“I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a hug,” Jane tells me. Despite living with her partner in a relationship that encompasses 17 years, the pair have been living completely separate lives in the same Surrey flat due to Jane being immunosuppressed as a result of a kidney transplant.
Jane works, lives and sleeps in what was once the couple’s dining room - “it’s a bit like a student bedsit” - and her partner takes their bedroom. “We can’t sleep together because of the Covid risk - he’s a train driver in London, so there’s always a risk that he’ll pick up the infection and bring it back in, so we have to keep separate and that can’t change,” she says.
