How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  Me too. So, the legendary, beautiful redhead (think face of Julianne Moore, curves of Jennifer Lopez) with the Cambridge First, on track to become a partner in a London firm earning gazillions, is now festering in a solicitor’s office above Hot Stuff Indian restaurant in the high street of a provincial town, resolving leylandii disputes for homicidal octogenarians and growing big and blowsy from drowning her sorrows. All of Deb’s recent emails begin, ‘Shoot me!’.

  I need something better than that. Don’t I?

  Debra is growing louder and more belligerent, so I change the subject and tell her about Emily’s belfie. Our disasters are small gifts we can give to our friends who suffer because they believe our lives are easier than their own.

  ‘Oh, they’re all doing it,’ Deb snorts. ‘Sexting. Some kid in Ruby’s year got himself arrested. Sent a pic of his willy to a girl aged fourteen. Huge hoo-ha at the school – said he was guilty of child abuse or something ridiculous. He’s been suspended, poor thing. The girl didn’t even complain. Teacher saw her laughing and sharing the dick pic with her friends; now it’s this huge deal because she’s underage.’

  ‘I think I’m pretty broad-minded,’ I say, ‘but can you imagine?’

  ‘Very easily, darling. If you give kids phones that do all that naughty stuff why wouldn’t they? It’s just too tempting. I mean, I have.’

  ‘You’ve done what? Deb. No. You haven’t. Please tell me you haven’t.’

  ‘Only knockers.’ She smiles and cups her breasts in her hands, thrusting them upwards in her straining blouse till they look like two quivering panna cotta. ‘Getting your tits out, that’s pretty entry-level stuff for online dating, Kate darling. Consider yourself lucky you’re off the market and don’t have to display your wares to new suitors.’

  ‘I feel sorry for them,’ I say, suddenly realizing how helpless and angry I feel about the belfie. ‘Emily and Ruby, they’re supposed to be the freest most liberated generation of girls who ever lived. Then, just as equality’s in sight, they decide to spend every minute slapping on make-up and posing for selfies and belfies like they’re courtesans in some fin de siècle brothel. What the hell happened?’

  ‘Dunno, beats me.’ Deb tries to suppress a loud burp and fails. ‘Shall we get the bill?’ She turns and flags down a scurrying waiter. ‘I do know Ruby goes out wearing next to nothing then, if some poor guy wolf whistles at her, suddenly it’s, “Oh, no, it’s sexual harassment.” I tried to tell her that the male brain is programmed to respond to certain parts of the female anatomy. Most boys like Felix and Ben can act in a civilised fashion, if they’re properly brought up by women like you and me, but enough boys won’t be civilised and then you’re in big trouble because, surprise fucking surprise, rapist Rob hasn’t read your student guide to inappropriate touching.’

  We fall silent for a moment. ‘The kids say I’m from the past,’ I say.

  ‘We are from the past, thank God,’ Deb booms. ‘I’m bloody glad we grew up before social media, darling. At least when we went home from school we were by ourselves, or with family who treated us like part of the furniture. There was no one poking us every ten seconds to admire their perfect bloody life. Imagine having every little bitch who was hateful to you at school joining you in your bedroom via your phone. I felt crap enough about myself already. I didn’t need an audience, thanks very much.’

  ‘Probably every generation of parents must feel like this,’ I say cautiously. It’s been so much on my mind, but I haven’t tried to put it into words before. ‘It’s just that this … this … this gulf between us and the kids, their world and the one we grew up in, it’s … I don’t know, Deb, it’s all happened so quickly. Everything’s changed and I don’t think we’ve even begun to understand what’s going on. Or what it’s going to do to them. How is Ben supposed to learn empathy for other people when he spends half his life carrying out drive-by shootings in some virtual-reality world? Did I tell you I found out Emily actually downloaded something to help her bypass the parental controls on their devices?’

  Typically, Deb is delighted, not appalled. ‘Genius! She sounds a highly resourceful woman, just like her mummy.’

  It’s time to go. She has drained my wine glass and we’ve argued over the bill. (Can’t remember who paid last time. I ask Roy, but he’s still busy looking up the number of calories in a flat white.)

  As the guy by the door hands us our coats, I ask Deb to be honest with me. ‘Do you think I can pass for forty-two?’

  She grins. ‘God, yes, no problem. I’m thirty-six, darling. If I ever bring a boyfriend to meet you we need to get our stories straight, OK? Or he’ll think “how come these two were in the same year at university and there’s a six-year age difference?” Now, you be honest with me, Kate. Do you think I can get away with thirty-six?’

  (No. I don’t. Whatever thirty-six looks like, Deb is no longer it, and neither am I.)

  ‘Course you can. Never better. Love what you’ve done to your hair.’

  Debra is halfway down the street when she turns and yells at me: ‘College reunion! Don’t forget, I’m going to be two stone lighter.’

  ‘And fifteen years younger!’ I shout back, but the traffic drowns out my reply and she is gone.

  5.21 pm: Just had a lovely long walk with Lenny to shake off the Women Returners meeting. He was desperate to go out when I got back from lunch; now he’s fast asleep and lying on his back in his basket by the Aga, all four paws wide apart, fluffy white tummy unprotected. Something almost unbearably touching about an animal’s utter trustingness. No sign of Richard. Ben’s got football, but I’m sure Em said she was having friends over.

  Upstairs, I find three girls sitting on Emily’s bed in complete silence, heads bent over their mobiles like they’re trying to decode the meaning of the I Ching. One is Lizzy Knowles, daughter of Cynthia and hateful sharer of the belfie; the other – pale, pretty, auburn – is Izzy, I think.

  ‘Hello, girls. Why don’t you, you know, have a nice chat? Face to face with eye contact,’ I say, peering round the door at this eerie dumb-show. My tone is only very lightly mocking. Emily looks up and shoots me her special ‘You’ll have to forgive my mother, she’s mentally impaired’ glare.

  ‘We are chatting. We’re texting,’ she hisses.

  I feel like Charles Darwin observing finches on the Galapagos Islands. Where is all this communication without speaking going to end? My great-great-grandchildren will be born with prehensile texting thumbs, no vocal cords and zero capacity to read human facial expressions. I am struggling to see any of this as evolution for our species, if evolution means progress, but at least Em isn’t by herself. Whatever friction the belfie caused in the peer group must have been fixed. At least, that’s what I hope. I tell the girls there’s Spag Bol downstairs if they want it. Only Lizzy responds. ‘Thanks, Kate, we’ll be down later,’ she says in the coolly condescending manner of Lady Mary Crawley addressing Mrs Patmore, the Downton Abbey cook. I give Lizzy my best and most ingratiating smile; my daughter’s fragile happiness is in that girl’s hands.

  5.42 pm: By the time Ben gets in, I’ve put carrot sticks and hummus on the kitchen table for him to eat. Piotr has removed all the old worktops; it’s like living in a shed, but it should be over soon. Ben grunts, ignores the healthy snack, gets some crisps from the cupboard (who bought those?) and disappears into the living room. A few minutes later, I hear the voice of another boy in there. Where did he come from?

  5.53 pm: ‘Benjamin, dinner time.’

  ‘Ben? Now, please. Spaghetti’s ready.’

  ‘Five more minutes. We’re nearly at half-time.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Me and Eddie.’

  ‘When did he come round? I didn’t hear anyone come in.’

  I walk into the living room, adopting the voice of maternal sternness. ‘You know the rule, Ben. If you want your friends to—’

  Ben is alone, h
unched on the sofa, clutching a handset, thumbs a blur. On the TV, someone in red takes a corner. Players rise in mayhem, the ball goes in, the crowd explodes and Ben keels over sideways as if shot, laughing into a cushion. Other cackles answer him, from nowhere; I recognise the voice of Eddie, saying, ‘That’s sick,’ but I can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  ‘Is that real?’ I ask, genuinely not knowing whether it’s a football match onscreen, with actual swearing fans telling the referee to fuck off, or whether it’s millions of digital dots. Not quite sure how real I am myself, most days. Maybe I should get someone to design a digital me, who gets on with cooking dinner, ordering shower tiles and all the boring jobs no one notices I’m doing, while the real Kate can concentrate on the life I really want, with time on my nicely manicured hands, firming up the abdominals and the plunging pelvic floor, and much less need to swear.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Where’s Eddie?’

  ‘At home, Mum, don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Please don’t call me stupid, Benjamin. Your real dinner is on the table and it’s getting cold.’

  ‘OK. Five more minutes.’

  ‘It was five minutes ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Extra time. Maybe penalties. I can’t pause it. We’ll lose the whole game.’

  I give up. Emily is upstairs with friends and they’re not speaking. Ben is downstairs speaking with friends, but they’re not here. They’re miles away, in another part of town. The kids are right: I am from the past. But they are from some Mad Max, post-apocalyptic future where mankind has dispensed with the civilities and physical interaction of all previous centuries. It scares me, it really does, but trying to wean them off their screen addiction seems futile. Like switching off the wind or the rain. If there’s a heaven, and my kids ever get there, their first question to St Peter will be, ‘What’s the password?’

  Hunger finally draws Ben to the table, where he tucks in with gratifying enthusiasm. I love to watch my boy eat his favourite meal; it must be some atavistic thing. Between mouthfuls of spaghetti, which he shovels in rather than twirling on a fork – the Battle for Table Manners has been lost – he explains that upstairs Emily and her friends are scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, sharing any videos or photos that they like. Talking is strictly optional in that process, apparently. It means showing each other something someone else has said, written, or photographed, not forming their own original thoughts or stories. I can’t help thinking of Julie and me creating a whole universe in our bedroom with just Lego and a single Sindy doll.

  ‘You do meet some people IRL,’ Ben says. ‘Is there any more Parmesan?’

  ‘I’ll get it. What’s IRL?’

  ‘Mu-um, you know IRL.’

  ‘I don’t, sorry.’

  ‘In Real Life.’

  ‘I see. In real life?’

  ‘Yeah, but mainly it’s not IRL ’cos basically you’re like online the whole time.’

  ‘How about school? Is school IRL?’

  ‘You’re not supposed to have phones in class,’ Ben admits cautiously, ‘but people do. Basically, that’s what social life is like now for my generation.’ (I’ve never heard him come out with anything so philosophical or grown-up before. I didn’t know he even knew the word ‘generation’. Result! Must stop thinking of him as seven.)

  As he’s leaving the table, Ben says did I know that the boys at school gave Emily the Rear of the Year Award because of the pic of her bum going viral, and she had to go to the nurse because she threw up in assembly?

  No, I did not know.

  9.37pm: Bedroom is dark, but my daughter’s face is illuminated by her phone. She is scrolling through photos. There are so many of them, an immense number, screen after screen. Up closer, I see they are nearly all selfies; in none of them is she smiling. She’s making that weird duckface, the one all the girls pull now. Halfway between a pout and a pucker, it makes her lips look huge, outsized in her face. And she sucks in her cheeks – a come-hither, glamour-model pose. Emily is constantly watching these online make-up tutorials; she’s got really skilled at it, much better than I am actually. But it does look like she’s painting an older, more sophisticated woman onto that sweet, heart-shaped face.

  I really dislike the selfies, this gallery of narcissism, and the way Em stares at them so avidly, as if she were an addict and the drug is herself. In my mother’s family album at home there are only three or four snaps of me at Emily’s age: one with Julie on holiday in Colywn Bay; one as a bridesmaid in a too-tight, fuchsia satin dress (I’d sprouted breasts between the fitting and the wedding); one of me and my dad by the veg patch in the back garden, him stripped to the waist and grinning at the camera, as devilishly handsome as Errol Flynn, and me prim and awkward beside him in a knitted tank top over a cheesecloth shirt with an awful straight fringe and National Health specs (you’d never think we were related). Emily takes more photos of herself in a single week than exist of me from half a lifetime. It makes me deeply uneasy, though I know I’ll get my head bitten off if I say anything.

  ‘Ooooh, you look so pretty. Look at you, gorgeous girl!’

  Em shrugs away the compliment, turning on her side and pulling the duvet up over her shoulder.

  ‘Is everything OK at school, love? You know I got the son of this nice lady in my Women Returners group to take your belfie off the Internet. Josh Reynolds. He’s a computer genius; he was at your school ten years ago. He says he’s zapped all the ones he could find.’

  ‘Please don’t, Mum.’

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, love. I understand. I just want you to know that Josh is going to block the belfie if anyone ever tries to share it again.’

  ‘Didn’t tell Dad?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t.’

  I can see Em’s shoulders start to heave under the duvet.

  ‘Oh, darling, it’s OK. Don’t cry.’ Climbing on the bed next to her, I stroke her wet face. ‘What is it? Is it the belfie? Have people been mean to you?’

  ‘No. Just I’m really really stressed, Mummy. School’s so hard. I’m not the cleverest, I’m not the prettiest, I’m not the sportiest. I’m not the anythingest.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart. You are good at things, you know you are. So good at Music and English. It’s natural to feel like that. And the girls came round today, didn’t they? And you’re all going to Taylor Swift, that’ll be so nice. Did you give Lizzy the cheque?’

  She nods. ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘Course we can afford it. We’re just being a bit careful until Mummy finds a job, that’s all.’

  She rolls over and buries her face in my neck. ‘Sorry I knocked your glasses off, Mum.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, love. I was just worried you’d hurt yourself, that’s all. I know I was being a nuisance. Is your leg better now?’

  ‘S’fine.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Noooo.’ Her body stiffens and she jerks away again.

  ‘OK, OK. But let me know if you need any cream to put on it? Oh, look who’s here! Baa-Sheep.’

  Emily’s beloved companion – she carried him around by his right arm for her first three years on Earth – is definitely showing signs of age. His white fleece is now a smutty grey, though, thankfully, Baa-Sheep’s power to comfort is undiminished. I tuck the toy next to her face; she kisses him and I kiss her. Oh, help. All the problems she had when she was little, they seem like child’s play now.

  ‘Good night. Sleep tight.’

  ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ Emily whispers.

  11.01 pm: Am shattered, but so much to do before I take myself off to bed. Get Ben’s football kit out of the washing machine and put it in the dryer, ready for the morning. At least he managed to bring a pair of socks home this time, that’s something, although the name tapes reveal that one sock belongs to a different boy – a giant by the look of it. I think of Joe Barnes’s mum out there somewhere, washing my Ben’s odd sock with the same wry sh
rug.

  I let Lenny out into the garden for a final wee. This takes a while because he loves being out at night; maybe his sense of smell is heightened? I must ask Sally; she knows that kind of thing. (‘Roy, please please can you remind me to plant those bulbs?’) The dog is following one of his urgent scent trails around the containers on the patio then breaking into a run as he gets to the lawn beyond. I soon lose sight of him; all that my eyes can make out is the distant silhouette of three Scots pines and a single glimmering silver birch that looks like a fork of lightning against the pewter sky.

  ‘Lenny, LENNY!’ I call and call, scanning the dark lawn for a flicker of movement. ‘Lenny, don’t do this to me, please. I’ve got enough on my plate with your sister.’ (Do I really think of Lenny as Emily’s naughty little brother? I’m afraid I probably do.) Oh, please God, let him come back. I can’t face Lenny getting lost, not on top of everything else.

  Take deep gulp of cold air and try to whistle. So much for Lauren Bacall’s ‘Just whistle’; there’s no ‘just’ about whistling in my experience. Lenny is a lot less biddable than Humphrey Bogart and has a fascination with the river on the far side of the wood at the bottom of our garden. I purse my lips and make a feeble peeping sound. Just then, Lenny is at my feet, an old tennis ball in his mouth hung about with tendrils of weed and drool. Hugely pleased with himself, his tail thumping a personal round of applause.

  ‘Oh, good boy. Clever boy! We’ll get Emily sorted, won’t we, boy? Everything’s going to be all right.’

  Midnight: Rich is fast asleep: claimed he rode twelve miles tonight. The bassoon section of the Snore Orchestra is warming up nicely, which isn’t ideal background music for me to drop off. I plug my phone in to charge and am just about to flick the Ringer Silent switch when a sweet-sounding chord announces a new email has landed. I recognise the name of the sender, a contact from my City days. That’s strange. Wonder why she’s getting in touch now?

  From: Miranda Cullen

  To: Kate Reddy

  Subject: Hello stranger

  Hi Kate,