On Monday, Dominic Cummings finally gave an account of his trip to Durham during lockdown – more than a month after his wife, Mary Wakefield, wrote about their experiences of lockdown for the Spectator magazine.
The two versions are not entirely consistent. An analysis of their stories, together with eyewitness accounts, throws up questions and peculiarities that are yet to be resolved.
Friday 27 March
By Cummings’ account, his wife fell ill during the day, prompting him to rush home from No 10 to take care of her. He then returned to the office, despite having spent time with someone he strongly suspected to have coronavirus. They drove to Durham that evening, and he developed symptoms himself overnight.
But in Wakefield’s article, she wrote: “That evening as I lay on the sofa, a happy thought occurred to me: if this was the virus, then my husband, who works 16-hour days as a rule, would have to come home.”
By her husband’s recollection, he had already been home. And why did Cummings return to the office after spending time with his symptomatic wife?
2/3 April
Wakefield wrote that “day six is a turning point”, when her husband was having such difficulty breathing that she feared he should be in hospital. Day six of her account would appear to be Thursday 2 April.
Yet according to Cummings, the following day he was well enough to drive to hospital to pick up their son, who had been taken ill the night before.
Sunday 12 April
In Wakefield’s account of the family’s time in quarantine, she described a range of unusual and varying symptoms that people with coronavirus may experience. She referred to her own headaches, others’ “numbness in their fingertips”, and Cummings’ “spasms”. No mention, though, of problems with her husband’s eyesight.
Yet this was the reason Cummings gave for taking a “test drive” to Barnard Castle, a town almost 30 miles away, before returning to London. He said he had taken his wife and son “for a short drive” on Easter Sunday – Wakefield’s birthday – “to see if I could drive safely”.
Why did the couple conclude that the best way to test his eyesight was to take a trip that would have involved using a busy A-road?
Cummings also said the family went to the “outskirts” of Barnard Castle. But the location where they were seen, next to the River Tees between Ullathorne Rise and Gill Lane, is on the far side of the town from the Cummings family property, and is close to a considerable number of homes.
Why did they end up here on a drive designed simply to test whether it was safe for him to take the wheel?
