reckons Carrie has sneakily filled her nappy whilst asleep. ‘Just ask Sophia what her surname is and put yourself out of your misery,’ is his parting shot.
I’m glad we don’t have smellovision. Babies are all very cute but the nappy thing gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I could ask Sophia for her full name I suppose, but I don’t really like to. I can tell Sam thinks I’ve gone a bit strange during the lockdown, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to break the spell of this unusual thing – whatever it is we have going on. Not that it is even a relationship, but it is a kind of friendship. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of Sophia one day by chance. We certainly can’t risk meeting each other; she works in a school. Besides, even if I like her, what am I going to do about it?
The home phone goes. It’s my dad. ‘Hi, Jack, we’ve got a problem.’
I’m instantly alert. ‘Is everything all right? You’re not ill are you?’
‘No, son, nothing like that,’ my dad says in an exasperated tone. ‘It’s your mother’s emails.’
‘Oh.’ That’s a relief. I really wish he wouldn’t do that; thanks to the incessant daily news updates, we’re all constantly wired for imminent disaster. I could certainly do without Dad ringing up with a tone of impending doom. ‘What’s up? You were sending them out with no problem yesterday.’
‘I know, that’s the flaming annoying thing. There’s no rhyme or reason with these computers. Your mother wanted another email sent out to her friends from her Italian group.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I put in all the email addresses one after the other, as you’ve told me.’
‘So far so good. Did they ping back? Maybe you put a couple of the addresses down wrong.’
‘No they sent.’
‘Well that’s great. By Jove, I think you’ve got it.’
‘They sent,’ he says again, ‘but for some reason at the end of the email there was a photo of your mum and me in Cornwall!’
‘A photo of you on holiday?’
‘Yes but she didn’t attach a photo. In fact she says she doesn’t know how to and besides, she couldn’t remember ever having seen it and was horrified about her hairstyle.’
‘Why?’ I ask, thinking it can’t be worse than my recent one.
‘It was frizzy, she said. But it looked like it always does to me, not that I told her that.’
‘No, that is a bit random. I didn’t think you could attach photos by mistake.’
‘It’s worse than random. She’s had several very angry emails from people telling her she shouldn’t be travelling and worse still, one from her friend – who lives in Cornwall by the way – saying it’s people like us who are not only setting a bad example by moving about during lockdown, but also that going on holiday to Cornwall is unforgivable. Of course your mother said a few things in return and now I don’t think we’ll be going to stay again.’
For the first time today, I have to laugh. I really can’t help it. I’ve heard of communication issues due to language barriers, but during this lockdown it’s the language of computers that’s proving far more tricky.
Chapter 13
Sophia
I’ve gone from not even knowing there’s a guy living above me, to worrying because I haven’t heard anything from him for a while. Well, not since the day before yesterday anyway. It’s really unusual because our evening chat whilst chilling out on the balcony has become a bit of a thing. I now leave the door open all the time when I’m home, as the weather’s still warm and sunny and we sit on our own individual tiny pieces of outdoor space whilst he tells me about a funny incident from his day and I tell him about the kids at school. There’s something comforting and companionable about it.
I’ve been at school this morning but since I’ve been back it’s horribly quiet. Erica is in bed as she was on late shift and came in at silly o’clock completely exhausted. I didn’t tell her the amusing Benny story, just popped her into bed with a mug of hot chocolate. She had barely managed to spoon down the spag bol I had made for her, she was so tired. ‘So many babies all at once,’ she said, ‘including a set of twins, and one was breach.’
‘Don’t even go there,’ I said. ‘Just get some rest.’
She needs to feel lively for later, because tonight it’s Jess’s virtual hen do. It should be