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After living away from our hometown for nearly ten years, 10 months before Covid my husband got a promotion that meant we could move back ‘home;' where my family and our oldest friends still lived.
The village we had originally lived in had recently expanded with two new upmarket housing estates complimenting the quaint older houses and the sprawling Clarks Valley council estate, where my sisters still lived.
My best friend Kira soon found me a job with a solicitor's office as a receptionist and as my daughter was already at Uni a couple of hundred miles away, it left the two of us in a large semi-detached house.
Kira and her husband Malcolm (Malc) were younger than us by a few years and had been next door neighbours at the old house; and my husband, Frank had taken him ‘under his wing', introducing him to his friends at the pub and going to football together.
Even though they were younger than us, we had quickly become firm friends, socialising and occasionally our families holidaying together.
When Covid and the lockdowns ‘hit,' Frank could work from home and I received the Government's furlough handouts, which was good.
In the space of a month after the lockdowns ended, Malcolm had finally sold his specialist high tech engineering business for several million pounds and ... my 51-year-old husband had a massive heart attack and died; leaving me a widow at 46.
Everyone was incredibly supportive over the next couple of months; but soon people had to get back to their everyday lives and I was left to grieve alone.
Kira phoned me regularly and kept asking me to join her and some friends for nights out; but I always declined.
Frank was well insured and as well as the mortgage being immediately paid off, he also had a ‘death in service' policy which paid out a small fortune leaving me comfortable financially ... although I returned part-time to my receptionist job, yet I was still very lonely.
Not long before the anniversary of his death, Kira finally convinced me to join her and some friends, old and new for a pizza and a few drinks one Friday night.
Although I was dreading it; I had a good time blushing at some of their stories and even found myself actually laughing a couple of times.
I only knew two women in the group, Debbie who with her husband Ross had also been a neighbour when we first lived in the village and Louise who I only vaguely knew from our kids being at the same high school some years before.
They were a fun crowd, who all ‘dressed to impress' and could be a bit bawdy and sweary I suppose, but just what I needed at that time in my life.
We repeated this a few times over the next couple of months; until after Frank's anniversary it became a fortnightly outing, plus I accepted invitations from Kira and Malcolm for dinner at their house a couple of times too.
Even before we'd moved away both Kira and Malc had been very ‘touchy feely' people, but now they seemed even more so; and Malcolm's personality had changed dramatically to where he could probably now be called an Alpha Male, ultra confident and people seemed to be drawn to him in pubs where we'd all meet up after our girlie nights out.
Malc always made a point of hugging me whenever we met up and, on these nights, would pull me tightly into his gym honed frame and; as he towered above me at about 6ft 3, would kiss me on the top of my head, then hold on to me, as if he was my protector.
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