Pain like ours was tearing through families the world over. It felt like we were all in it together. Not all of us, it turned out
Without wishing to sound like an episode of Poirot, I remember well what I was doing on the evening of 20 May 2020, when more than 100 people were invited to a BYOB party in the prime minister’s garden, “to make the most of the lovely weather”. While they recovered from an “exceptionally busy period” with, it might be presumed, laughter, companionship and their own bottles of wine, I was at my house. Like them, I, too, had a glass of wine, although I had drunk it by myself. I had then gone for a walk around my block where I had bumped into a friend out on his “daily permitted exercise”. We spoke a little, at a distance of more than two metres. He offered his condolences. I thanked him and returned home, alone. 20 May 2020 was the day I buried my sister.
Like those assembled with their bottles in Downing Street, I, too, had broken the government’s existing guidelines, implemented to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, in a familiar garden. After my sister Karina’s funeral, I had gone to my mother’s house. It was a baking hot day and, while the circumstances didn’t really allow me to “make the most of the lovely weather”, the sunshine did permit me and my other sister, Kirsty, to sit in our mum’s garden, at the state-appointed distance from each other, and recall the many joys, as well as strains, that Karina’s life had brought. There were three of us in the garden, from three separate households, one more than was permitted. It might not have been exactly to the letter of the law, but we reckoned it was the least our grief would permit.
Rory Kinnear is an actor and playwright
