It Started With A Tweet

by Anna Bell

  ‘I don’t think this is good for you. Why don’t you take Chris’s ticket for the show? I’m sure Les Mis would cheer you right up.’

  ‘Oh yes, because it’s so known for its cheery theme. Thank you, but I can’t. Even if it wasn’t the most depressing musical ever, I’d have to switch off my phone and I’d never be able to concentrate as I’d be thinking about what was going on on Twitter.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to leave you here. You look poised to have a meltdown.’

  Before I can protest that I’ll be fine, my phone rings and I flinch.

  ‘You answer it,’ I say, shoving it towards Erica, too scared to even see who’s calling.

  ‘It’s Rosie,’ she says handing it back to me. ‘Surely you can talk to your sister.’

  ‘Oh crap, I’m meant to be meeting her for lunch. She said she’d phone to arrange when and where. Speak to her and fob her off, will you.’

  If my mum would be disappointed, then Rosie would be plain smug about the whole thing. I don’t want my sister and her perfect life to get a whiff that I’ve monumentally fucked up mine.

  ‘Hello, oh hi, Rosie, it’s Erica. Yes, yes, Daisy’s here home from work. There’s been a bit of a situation. Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ she says.

  I wave my arms gesturing for her to wrap the call up, but Erica waves me away and walks out of the room as if I’m distracting her. I hear the odd word – tweet, goggle eyed, worried – and I know she’s shared my shameful secret.

  ‘OK, I’ll text you the address,’ she says walking back into the room. She hangs up the phone and starts tapping away a text on it.

  ‘What’s going on? I thought I told you to fob her off.’

  ‘She wanted to come and check you were OK. She said she’s at Clapham Junction so she’ll catch an Uber and will be here in a bit.’

  ‘What, coming here?’ I screech. Could this day get any worse?

  ‘Hopefully, she’ll be able to stay with you until we get back,’ she says, seemingly pleased with herself that she’s solved the problem of leaving me here alone.

  ‘My older sister babysitting me,’ I say, almost laughing at how ridiculous my situation has become.

  I sigh and think of all the people in the world who I’d want to see now, and my sister is not one of them.

  Chapter Five

  Time since last Internet usage: 1 millisecond

  ‘Blimey,’ says Rosie, as she walks into the tiny box room and spots me hunched over my laptop.

  I see Erica out of the corner of my eye giving her an ‘I told you so’ look.

  When Rosie arrived at the front door there were a lot of muffled whispers and I presume that Erica has brought her up to speed.

  ‘Quite the predicament you’ve got yourself in, then,’ she says, sitting down.

  I feel myself tense up at the smug look she’s got on her face. I knew she’d react like this; she’s probably itching to get on the phone to Mum to share my misfortune.

  ‘I’m sure it will all blow over in a day or two,’ I say, not sounding very convincing.

  ‘It’s OK not to be OK,’ she says, with the most compassion I’ve ever heard in her voice. She stretches out her hands as if I’m about to shatter into a million pieces and she’s going to catch me.

  It unnerves me and I almost burst into tears. I’d full on prepared myself for her scorn and self-righteousness.

  ‘Look, Erica told me that you’ve been staring at that screen for hours now; it’s not healthy. She said she’d suggested you go away.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere on my own, and it’s too short notice for people who still have their jobs!’

  She nods her head and smiles. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘What?’ I stare at her, my tears forgotten. ‘Um, I think it might be better to stay here and sort out another job, and –’

  ‘Nonsense, you need a break and I’m free. Let’s go away somewhere.’

  I do feel like running away from all of this, but Rosie and I haven’t spent more than a day together since I was fifteen and she went off to uni. Back then we fought like cats and dogs. And despite us being older and wiser now, whenever we’re together at Mum’s, no matter how short the time, sibling rivalry always rears its ugly head.

  ‘I thought you were staying down here for a couple of days?’ I say, in desperation to find a way out.

  ‘I came down to see Rupert as he’s here on business, but . . . he’s busier than expected. So I was going to head back to Manchester later this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, don’t let me keep you,’ I say.

  ‘Look, you’re already exhausted from all that work and now this has happened, you can’t stay holed up in this flat staring at the screen. Come back on the train with me and I can pack some stuff and we can go away from there.’

  ‘Where would we go? Somewhere abroad?’

  I slowly let the thought creep into my mind. I’m imagining myself on a desert island, somewhere with crystal-clear water and fluorescent cocktails. I’m reaching for my phone to take an Instagram snap, when it starts beeping with tweets on my Twitter stream.

  I sigh.

  Even if I run away, Twitter will follow me. When I close my eyes, I can see the words of my tweet in large letters, and I can almost hear the digital laughter of everyone reacting to it.

  ‘No, I was thinking more of a staycation. In fact, on the way over here in the taxi, I had a brilliant idea. We should go on a detox.’

  ‘A detox? What, some sort of spa retreat where we drink green shakes and lemongrass all day?’

  ‘Um, no, a digital detox,’ says Rosie, a glint appearing in her eyes that I haven’t seen for a long time. That same glint that always got us into trouble when I followed one of her hair-brained ideas when we were kids.

  ‘A digital detox?’ I say, confused. ‘Like no phones?’

  ‘Yes . . . and no computers, tablets, kindles . . .’

  I’m starting to hyperventilate at the thought as she practically reels off the usual contents of my handbag. ‘Are you mad?’

  Rosie laughs a little. ‘Of course not. I think it would be good for you – good for us – to get away, and for you to have some space from all this.’

  She waves her hand like she’s waving a magic wand over my bed, which looks as if it’s been lifted straight from an Apple Store catalogue with my MacBook, iPad and iPhone next to me.

  ‘I am not going on a digital detox,’ I say, folding my arms. At a push I’d consider going away with her, but this is one step too far. ‘It’s a terrible idea – see,’ I say, pointing to the scared look on Erica’s face.

  ‘She can barely go one minute without checking her phone, let alone one day,’ she says, backing me up.

  ‘Oh, I can well imagine. When we were last at home together, she was commenting on Britain’s Got Talent, based on the tweets she was watching, and she hadn’t even realised we’d changed the channel ten minutes before.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s funnier reading about people’s reactions to something. It’s only like watching Gogglebox,’ I say in my defence.

  ‘OK, then what about when I had to Whatsapp you during Christmas dinner last year to get you to pass the gravy?’

  Erica giggles and I fold my arms across my chest, I have no comeback to that.

  ‘I could give up my phone, no problem. Yesterday, I went for a whole fourteen hours without checking it,’ I say.

  I’m still cursing my dead battery. If I’d just seen those notifications rolling in when I first tweeted I could have deleted it before it started trending.

  ‘And how many of those fourteen hours were you asleep?’ asks Rosie.

  ‘About eight or nine,’ I mumble. ‘But I’m sure I could last a whole day.’

  ‘I was thinking one week,’ says Rosie.

  ‘One week!’ Erica and I scream in unison.

  ‘As if,’ says Erica. ‘As much as I agree that Daisy needs to step away from the computer, I don’t think she’d be a
ble to do it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says Rosie, nodding. ‘Silly me. I thought Daisy would have more willpower and determination than that. I must have got all those genes in our family –’

  ‘Hang on,’ I snap, my sister already getting under my skin. ‘I’ll have you know that if I wanted to do a digital detox, I’d be able to. I just don’t want to do one.’

  ‘OK,’ says Rosie, nodding her head in a patronising way. ‘Sure you would.’

  ‘I would,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’m not addicted to my phone.’

  At that exact moment it beeps, as if to test me and I pick it up without flinching.

  ‘It’s from Nan,’ I say, scan reading it, ‘she wants to know what a Brazilian is. Oh for fuck’s sake, when did she start going on bloody Twitter?’

  ‘Didn’t you set it up for her?’ says Rosie. There it is, the smug look that I knew would be all over her face if she came over. ‘So what was it you were saying about not being addicted to your phone? You picked that up in a nanosecond.’

  ‘Well, it could have been important. In case you haven’t noticed I’m having a big life crisis at the moment and it’s imperative that I keep up to date.’

  ‘As I said, I was wrong. You’d never be able to digitally detox. It’s a shame, as I had a great place in mind and everything.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Uh-huh, and I even gave them a ring when I was in the taxi to see if they had any last-minute availability.’

  ‘And did they?’ I ask, not sure I want to hear the answer.

  ‘Yes, they do, but if you don’t think you could do it . . .’

  ‘Holy shit,’ I say, ignoring Rosie and staring at the screen in disbelief as I read a tweet.

  Dominic Cutler @DomDomDom2434

  Apparently I’m hot as hell . . .

  WB_MARKETING Sexy knickers £25, Brazilian £35, New outfit £170. When your Tinder date is hot as hell & you’re going to f**k his brains out = #priceless

  ‘What?’ asks Erica.

  ‘Dickhead Dominic is getting in on the action.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asks Rosie.

  ‘The Tinder date from last night, the one who the tweet was about.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says.

  I scrunch my eyes up. I desperately want to look, but at the same time I don’t want to.

  ‘Daisy, this isn’t good for you,’ says Rosie in a calm voice. ‘Why don’t we pack a few things? All of this will have blown over by the time you get back.’

  I watch in horror as my twitter search for ‘#priceless’ has new notifications, and as I click on them, I see that other people are retweeting Dominic’s tweet.

  ‘I’ll help pack,’ says Erica, pulling open my drawers and seeing they’re all empty.

  ‘Washing. Haven’t done. Nothing Clean,’ I stutter, unable to string together a sentence.

  ‘That’s OK,’ says Rosie. ‘You can wash them at mine tonight and I’ve got a tumble dryer too.’

  ‘What about booking the place? Maybe it’s been booked up since you phoned,’ I say clutching at straws.

  Rosie pulls her phone out of her bag. ‘I’ll phone them right now,’ she says, walking out of the room.

  I’m vaguely aware of Erica packing me a suitcase full of my dirty washing.

  ‘There,’ she says, zipping it shut. ‘You’re all good to go.’

  She pulls the suitcase off the bed and drags it down the corridor into the lounge before she comes back and gently removes my laptop from in front of me. I snatch my phone and clutch it to my chest before she can nab that too and I find myself escorted to the lounge.

  ‘Great news!’ says Rosie as she hangs up the phone. ‘We’re all booked in. I’ll print all the paperwork off when we’re back at my flat.’

  I groan, wondering why I agreed to go. But at least we’re not going until tomorrow, which means I’ve still got my phone and, hopefully, enough time to convince my sister to change her mind.

  Chapter Six

  Time since last Internet usage: 1 hour and 55 minutes

  Bang!

  My eyes fly open as the Land Rover hits a boulder as we pull over for a passing lorry, and my bum flies off my seat before crashing down again. Lorry past, we pull out onto the uneven and bumpy road, causing me to rock sideways. I must have nodded off. The last thing I remember was the concrete landscape of Manchester, and now we’re way out in the country and all I can see are green fields and rolling hills. I barely got any sleep last night at Rosie’s flat. I was too busy staring at my phone as #priceless continued to trend in the UK.

  ‘Where are we?’ I ask, rubbing my eyes.

  I look out of the window and take in the grey slate walls that pepper the fields. I’m guessing we’re somewhere like the Lake or Peak District.

  ‘We’re in Cumbria, Sleepyhead.’

  I’m stare out of the window, admiring the scenery when it begins to dawn on me that we’re on our way to a detox, and I suddenly start to panic, wondering what I’ve missed while I’ve been sleeping.

  I’m searching for my phone in my handbag, which is difficult because of the way Rosie is flying round the bends at almost break-neck speed. She seems to know which way to turn at every corner and I get the impression that she knows the roads well.

  ‘I take it you come out this way a lot?’

  ‘A fair bit. We should be there in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s exciting or not,’ I say, wishing I’d asked more questions about where exactly we are off to before I agreed to it. ‘Does this place have a hot tub or a spa or something?’

  ‘It has something,’ she says continuing her vagueness.

  I finally pull the phone out of my bag, hoping that I can have one last look at Twitter and say my final goodbyes. I can’t believe this will be my last phone contact for a week. I should have been making the most of our final minutes together rather than sleeping.

  ‘There’s no bloody signal,’ I say shrieking. I start waving it around my head in a desperate attempt to find one. ‘There’s nothing.’

  I can feel my heart race even faster than it has been over the past twenty-four hours watching the live Twitter stream. I’m about to hand over my phone for at least a week and I can’t even check Twitter or Facebook beforehand. I haven’t had time to say a proper goodbye to Siri; he doesn’t like to speak to me unless he’s connected to the Internet, he’s fickle like that. I didn’t even send Erica a hand wave Emoji and a heart, or put a holiday response on my email. Now it’s going to look as if that ill-fated tweet has forced me offline.

  ‘Don’t look so freaked out, it’s only a week, two weeks max,’ says Rosie as if she knew that this was going to happen.

  ‘Two weeks? I didn’t agree to that . . . I need to be back and job hunting as soon as I can,’ I say, wondering where the hell we are and whether I can walk back to civilisation and put myself on a train to London. This was an awful idea. A week was bad enough, but two weeks . . .

  ‘It’s just until you’re free of your digital addiction,’ she says calmly as if I’m a drug addict about to be checked into rehab.

  I might have wanted to prove to Rosie that she was wrong, that I’m perfectly capable of doing this, but now, as we’re approaching H-Hour, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. She’s talking like I can’t actually leave until I’m ‘cured’. What if it’s a cult that’ll keep me prisoner, with my phone and link to the outside world ripped away from me so that I can’t tell anyone I’m being held against my will? I stare at my sister, my own flesh and blood, and wonder where she’s taking me . . .

  I knew I shouldn’t have binge watched Broadchurch – talk about making me paranoid.

  I look out the window, desperately trying to take in the rise and fall of the landscape. I memorise the dry-stone walls and oak trees dotted over the rolling hills, the humpback bridges that the Land Rover bumps over, and the bends in the road. All in case I need to escape back to the main road. Back to
civilisation.

  We turn a bend and all of a sudden we’re driving through a small village with the road sign declaring it to be Lullamby. The dark-bricked houses line the route as the road creeps round. A pub stands in the centre, its sign blowing in the wind, and a village-shop-cum-post-office is opposite. There’s a small church on the outskirts and then we’re back out into the countryside again. But at least there’s hope, that’s the first sign of people I’ve seen for ages. Maybe the pub even has WiFi.

  We only drive a mile or two outside the village when Rosie turns sharply up a dirt track.

  ‘Here we go, hold on to your handle,’ she says, grinning manically with excitement.

  I see that damn twinkle in her eyes and I wonder what I’ve let myself in for.

  ‘Look out!’ I shout as a dog runs out into our path.

  She slams her brakes on and we go flying forward.

  The springer spaniel bounds back to his owner, who doesn’t look pleased to see us. Despite the blue skies and the fact that it’s May, he’s dressed like a yeti. Tatty old fleece over the top of another fleece, big boots, and a hat with flaps over his ears. Even his big beard’s keeping him warm. I’m surprised, when he turns to give us a scowl, that he looks relatively young; I expect him to be older by the way he is dressed.

  ‘Is this the welcoming committee?’ I say laughing nervously.

  Rosie gives him a cheery wave, which he ignores, as he walks after his dog up another track by a crumbling old building.

  ‘No, no. He must be a neighbour,’ she says putting the car into gear and carrying on up to the track.

  I turn my nose up hoping that the neighbours aren’t indicative of where we’re going.

  I hold on to the handle above the window as the Land Rover tilts from side to side up the drive. I’m glad that we’re in this and not the nippy Audi she used to zip around in. I don’t think much else would have made the journey, and I wouldn’t have fancied walking up here with my suitcase.

  ‘What is this place? And why haven’t they got a proper road?’ I say, thinking that it’s hardly good for business.

  We reach the top of a hill, and there, nestled in a dip just below, is what looks like an old farm.