Day 14

I am worried about J.
She has not been in touch for a few days and this feels unlike her.

I met J on the first week-end of February when we helped the local nature reserve volunteer group dig up saplings from the grass meadow. We hadn’t talk all that much. The work was solitary and she had to leave early. But we did figure out that we live in the same street. I knew her house by the cats surrounding it and the collection of teddy bears in the window. She told me about the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme she runs and I agreed to join the mailing list.

I didn’t think more about it. That is until COVID-19 hit the UK shores and it became apparent that we were going to go into lockdown. I reached out to ask if she had set up a mutual aid group for the street. She was about to and asked if I’d mind doing a leaflet we could drop in every house in the street. So I created one.

We have chatted on and off since. She deals with e-mails, food banks, and liaising with the local authority and businesses while I chat on WhatsApp with neighbours hunting down flour in shops and finding boxes for the food bank.

Every day there is an e-mail or two. Sometimes an idea to be bounced off me, sometimes a message forwarded from the local police. But for the last five days my inbox has been silent. So I decide to write her a card, leave it through her letter box, and hope she is okay. I only have Christmas cards or cards with dogs on them. The dogs will have to do.

I post it when I leave for my daily walk, the cats looking at me suspiciously.

Halfway through my walk, I check my e-mails. There is one from J about the Council Trading Standards. As I read it another one pops up forwarded from our local constabulary regarding the theft of three mountain bikes.

J is okay.