Distance

Chapter 1 - Heidi

Heidi woke up at 7 am. Despite having been quarantined by herself for 16 weeks now she was adamant about her timetable. She got up, showered and made coffee, watching with boredom as the granules turned a thick brown and bubbled as the hot water swirled them into nothingness. After her daily workout on the floor of her studio flat and breakfast of exactly two eggs and a slice of toast, she sat down to work. The hours of her job were long and she felt herself developing back pains from her stationary solitude. She worried that she would turn out like her father, unable to move due to years of manual labor. She liked to think of her father, his warm smiles and excitement when she let him unfurl his views of the world. This was a recent thing, in the past, her stubbornness had left no time for her father's ramblings but alas, the weekly video chats these last 4 months since lockdown had made her miss hearing his voice. 

Heidi was far from solitary despite her confinement, she had daily videochats with her numerous friends and a constant influx of emails from her boss. As the leading healthcare correspondent, her self-isolation was hardly a time for relaxation. Her other coworkers loved breaking news, feeling the rush of typing up the latest rumours they'd heard on the grapevine. Heidi was the opposite, spending much of her time tracing facts and sources to ensure the validity of her writing. It was hard work, grueling and unsatisfying but it was this that made her one of the leading journalists in the country. She had blown up during this pandemic, her stories regularly on the front page, her twitter followers now approaching the hundred thousand mark. 

At precisely 10:45 her doorbell rang, she saught sanctity in the knowledge that this was her shopping delivery, the only outside contact she would have to face for the next 2 weeks. She spoke curtly to the delivery driver who always seemed a bit haphazard with her deliveries. She couldn't trust him not to carry the infection into the hallway outside of her apartment yet her childhood of hospitalizations left her too vulnerable to go into the foyer to collect them. He was getting better by now, aware that she wanted him to place her groceries at least 2 meters outside her apartment door and stand back as she brought them inside. Once she had shut the door she began her process of disinfecting, taking her spray and cloth to each bottle of wine, removing the packaging, even washing her vegetables several times over. She preferred the trust of frozen and canned food yet knew the importance of a fresh and balanced diet. 

Her days were very much the same these days, she would work all day and talk to her friends and family in the evenings, they were all quarantined with husbands or wives, with parents or children. She missed them a lot, missed their traditions, missed the evenings they would spend together, the excitement of trying new bars and restaurants. The hole in her heart would grow larger when she heard the stories of their children. How baby Harry had begun to walk, how little Lisa celebrated her 7th birthday with an online party. She tried not to be bitter but the thought of babies made her hurt. She was 36 now, she had always been the most successful, her salary twofold what her friends earnt, her job reaching new peaks of excitement yet the feeling of emptiness that surrounded motherhood never ceased. Would she ever find the opportunity to fall in love again?

She thought of her own mother, the tension returning, the memories of abuse and control - they still video called every week, her mum would update her on every aspect of her life, not that Heidi hadn't already seen it all through the incessant Facebook posts. #stayhomeandhealthy - her mother would post. Despite having no qualms with technology, in fact Heidi was very advanced in that sphere, she detested social media. The falseness, the attention-seeking, she could never understand why people couldn't just live their lives for themselves, not for a feed. Alas, her mother would never know how she feels, never acknowledge the way she had treated Heidi as a child, never recognize the fragility of their relationship and the simmering tensions that ran throughout. 

Heidi was in bed by 10 pm, the same as every night, she read her book for an hour, satisfied as she turned the last page and already planning to start a new one tomorrow.