Daniel had only just unlocked the screen to his phone when his mother’s face flashed up, alerting him to the fact that she was ringing. It was the photo he’d taken of her at her sixtieth birthday that he’d set as her avatar in his phone, a gin in one hand and a half-smoked Marlboro Light in the other. Daniel had never known his mother had smoked until that night. She had told him sixty was the year she ‘stopped giving so many shits, like Helen Mirren said’, and that included hiding her four-a-day habit from her grown son. ‘Life’s too short!’ she’d hooted, before they both knew just how short. Daniel had thought it was hilarious. ‘All power to you, Mum!’ he’d said, laughing, his dad simply shrugging as if to say, ‘What can you do?’
Daniel stared. He wouldn’t normally cancel her call but this was about to be the first moment of the rest of his life. He couldn’t talk to her now. He didn’t want to be on the phone as his future began. He deliberated for half a second before hitting the red cross, watching her face disappear. He waited for his drinks and, staring anxiously at the open door, waited for his date too. She’d be here any minute now. Any minute.