Last August, Pape and his family went on a city break to Birmingham, making the most of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s discount scheme. The day after he arrived home, his symptoms began
Amanda Pape didn’t want to go on a city break to Birmingham during a pandemic, but her husband, Bob, a 53-year-old lawyer, insisted. “Bob was convinced that the government would not allow people to travel if it wasn’t safe,” says Amanda, a 56-year-old former teacher. Bob was persuasive – he was a lawyer, after all – so she relented. Along with her daughter, Jazzy, 19, one of Jazzy’s friends and a child Bob and Amanda were fostering, they booked three nights in a Holiday Inn from 2 August 2020.
The family, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, stayed from Sunday to Wednesday, to make the most of the government’s “eat out to help out” (EOTHO) scheme, which offered food and soft drink discounts on Mondays to Wednesdays in August. Right until they left for Birmingham, Amanda was uneasy. She was on the verge of cancelling. It felt wrong.
