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A Brief Encounter Short Love Story Set in the Age of Covid By Iconic Journalist, Author and Broadcaster Alison Jane Reid exclusively for The Luminaries Magazine.
Intro
Out of the silence, in the deserted museum cafe, came the delirious voice of an Arabian singer.... a voice of exquisite, finely wrought sorrow, passion and tumult. A voice like a whirling dervish of emotion, that breathed stories of other worlds, in a language of longing, desire, colour and mysticism. It felt like a siren call to to live, to love, to travel to be free.
It was intoxicating, given that the world had been standing still during the age of Covid.
The Buzz, Mayhem and Camaraderie of a National Newspaper
I have always felt at home writing in cafes, hotels and on long train journeys. It's the next best thing to the buzz, mayhem and camaraderie of a national newspaper office. Now it felt like a lifeline and the chance to make believe that the world was opening up again after the lockdowns ended.
Two Strangers, Working Remotely After the Lockdowns Ended
The cafe was empty apart from me and one fellow remote worker and the skeleton museum and cafe staff, who kept a low profile. The redbrick museum and arts centre cafe was situated close to the bustling heart of the ancient part of a town that has ebbed and flowed in my life since I first saw The Sound of Music at the Hexagon.
If I close my eyes, I can see my eighteen year old self standing on platform one at Reading station, waiting for the next chapter of my life to begin. How I loved taking the long train journey to and from university in a chic little black wool dress with a gauzy midnight blue scarf strewn with tiny sequins and stars, with an antique brooch I had found at a vintage market, close to the station, brimming with twinkling fripperies from a bygone age of elegance and whimsy. Reading cultivated my passion for haute fashion and beauty. It is a town that should be a city, with roots that stretch back to William the Conqueror.
Casually, I studied my fellow worker who had also been drawn to the allure of cafe society that has existed for centuries. He had a luxuriant mop of very black hair, pale skin and a quiet, calm voice. Throughout the day, he would make work phone calls on his mobile and I could barely catch a word. Perhaps he was being polite. I wondered what he did and where he had blown in from. I had never seen him before.
He was Handsome and Sartorial in a Keanu Reeves Sort of Way
He was tall and dressed in black jeans, a polo neck sweater and a jacket which succeeded in looking both relaxed and yet sartorial too. I like a man who knows how to dress well. He was handsome, with a kind, appealing face in a Paul Rudd meets Keanu Reeves sort of way.
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Read On
I guess the stranger and I both had the idea to go and work in the cafe remotely as the lockdowns eased to preserve our mental health and to feel a sense of normality and community in a time that was anything but normal. It was more than that too. It was about embracing the freedom to go out. To live and work over one more cup of coffee a la Bob Dylan and at the very least, in an interesting atmosphere of music, art, history and the idea of society, even if people still mostly stayed away out of well-orchestrated fear.
We Wanted the World to Go On
Not us. We were brave. We wanted the world to go on. We yearned to live.
I remember he liked to drink an Americano and at the end of the day, he would have a craft beer or two.
So, every day for weeks in the year 2021- 22 I would diligently go to the museum cafe and get on with the business of editing and writing articles for this magazine. Slowly, I began to look forward to seeing the stranger there too. He was always there, sitting at his wooden desk, close to the door. I sat at a desk next to the display of vintage albums by Neil Young, Free, the Who, The Stones and The Velvet Underground, to avoid the winter wind rushing around the door that didn't quite fit.
No Man's Land and a Flirtation that Went On and On, for Weeks
There was one empty desk in between us, which I decided to call no-mans-land. No one ever sat there.
Once in a while, someone would come in for a takeaway single-estate coffee and they would carelessly leave the door ajar, as they hurried away.
The man seemed impervious to the cold.
At first, I didn't take much notice of him. I wasn't looking for romance, just any drop of humanity and a desire not to feel alone and to focus on work and creativity. To forge ahead, no matter what. I was in profound mourning for my mother who had died from sudden multiple strokes and the wilder ravages of dementia after she decided to pull the plug on functional medicine which had halted and reversed the condition. My beautiful mother's prolonged suffering and loss of dignity and autonomy had broken my heart. I had also emerged from a relationship just before Covid, which had left me feeling that it would be better to run into my ideal of a man, not go looking for him ever again. In the meantime, I would find a remarkable dog and write lots and lots of novels and short stories and move to Italy.
The Art of Flirting and Slow Love
So the weeks went by and I was too shy to greet my co-worker in the morning and say hello. Instead, after a while, and as the space between us grew familiar, we began to take sly peeks at each other, when we thought the other person was concentrating on work.
Jane Austen and the Fertile, Female Imagination
Reader, the situation was unexpected, funny, sweet and quietly intriguing. As Jane Austen declared, the female imagination is a fertile, wonderful thing. I began to wonder if it was possible to meet a perfect stranger during a plandemic and that a coup de foudre would ensue. That we would like each other, and then we would discover that we had lots of shared passions and fall organically in love. I started to daydream about the railway cafe in the film Brief Encounter without the desolate and profoundly conventional ending.
Why not? People meet randomly all the time, get married and spend half a century together. Why not us? It could happen.
So, one day, towards evening, my heart racing, I said hello, as he sat at the bar, drinking a beer and chatting with one of the founders of the arts centre. It was a bit awkward. I didn't want the museum staff to know what was going on. He nodded and smiled at me and I left for home, feeling more contented.
Of course, I told all my close girlfriends about the exotic man in the cafe, and they all commanded me to be more daring and forward. I couldn't do that, I was paralyzed by grief, after losing my mother, and feeling utterly bereft.
I also began to realise how wary I felt about even the possibility of a new relationship.
My confidence and playfulness had abandoned me.
I had become my fourteen-year-old self again. The shy girl who would turn pillar box red if a boy looked at me. I also had to go away for a couple of weeks, to sort out my mother's house.
When I returned to the cafe several weeks later, the man was still there, working at the same desk. We began to look at each other more. Neither of us spoke. I didn't know what to do.
A Grand Gesture, Like a Game of Chess
This went on for the rest of the week. On Friday, I arrived later than usual and the man had made his move. After weeks and months of exquisite tension, he was sitting at my desk! The desk I always sat at. This was a big deal. There were only three desks. He had his and I had mine. It was a ritual that had gone on for months. I wasn't prepared for that. Then he spoke to me.
"I've stolen your desk, I've requisitioned it," he said triumphantly. He was looking directly at me for the first time, and he was waiting for me to respond.
"So I see," I said laughing nervously, in shock. Men do things like that, they make grand gestures, it's like a game of chess. I had not expected it. I was not prepared. A sense of helplessness washed over me. I was fourteen again.
A Lauren Bacall and Bogie Move
All I could think of was, what do I do? Where do I sit now? Do I go over to him? Do I act like Lauren Bacall to Bogart and say, "Just whistle, you do know how to whistle don't you?"
That was it. All I had to do was remember that I am mad about the movies, and this was the movie of my own life and I had the starring role.
Slowly, I walked over to the desk, pulled up a chair and sat down.
Hello D - , I said, looking straight into his eyes. What took you so long? Now, are you going to buy me a damn fine cup of coffee and tell me the story of your life so far?
Ends.
A Note About - Lockdown Love - A Brief Encounter Love Affair During the Covid-19 Plandemic. (No, dear reader, that is not a typo).
A short story based on actual events that took place after the Covid lockdowns, in 2021/2022 somewhere in the UK. Some details including the location have been changed for dramatic purposes and privacy.
Five of AJ's Favourite Brief Encounter Love Affair Films for you to watch and savour
Five Films to Watch that Celebrate Love, Especially Brief Encounter Love Stories. I urge you to buy second hand copies of you favourite film DVDs so that you can watch them whenever the desire takes you. Streaming companies are overcharging for the films we love. Look for film DVDs in charity shops, World of Books or buy new copies from stores such as HMV.
For those of you who still wish to stream, each film contains a link to Amazon Prime. If you use link we may earn a small commission.
The Lakehouse - Two of my favourite actors in a quiet, profound love story of time travel, meeting the one, family, ego, a love of architecture and daring to pose the idea can we change our fate?
Brief Encounter - The Sir David Lean classic, an intense, dramatic forbidden love story told in black and white that mostly takes place at a railway station while the married lovers snatch time together after a simple twist of fate and a spec of dust brings them together.
Sliding Doors - Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah Star in director Peter Howitt's classic, culture rush, nineties, London rom com about career girl, Gwyneth Paltrow, who meets John Hannah in two different time dimensions with very different outcomes. Set to an irrestisble nineties zeitgeist soundtrack, one outcome is tragic, the other is full of chance encounter promise, with the help of Monty Python.
Under a Tuscan Sun - Diane Lane's devastated writer, takes flight to Italy after a horrible divorce and she is reborne as she discovers the simple pleasures of La Dolce Vita. Along the way, she finds a new tribe as she buys and 300 hundred year old villa on impulse. The house restores her joy and she finds a new love when she lets the ladybirds come to her.
Love Affair 1939 Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in the definitive version of Love Affair (not the later Cary Grant version). Two people meet on an ocean liner bound for New York, where they both have waiting lovers. Dunne and Boyer fall in love over pink champagne and the prying eyes of the public and pledge to meet in six months at the top of the Empire State Building.
Copyright Alison Jane Reid/ The Luminaries Magazine. All Rights Reserved - May 2026. No re-use, Copying or Ai Harvesting Whatsover.
About the Journalist - Alison Jane has been a leading UK journalist, broadcaster, commentator and author for three decades. She trained at Mirror Group Newspapers and The Photographer Magazine as a feature writer and fashion editor. For a decade she was a contributing editor to The Times Saturday Magazine. AJ also worked as a contributing editor to The Lady Magazine and You. Her features and interviews have also been published in - Country Life, The Sunday Times, Coast, ES, The Evening Standard and The Independent Magazine.
Film images are copyright of the respective film studios and they are for editorial use only.
Images of the Author, Copyright Alison Jane Reid/The Luminaries Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Other pictures for illustration, courtesy of Pexels.
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