“And when I go out for a walk at night near my house, I put on my mask.”

“Well. You’re very well-behaved.”

How else was I supposed to respond?

She seemed intelligent. A middle-class professional, just about middle-aged, married with children. But she may as well have just told me she was insane.

It felt like that was exactly what she had done, effectively.

Except she wasn’t insane. I knew that, because nothing else that she said, on any other subject, was out of the ordinary. Her mannerisms and modes of speech were regular. She was very polite.

That was it, that was the problem, I realised.

She was very polite. She cared about manners, and about being seen, or heard, to be respectable.

And what was polite right now, suddenly, without anyone having checked around, was to do things that were irrational.

Like wearing a facemask alone at night…