Copyright Oggbashan May 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
+++
I heard the key in the front door and went out into the hall.
Julie didn't have to say anything. The expression on her face was enough. I opened my arms and she accepted the hug while crying against my shoulder.
"Another one?" I asked.
"No, Andrew. Two, and I thought we had saved one of them," Julie sobbed.
+++
Julie is a nurse at our local hospital, normally delivering chemotherapy to cancer patients but now working in intensive care with those on ventilators for Covid-19.
Since October, I had been renting part of her house while studying part-time for a sponsored MBA. I had been living with my parents in Nottinghamshire and working for a local branch of an insurance company. I had been promoted and sent to their London office where they sponsored me for an MBA at the university near Julie's house. I couldn't commute from Nottinghamshire but I could catch a high speed train from Julie's town to go to the London office three days a week.
All that changed drastically with the Covid-19 lockdown. The university shut down. My London office was closed. I couldn't go back to my parents because my father, a former miner, had damaged lungs and was self-isolating in their small two-bedroom house. I had to stay with Julie.
She was grateful because the rent I was paying was enough to cover her mortgage. I could, and did, work from her home in the small dining room which I had equipped with state of the art computing equipment and fibre broadband. I was now working at home five days a week and trying to continue my studies remotely.
I was useful for Julie. I could do her shopping and act as a house husband, maintaining the house and doing the cooking whenever she came home, exhausted by a long day in full protective equipment.
When I started my MBA I was staying in a hotel, not ideal, while I looked for a one-bedroom flat but they were too expensive locally. Rachel, one of the women on the course with me, had suggested Julie. Julie was just divorced from David, who worked at an estate agent. He had found the neglected house that they could buy at a low price because it needed modernisation. At first he had worked at improving it but he started drinking too much and abusing Julie. When he emptied their joint account to pay for his drinking Julie had had enough and divorced him. She had to buy him out of the house and had increased the mortgage to do it -- to a level she couldn't really afford.
Rachel had introduced me to Julie. Although Julie was depressed and hurting, a business arrangement between us seemed sensible. I would pay her rent and help with the continued modernisation. The amount I was paying was slightly less than for a local one-bedroom flat but I would have more room.
I helped with decoration of the exterior and interior of the house and was able to install a new bathroom suite before starting on the kitchen. I paid for materials as part of my rent and provided the labour. Six months after I had come to stay with Julie the house had been rewired, re-plumbed, had a new bathroom and kitchen. A month before the lockdown I had received a large Christmas bonus based on the 2019 company results. The bulk had paid for the kitchen to be done months earlier than I had anticipated. Some of the rest had gone on an impulse purchase that I thought I might need sometime. My relationship with Julie had still been that of landlord and tenant -- a friendly one but no more than that.
The Covid-19 lockdown began to change that. She was working hard in a very stressful environment and I was in the house almost all the time. Even around working and studying at home I had been able to do more work on the house and because I could go to the supermarkets I could keep us supplied. Julie was grateful but the strain of caring for very sick people was distressing her.
When her first Covid-10 patient died she came home in tears. I couldn't let her sob alone so I just opened my arms, without a word. That changed everything. We were no longer landlady and tenant but two people there for each other. Gradually Julie began to rely more on me, emotionally as well as for the basics of living.
A few weeks of lockdown and I knew I loved Julie and she loved me. I was more supportive than her former husband David had ever been yet I didn't ask her for anything. I was just there for her whenever she wanted.
+++
I sat her down in the kitchen with a cup of coffee while I went to run a bath with her favourite bath salts. It had taken me a week of searching before I had found some more of those bath salts. Julie hadn't said anything but I knew she appreciated the effort I had made.