Daphne
Daphne
Daphne positioned her new whiteboard a few meters in front of her bed. That way it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning, which would keep her focused. She pulled the cap off the fat black marker she’d bought and lifted the nib to her nose, inhaling the smell of purpose, of potential, of the future.
Make some friends , she wrote, the squeak of the pen on the board giving her a little frisson of anticipation. She’d missed having a challenge, and was under no illusion about what a challenge this was, as her little interaction with that irritating, interfering, and patronizing old man on King Street had reminded her. She’d spent most of her life distrusting people, assuming that everyone must have some kind of ulterior motive for every decision they made. After all, she usually did. However, she imagined that in order to make friends, you probably had to show them some level of trust. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and not threaten to have them arrested.
Be more trusting , she wrote in blue. Then, remembering how she’d yelled at her recent Good Samaritan, she added no shouting or glaring in parentheses. She surveyed her words, head cocked to one side, before uncapping a green pen, adding an asterisk after the word glaring , then writing *unless severely provoked at the bottom of the board.
Now, where was she going to find these strangers who she had to trust and not shout or glare at?
Volunteering? she wrote in red pen. But surely the whole point was to meet people with whom she had at least a little in common? She was far too selfish to spend her time helping the needy, and disliked, in principle, anyone who did. She picked up her whiteboard eraser and scrubbed the word out.
Take up a hobby? she wrote in its place. But what? The only hobbies she’d had in the past were not the type that made you friends. Quite the reverse, in fact.
Join a club? she added to the list, then snorted, remembering the Groucho Marx quote, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Wasn’t that the truth?
Use the internet? she wrote with a flourish, before putting the caps back on her new pens and lining them up at the base of her board. She took a few paces back and stared at her beautifully color-coded work.
“Use the internet,” she read out loud. That was something she could start on right now, wasn’t it?
Daphne was a huge fan of the internet. Young people today had no idea how lucky they were, having all that information at their fingertips. In the early days of Daphne’s career, her job had been gathering information. She’d spent days searching through microfiches in the local library, tailing possible leads, grilling informants, and flirting with policemen. Now, much of the information she’d required would have been right there, on the internet. You just needed to know where to look. And she always knew where to look. Surely, the World Wide Web could snare her a friend or two?
She walked over to her huge, square, leather-topped partners’ desk. Ironic, since she didn’t have a partner to sit on the other side. She flipped up the lid of her laptop, which revealed the last website she’d been on: OurNeighbours.com. She moved the cursor up to the search bar and typed two words: make friends .
Almost immediately, a slew of posts containing the words “make” and “friends” highlighted in bold appeared on her screen. She scrolled down the page until her gaze snagged on the words ARE YOU OVER SEVENTY? As a matter of fact, despite her feeling nothing of the sort, she now was. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE SOME NEW FRIENDS? Seeing the question posed so baldly, Daphne still wasn’t entirely sure that she did, but she had resolved at least to give it a go, so she read on.
WHY NOT JOIN THE SENIOR CITIZENS SOCIAL CLUB AT THE MANDEL COMMUNITY CENTER? CALL OR TEXT LYDIA ON 07980 344562 , she read. She looked back at her whiteboard, and the words Join a club? She stared at the post for several minutes, drumming her fingers on her desk. Perhaps she should try this social club. Mandel Community Center was just around the corner: a squat, dilapidated-looking carbuncle of a building, nestled among the prettier Victorian houses between King Street and the A4. She could go just the once, and if it was terrible, as she suspected it would be, she need never go again.
Daphne looked over at her phone, which was sitting on an art deco console table near her front door, tethered to the wall. She hadn’t called anyone apart from tradespeople for well over a decade, and just the thought of phoning a complete stranger and trying to sound like the kind of social, outgoing person she’d want in her club made Daphne feel queasy. It would be humiliating.
No, a more detached communication would be preferable. Then she could keep it simple and to the point. But her phone didn’t have the capability of texting anyone. She didn’t want to fall at the first hurdle. Not at her age—she could break a hip.
Daphne had owned a mobile, of course, back in the day. A state-of-the-art BlackBerry, which had allowed her not only to text, but to send emails! But she’d had to dispose of it when she’d moved here, on April 26, 2008. She’d stopped the van containing the salvaged remnants of her previous life, and had tossed her beloved BlackBerry into the dark, cold depths of the River Thames.
She hadn’t replaced it. After all, the clue was in the name: mobile . If you never went anywhere, or talked to anyone, what was the point?
Still, it was her birthday. And not just any old birthday—a BIG one. So tomorrow she would buy herself a belated present: a brand-new mobile phone. And then she would join a social club.
···
The man in the mobile-phone shop wasn’t a man at all. He was very much a boy. He even had acne, including one spot with a generous head of yellow pus that was just begging to be squeezed. Daphne considered offering to help, but thought that might be overstepping the boundaries. It would be reckless to go from little social contact at all to manhandling other people’s unsightly dermatological features in one fell swoop. Baby steps, Daphne.
The man-child looked up at her as she stood at his desk. Was he smirking ? She suspected he was.
“I’d like to buy a mobile phone,” said Daphne. “And I believe I am in the correct establishment.”
“Totally,” said the boy. Definitely smirking. “What sort of phone would you like?”
This question stumped Daphne somewhat, and she refused to display total ignorance in front of this child, so she quickly scanned the display of phones around her. She couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled her old BlackBerry. Everything seemed to be Apple these days. Why was all technology named after crumble ingredients?
“I’d like the red one,” she said, pointing at a slim, modern-looking phone on a display stand. She’d always liked red. It was very her .
“That’s an iPhone Fourteen Plus, with a dual-camera system, face ID, and five hundred and twelve gigabytes of storage,” he said. “I’m not sure you need that much capacity. What do you want to use it for?”
This was an extremely impertinent question. It was entirely Daphne’s business how she used her new phone. Fortunately, she remembered the words she’d written on her whiteboard the day before— no glaring —and rearranged her face into a benign smile, of sorts. Given the slightly alarmed look on the salesboy’s face, she hadn’t entirely succeeded.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Box it up, and I’ll pay cash.”
“Whoa! Slow down,” he said, holding his palms out toward her, as if she were a skittery horse which might bite. She had a strong urge to do exactly that. But she needed the phone.
“You’ll have to have a contract,” continued the boy, pulling up a screen on his laptop, and swiveling it around so she could see it. “I’ll need name, address, bank details, date of birth, credit check, etcetera, etcetera.”
“I’m sorry, extremely young man, but we’ve only just met, and there’s no way I’m giving you all that intrusive and sensitive information. This is a standard commercial transaction. You tell me how much that phone costs, I give you the cash, you put it in a bag, and I go home. Capisce?” she said, adding a little touch from The Sopranos as a flourish.
The boy sighed. “OK, we’ll do a pay-as-you-go. That’ll be nine hundred and forty-nine pounds, plus the cost of a SIM card.”
Daphne tried very hard not to look shocked as she mentally calculated how much cash she’d shoved from the safe into her handbag that morning.
“Do you know how to use it?” said the boy.
“Look, why is it that whenever people see someone my age, they assume that they’re totally useless with technology?” she said. “It’s terrible stereotyping, not to mention rude and patronizing.”
“So, you know how it works?” said the boy.
“No,” said Daphne.
···
Two hours later, the mobile-phone salesboy had a migraine and had to take the rest of the day off work.
Daphne, meanwhile, was the proud owner of a smartphone that she knew how to operate, had sent her first text message since 2008—to someone called Lydia—and was on her way to creating a social life.