An Odie to Jodie — Story Time

As someone with little interest in zombies, dystopias or video games, I’d never really considered who I’d choose to be by my side during a global lockdown. 21 days into being (almost constantly) locked inside, I think I can make a good list of required attributes now. You need someone good at building routines, but still fun and flexible. Someone who can cook and appreciates it when you cook. Someone sociable, entirely non-annoying, up for bingeing specific TV shows and doing laughing gas on an Instagram livestream. Someone you never run out of things to say to. Someone you love. Someone like Jodie.

By the time you read this, my flatmate Jodie will be down in Hastings, nearer to her Dad, with a bit more space, and I’ll be up in London at our flat with my boyfriend James. I’m driving an alarming amount of crafting materials and skincare products down tomorrow, leaving her there, and saying goodbye until this weird limbo life we’re all living in is over. 3 weeks of spending almost every hour of every day together will be over – when she returns the world will be crawling back towards normalcy: pub pints, friend hugs, dinner parties. People returning to their chosen families, almost certainly tentatively, cautious (I hope) so we don’t have to get sucked back into our little vacuums again.

For the last 3 weeks Jodie and I have lived our lives within poking distance. She works in advertising, on constant video calls; I’m a writer and have been working on a script for a young adult sitcom I write for. We worked in the same room as each other every day. We planned a food schedule and made each other lunches and dinners every day. When I was ill and desperately needed a steroid inhaler, she came with me in the car to the GP. She fed the cats when I forgot and is the only one keeping the plants alive.

We’ve been friends for 14 years. We’ve lived together for about 18 months. We probably won’t be together that much longer – I have a boyfriend I’ll eventually live with and she wants to buy a flat. I’ve loved living with her but there’s no test on a friendship like a quarantine: there’s so much anxiety and fear in the air, you can’t go anywhere or hang out with anyone else, if you fell out you’d be in serious trouble. We didn’t fall out. We had a genuinely lovely time. We watched a lot of telly, cooked, drank prosecco. We dressed up as Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin and presented a drinking game for my friend’s online festival. We discussed each other’s work projects and the cat’s personalities in depth. We both became obsessed with the nice couple on Escape From The Chateau. Honestly, it’s been the best quarantine a girl could ask for.

There’s so much writing and art in general about romantic and familial love, and in my opinion, nowhere near enough about friendship, about how brilliant and enriching it can be, and how having a good friend by your side can get you through pretty much anything. I mean, other than the film Ratatouille, although in my opinion that friendship has a serious power imbalance. Good friends, people you can call whenever and ask for help, people you always want to go out and get drunk with, people who’ll go with you to get a steroid inhaler, aren’t cherries on top of a life – they’re the delicious creamy filling. Without them, you’re gonna have a dry cake. Jodie, if you’re reading this, thank you for being a great friend, flatmate, and co-host of what I imagine will eventually be a televised series of drinking games. See you on the other side.