How to be the World's Worse Mum. Step 6: The Telephone.

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The phone is ringing. I’m counting.

Three rings.

I’ve prised myself away from the computer: bones are creaking.

Six rings.

I’ve got part way across the kitchen: heart racing.

Seven rings.

I’ve opened the living room door: muscles twanging.

The noise is louder now and insistent.
A friend is calling, and I want to get to the phone before the sound dies away. I rush across the room to reach it: tendons snapping.

Nine rings.

The teenager is sitting on the settee seemingly oblivious to the phone that’s ringing within easy reach of his arm. I could ask him to pick it up, but I lost that battle long ago. I say nothing and dive for it: instant hernia.

The teenager watches me with lazy interest as my hand touches the handset.

Ten rings. Then it stops.

I wanted to rail at him. ‘Why didn’t you pick it up?’ There was a time when he loved picking up the phone and chatting.

An old friend happily recounts the time once when he rang her up in the middle of the night and invited her around for a chat.

‘Where’s your mum?’ my friend had asked.

‘Oh, she’s asleep. She’s exhausted, so you can come around now if you like,’ he’d offered with seductive charm.

She’d resisted, but he’d chatted to my friend on the phone for ages before he’d finally decided to go back to bed himself.

He was about three years old at the time.

Nowadays, I’m the one who always has to pick up the phone. Usually when it rings I’m in one of the distant corners of the house.
I sigh, and glance at the teenager who is grinning at me.
He’s holding up his mobile phone. My phone suddenly rings again and then stops abruptly.
‘It was you!’ I say, aghast.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Let’s go. I’ve been waiting for ages.’
‘You rang my phone with that!’
‘Yup. Let’s go. It was the quickest way to get your attention. Worked didn’t it. Come on let’s go.’

Sighing, and cursing telephones, I followed the teenager out of the house ...trailing guts!