FROM: Ian Brown

TO: Johanna Schneller Welcome home, honey!

Lovely to see you again, even from the distance of 6m as you walked in the front door and I stood out on the sidewalk, to maintain non-contagion. Did you have a good time in California with Patty and Judy?

I hope so, because you are not going to have a good time back here at home. Because you're returning from the United States, you have to undergo self-isolation for two weeks, on your own floor of the house and in your own bed and bathroom, while I have to practise "social distancing". I don't have any symptoms beyond a slight sore throat, but it makes sense for everyone to act as if they are infected, as there aren't enough tests. Which is why I am in our 350 sq ft basement apartment, and you are in the house itself.

I tried to leave your solitary-confinement cell pristine by disinfecting everything I have been touching regularly before I took up my lowly place in the basement: all the taps and faucets, the stairway banisters, the flush handles on the toilets, the front and back door knobs, the blind string on the window nearest the bed.

My problem with disinfecting is that it is so easy to miss something like, say, the inside of the laundry hamper. I just read on the Internet that we should disinfect the inside of the laundry hamper. But have we, two working people, you a feminist and me a traditionally lazy male where housework is concerned - have we ever even considered the inside of the laundry hamper?

Thank God we had those Lysol wipes; otherwise there isn't a tub of disinfectant wipes, or a face mask, or a pair of sterile latex gloves, within a 3km radius of our house.

And according to the rules of Covid-19 self-isolation, you are not supposed to venture into any possibly common area of the house without both mask and gloves.

So that is why I'm in the basement, in my own hermetically sealed pod.

FROM: Johanna

The speed of this is still so strange to me. I flew to Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 11. The aforementioned Patty and Judy, my oldest friends, and I went to a beach-side restaurant. Plenty of people there.

On Thursday, we drove into the desert, and stopped at a diner for lunch. Plenty of people there, too - but now, every table was talking about The Virus.

An hour later, we walked into a supermarket, and something in the air made us immediately say: "We are buying all our food, no more eating out, period."

There was no sense of panic, just, ohh, this is what we're doing now.

We'd booked this trip long before there was a Covid-19, and it turned out to be freakishly perfect: Our Airbnb house sat in the middle of nothing. A few times a day, we'd check in with the world, and watch the news pile up on itself. We felt pure.

That's why I was so resistant when you started texting me those articles about how to self-isolate. I was all denial: "Let's tough it out together! Let's be Tom and Rita! What do you mean, you can't pick me up at the train?"

You texted back, and I quote: "I would happily pick you up... but everything about that plan (enclosed space, returned from highly infected place, me over 60) says bad idea. Because if you have it and I get sick and die, you will feel terrible."

FROM: Ian

You are right, I do have hermit fantasies - and self-isolation is playing to them. I brought nine - nine! - books with me to the basement.

FROM: Johanna

You insist you're an introvert, because you like to be alone. But you also need people. You thrive on contact.

FROM: Ian

But self-isolation is going to be hard on extroverts. You need to be hermit-like now, to get through this. I woke up this morning depressed - like many people, I imagine. Then I made it worse by reading the (coronavirus) news. Better to start the day with music or great writing.

FROM: Johanna

Thanks for the bag of mushroom crisps. Which I needed you to get, because they were in the basement storeroom. Where you won't let me go.

FROM: Ian

It's not about not letting you go there! This is a pandemic, not a test of how much I love my wife... What I find depressing is not just the possibility that anyone could die, but the way the virus has deprived us all of a future, of a frame of reference to plan by.

But if I actually face the possibility that my end might come sooner than I think - that makes me act. Which is why we need to embrace our inner introverts now.

FROM: Johanna

If Twitter is right, a lot of us are going through the same thing: At first, self-isolation sounds like some kind of spa. I'll do my taxes! I'll try podcasts! I'll reread all of Chekhov! But what I really do is watch a baking show, because that's who I am, at my core. That's what's so immediately unnerving about self-isolation. We confront who we are. That doesn't seem to change, no matter what else does.

FROM: Ian

Then again, we aren't cooped up with kids and no school for three weeks, like some of our friends. "I predict a spike in the divorce rate," a neighbour said. Which do you think is harder in these circumstances - being alone, or never being alone?

FROM: Johanna

I think being alone is always hardest.