‘Preach it, Granny.’
I shoot them both a quick glare and then turn back to my mum.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ I tell her, soothingly. ‘It’s just that all this silly talk about stalking makes it sound more devious than it really is and I don’t want Scarlet getting the wrong idea.’
I don’t want Scarlet getting any idea about it at all, full stop. So thank you very much, Mother. You’ve just completely destroyed my cover.
‘Have you been tracking me?’ asks Scarlet and my goose bumps disappear under the heat of her fierce gaze. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘It’s called maternal protection,’ I snap back. ‘And you should be thanking me for keeping you safe.’
‘It’s called stalking!’ howls my daughter. ‘And it’s a complete invasion of my privacy! I can’t believe you sometimes, Mum.’
‘I told you it’d end in tears, Hannah,’ my mother helpfully adds. ‘No good can ever come from meddling in your child’s business.’
The irony of this sentence is clearly completely lost on her.
‘For the record, I’ve known about this for ages,’ says Dylan, smirking smugly at his sister. ‘It’s not really a problem unless you’re going somewhere that you shouldn’t be.’
‘Don’t lie,’ snaps Scarlet. ‘You’ve just disabled the app on your phone.’
‘Is that what you’ve—’ I start, turning to Dylan but Scarlet interrupts me.
‘Well, you don’t need me to give you my friend’s name then, do you?’ she says, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘Not when you can follow my every move from the comfort of the sofa. God. It’s so pathetic.’
‘I don’t track you from the comfort of the sofa,’ I hiss. ‘I’d be so lucky. No – I’m too busy running around picking up all the half-empty cups of tea that you leave strewn around the place as if it’s a hotel.’
‘What are you on about?’ Scarlet’s face is screwed up in fury. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
My weak attempt at regaining the moral high ground is obviously failing.
Nick finally stops his fascinating monologue about Betty the Land Rover’s rust problem and looks across at us. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Our daughter wants to hang out with a friend,’ I inform him, retreating to a safer foothold. ‘A friend who has no name.’
‘That’s sad,’ says Benji, through a mouthful of pasta. ‘Imagine having no name.’
Scarlet groans under her breath.
‘Why are you so stupid?’ she asks him. ‘Like, actually? It’s a genuine question. How have you even survived this long with so few brain cells?’
Benji wrinkles up his face, the way he always does when he gets upset and I leap in before Scarlet’s attempt to distract us from the real conversation is a success.
‘I’m assuming that your reluctance to share information means that it’s a boy?’ I enquire. ‘Does he go to school with you? Have I taught him?’
My daughter shakes her head. ‘I didn’t say that it was a boy, did I?’
‘Yeah, Mum,’ adds Dylan. ‘Did you just assume her sexuality?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ Scarlet retorts. ‘She makes out like she knows everything but she doesn’t actually have a clue about what it’s like to be Gen Z.’
‘Who are we talking about?’ asks Nick, looking confused. ‘And why?’
‘I just want to hang out with some friends, Dad,’ Scarlet tells him, throwing him a huge smile. ‘Tomorrow evening. I was just checking that you guys didn’t have any plans.’
Nick smiles back at her. ‘It’s fine with me,’ he says. ‘I’m intending on spending most of the weekend underneath Betty, sorting out her under-carriage.’
For fuck’s sake. It’s like I am the only adult in the room with a pair of functioning ears.
‘Can we just back this conversation up a bit?’ I sit up straight and stare at Scarlet. ‘Number one, is it “friends” plural or “friend” singular that we’re talking about here?’
‘Friends plural,’ she mutters.
‘Good. And where exactly are you meeting them?’
Scarlet pauses but my mother leans forwards and gives her a smile.
‘You may as well tell her, darling,’ she advises. ‘She can locate your exact whereabouts on her phone in five seconds flat if she wants to. I’ve seen her do it. It’s very impressive – I think she might have had a good career in the Secret Service in another life.’
Yes, another life where I’m not constantly needed to solve my family’s problems and keep them out of trouble. Another life where I roam the streets of Paris wearing nothing but high heels and a trench coat instead of roaming the supermarket aisles wearing an old waterproof jacket and scuffed-up shoes.
‘We’re getting together at Petra’s house,’ she says, the words pushing themselves reluctantly out of her mouth. ‘A couple of us from school and some of her new friends from college.’
I sit back in my chair. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ I tell her. ‘And if you’d only said that in the first place, then we could have avoided this whole conversation. Of course you can go to Petra’s house – I’m sure you’ve got lots to catch up on.’
‘And are you going to keep on stalking me?’ she asks. ‘Even though you know that it’s an invasion of my human rights? You really do need to get a life, you know, Mum.’
‘Have you been tracking her phone again?’ asks Nick, frowning. ‘I thought we agreed that we’d only use that function if there was an emergency.’
Sometime it feels like the entire universe is out to get me, it really does.
I sigh. ‘If you feel that strongly about it, then no – I won’t track your location. But don’t come crying to me if you get kidnapped and nobody notices.’
‘Hannah!’ exclaims my mother. ‘What a thing to say! Nobody is going to kidnap Scarlet!’
‘Nobody in their right mind, anyway,’ huffs Benji, finally getting his own back. ‘And even if they did, they’d soon give her back when they realised how annoying she is.’
In the ensuing carnage all attention is diverted from me and the fingers that I am frantically crossing under the kitchen table, which is good, because I have absolutely no intention of stopping utilising new technological advances to keep a maternal and watchful eye on my children. It’s the only reason I pay for their bloody phone contracts in the first place.
The meal finally ends and the kids do some token cleaning up before disappearing to their rooms. Nick mutters something about fixing a Land Rover part and heads out of the back door in the direction of the shed and I know that I won’t see him again for hours.
My mother looks at the clock.
‘I’d better be off,’ she says. ‘I’m meeting an old friend for drinks tonight and I can’t be late for Barbara. I think she’s heard about my new calling in life and is hoping for a bit of free advice.’