“The banality is stretching the limits of my credulity”

IT IS midnight and my husband and I are sitting at the kitchen table.

I’m trawling through the message inbox on my phone in a mild fit of pique; I need to find a number that my husband sent me weeks ago, which I should have saved to my contact list but haven’t. I rarely delete, so I know the number is there somewhere. I suggest he checks his sent items.

“No point,” he says, buttering toast. “I deleted everything the day before yesterday.”

I continue scrolling down through my inbox. Most of the 226 messages are from my daughters and take the form of urgent demands plus smiley emoticons:

can u get credit 4 me PLEASE:):) ILY xx dad says get milk.

I ignore them and open my husband’s, which operate on exactly the same principle, minus smiley emoticons:

Bicycle pump from Murph’s, tea-bags, dog food from vet not Dunnes k? Ta.

No number, I think, scrolling down. I open them one by one. Most are variations on the following theme:

Stop at garage girls say desperate for choc. Snickers 4 me pls. Teabags. Ta.

I begin to ponder the use to which we, as a family, put our phones, when I scroll down and open:

Get loo paper, onions and chimney cowl from co-op. Ta.

At this point, I think, “what a waste of technological sophistication and mind-bogglingly complex electronics.” I scroll down through many, many requests for many, many goods and services. The banality is stretching the limits of my credulity. I stop scrolling. “Romance is dead,” I say. My husband is spreading Marmite on his toast. “What?” he says. “Romance is dead,” I repeat. I read him one of the least whimsical texts I can find:

Slow puncture in back tyre, can you pick up spare at Maxol. And bleach cos fecking cat shat in porch. Ta.

“You should read your texts,” he says. “They’re savage.” It’s clear that he’s not using the word ‘savage’ in the same way in which my children use it — to mean indescribably fantastic. “At least I put ‘ta’ at the end,” he says. “Look,” he says, taking his phone from his pocket. After some mad thumb action, he says: “Read that!” He hands me his phone with a dramatic flourish. In his inbox, I read an old message that I have sent him:

I’ve cleaned the house for four hours today.

Next time someone asks me what I do for a living I will say I am a DRUDGE.

Marriage is a con.

He’s right; there is no ‘ta’. “But look! Look at that one!” I point to:

sorry I was grumpy, think I’m low on carbs. X

“There’s an ‘X’ on that one,” I say.

“Rare,” he says. “Your texts are savage.” “Business-like,” I suggest. He says, “sorry, but if it’s romance you’re talking about, your texts are worse than mine.” I have to agree with him. He passes me some toast. “If I lost my phone, the person who found it would guess my relationship status straight away,” I say. “It shouts married.”

“I think they’d just think we forget to get teabags a lot,” he says.

“Not just tea bags,” I say. We both yawn; neither of us is in the mood to revise household-management strategies. “I’m off to bed,” he says, heading upstairs, “coming?” “In a sec,” I say. I like the kitchen at the end of the day when no one is in it and besides, I need to find that number.

I scroll idly for a while but I can hear my husband banging his pillows into a cosy shape for sleep upstairs. Bed beckons.

I wrestle the dogs into the porch and switch off the kitchen lights. While I fumble around in the dark for the sitting room door, my phone beeps. Its screen glows blue and square on the kitchen table. I pick it up, perhaps it’s one of my sons, I think, texting me at ungodly hours from abroad. Bizarrely, my husband’s name and number fills the screen.

I open and read:

Hey there sugartits, make a cup of tea and bring it up. I’ll make it worth your while. Who says romance is dead?