Page 78 of The First Mistake

Alice waits, hoping for a more eloquent response from her intelligent, well-educated daughter. But she’s left staring at the top of her head. Again.

‘I really think we need to talk about this whole phone business ...’ starts Alice, but Sophia is already rolling her eyes. ‘I would also appreciate a little respect.’

‘Yes Mum,’ she says, placing it on her lap and sitting up straighter. Alice is sure she can see her hand itching to pick it up again.

‘I don’t mind you using it for normal communication between your friends, yourrealfriends, but not for the seven hundred you’ve got on Facebook or whatever it is.’

Sophia stifles a smirk. ‘Nobody’s on Facebook anymore. It’s Snapchat.’

‘Okay, well whatever it is, I’d prefer you to spend your time on real life and not the made-up one on social media.’

‘I don’t make up anything,’ she protests.

‘I hope you don’t, but everybody else on there probably does.’

She tuts, and Alice shoots her a look.

‘These people’s lives are fake,’ says Alice, picking up the offending item. Sophia looks at it as if it’s a baby that her mother is about to throw into a road. ‘They’re not lives that you can aspire to because they’re not real, and I think it’s putting you kids under an awful lot of pressure tobea certain way andlooka certain way.’

‘I don’t take any notice of that sh—’ Alice raises her eyebrows to stop her daughter finishing her sentence. She looks away sheepishly. ‘There’s some useful stuff on here too, it’s not all rubbish and fake.’

‘Give me one example,’ Alice urges.

Sophia holds out her hand and Alice reluctantly gives her phone back to her. She taps and swipes away. ‘So, for example, I can see where all my friends are.’

‘How is that useful?’ Alice blurts out, a little louder than intended. Though she can’t help but wonder whether, if there’d been such a tool when she was married to Tom, it might have alerted her to him having an affair with Beth. But then she thinks that if such a thinghadexisted, they might have been able to find Tom on the mountain, and he would have come home to her with only a few bruises to show for his misadventure.Would he have left me anyway?she asks herself.Would he have gone to Beth as soon as he found out she was pregnant and left the family that he already had, to be with her?

She banishes the thought, because it is no longer important. What she’d believed to be true for the last ten years is a lie and she hates herself for living half the life she could have been living. She could have been anyone, could have gone anywhere; instead she has been paralysed, forever fearful that something would happen to a loved one, or take her away from those who needed her.

Well, no more. She is going to be the person she lost all those years ago; live with abandonment, shake off the paranoia that has plagued her for so long. She’s going to love the husband she’s got, not the one she lost. She’s going to be the wife Nathan should have had all this time, not the hollowed-out version she’s mostly been.

‘Look,’ says Sophia patiently as she shows her phone to Alice. ‘This is how I can check out where all my friends are.’ Alice screws her eyes up to see miniature cartoon characters dotted across a map. ‘There’s Hannah. She’s in a car going along Upwood Road.’

Alice looks a little closer and is astonished to see a blonde-haired avatar sitting in something resembling a toy car.

‘That’s insane!’ exclaims Alice. ‘You can actually see what everyone is doing?’

‘Sometimes, yeah. So, there’s Jack and he’s listening to music.’

A boy wearing headphones is grinning back at her.

‘And there’s me!’

Sophia closes in on a girl with bunches, smiling out of the very house they’re sitting in.

Alice can barely find the words. ‘That is so wrong, on every level. I don’t want you on there.’

‘Mum, everyone’s on it.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t want your whereabouts being advertised to whoever’s watching.’

‘You can turn it on and off.’

‘Well then turn yours off. Wait, who’s that next to you?’

‘That’s Nathan!’ Sophia laughs.

‘What’shedoing on there?’ asks Alice, her voice high and taut. ‘Why does he need to be on there?’

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