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Love in the time of Coronavirus

Lockdown was all of a week old and Alan was already missing her. He was missing her walk, missing her smile, missing her smell and, more than anything else, missing her touch. He glanced at the clock in bottom right hand corner of his screen. Five minutes to the start of his next Zoom call – and she’d be on it. Time enough to grab a coffee. He rolled back the chair from the desk and made his way the short distance to the kitchen.

Jenny looked up as he came in and announced she was just doing some sandwiches for lunch and hoped that was okay. He nodded and said that was great, popped a coffee pod into the machine, put his cup under and pressed the button. He looked at his wife, as the coffee poured into the cup and thought how twenty years had poured away just as easily. Filling the cups of their lives with …life. Two busy jobs, holidays, a daughter (currently “self isolating” with her boyfriend at Uni), family, parties, Jenny’s cancer and full recovery … life!

She looked at him:

“You okay?”

“What? Oh yeah. Miles away thinking about my next meeting.”

She smiled. He remembered that smile how it lit up the room. That smile was the magnet that first attracted him, and the net that had ensnared him. When did we stop smiling? Was it when we struggled so much with a very difficult, very bright, very exhausting toddler? Was it all those long business trips when Jenny was left to struggle with a rebellious ten year old teenager? Was it the toll of the cancer, the operations and the chemo?

He smiled back and picked up his coffee.

“That smell is something more than sandwiches.”

“Well, I’ve done the rota with the other heads and I’ll only be doing one day in six at the school. So you get more opportunities to be poisoned by my cooking.”

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then that was Jenny’s second winner. She was a talented, improvising cook.

“Well, a better way to go than Covid-19.”

She closed the five feet between them and touched his cheek and frowned:

“Don’t say that. I didn’t survive one disease so another could take you from me.”

Alan hoped his surprise didn’t show. He couldn’t remember the last time that she touched him so softly and spoke with so much tenderness.

He shrugged it off and declared he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Well, apart from to the study and my meeting.”

He could still feel her touch on his cheek as he clicked the mouse to start the meeting.

She was there – smiling at him from one of the boxes of pixels on his screen. If this had been a normal day, rather than a new normal one, they’d have had a coffee together with the occasional surreptitious touch. They’d have talked about the day ahead, about possibly getting together after work, about when they could next get away together for a night… the things that lovers talk about.

Now she was reduced to a three by two centimetre box on his screen.

The meeting went on a bit but eventually ended. Alan hung up and slumped into his chair. Jenny knocked and came in:

“Just going out for my run. Can you listen out for the front door bell? We’re due a Sainsbury’s delivery.”

He nodded and said it would be no problem. She left and he watched her out of the window, She looked good. The cancer had two effects on her. She’d lost weight and after she’d recovered, she managed to keep a lot of it off. But the other effect was a mental one – she was self conscious about her body. The missing breast. She’d opted not to have reconstruction. Jenny said she couldn’t face another major surgery.

Alan turned back to the screen and his ever growing Inbox. There was one from her asking if he was free to talk. He smiled and picked up his ‘phone.

They chatted about the meeting, about work, about life in lockdown – toilet rolls et al. Alan was going to rant on about how slow Johnson had been and how he had jeopardised the health of many of his citizens. Then he remembered how shocked he’d been when she said she’d voted Tory. “Well we can’t have that bearded weirdo as PM.”

After a few minutes he didn’t know what to talk about. And that was a very odd feeling for him. He and Jenny had spent the last few days crammed in each other’s company and hadn’t stopped talking. They often remarked that when they went out to dinner they could see other couples sitting in silence, but Alan and Jenny never had trouble filling the void.

The door bell was a merciful release from the stuttering conversation. He collected and carried in the Sainsbury’s order, careful not to disturb the jigsaw on the table. As he was packing everything away he thought about the conversation he’d just had – or not had really. What did he really miss about her? Yes, she was good looking, fit, bright (though maybe not politically!), sexy … and that was it. That’s what it all boiled down to. Sex.

Then he felt guilty. He knew he’d given Jenny all the support she needed through the cancer. But after … she’d been embarrassed, insecure and he’d been embarrassed for her, unsure of what do, unsure of how to touch her, hesitant. And so physically, they’ drifted apart.

He raised his hand to his cheek, which still ached with the tenderness of Jenny’s touch. He looked at the jigsaw, he hated the damn things but Jenny loved them. Maybe marriage is a jigsaw. You need all the pieces. Sex is just one piece and it’s nothing on its own. It needs the joining pieces - warmth, intimacy, friendship.

A hot, sweaty Jenny came through the door. He smiled and remembered that touch on his cheek. Alan walked up to her and stroked away the errant hair that had fallen across her face.

“I think I want this lockdown to last forever.”

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