, the entire population was kept at home in isolation. If you don't have any contact with others, then you can't spread it. Eventually, the thing will die off if it can’t spread and evolve. That is why they put people into total isolation with that Ebola epidemic in West Africa some years back. George Washington did the same when smallpox hit his army during the revolution. He isolated his troops and then vaccinated them. A few historians think that his actions then were a turning point in the war. The Chinese knew that war was more than just fighting.”

Hayley sat down and looked out of the window. A watery sun had just climbed over the trees. Nothing moved other than a few crows going about their business.

Maxine leaned over and took Hayley’s hand.

“Just when we were getting ourselves together…?”

"Yeah. That is a bit of a bummer but, we will have to do what we can to mitigate things."

“Like what?”

“I don’t know at the moment. I need to think about things and how this will impact the businesses.”

Maxine then said,
“You should as well. You look at problems from a different point of view. Take a few days and we can compare our thoughts.”

“What about us…? Here?”

“The Solar panels are being installed next week so that will make us pretty well energy self-sufficient."

“Do you think that it will get that bad? Power cuts and the like?”

Maxine shook her head.

"No, I don't but, that is down to us using more renewable energy than even 20 years ago. Those systems require little human intervention, unlike Coal Mining. It is more than likely that the first hint of trouble people will panic buy all sorts of things for no good reason. We have seen it before. One rumour about a possible problem in the supply of something and people go crazy trying to stock up on it even if they don't need it at the time. Human nature, I'm afraid.”

“We did a big shop last week and stocked up. Will we be, ok?”

Maxine smiled.
"I don't know but, I think we need to take a good look at what we have in the house. If we know what we have and how much we are using, then we can guestimate how much we will need going forward. Not the exotics but the staples like toilet rolls, baked beans, canned and frozen food. That sort of stuff.”

“You sound like you think that it could last for months?”

"That article said that this virus has an incubation period of seven to ten days. Double that and double it again, and that is the minimum. Forty days and that's a low estimate. I'll try to dig up the articles I read a few years ago about the spread of infectious diseases. The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted well over a year.”

“Why did you gen, up on that stuff?”

Maxine smiled again.
“We were thinking of investing in a medical technology company at the time. They specialised in field-deployable diagnosis kits for things like Ebola and Nile Fever. Adrian made sure that I was up to speed on the sort of equipment that they were making before we went to see them.”

“But you didn’t invest in them?”

“No, we didn’t. Before we could come to a deal, they were bought out by one of the giant American Medical equipment makers. It turned out that the UK company had been shortlisted for a contract for the US Military simply because none of the big players in the US was looking at this very seriously. Then word got out and… the rest is history.”

“Ok, I get you.”

---

[10th February 2020]

“Have they gone?” asked Hayley when Maxine came into the kitchen. Hayley was having another go at making bread. Her first few attempts had been disastrous. After the last debacle, she’d talked to her mother who was an excellent baker. This was her first attempt since then.

“Yeah. All installed and connected up. The batteries are starting to charge.”

Hayley smiled.
“At last, but they won’t get a lot of energy today. It is pretty dark out there. It has started to rain just as the forecast said it would.”

Maxine looked out of the window and nodded her head.

“At least now we can get to grip with our Electricity usage."

Hayley shook her head.
"If you got any more anal about that stuff, anyone would think that you are obsessed with it?"

“Someone has to do that. What would you do if the lights went off?”

“Get the torch from my handbag, go to the cupboard under the stairs and get the candles out.”

Maxine laughed.
“You have a torch in your handbag?”

Hayley grinned.
"What I keep in my handbag is strictly need to know, and you don't need to know."

They both laughed. It brightened up an otherwise very dull day.

---

[Late February 2020]

The two women had just finished watching the early evening news on TV.

“That does not look good. All those towns and cities in Italy locked down for 23 hours a day,” remarked Hayley.

“It isn’t good at all. I think we should move forward with our plans starting tomorrow.”

Hayley could see that Maxine was worried.
“We’ll get through this.”

Maxine smiled.
"I think we should try to grow our very own veggies."

Hayley laughed.
“Michel will fall about laughing when he hears about it.”

“He had to start somewhere. He knew nothing about growing herbs before he came down here.”

“They’ll take months to grow big enough to be harvested, won’t they? Are you saying that there is going to be a shortage of veggies?”

“If we are going to be put into some form of lockdown like Italy then what else will we have to do all day? Watch other people make oodles of money on YouTube?"

The seriousness of the situation was starting to hit home to Hayley.

She came and cuddled up to Maxine.
“There will be plenty of time for sex won’t there?”

Maxine sighed.
“You always had a one-track mind, didn’t you?”

Hayley giggled.
“I did try several times to get you into bed… but?”

“I know you did but it didn’t feel right at the time. I was full of teenage angst and a huge fear of making you pregnant. It is a little… well a lot different now.”

“It has to be. You don’t have your ding-a-ling now do you,” said Hayley using their infant school name for a penis.

“And good riddance to it,” replied Maxine.
“It never would do the right thing at the right time… But yes, there will be time for us to explore each other’s bodies.”

Hayley kissed Maxine. As she did so, memories of them fumbling around in Tom’s bed came flooding back to her. They weren’t pretty memories. She gave a small shudder.

“We didn’t know what we were doing back then,” said Maxine who has guessed what had flashed through Hayley’s mind.

“It wasn’t our finest day, was it?”

“That’s all in the past. We are both different people, older and hopefully a bit wiser.”

Hayley smiled.

“We are going to have to adapt to a different world when this is over. We did it when we stopped being teenagers and became adults so we can do it again,” said Maxine.

Hayley ignored Maxine and started to tickle her. That brought some brevity back into their lives even if it was just for a short period.

Just then a squall blew in from the Southwest. Both of them saw it as an omen.

[to be continued]

[authors note]
This piece was mostly written in July 2020 and updated in Oct 2021.