Still. Here. Now.

My daughter’s taken to leaving her bed in the middle of the night and snuggling with her mother. We wonder, out of fear? Or because the change in our days, and the absence of needing to go to school, has created an excuse?

I take the opportunity to go down to her room and write at the desk under her loft bed. So here I am, caught in the quiet of the tail end of darkness, before the light rises.

I turn off the white noise machine she falls asleep by, and at first what follows sounds like silence. But my initial impression lies. The radiator hums; the wooden floorboards creak and groan; rushing air outside brushes its fingertips against window panes and walls and slides over the roof.

A wider silence seems to lie over the houses and streets, over the city, the nation. Or does it? The more…