London, England – Palermo, Sicily, Italy – 2020
The last time Oliver Bennett saw his grandmother before the pandemic, he refused to kiss her goodbye.
He was eleven years old, and at that particular age he considered public affection an inconvenience, especially when it involved an elderly woman who insisted on straightening his collar and telling him that his hair looked as though he had been dragged backwards through a hedge.
They stood outside her apartment building in Palermo on a warm late-December afternoon. A taxi waited at the curb with its engine running. Oliver’s father struggled to fit two suitcases into the boot, while his mother searched her handbag for the passports she had already checked twice.
His grandmother, Teresa Bellini, stood beneath the apartment’s green wooden shutters wearing a cardigan despite the mild weather.
“Come here, Oliver.”
He approached reluctantly.
She put both hands on his shoulders and examined his face with the concentration of someone inspecting a valuable painting.
“You are getting too tall,” she complained.
“That’s what people do, Nonna.”
“Not so quickly. I haven’t permitted you.”
He smiled despite himself.
She reached up to smooth his hair. He ducked.
“Nonna.”
“What?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Making me look like a little kid.”
“You are a little kid.”
“I’m eleven.”
“An ancient age. Practically ready for a pension.”
His father laughed from beside the taxi.
Teresa drew Oliver closer. She smelled of lavender soap, tomato sauce, and the faint medicinal scent of the cream she rubbed into her arthritic hands every morning. He had known that smell for as long as he could remember, though he had never thought to name it.
“Give your grandmother a kiss.”
He glanced toward the taxi driver, who was watching from behind his sunglasses.
“Do I have to?”
Teresa followed his gaze and understood.
For a moment, something changed in her expression. It was not quite disappointment. She seemed to be measuring the distance between the boy who once fell asleep against her shoulder and the young person now standing in front of her, increasingly determined to belong to himself.
“Of course not,” she said.
She patted his cheek and stepped back.
“Go on. Your father will complain if you miss the plane.”
Oliver climbed into the taxi, relieved to have escaped the embarrassment.
Through the rear window, he watched his grandmother remain on the pavement. She raised one hand, small and pale against the dark green shutters.
He waved once.
Then the taxi turned the corner, and the apartment building disappeared behind a row of parked scooters.
For the next three months, Oliver thought very little about that goodbye.
He had schoolwork to do, football matches to play, friends to argue with, and a new bicycle to persuade his parents to buy. His grandmother lived in another country, but that had always been the arrangement. She occupied a comfortable place in his life: a familiar voice on Sunday video calls, a woman who sent birthday cards containing twenty-euro notes, and the person who made fried aubergines precisely the way he liked them.
It had never occurred to him that distance could become something more permanent than geography.
By March, however, the world had begun to change in ways even the adults could not explain.
And Oliver would spend much of the following year remembering the kiss he had been too embarrassed to give.
The first signs of trouble reached the Bennett household through the television.
At the beginning of March, news reports showed overcrowded hospitals in northern Italy. Doctors spoke to reporters through masks. Military vehicles appeared in deserted streets. Numbers climbed across the bottom of the screen, and the people presenting them looked increasingly uncomfortable with the task.
Oliver’s father, Daniel Bennett, watched the evening news more carefully than usual.
He was forty-two, an architectural surveyor who spent much of his working life examining buildings that other people wanted to renovate. He believed that most problems could be understood by gathering the relevant facts, identifying the weak points, and making a sensible plan.
His wife, Claire, a physiotherapist at a London rehabilitation clinic, had a less reassuring view of problems. She worked with people whose lives had changed in the space of a single accident, diagnosis, or missed warning sign. She knew that careful people were not always protected by careful decisions.
One evening, Oliver came downstairs to find his parents speaking quietly in the kitchen.
“She’s ninety-three, Daniel.”
“I know how old my mother is.”
“Then you know why I’m worried.”
“She has food. She has her medication. I spoke to Matteo this morning.”
“Matteo is nearly seventy himself.”
“Sixty-eight.”
“That’s not the point.”
Oliver stopped in the doorway.
“Are you talking about Nonna?”
His parents turned.
Daniel switched off the radio.
“We’re talking about what’s happening in Italy.”
“Is she sick?”
“No,” Claire said immediately. “She’s perfectly well as far as we know.”
“What does ‘as far as we know’ mean?”
“It means we spoke to her yesterday,” Daniel replied. “She was complaining about the price of oranges, which generally means she’s feeling all right.”
Oliver accepted this explanation. His grandmother had strong opinions about food prices, local politicians, television presenters, and the decline of respectable bread. Complaining was part of her ordinary way of being alive.
“Can we call her?”
“After dinner.”
Oliver opened the refrigerator.
“What are we having?”
“Chicken.”
“Again?”
His mother looked at him.
“Would you prefer to cook?”
He withdrew a carton of orange juice and decided that further negotiation would be unwise.
Later that evening, he sat beside his father while they called Palermo.
The connection was poor. Teresa’s face appeared in fragments, freezing occasionally into expressions she had not intended to make. Behind her, Oliver could see the familiar yellow kitchen tiles and the small wooden shelf crowded with jars of dried herbs.
“Oliver!” she exclaimed when the picture cleared. “Look at you. Have you eaten?”
“Yes, Nonna.”
“What?”
“I’ve eaten.”
“What did you eat?”
“Chicken.”
“Did your mother cook it properly?”
Claire, passing behind the sofa, raised an eyebrow.
“I can hear you, Teresa.”
“Good. Then perhaps you will listen.”
They all laughed.
Teresa continued talking about the neighbourhood. The church bells were still ringing, though fewer people attended services. Her neighbour had bought enough pasta to feed an army. The woman at the bakery had begun serving customers from behind a temporary plastic screen.
When Daniel asked whether she had been outside, Teresa hesitated.
“Only downstairs.”
“Mamma.”
“I needed milk.”
“Matteo said he’d bring whatever you needed.”
“Matteo brings me milk that expires tomorrow.”
“Then tell him which one to buy.”
“He is a grown man, Daniel. If he doesn’t know how to buy milk by now, I cannot educate him.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
Oliver laughed, but his father did not.
“Please stay inside,” Daniel said. “Just until we understand what’s happening.”
Teresa studied her son’s face through the screen.
“You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You were never good at lying.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She adjusted the camera, bringing one eye very close to the lens.
“I am being careful. You don’t have to worry about me every minute.”
After the call, Daniel remained on the sofa with his phone in his hand.
Oliver was halfway up the stairs when he heard his father speak.
“I should have gone in February.”
Claire answered from the kitchen.
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I kept saying I’d visit when work calmed down.”
“Work never calms down.”
“No.”
There was a long silence.
Oliver continued upstairs, but for the first time he understood that his father was frightened.
It unsettled him more than the pictures on television.
When the schools closed, the first week felt like an unexpected holiday.
Oliver stayed in his pyjamas until noon, played computer games with friends over the internet, and ate cereal directly from the box when his mother wasn’t watching.
By the second week, the novelty had worn off.
His football club suspended training. The public playground was closed. His best friend, Ethan, stopped coming to the door, and the short conversations they had through their phones became increasingly repetitive.
The streets outside their house in South London were strangely quiet. Buses passed with only a few passengers. Shops displayed handwritten notices. Someone had taped a rainbow to the window of a nearby flat, and within days there were dozens more.
Claire began working longer hours, assisting patients who could no longer attend their usual rehabilitation appointments. Daniel worked from the dining-room table, surrounded by survey reports, building plans, and mugs of coffee that Oliver was repeatedly ordered not to knock over.
Every Sunday, the family called Teresa.
At first, she appeared as she always had, sitting upright at the kitchen table with her hair carefully pinned and a glass of water beside her.
Then Oliver noticed that she had stopped wearing earrings.
It was a small thing. His grandmother owned several pairs, mostly modest gold studs and tiny pearls, and she generally wore them even when she wasn’t expecting company.
One Sunday in April, her hair was loose around her shoulders.
“Where are your earrings?” Oliver asked.
Teresa touched one earlobe.
“Oh. I forgot.”
“You never forget.”
“I’m ninety-three. I’m entitled to forget something occasionally.”
“Did you eat breakfast?”
She looked offended.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just asking.”
“I ate toast.”
“With what?”
“Butter.”
“You always have jam.”
“Well, today I wanted butter.”
Oliver leaned closer to the screen.
“What’s behind you?”
“My kitchen, Oliver. Have you forgotten what a kitchen looks like?”
“The washing-up.”
Teresa glanced over her shoulder.
Several plates stood beside the sink.
“Yes?”
“You haven’t washed them.”
“I was going to.”
His grandmother had spent decades insisting that a clean kitchen was a sign of a civilised household. She washed dishes while cooking rather than allowing them to accumulate. When Oliver stayed with her, she wiped the table before he had finished eating.
Now the plates had been left where they were.
Daniel took the phone.
“Mamma, is everything all right?”
“Of course.”
“You seem tired.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“Why?”
