Up and Running – Jenny 5

[For back story see lower numbers in archive]

Izzy was in the loft. This irritated Jenny a little but at least Izzy was out the way. Up there she wouldn’t hear her sighing – or maybe she could as Jenny’s sighs were pretty loud sometimes – and wouldn’t hear her castigate the kids. Or maybe she could, but at least she couldn’t do anything about it.

“He might have had the virus,” said Izzy, a day after the fateful run, still in bed, having not slept all night.

“If he was running he must have been feeling OK.”

“He doesn’t have to have symptoms to be carrying it,” pointed out Izzy, “and he wasn’t a very good runner. He wasn’t looking where he was going, he was practically jogging backwards, seemed to be distracted by someone, or waving at someone – he was looking the other way when I rounded the corner and…”

“And how are you feeling?”

“Shaken. And worried. And hurt.”

Izzy spent the day in bed and by mid-afternoon had drawn up plans for her isolation in the house. She’d worked out what she needed within reach, worked out what Jenny needed to sleep in with one or other of the kids – or downstairs if she wanted – and had also decided that rather than just lying there waiting for her own comeuppance as the virus took hold (if it was going to) she reckoned she could make a dedicated ‘safe’ path between her bed and the loft hatch. This meant she would start in on tidying the loft while going thorough quarantine. The loft needed doing, there was no time like the present and this could be the opportunity they were looking for.

On hearing this Jenny spluttered her tea over the end of the bed and then had to change the sheets – which Izzy said was probably a good idea to do anyway (start with a clean sheet she almost laughed) – and the distraction of all of this meant they did not really discuss the practicalities of the loft idea. Izzy felt the idea had escaped into reality without proper scrutiny, like a bunch of travel expenses made dangerously close to annual leave.

Early the next morning, stiff from the sofa, Jenny went upstairs with breakfast for Izzy. As agreed she opened the door at left it on the table at least three metres away from the bed. Izzy said thanks and informed her there’d been no change overnight.

Jenny came downstairs as Helen was calling her and having difficulty with the whereabouts of the milk in the fridge. Having sorted this and handed Peter his toast as he walked past on the way to the sofa, Jenny went back upstairs only to find the tray hadn’t moved.

So she came back back downstairs and tidied up after Helen who had deserted her breakfast half way through as she wanted to watch something on her iPad and so shouted for Jenny to come and enter a password for her.

Jenny went back upstairs, to find the breakfast eaten, the bed empty and the loft ladder down. There were some ominous sounding thuds and sighs coming from the top of the house.

“Are you, ah, OK?” She asked.

“Fine, fine,” came the response, shortly.

Jenny came downstairs. Peter was in the front room on the sofa. The effort of making banana loaf had clearly taken it out of him, the results had been sort of OK (Jenny was enthusiastic, Peter not so) and Jenny didn’t have the heart – or face it, the time – to try and restart the cycle to get him to do anything else. She took his empty plate, sighed, and went back into the kitchen where Helen was asking her for another password for something else other kids’ parents let them watch. Helen also said she was cold.

Jenny started back upstairs to get Helen’s cardigan but mistimed the whole expedition so Izzy, who was half way down the loft ladder with a box of something, went back up into the loft without a word.

However, Jenny noticed this, sighed again, and started back downstairs shouting “I’m gone! I”m gone!” as she did so, only to hear a muffled Izzy call “It doesn’t matter I’m not there anymore!” From the loft.

There was a pause in movement throughout the household. Helen shivered again slightly. Peter dropped his phone, swore and picked it up again. Jenny looked at her watch. It was ten minutes past eight.

Jenny went back upstairs singing tunelessly in order to inform Izzy she was going upstairs without actually having to tell her she was going upstairs again.

There was a sudden thud, slipping noise and a shoebox rattled down the ladder to explode in a mass of small metal disks at Jenny’s feet. Izzy swore above her. “Missed me,” said Jenny.

"Wasn't aiming," said the absent Izzy.

She looked down at the contents of the box which was no longer the contents of the box. It was pretty much all the button badges she and Izzy had collected during their teenage years, a dispersed record of bands, causes, action groups and events they’d both been at, separately and sometimes, coincidentally, together. 

“Can I touch these?” Asked Jenny, tentatively.

“Guess so,” said Izzy. “They were in the box when I dropped them. I've not breathed on them.”

Jenny sat and picked a few up. For a second she was transported to an easier, maybe a simple and more exciting time. And then Helen shouted up at her again as she’d lost the wifi signal.