Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(33)

“I’ve been working. I went for a swim this morning as usual . . . The sea was really rough.”

“Did you see any weird jellyfish?”

“Not this time.”

“If you see any weird jellyfish washed up, will you send me a picture?”

“Of course.”

Jake looked down and picked at the white M of his Manchester United shirt. It was coming away from the fabric. “Cool. Have you heard of geocaching?”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s really cool; people bury stuff, like a coin or a badge or some object, and it’s buried with a logbook and a GPS tracker, and you get an app for your phone, and you join up, and then you can go around and find these things and dig them up. And you, like, log it on your profile online. I’ve got the app on my phone, and there are loads around Ashdean and the coast. Can we go geocaching when I come for half term?”

“Of course!” Kate’s heart swelled at the thought that Jake was excited to come and stay in October.

“And it’s free, which is really cool.”

“How do you spell it?” asked Kate. Jake spelled it out for her, and she wrote it down. “Have you done any in Whitstable?”

“Yeah, my friend Mike is into it. His mum likes hiking, unlike Grandma, who won’t stray far from a tarmac surface cos of mud on her shoes.”

Kate wanted to smile, but she kept her face neutral and changed the subject, asking him what he’d been doing.

“I’ve been to school, been to football.” He shrugged and blew out his cheeks. “Boring stuff really . . . even more so because someone won’t let me join Facebook.”

Glenda was listening in the background, because she slammed down a spoon and turned to the camera, pointing her finger at Jake. “I’ve told you what I think about Facebook, and I don’t appreciate you trying to go behind my back!”

“Calm down, Glenda . . . I’m just talking to Mum.”

“And don’t you start that; I am your grandmother, not some friend down at the skate park.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “I don’t have any friends called Glenda, especially ones who’d be seen dead with a name like that at the skate park.”

Kate could see her mother go bright red; she looked ready to burst.

“Jake, don’t talk to Grandma like that,” said Kate. “And don’t roll your eyes at me.”

“I’m going to be fifteen next year, and she’s ruining my life. Everyone is on Facebook, all my friends! There’s a guy in the year above who found a job working at a festival through a post on Facebook, so you could be damaging my future career!” he shouted. He got up and stormed off. They waited a moment, and Kate heard a door slam.

“His future career,” said Kate. “He knows exactly what buttons to push.”

Glenda pulled out the chair and sat down at the table. “He’s turning into an argumentative teenager.”

“When did he start calling you Glenda?”

“Last week, when we disagreed what time he had to come home. Calm down, Glenda is his new favorite phrase.”

“Does he call Dad Michael?”

“No, your father still gets to be Grandad. I’m always the bad cop.”

“Where is Dad?”

“He’s playing snooker with Clive Beresford. He sends his love.”

“Clive Beresford sends his love?” said Kate, unable to resist teasing.

“Catherine, don’t you start.”

“Shouldn’t we be happy Jake is becoming a normal moody teenager?”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

Kate raised her eyebrows but let it slide. “Mum, we should let him join Facebook.”

“But!”

“Hear me out. If we don’t, then he might set up some anonymous profile that we don’t know about. Tell him he can join, but we have to know his password. We also have to be friends with him.”

“I have to join too?” said Glenda.

“Yes. And I’ll join. Then we can monitor things, and we can also hoick him off it if there is anything we don’t like.”

Glenda thought about it. “What if you-know-who or his bloody mother gets in contact with Jake?”

“Peter and Enid are banned from all communication with him, Mum, including social media and email.”

“What if he finds something?”

“We can’t ban him from looking at the internet for the rest of his life,” said Kate. Glenda took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “This scares the shit out of me too, Mum.”

“Language, Catherine . . .”

“We have to be smart. Banning things never works. It often makes things worse. We have to practice our surveillance techniques. We monitor him online.”

Glenda smiled. “You’re probably better at that than me.”

“I don’t know. You did break the lock on my diary when I was twelve. Not that I was writing anything salacious.”

Glenda shook her head, conceding defeat. “Okay, fine . . . But I need your full support on this. I’m not being the bad guy and the one who takes him away from Facebook.”

“If we want him to come off, I’ll be the one who tells him,” said Kate.