The Teenagers in Lockdown

Olivia is eighteen and pining for her boyfriend Callum, from whom she was cruelly torn six weeks, three days, nineteen hours and forty-three minutes ago. Ed is fifteen and therefore furious with lockdown, the universe and everything but mostly with his parents. So one is in love; the other in hate.

Olivia floats about the house like an inert gas, coming to life only when phoning Callum, which she does for hours and hours every day. Her mother reckons Olivia and Callum have spoken more during the six weeks of lockdown than she and Olivia’s father have in twenty-one years of marriage. After each of these conversations Olivia languishes even more miserably than before, because Callum is so far away. Her mother heartlessly suggests she might feel better if she went for a walk, but Olivia doesn’t want to feel better because that would be a betrayal of her love. It’s like living with Mariana in the Moated Grange.

Meanwhile Ed sits on his bed, hunched over his PlayStation like Gollum over his Precious, swamped in shapeless black sweatshirts like Bedouin tents with hoods that conceal his entire face. His mother has no idea where these horrible garments came from. His curtains are never opened, let alone his windows, so his perpetually dark room reeks as if a badger is decaying under the bed. When his mother ventures into this troglodytic hovel she trips over mounds of festering clothes but she isn’t allowed to remove so much as a single rancid sock, nor may she touch the encrusted cereal bowls that litter every surface. ‘I’ll bring them down,’ Ed mumbles without looking up, but he never does. She’s sure he has cigarettes or pornographic magazines stashed about that he doesn’t want her stumbling upon. If she dares address him while he’s engrossed in his galactic warfare he tilts his head back to glare at her from beneath his black hood. It’s like living with Darth Sidious.

Their father, who has no idea how any of this goes because he’s always been away at work, is genuinely surprised that his offspring aren’t making the most of this time by rising at 6am to go jogging and learn Mandarin. He had envisaged lockdown as a joyful time of reforging familial bonds, but how can you bond with people you never see? So he says ‘good afternoon’ very loudly when they descend, bleary-eyed, at noon. He is bitter; they are contemptuous. ’Twas ever thus.

© C P Jenkinson 06/05/2020

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