Love in Lockdown

by Chloe James

  I wonder if we could use this, putting the number of our local WhatsApp group on the bottom. I could make loads of photocopies and we could get them out to all the flats. Of course the only thing is someone like Jack couldn’t deliver them and I need to think of something he can do – he feels so helpless, I can tell. My eye goes down to Zane’s little rendition of Charlie Mackesy’s mole character – it’s more of a splat, really, but he has drawn little feet and arms and painted over the top in painstakingly big letters, ‘I may be small but I can make a difference.’ I wonder …

  I walk out on the balcony. ‘Hey, Jack, you around?’

  There’s a moment’s silence, only one moment, I notice, then: ‘Hi, how are you?’ he calls. I’m inordinately pleased to hear his voice. It’s strangely comforting to know he is just upstairs even though I can’t see him.

  ‘Good thanks,’ I reply. ‘Have you got the emergency supply rope?’

  ‘Just a mo and I’ll send it down.’ There’s a thump and a scraping sound and soon the trusty Budweiser box bumbles into view. ‘Is it more crispy cakes?’ he asks hopefully.

  ‘Nope I’m afraid not, though I might be making flapjacks later if you fancy some.’

  ‘Bit healthy,’ he says, then laughs. ‘Mind you, I really need to get a bit fitter after all this sitting around, so flapjacks would be amazing.’

  I roll Zane’s picture into a scroll, and tuck it into the Budweiser box to send up.

  ‘I may be small but I can make a difference,’ he reads out loud. ‘Thanks … are you trying to tell me something?’

  Oops, I didn’t think of that. ‘No, sorry, I mean …’ Epic fail. ‘What I mean is I’ve thought of something you can do from home that might help others. Although you’re already doing your bit by staying in.’

  ‘I know, my razor wit and bubbly personality is a danger to the public otherwise.’

  ‘I wasn’t saying that, though you’re probably right.’ I grin to myself. ‘It was just that I had an idea. How are you at talking to people?’

  ‘Not bad – I’m talking to you,’ he says, and I can tell he’s smiling.

  ‘Absolutely, and you like working in a bar so you’re perfect for this. How about you become our guy who chats to people who just want someone to phone them every so often? I thought we could create a support network of volunteers like you who could ring anyone who’s stuck in on their own for regular chats.’

  ‘Well yeah.’ He pauses. ‘Yeah I think it would be good. I’d be more than happy to do that and it might cheer some people up. In fact I’d quite like the chat as well; gets a bit quiet up here.’ Aha – my idea seems to be working perfectly. I thought Jack might be too proud to admit he’s lonely and needs some support, but this way I’ve hopefully solved it, without him losing face.

  ‘That’s brilliant. I just need to work out how we organise it, but I think if I use some photocopies of the sheet I gave you – with the WhatsApp group on it – I’m sure we can get them round to people.’

  ‘Great,’ says Jack. ‘Count me in. Although, it’s just a phone call isn’t it, not FaceTime or Zoom?’ He sounds anxious, which I find surprising. He’s obviously worked in a job that takes oodles of confidence and yet he’s worrying about a Zoom call. It seems odd.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ I reassure him. ‘It might be less complicated, initially at least, especially for any older residents who can find technology daunting. Why do you ask, anyway? I didn’t have you down as the shy or nervous type. Or have you grown two heads or a comedy beard or something?’

  ‘No,’ says Jack far too innocently. Something’s definitely up. Either that, or he is totally lacking in self-confidence.

  ‘Don’t believe you. Come on – spill.’

  ‘Well … I had an accident whilst cutting my hair.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’ I have horrible visions of him having cut himself and having to wear a large sticking plaster over half of his head like a character in one of those dodgy old black and white horror movies.

  ‘One involving the razor giving up halfway through.’

  ‘That’s a nightmare,’ I say, trying to sound sympathetic even though secretly, I just want to see how bad the damage is. Maybe he’s really sensitive about his hair.

  ‘Yes it is. One half of my head looks quite neat and the other half has Troll Doll hair.’

  I can’t help it – I laugh. ‘It’s only hair.’

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ he insists. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to give any of these people I’m trying to help a terrible fright.’

  ‘Is the razor totally broken or could I send up some batteries?’

  ‘It’s broken, but it’s okay – good old Sam is on the case. He’s ordered me another one like his own, but of course all of those kind of things are slow delivery at the moment, so for now I have to put up with my slightly deranged hairdo.’

  ‘I wish I could get to see it. But at least you don’t have to wait too long to get it fixed. That’s kind of Sam to sort it out for you – he sounds like a fantastic brother.’

  ‘Yep he is, when he’s not being annoying.’

  ‘How are Carrie and Tina?’

  ‘Doing really well. I’ve managed to Zoom a few times and watch Carrie having her bedtime story.’

  ‘That’s lovely. I hope it was a good one.’

  ‘Yes it was That’s Not My Puppy.’

  ‘Sounds really gripping.’ I think I know this book off by heart – it’s one of the pre-schoolers favourites and although it’s enjoyable the first few times, it does become a little predictable on the twentieth reading.

  ‘It was,’ he assures me. ‘The funny thing was that by the end Carrie was still awake, Tina was asleep and my head was nodding.’

  ‘That’s hilarious.’

  ‘How’s your sister – Jess, isn’t it? How’re the wedding plans going?’ I’m touched by how much Jack remembers and it’s surprisingly good to have someone outside the family to talk to about Jess’s crazy antics.

  ‘Full steam ahead of course. It’s only a few weeks away. We’ve been discussing gazebos this morning.’

  ‘Exciting times … but surely she doesn’t need a gazebo, because everyone will still be in lockdown?’

  ‘You would think. But it’s a small one that she and Zach can stand under in the garden whilst the priest marries them.’

  ‘There’s simply no stopping Jess is there? You’ve got to admire her organisational skills. Will he have to socially distance?’ asks Jack.

  ‘Yes. So much so, that he will be marrying them via Zoom.’

  Jack pauses for a moment. ‘That situation is fraught with interesting possibilities. Anything could go wrong!’

  ‘Not if Jess has anything to do with it. She plans everything meticulously – nothing will dare go wrong. She’s an organisational freak … including threatening to arrange me a virtual blind date this week. It’s probably already all set up.’

  There’s a longer silence and I wonder if he’s still there.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘No.’ Another pause. ‘I was just looking inside as I thought I might have left the kettle on.’

  ‘Oh.’ That’s strange – it’s most likely an electric kettle surely so it wouldn’t matter. ‘And had you?’

  ‘Had I what?’

  ‘Left the kettle on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He clears his throat. ‘So, you have a blind date. Lucky you. Will you actually meet the guy?’

  ‘No, it’ll be online.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Okay this is weird. Our usually flowing conversation has come to a screamingly obvious halt. ‘I don’t really want to even do that,’ I tell him. ‘It’s such a hassle. He’s a colleague of Jess’s – works at the same marketing company.’

  ‘Well … he might be nice.’ Jack sounds doubtful.

  ‘Not if my dating history is anything to g
o by.’

  ‘History of bad experiences, eh?’

  ‘You could say that. I attempted to get back on the dating scene during my teacher training a year ago, after a messy break-up from a long-term relationship, and I had a fair few disasters.’

  ‘I’m intrigued now.’

  ‘Really, you don’t want to know.’ I’m regretting opening up this line of inquiry.

  ‘I’ve got all evening; I could cancel all my other appointments and even send you down an Old-Fashioned. I’m a very good listener and obviously I need to get practising for my support line.’

  I can’t help smiling. Jack makes me want to open up, even about disasters I’ve long tried to bury in the hopes they haven’t put me off dating forever. ‘Okay, seeing as you’re twisting my arm.’

  Minutes later, I’m sitting on my balcony sipping at my cocktail, hoping it’s enough to give me the strength to contemplate my recent bumbling efforts at dating.

  ‘Well the first guy, John – he was really sweet. I met him in my English classes. He offered to take me out for a coffee, turned up with a red rose.’

  ‘Sounds like a real smoothie.’ Jack is trying not to laugh, I can tell.

  ‘Yes he appeared promising, but only long enough to lure me into a second date. At that point he held my hand and his was quite, well … there’s no word for it other than slimy.’

  ‘Perhaps he was nervous,’ Jack points out charitably.

  ‘I could have forgiven him that of course, but when he was walking me home he swooped in for a kiss and his lips were kind of yeuch – too wet, so I moved my head and he sort of missed.’ I’m cringing just remembering it. ‘Then he said, “Oops, maybe next time”.’

  ‘Ah. So no spark.’

  ‘Nope, none at all. He was really nice but I just didn’t like him in that way. Then I had a real job to get rid of him because he became a bit of a cling-on. I had to call in all the girls to get him to move on by mentioning my fictitious new relationship with another guy.’

  ‘Sounds effective. Your friends are probably quite intimidating if they’re all training to be schoolteachers.’

  ‘Rude! But to be fair, you wouldn’t want to mess with my teacher-training gang. They’re used to dealing with a class of disruptive primary school kids, so one slightly weak and wimpy young man didn’t stand much of a chance.’

  ‘I almost feel sorry for him now.’

  ‘The next one,’ I continue swiftly, ‘was Fossil Guy.’

  ‘Fossil Guy,’ Jack repeats, sounding mystified.

  ‘Yep, he was a crazy boffin, an expert in palaeontology and scaphites.’

  ‘Sounds like a disease.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I laugh. ‘With him it was like one. He was training to teach geography – to senior kids. He loved to talk in great scientific depth about everything, so he would probably have bored them to tears. The first date fossil hunting on Cramley Beach was interesting, but two more fossil hunting trips later, I realised that was enough to last a lifetime. When I went back to his place, he painstakingly went through his fossil collection, one by one – and he had over a thousand. I don’t know how I got out of there before reaching premature old age!’

  ‘Still, look on the bright side,’ Jack says seriously, ‘at least now you know the difference between an ammonite and dinosaur poo.’

  ‘Not you too!’ I squeak.

  ‘Nope,’ he admits, ‘I just noticed them in the gift shop when I went to the National Trust Shop once.’

  ‘You’d better watch out, if it gets around to your Soho customers that you’ve been frequenting National Trust Shops your reputation is going to be in serious trouble.’

  ‘Oh no, my secret’s out,’ exclaims Jack in mock horror. ‘Please don’t tell them about my obsession with fossils; I’ve always hidden it so well.’

  ‘Well now it sounds as though you have the mad professor hair to match.’

  ‘How rude.’ Jack is still laughing. ‘But I don’t think you can top that date.’

  ‘I bet I can,’ I tell him, though I wish I couldn’t. ‘The last, but definitely not least awful, was Mick. He was good-looking, funny … ticked all the boxes. He was in several of my classes, seemed really patient and good with kids.’

  ‘Sounds perfect. What was wrong with this one? Was he a secret prank caller – or no, I’ve got it, he was a fraudster and cheated people out of their money in his spare time?’

  ‘Idiot!’ I laugh. ‘That would be a bit of an escalation from a fossil fancier. No, nothing as dramatic as that. But it was pretty weird and stressful at the time.’

  ‘I can’t stand the suspense,’ Jack says.

  ‘Mick wasn’t bad in himself; his annoying rugby-playing friend Pete was the problem.’

  ‘Ah, the toxic friend situation.’

  ‘Yep, that’s the one. Wherever Mick and I went, Pete had to come too. It was kind of weird. I sort of accepted it at first as I thought maybe he was lonely or something. I even suggested one of my friends came along too so we could go out as a group.’

  ‘Did that work?’

  ‘No, Pete was such a loud, irritating chauvinist pig, with views he seemed to have borrowed from the Victorian era, my friend ended up leaving early.’

  ‘So when did you realise it just wasn’t going to work?’

  ‘I stuck it out for a few months.’

  ‘You’re very patient.’

  ‘Yep, perhaps too patient. In the end when Pete was on yet another date with us, in which he upset the waitress for the umpteenth time, he added insult to injury by putting his hand on my thigh during dinner. I just snapped.’

  ‘Cheeky sod!’

  ‘Yes and to make things even worse, when I confronted Mick about it, he said I was “lying, because Pete would never do such a thing”! I ended up suggesting that as Mick was so fond of Pete he should date him instead of me, and I stormed out of the restaurant.’

  ‘Sounds very dramatic, but well done you!’

  ‘Yes it was.’ I laugh a little at the recollection. ‘Now I’m telling you about it I just can’t understand why I ever went out with him in the first place, but he was kind of subtle and there was always what seemed to be a valid reason why Pete needed to come along.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for being too nice,’ says Jack.

  ‘I guess not, but I feel such an idiot.’ Maybe that’s why I put up with Ryan for so long. I think I had always known there was another side to him that might be kind of shallow, but it had taken my illness to force it to the surface where I could no longer ignore it. Although I’m not surprised I was fooled; at times he had been really considerate. I just don’t know – I’m so confused.

  ‘Don’t say that, because you’re not. Besides …’

  He’s quiet for a moment, and I wait, wondering what he’s going to say. ‘I think any guy would be very lucky to go out with someone like you.’

  That means a lot. I don’t know what to say. ‘But you haven’t even really met me.’

  ‘True, but I’ve had enough experience to know how to recognise a kind and genuine person when I hear one.’

  ‘Don’t – you’ll make me big-headed,’ I say, embarrassed. But secretly I’m singing inside. Because in the damaged and cynical world we are living in, which seems to be totally falling apart, it’s really good to have someone who thinks you’re doing something right somewhere along the line.

  Chapter 10

  Jack

  A couple of days later I’m quite upbeat, waiting for Sophia to drop some more food at my door. I’m confident that this time I’ll get to actually see her. Whilst socially distancing of course. I don’t need loads of stuff because she was so kind getting me extras last time, but I’ve asked for some essentials like Ambrosia rice pudding. I must confess it isn’t as good as Mum’s, but with her living over a hundred miles away and us being in the middle of a lockdown, it’s the closest I can get.

  My phone shouts out and I grab it, wondering if it’s Sophia. It isn’t, it’s
my dad. ‘Hi, Dad, how are you?’

  ‘Good thanks, though your mother’s driving me mad.’

  ‘Oh – bit too cooped up, eh?’

  Dad lowers his voice to a whisper. ‘There’s no getting away from her at the moment, son.’

  ‘Well no, we are in the middle of a lockdown.’

  ‘I know but she seems to be everywhere. Just when I think I’m going to have a sit-down and watch a bit of the match, she’s got the next thing on her to-do list for me to get stuck into.’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t any sport on at the moment.’

  ‘There isn’t. These are old ones I’ve recorded.’ My dad is a complete sports nut; he loves watching football. My mum had satellite television installed a while ago, as she’s really into languages, but my dad had it permanently tuned into sport. Now he can watch football matches live every day of the week, all over the world. Except not at the moment of course as we’re in lockdown. As you can imagine the switch-off of sport is a bit of a result for Mum, so she is making the most of it.

  ‘Anyway, are you busy?’ Dad asks.

  ‘No, although I was just about to …’ I gesture aimlessly to the door, which is pointless as my dad is hardly going to see me.

  ‘Good – of course you can’t be, can you, stuck in all day?’

  ‘No, but I was just waiting for …’

  ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes. I wondered if you could talk me through this email I tried to send.’

  That’s the thing with this lockdown. If only we had had suitable warning, we could have all taken some time to enrol our boomer parents on a social media course at the local library, or given them a crash course ourselves, so that they were ready for this from a technical point of view. As it is, they are trapped in a world where their only means of seeing us is through technology they have little or no knowledge of. Trying to help them involves attempting to explain over the phone, which is about as easy as a game of Twister in the dark with directions given in Morse code, without any instructions for how to work or understand Morse code, or Twister either for that matter.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell you without seeing it, Dad,’ I explain gently.