Page 5 of The Happiness Project

‘And whatever it is,’ I say, ‘can this crucial news possibly wait until the travel agency closes? We’ll probably have more customers in soon.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Mum adds that any customer would want to hear what she has to say. I shrug. There’s no point resisting when she’s in this mood.

‘Go on then,’ I say with a sigh. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’m going to die,’ she says, placing her phone in front of me, but the screen is blank.

‘What’s your pin code?’ I pick it up.

‘1234 — it came with that and I thought it was very easy to remember.’

‘Mmm.’ Typing the number in, I get a screen showing a gravestone. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s called a death clock,’ Mum replies. ‘Jackie was telling me all about it when I had my roots done. You put in information and it tells you when you’re going to die.’

Jackie has been Mum’s hairdresser for an eternity and Mum visits her every month without fail even if it doesn’t need doing. There are definitely weeks when I swear Jackie just makes scissor sounds behind Mum’s head as you really cannot tell the difference.

‘Jackie put in all my details and look — I’ve only got four thousand days left!’

I’ve never heard of this website before but it seems pretty grim. You enter your age and some health details and it basically calculates when you’re going to pop your clogs. Patty takes it out of my hands and reads the information.

‘But you’re going to live until you’re ninety,’ she says to Mum. ‘That’s not a bad innings.’

‘I want to get to one hundred.’ Mum looks annoyed rather than distressed. ‘Tell the website it’s wrong.’

‘Don’t think it quite works like that,’ I say. ‘It’s just making a guess anyway — based on general statistics. They can’t possibly take into account your robust constitution.’

Patty is typing in her own information.

‘Woohoo,’ she says. ‘I beat you — I’m making it to ninety-four. But I’ve only got twelve thousand days left, that’s no time at all. Blimey, if I have four bottles of wine a week, how many do I have left in my lifetime?’

‘Nearly seven thousand,’ pipes up the customer from the other side of the room. ‘Which sounds far too much for one person.’

‘Oh I never get a bottle to myself,’ swipes Patty, adding in a loud comical whisper, ‘Angie always takes more than her fair share.’

I snatch the phone from her. Patty’s result has a helpful clock counting down the time she has left on earth. I toggle back to where you input the information, snort and start typing.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Patty.

‘Putting in your real information,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve said you have a BMI of less than twenty-five and never drink? Let’s see what happens when we tell the truth . . .’

I finish typing, look up at her with raised eyebrows then stand and pick up my coat.

‘Where are you going?’ asks Patty.

‘I’m going to need a black dress sooner than we thought,’ I tell her, then can’t hold back the giggle. I sit back down and tell both her and Mum to ignore this website as it’s only a bit of fun.

‘What did it say with . . . you know, more up-to-date information?’ ventures Patty.

‘Up-to-date? Do you mean accurate? I’ve put in those four bottles a week you mentioned instead of your original “teetotal” answer. And I’m not telling you — suffice to say it estimated that you wouldn’t make it to ninety.’

‘Wow,’ she says. ‘So less time than I’ve already had? I suppose that’s obvious really, but it’s a bit shocking to see it in black and white. I need to get on with life, don’t I?’

‘We both do,’ pipes up Mum. ‘We need one of those bucket list things and we need to get on with them quickly.’

‘Good idea — Angie could book us one of those trips to go swimming with dolphins,’ says Patty.

‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ says Mum, as I guessed she would. ‘And why would dolphins want to swim with us?’

---