It takes Beth a few days before she manages to separate Elliot from his phone. Putting a ban on it at the dinner table, she takes it from him and stows it in his coat pocket.
‘I’ve turned mine off,’ she tells him, ‘and I want no work talk tonight. I just want “us” time. Open that bottle of wine for me, will you? I’ll hang your coat up in the hall.’
Beth takes the coat out of the kitchen and then quickly removes the phone from Elliot’s pocket. She activates the hacking device and gives permission from Elliot’s phone to connect via Bluetooth, which allows her to copy the sim card and everything that’s on it. Then she puts the phone back in the coat pocket and returns to Elliot in the kitchen. The wine is open and he’s pouring it into their glasses.
Beth takes a casserole out of the oven and puts it on a heat-proof plate on the table.
‘It’s hot. Be careful,’ she says.
The device takes half an hour and Beth makes every effort not to appear jittery as it does its work. Serving up warm baguettes with the casserole and some lavish salty butter, Beth continues to top up Elliot’s glass until he’s so relaxed, she’s sure he isn’t thinking about his phone.
When the first bottle is downed, Beth gets up.
‘Let’s live a little,’ she says. ‘There’s another bottle in the wine rack, if you’ll take care of it. I just need the loo.’
Beth hurries out to the hallway again and takes Elliot’s phone from his pocket. The device shows green, which indicates that the copy is complete. She puts his phone back in the pocket and goes in the bathroom. She hides the hacking device in a bottle of aspirin. After flushing and washing her hands she comes into the hallway to find Elliot looking at his phone.
‘Hey you! I said no phones tonight!’
‘I’m just turning it off,’ he says. Then he grabs her to him. ‘How about we leave that wine to breathe for a while?’
She lets him take her upstairs.
They make love and afterwards, because of the wine and the food, not to mention a very intense orgasm, Elliot nods off.
Beth listens to his breathing level out before getting up. She pulls on her dressing gown and goes back downstairs. She takes the device from its hiding place and retrieves the other iPhone from her handbag. She activates the transfer into the new phone, it starts to overlay Elliot’s details onto the new sim card.
She places the phone and stick in her robe pocket, then starts tidying up the kitchen, putting a lid on the remains of the casserole and the cork back into the second bottle of wine. After she’s done this, she checks the phone. It’s not quite done and she doesn’t want to risk it being interrupted.
She pours herself another glass of wine while she waits.
The device takes longer to clone than it did to copy but when it’s finally done, Beth looks at Elliot’s apps. All of which are normal for any smart phone. She opens his text messages and sees a lot from his mother. She skips in and out of a few and there’s nothing abnormal about any of the communications. The only thing that’s odd is, Elliot has rarely mentioned her. It was weird considering how much Beth talked about her own mother to him, that he had never come back with any reference to his own. No, that wasn’t strictly true. He’d talked about her once, not long after they first met. It was a casual comment, about having to do something for her.
Satisfied for now. She turns the phone off, swigs down the last of the wine in her glass and goes back upstairs.
In the room she removes the robe, taking the phone with her as she approaches the bed.
Elliot is snoring loudly. Beth opens the drawer at the side of the bed and places the clone phone inside it. She gets in beside him. Then she lies back and stares up at the ceiling. It is peculiar that he doesn’t talk about his mum, but then Beth had never asked him about her or his father. From the texts she’s read, his mother is rather needy. But all of this isn’t a sign of any wrongdoing and so Beth closes her eyes.
I’ve overreacted, she tells herself. And then she feels guilty for her deceitful and untrusting behaviour. Elliot has been a sweetheart from the day they met. She has no right to question him: omission is not a lie.
Despite feeling anxious about her own actions, Beth drifts off to sleep feeling more confident that she’s made the right decision in getting involved with Elliot. Perhaps it is time for him to meet the boys, after all.