Image copyright Leaf Arbuthnot

By rights, freelance journalist Leaf Arbuthnot should have been pretty busy of late with preparations to launch her first novel. But, like for so many of us, normal life ground to a halt as the coronavirus swept in.

That meant abandoning any ideas of a (cheap) white wine-fuelled press party or public readings from her novel Looking For Eliza, she says.

"I feel like my life has been thrust into the deep freeze. It's sad to see all those things disappear. It's a bit depressing," she adds.

Instead, holed up at her parents' house near Reading, rather than in her London flat, she's been trying distraction techniques to quash worries about how her book will fare and the future of her arts and culture freelance career.

Baking has been high on the list, as has playing with the "ridiculously fluffy" Norbert - a chick from the family's chooks.

But these things only go so far in a crisis, especially when the events she would normally cover have stalled and papers, struggling even before the pandemic, are tentative about commissioning freelancers.

"I'm frustrated by the way I'm dealing with this. I seem to be more paranoid. My friends tell me this is completely fine. This is a pandemic, your career isn't ending," says Leaf, who writes for the likes of the Guardian, the Spectator and the Sunday Times.

"I realise just how much of my work relied on the world happening with business as usual. But I know I'm lucky my book is coming out at all and without the internet I'd really be up the creek.

"Yet I feel like I need to touch base with reassurances again and again. I have low level neediness. That makes me dislike myself."

Her feelings will chime with those of a lot of people - and so will the themes of her book.

Though unsurprisingly nothing to do with a pandemic, Looking For Eliza is about cross-generational loneliness - increasingly debated in recent years - and the value in forming human bonds outside your comfort zone.

Its protagonists are the widowed, disenchanted poet Ada in her 70s and the 25-year-old first-year Italian PhD Oxford student Eliza. Both are suffocated by loneliness, in its truest form.

No efforts towards social interaction - be that fresher events and sex for Eliza, or hiring herself out as supportive "rent-a-gran" for Ada - can fill their individual emotional voids.

And though they live across the road from each other, they could be worlds apart, like so many neighbours even without the barriers raised by a health crisis. And the generation gap doesn't help.

But underneath they are two sides of one coin, having both become disconnected from a sense of self or place through the loss of a significant other.

"I see Eliza as a young vine," says Leaf. "She's recently disentangled herself from quite an abusive and intense relationship with her ex-girlfriend, Ruby, which started just as she was becoming an adult.

"She's grown up with that support, even if it was quite twisted. Now she's suddenly having to work out who she is by herself but lacks the tools to scoop her out of loneliness."

As for Ada, whose husband was a revered university professor, "she's had a really wonderful marriage to a man who was generous and kind", says Leaf.

"After his death, she realises the friends she thought were theirs collectively were more on his side of the ledger and suddenly all those relationships thin out and fracture.

"She finds she's living alone, not having had children because they couldn't, and she doesn't have the confidence or resources internally to be able to build a new life."

The two are brought together by Ada's Rent-A-Gran venture, through which she's realising just how widespread a problem social dislocation is.

Their connection is instant. They bond through simple pleasures, such as cooking and lapsang souchong tea. And crucially, they are curious and non-judgemental about the generational differences in their world views.

Ada is particularly interested to learn about Eliza's bisexuality. And, set against the backdrop of the Brexit vote, politics is thrown in (lightly) too.

As the friendship grows stronger so does their self-worth.

"I really do think you can tool up against loneliness, you can pull up against it by finding connections close at home," says Leaf.

"There's been a real flowering of activity since lockdown, where people are really reinvesting in their local communities and just helping.

"I've got friends who now know their neighbours' eating habits because they're doing their shopping. And yet they'd never spoken before and haven't physically met. I've been quite encouraged remotely.

"On a community level I think we will enjoy the benefits of having engaged with people nearby and maybe a renewed understanding of how interconnected we all are."

In her own life, Leaf knows the value of reaching out to relationships outside your age bracket. She volunteers for Age UK, has separately made friends with two elderly people, and turns to her "remarkable" 100-year-old grandmother for advice.

"I feel I connect much better with two generations up," says Leaf. "There's a real lack of judgment around these relationships and a mutual lack of understanding, which can be quite charming and lead to quite free conversations where you learn a lot about each other's point of view. Even if you don't agree, it doesn't matter."

In its review The Lady magazine said Leaf had been "even-handed in pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of both women and reminds us how important it is to be with our elders".

While in the Evening Standard, Susannah Butter said of the book: "There's a lot to identify with, whether you are in your seventies or a millennial."