How Hard Can It Be?. Allison Pearson

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, hunched 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.