you? Where are your family?’
‘My mum and dad live in Scotland. Moved up there a few years ago. They weren’t . . . running away from anything. They’ve just always loved the place and wanted to go there in their retirement. Can’t blame them really. The pace of life up there is much more laid-back.’
‘Do you see them much?’ she asks.
‘Probably not as much as I should,’ I answer honestly. ‘Scotland’s a ball-ache to get to at the best of times.’ I scratch my cheek. ‘Actually, I think I speak to them more on FaceTime than I do in real life, as well.’
I wince a little internally as I say this. I really should get in touch with Mum and Dad more. Grace’s sad story proves that your parents won’t be around for your whole life, and I have been quite neglectful of them recently.
Oh, great.
Now I get a little more guilt to add to the pile, alongside what happened at Heirloom Coffee with Henrietta.
‘So, do you think you still want to try the detox?’ I ask Grace, once more neatly diverting the subject of conversation. Sadly, I’ve managed to divert it back to the thing I was previously trying to divert it away from, proving that I probably need some kind of satellite navigation system for my brain as much as I do for my car.
Grace seems to think about it for a second, before nodding her head once. ‘Yes. I do want to try it. I need to get back out into the world. I need to stop hiding away. And I’m not going to do that if I’m glued to my bloody laptop.’ She reaches into her jeans pocket and pulls out her phone. ‘Or this thing.’ Grace thumbs the screen and turns the phone around to show me. It is covered in apps. Far more even than were on mine. The ones that take the most prominence at the top of the screen are Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Behind all of them is a picture of her and Megan. You couldn’t sum up Grace’s predicament better than with this single image if you tried. ‘Just look at the state of that screen, would you? All those apps!’ she says with disgust.
‘Yeah. Mine was a lot like that too.’
Grace turns the phone back to her own face and looks at it angrily. ‘No more,’ she says in a determined voice. ‘No more of you.’
And with that, she quickly gets up from the breakfast bar, walks over to the sink and drops the phone into the dirty water, where it sinks underneath the saucepan still half covered in the remnants of last night’s bolognaise sauce.
‘Er, why did you do that?’ I ask her as she turns and looks at me triumphantly.
‘Didn’t you get rid of all of your tech?’
‘Yes. I put it in a box.’
Grace stares at me for a moment with a blank expression on her face, before looking down at the sink. ‘Bugger,’ she says. ‘And I’ve got four months left on my contract.’
It’s nearly midday before Grace leaves my flat, carrying her phone in a sandwich bag full of rice.
I agree to pop round to the coffee shop in a couple of days, to see how she’s getting on. I figure by that time she’ll be seriously contemplating giving up on the detox, having been bereft of tech for forty-eight hours. She’ll probably need some encouragement to stick with it at that point.
I have to marvel at my change of heart over the whole thing.
I was fully prepared to give up my own detox right before Grace called at my door, but now I know somebody is attempting to do it alongside me, it has given me a renewed resolve.
Is it just because misery loves company?
Or is it because, deep down, I know the idea of cutting my time spent on the Internet is a good thing, regardless of the problems it also causes?
Or is it just because Grace is a pretty girl? One I’d probably like to spend more time with?
I just don’t know.
But when you get right down to it, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I am going to continue with the detox, and that makes me feel good about myself.
I don’t actually like to quit. I don’t like to let people down. And I sure as hell don’t like to think that my life is controlled by anyone – or anything – other than me.
I’m sure there’s a