FATHER AND SON GROOMED MY GIRL

Lucy* did a good deed during the pandemic but it turned into a sickening nightmare

- JANE COHEN, FIONA FORD

As I dumped shopping bags on the kitchen counter, the house was filled with the sound of squabbling. ‘Give it,’ my teenage daughter Alice* shouted at her siblings. It was February 2020 and my kids were tussling over the remote,

‘I’ll take that,’ I said, to which they groaned. Sinking onto the sofa, I put on an episode of Pointless. Within minutes, my brood had snuggled up next to me. ‘Good choice,’ Alice, then 12, said, smiling.

LOCKDOWN HELP

Despite the squabbles, we were a close family – something I reminded myself of the following month, when the country was in the grip of the COVID-19 lockdown. Not working, I was able to homeschool the children. Some people weren’t as lucky to have family around them, so I volunteered with an online support group helping people who were shielding.

A widower named Roy Lockett, then 70, got in touch. ‘He lives on his own,’ I told my husband, feeling sorry for him and frail man who wasn’t in the best of health. His wife had died years before.

‘I live alone now,’ he told me, as I stood two metres away on his path. His son Peter Austin, then 39, lived nearby but wasn’t always able to help.

After that first meeting, I did regular food shops for Roy, dropping the groceries outside his door. We’d chat from a safe distance and the world working on cruise ships. ‘And instructor,’ he said.

One day, I took Alice along. Like most teens, Alice liked staying listening to music and chatting to mates online. The school closures had wreaked havoc on her life, and I thought it’d do her good to come and help me help Roy, figuring she’d look up to him, like a grandfather, and enjoy his stories. The two of them got along really well, and I.