‘I don’t think they help,’ he replied. ‘We’re on them all the time, aren’t we? And not just us, Nelson and Elizabeth too. And we gave Achilles one for his birthday. It’s possible that he’s met some … undesirables … through the various …’ He waved a hand in the air, uncertain of the correct terminology. ‘Applications.’

Beverley shook her head. ‘Phones have existed since the dawn of time.’

‘Well, they haven’t, actually.’

‘For a century anyway.’

‘Landlines. But no one ever came in and stood in their hallway and stared at their landline, did they?’

‘When they became push button, that was quite exciting.’

‘I wonder if …’

‘If what?’

‘If we should take them off the children. Until they’re eighteen. Or twenty-one.’

Beverley laughed. ‘Good luck with that,’ she said.

‘I mean it. What I worry about is that we all get so addicted to them that—’

Before he could say anything more, the door to the kitchen opened and a scrawny little boy in a pair of bright pink underpants stood before them, looking deeply sorry for himself. Beverley placed her phone on the island and turned to him.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘You look awful!’

Achilles opened his mouth to answer but, before he could say a word, he lurched forward and a stream of vomit poured from his mouth, covering his mother’s brand-new iPhone.

And at that precise moment, in Beijing, a man named Zhang Yiming turned to his high-school girlfriend and said, ‘I think I’ll call it TikTok.’

Friday

HE/HIM

George was sitting in the kitchen, drinking his morning cup of coffee, staring at the sealed box containing the dead body of Ustym Karmaliuk. For some inexplicable reason, Beverley had elevated it to the top of a pile of six thick hardback books, the uppermost one being the eight-hundred-page biography that George had bought on Monday and still hadn’t opened. It gave the sarcophagus a faintly deified air.

‘He’s still here, then,’ he muttered, looking across at Elizabeth, who glanced up from her phone for a moment. She didn’t like being distracted from her Twitter arguments.

‘I’m sure Mum has a plan,’ she replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere near him.’

‘He was definitely male, then?’

Elizabeth shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t turn him over to look, but the real-life Ustym Karmaliuk was a man, so I would assume so.’

‘Actually, the way to tell the gender of a tortoise is not how you might expect. The females have shorter tails than the males, and they also have a U-shape notch on their underside, unlike the males, who have a V.’

‘How do you know that?’