Lonely

Sunday 9th January

Day 263

For lunch I snap a green stick of celery and dip it into a tub of hummus while I unpack the array of bulging Sainsbury’s bags sprawled on the kitchen floor. I like having the fridge occupied again with broccoli and tomatoes, eggs and milk. I even break all my own seasonal rules and buy beans from Egypt - ringing the sprout changes.

Later, walking to the car, I feel the sun hot on my hair and I think of my husband striding out across muddy fields with old friends. I sit with my father while the light fades in his room and the anglepoise lamp behind him draws a circle round our chairs. He tells me the story of the man who started his Abbeyfield Homes - who tried to fill the ache of loneliness he found in the people on the streets of Bermondsey in the 1950s.

We snack on the puffed cheese straws that I brought him instead of my moist slabs of Christmas cake, as he’s on a diet. I peel him an orange but it’s too sour and we find an almost ripe pear in his fruit bowl instead. I leave him talking to my sister on the phone, praying he won’t be lonely tonight.