It Started With A Tweet(21)

‘I didn’t even think to bring a watch, I always use my phone to tell the time,’ I say, pointing at my sister’s wrist. I don’t want to be asking her what the time is every seven minutes.

‘We’ll pop it on the list, I’m going to have to go shopping tomorrow anyway.’

My heart starts to race a little. Shopping. The outside world. I know that I’ve been at this old farm for less than an hour, but already I feel desperate to get back to civilisation.

Rosie goes back to her cooking and I look around the kitchen trying to keep my mind occupied. I try and work out how many blocks of seven minutes there are in a day and, without a calculator – as we all know where mine is – I’ve concluded that it’s a bloody long time.

I hear something and I immediately reach for my phone before I realise what I’m doing.

‘What? Did you see something?’ asks Rosie, who’s still a little jumpy, presumably after the pigeon incident earlier.

‘No, I just thought I heard my phone buzz,’ I say straining my ears to hear.

I’m usually so switched on to the nuanced beeping of my phone that I keep expecting a ping to break out through the silence. I hear a creak from what sounds like up above and I look hesitantly up at the ceiling.

‘It’s probably the wind rattling the windows upstairs,’ says Rosie, as she takes a seat at the table.

A shiver runs over my spine and I try to make my ears tune out from hearing noises, as my imagination runs wild at what each squeak and creak could be.

‘So, what’s next on the detox plan, then?’

Rosie glances at one of the pieces of paper she pulled out of her bag earlier and studies it.

‘OK, so tonight, we’ve got, um, an evening of talking ahead of us. You know, just relaxing into the whole thing. Then, tomorrow morning, I thought I’d stock up on supplies and then perhaps we could go for a walk or something.’

‘That sounds a bit vague,’ I say. ‘On the train to Manchester yesterday I googled digital detoxes and the ones I saw had every last minute timetabled, and there were reasons for everything.’

‘Well, I’m going shopping so we can eat something, and the walk is so that you can reconnect with sodding nature without looking at it through a phone lens,’ she says a little stroppily.

‘Sorry,’ I say in a mocking voice, like I would have done as a teenager. ‘It’s just this whole thing was your idea.’

‘I know,’ she says, exhaling loudly. ‘Look, I thought you wouldn’t be into the whole mumbo jumbo stuff, but if you are, here.’

She digs around in her bag and throws me out a floral-print notebook that looks like something straight out of a National Trust gift shop.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ I say, flicking through the empty pages.

‘Start a journal. Get in touch with your feelings,’ she says in an earthy tone as if she’s taking the piss.

She’s right, that isn’t very me.

‘Joking aside, I did bring that for you. I figured you’d miss writing things on social media and I thought this would be a good outlet. You always did write an interesting diary.’

I give her a scolding look as she knows as well as I do that I stopped writing one the minute I found out she’d been reading it.

It’s funny how I got so mad that someone had read my personal thoughts, and yet now I broadcast them on a daily basis for the whole world to see.

I stare at the diary and pick up the pen.

My sister has kidnapped me and is holding me against my will in a crumbling old farmhouse.

Now, if I wrote that on Twitter, I’m pretty sure that it would go viral quicker than my #priceless tweet and I’d have the police helicopter hovering overhead before we knew it. But writing it in a journal when I’m the only person that’s going to read it holds little appeal. Not even the little thumbs-up sign and shocked face that I draw next to it make me feel better.

‘I’m starving, when do you think the food is going to be ready?’ I ask, putting the notebook to one side.

Rosie jumps up, goes over to a box of food that she’d brought in from the car, and whips out a packet of Pasta ’n’ Sauce, the type of thing we used to have when we camped as kids.

‘You’re not even going to cook proper food?’ I say, my stomach growling, not from hunger, but from frustration.

‘I will do, but not today as I only brought the basics up. I’ll get better supplies tomorrow.’

‘We could always go to the pub for dinner,’ I say wistfully, imagining the cosy-looking pub with its hanging baskets and thatched roof that totally looked like the type of place that would serve big chunky chips and puff-pastry pies. I’m almost dribbling over the table as I daydream.

‘We’ll go there another night. I don’t think it would be good for you so early on in your transition. I mean, how would you feel, seeing all those other people on their phones? I think it’s best to keep you away.’

She’s treating me like an alcoholic who can’t set foot in a pub for fear of a relapse. ‘I could totally handle seeing other people on their phones,’ I say, imagining them swiping their fingers over those glossy screens and computing that rush of information .?.?. she’s right, I couldn’t cope. ‘Pasta ’n’ Sauce it is, then,’ I say, sighing. ‘So, did Rupert mind you coming away?’