Only Connect

One day in late summer I have a bad fall. I shred an ankle. It does not heal. After weeks of medical muddle, a scan shows ligaments snapped and torn off the bone. I am housebound for months. Yet my spirits are surprisingly good. But then, I'm not alone in this. Illness, injury, dependency - all bring their own strange intimacy. My husband has been with me almost every minute, tending, fetching, cooking meals and bringing cups of tea, insisting on new consultations.

Tony, a former Carlton Football Club physio, is my new hope. My husband drives me to see him and carefully eases me out of the car. As I flail along on crutches he calls out, his tone sharp with worry, "Your crutch is too close to the edge of the path." I realise he is walking right behind, watching my every step.

I lie on a long, thin table covered with white cloth. Tony bends over my wrecked ankle, head bowed, with a pensive expression. He cradles my heel between his large palms. His touch is kind, comforting. Just at that moment an unbearable thought sweeps out of left field, like an ambush. The thought is this: What if you were so utterly alone in the world that the only time you felt the touch of another human being was when a podiatrist trimmed a corn? Or a hairdresser brushed your hair?

My thought is about loneliness.

The day before a friend had rung to commiserate. The talk turned quickly, however, to what was really bugging her. My fall had aroused in her a primal terror - usually held in abeyance - of being alone. Her panic crackles over the phone and her sadness seeps into the air until I am drenched by it. What if it had happened to her? Who would care for her? How will she cope in old age?

These are real enough questions, and an ever-growing number of people face them. It is seven years since Robert D Putnam published Bowling Alone, his classic work on social disconnection in the US. The trend he identified has only intensified across the West.