Two Metres From You

by Heidi Stephens

  Gemma carried the tray out of the back door and up the steps, to find Matthew carrying two folding chairs to join a metal bistro table he’d already placed under the apple tree next to Mabel. They both sat in silence for a minute, sipping tea and admiring their progress in the garden. The sky was full of birdsong; Gemma had never heard so many.

  She broke the silence. ‘No work today?’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘I’m waiting for some parts to be delivered later today – everything’s taking ages. I thought I should come and help; it’s my fault the grass looks like this. I should have given it a first mow of the season weeks ago, never quite got round to it.’

  Gemma nodded. The last few weeks had been strange and uncertain for everyone; she could see how mundane household tasks might fall down the list of priorities. She tilted her head to watch a small brown bird hopping along a branch. Aunt Laura had kept a little guide to garden birds on her kitchen windowsill in the house in Norfolk, but Gemma couldn’t remember any of their names. Some kind of finch?

  Matthew cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to ask you a small favour, if you’ve got time tomorrow morning.’

  Gemma turned back to look at him. He has a nice face, she thought. Even though he looks like he’s about to ask for one of my kidneys. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ruth has asked me if I can do a few hours in the village shop.’ Gemma looked confused; she had met several different staff on her shopping trips and assumed they had plenty. ‘Ruth manages it, but it’s run by volunteers. It’s a community shop. But most of the volunteers are retired or have health issues, so quite a few would rather not work in such a small space right now.’

  Gemma waited; she was yet to see how this might involve her.

  ‘I think legally we can count ourselves as one household, since my barn could be classed as an annexe of your house and we share a garden. It’s a grey area.’ He shrugged and gave a small smile. ‘So I wondered if you’d come with me. It’s not hard and I could do it alone, but everybody who comes in wants a chat and it’s knackering. I hoped you might . . . help lighten the load a bit.’

  Gemma laughed, imagining being trapped in a confined space with a stream of villagers who hadn’t spoken to a living soul all day. She’d definitely want moral support.

  ‘Count me in, it’s not like I’ve got much else on. And I’m OK to assume we’re the same household if that makes things easier. I breathed wine fumes all over you the other day, so if I was going to make you sick I probably would have done it by now.’

  Matthew grinned at the memory, then leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head as he surveyed the garden. His T-shirt rode up a few inches to reveal an impressive washboard of hard abdominals, and Gemma looked away, momentarily flustered. Less than two weeks single and you’re perving on the garden help. Get a grip on yourself, Lady Chatterley.

  She turned back to find Matthew’s green eyes observing her with interest, taking in the Spice Girls T-shirt and her make-up-free face like he was seeing her for the first time. She put the empty mugs and half-empty pack of biscuits back on the tray and carried it back into the kitchen, feeling all of a sudden a little warm.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Thursday, 2 April

  To Do

  Pretend to be shop assistant

  By the third customer of the morning, Gemma fully understood why Matthew had asked for her help. If Covid-19 could be spread via idle chat, then the Crowthorpe village shop would be a plague house. Starved of company and conversation, the villagers weren’t going to waste the opportunity to speak to a real-life journalist about the headlines from their preferred news source (Daily Mail, occasional Telegraph, mostly ‘I read a thing on Facebook’) and speculate on what the next few weeks might hold. Gemma was emotionally and physically drained.

  They also seemed to think she had some kind of hotline to UK coronavirus mission control, asking her questions about the Prime Minister’s health (Gemma knew as much as they did), whether you could drive somewhere to walk your dog (why would you when you live here?) or whether drinking herbal tea might boost your immune system (no idea, but we have several flavours). Gemma was dying to tell them that far from having a hotline, she didn’t even have a phone signal, and the most recent article she’d written was a list of Twenty Lockdown Songs to Live By, including ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ by The Police and ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ by Tiffany. It was hardly prize-winning journalism.

  While all this was going on, Matthew kept busy stacking shelves and operating the price-sticker machine. She caught a glimpse of him smiling as she got caught up in a particularly thorny debate with a very angry man who’d seen proof (source undefined) that the virus was actually manufactured in a lab in Wuhan and was being spread by 5G phone masts. Since Crowthorpe only had 4G in an area roughly the size of a tablecloth, Gemma didn’t think he needed to worry too much. Matthew was definitely going to pay for this later.

  When she had taken Mabel out for her walk this morning, she was acutely conscious that she was buzzing a little about spending time with him again, even though the attraction made no sense. Historically she’d liked her men physically and emotionally more fragile and less overtly masculine. On this basis Matthew wasn’t her type at all, but nonetheless there was something about him that she found appealing. Perhaps it was his solidity in an unstable world, or perhaps she’d just outgrown needy, frangible men. To call him ‘ordinary’ felt insulting, but that was definitely part of it; he was easy to spend time with, and not wholly uneasy on the eye if you liked the slightly battered rugby player look, which usually she didn’t at all, but was finding quite distracting right now.

  The one-customer-only policy had made perfect sense to Gemma when she was a shopper, but as a member of staff it created quite a headache. Small talk took time, and every pause in the shopping mission to chat to Gemma or Matthew was greeted with glaring and tutting from those waiting outside, until their turn came and they did exactly the same. Gemma could see why Gareth had closed the door on Tuesday, but it was much warmer today and the breeze from outside kept the temperature in the shop bearable.

  Towards the end of the morning, Margaret came in with her red shopping trolley, and looked delighted to have the opportunity to interrogate Gemma again. They’d shared a few waves in passing but not spoken since the morning of Gemma’s arrival when Margaret had given her directions to the shop. Gemma rang her provisions through on the till quickly, hoping she might avoid the Crowthorpe Inquisition.

  ‘So, still here, then,’ said Margaret, eyeing both Gemma and Matthew beadily.

  ‘Still here,’ replied Gemma, willing herself not to be intimidated, ‘cluttering up the village.’

  ‘I’m surprised to see you two here together. I didn’t realise your arrangement counted as the same household.’ The implication hung in the air like one of Mabel’s toxic farts, but Gemma batted it away.

  ‘It definitely does,’ she said, glancing at Matthew, ‘and we stay two metres apart at all times, just to be extra safe. If I didn’t wear contact lenses I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like.’

  Margaret stared at her, momentarily silenced. She made a sceptical ‘hmmm’ noise at nobody in particular, then wheeled her trolley away.

  ‘Nosy old bat,’ muttered Gemma.

  ‘She’s actually my great-aunt,’ deadpanned Matthew.

  ‘Oh God, really?’ Gemma looked horrified.

  ‘No, not really.’ Matthew grinned and went back to stacking tins.

  By 12.45 p.m. they had dealt with the last few people in the queue, so Gemma offered to help Matthew fix the door to the largest of the two chiller cabinets. The doors only seemed to seal properly half the time, which ran the risk of it being left open when the shop was closed. If that happened on a hot weekend, there wasn’t a scented candle in the world that would get rid of the smell of rancid meat and sweaty cheese. Matthew couldn’t repair it, so he sent Ruth a text saying she needed to get someone from the fridge
company out to look at it, and in the meantime he’d come up with a very temporary fix.

  Gemma listened to Matthew’s fascinating explanation about how a door could behave like a door or it could behave like a lid depending on angles and mass and gravity, but all she heard was an incomprehensible buzzing noise. She’d never paid much attention in Physics at school; it didn’t seem very open to creative interpretation and her teacher had looked so much like the dog from the Dulux TV ads it had been hard to take him seriously. Matthew saw the baffled look on her face and stopped talking, then tried again.

  ‘If we tilt it back a few degrees and wedge some cardboard underneath, it will stop the door swinging open.’

  ‘Oh. Fine. That makes sense.’

  Matthew pushed against the top of the chiller to lean it back, and Gemma folded bits of corrugated cardboard from a box that had once held packets of cereal and stuffed it under the feet. As long as nobody pulled out the cardboard wedges or mopped the floor, it would be fine. They played around with the layers of cardboard for a while, Gemma looking up at Matthew’s straining arms as he tested to see if it was stable and tilted at the right angle. She decided it was quite a nice view from down here, and there were definitely worse ways to spend a lockdown Thursday.

  Ruth arrived at 1 p.m. to lock the shop for lunch, thanking them both for their help and particularly Matthew for fixing the fridge. She dropped shameless hints about the two of them doing more shifts, but they both managed to remain non-committal – Matthew had quite a lot of work in the pipeline, and Gemma definitely wasn’t doing unpaid work in this nuthouse without him.

  They strolled back through the village together, chatting about the small ways that lockdown was impacting the village. As far as Matthew knew, nobody here had caught the virus yet; in fact Wiltshire had one of the lowest infection rates in the country. Crowthorpe’s pain was being felt behind closed doors – no school for the kids, no play area, no village clubs or community events, no church services. The village had already mobilised the troops to deliver shopping and pick up prescriptions and make meals for some of the older and more vulnerable residents, but people didn’t seem ready to switch to online community stuff yet. Change happened slowly in a place like this, and there was no point going to all that trouble if things were getting back to normal in a couple of weeks. All of which meant that people had time on their hands, and no physical evidence of the virus other than what they saw on the news, which hardly anyone trusted these days anyway. No wonder some had turned to conspiracy theories.

  The conversation drifted to Gemma’s life in London, which seemed to intrigue Matthew. He asked about her job and her friends and her favourite ways to have fun, and she shared a few stories but couldn’t get enthused; it all seemed so far away right now, like a life that belonged to someone else. There was nowhere to anchor her memories – her home with Fraser was gone, and Aunt Laura’s house was now owned by a Dutch architect and his husband. She’d cycled over to have a look at it a few weeks ago, and there was a planning notice on the front gate to say they’d applied to excavate the basement. It was entirely unreasonable, but in that moment it felt like they were ripping her guts out too. Whatever version of London she returned to in the coming weeks, it would be something entirely new.

  They walked in silence for a while, as Gemma watched a woman trying to navigate a pram on the uneven pavement between the parked cars. The gap wasn’t really big enough and the pram looked like it weighed a ton – why did prams need to be so huge when babies were so small? Gemma could see shadows like car tyres under the woman’s eyes; under different circumstances she would probably have had her mother or sister living with her in these early weeks. It must be hard for parents right now, without their usual support network. Gemma was reminded of the running woman with twin boys she’d seen at the shop on Tuesday. Who was taking care of these women, while they took care of everyone else?

  She noticed Matthew looking at her, and her cheeks coloured – there was a solid chance he’d just asked a question, but she hadn’t been paying attention.

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?’

  ‘I asked what you miss most about your life in London. If you could have brought anything with you, what would it be?’

  Gemma was silent for a moment while she thought about his question. She definitely didn’t miss Fraser, or his flat. He liked everything to be white – towels, bedding, furniture – sometimes it felt like living in a psychiatric hospital. It had taken weeks to convince him on the grey and yellow Heal’s cushions, and in a moment of sudden clarity she realised that he’d asked the Mystery Brunette to sit on them so she didn’t get body fluids on his white sofa. What a shit. She definitely missed the Cypriot café on Bermondsey Street that served sweet and strong coffee with a side order of Eurovision chat – everyone had their guilty pleasures, and Gemma’s was the Eurovision Song Contest. She’d watched it since she was a little girl – British Forces television might have had a limited schedule, but it always included Eurovision. She and Joe had talked about going to Rotterdam for this year’s Grand Final, but the event had been cancelled now, just like everything else. She dragged her thoughts back to the present.

  ‘I miss my books.’

  ‘Your books?’

  ‘Yes. I like to read. I have some books on my phone, but it’s not the same as the paper version. The flat I was living in had a whole pile of books I hadn’t read yet, and I didn’t bring any of them with me. I’m pretty sure they’ve been thrown out by now.’ Fraser wouldn’t keep them, the covers were too abstract and colourful. Also somebody might comment on them and he’d have to admit he hadn’t read any of them. Fraser didn’t do fiction; he preferred those motivational business manuals about influencing and networking and conjuring money out of your backside, the kind that had words like ‘paradox’ or ‘unstoppable’ in the title.

  Matthew paused, his brow furrowed with indecision. ‘I have books. You can borrow whatever you like.’

  ‘Really?’ Gemma looked at him with interest. She couldn’t imagine the bookshelves in Matthew’s barn had much that would excite her; in her head it was real-life SAS adventures or high-octane thrillers involving brutal murders in backwater American towns. Or perhaps he liked wizards and dragons or fantasy space adventures; you could never tell.

  She didn’t want to offend, so she arranged her face into an enthusiastic smile. ‘That would be great, thank you.’

  Matthew looked at his feet, unable to meet her eye. ‘I’ve got to work for the rest of today and tomorrow, but you could come over late on Saturday and have a look if you like. Eight-thirty or so? I can make some pizza or something.’

  His voice trailed off, as Gemma felt a flutter in her stomach that had little to do with the fact she’d walked Mabel in lieu of breakfast. She gave him a smile that she hoped communicated friendship and appreciation rather than deeply impure thoughts. ‘That would be great, I’d love to.’

  When Gemma got home she let Mabel out into the garden and made a mug of tea and a cheese sandwich, using local granary bread and some Cotswold chilli jam that would go down a storm in her local London deli. She carried it through to the dining room and sat at the heavy oak table, while Mabel sniffed around for crumbs. Her dog bed had limited appeal at this point in the day, as the sun wouldn’t make it to the windows for a few hours yet, so she settled on her owner’s feet instead. Gemma slipped on the chunky cardigan that was draped over the back of the chair and pulled the sleeves down over her fists.

  She’d had a pitch for an article accepted yesterday, about the challenges of living together in lockdown – the lack of personal space and me-time, the awkward clashes in routine, the jarring discovery that your partner was an entirely different beast on Zoom calls and talked impenetrable management bullshit about ‘cascading relevant information’ and ‘squaring the circle’. It was a pressure cooker for relationships, and while some would be stronger for the experience, others inevitably wouldn’t make it.
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br />   She tinkered with it for a while, enjoying the irony that she was writing about the emotional pressures of cohabiting when she’d only done it once in fourteen years of adult life, for a sum total of six months. The reality was that she liked living alone; she’d found comfort in her own company all her life. Before boarding school, Gemma’s childhood memories involved her father always working, her mother distracted by the endless demands of being an officer’s wife and always annoyed with Gemma about something, and Louise surrounded by an impenetrable circle of giggly friends, unable to understand why her big sister wasn’t more fun. So Gemma retreated to imaginary places inhabited by witches and fairies, and lost herself in magical lands that could only be reached if you climbed a special tree in an enchanted wood.

  The boarding school years were purely about teenage survival for Gemma; living for the peace and freedom of weekends at 22 Church Street, Aunt Laura’s house in Wymondham. Aunt Laura didn’t believe in watching television before dinner, so Gemma would spend the days nestled into her favourite chair by the lounge window, feeling a million miles away from the bitchy cliques of girls her own age, even though school was less than half an hour away in Aunt Laura’s clanking Mini Metro. In Church Street, Gemma’s friends were stacked in a pile beside the chair; an intriguing adult world of novels that had taken her blossoming teenage imagination on a journey of adventure, drama, mystery and romance. Aunt Laura’s collection of paperbacks was soon exhausted, so Gemma applied for a library card and walked into Wymondham on a Saturday morning to replenish her supply. The town library was housed in a mediaeval chapel; Gemma was usually waiting outside when it opened, running her hands over the smooth flint cobbles and imagining them being placed there by people who had stood on this exact spot 900 years before. Looking back, she could see that she had been quite an intense teenager; no wonder she was lonely.