She was waiting for him to text her.
The night before, they’d had a terrible row, and it was made worse by the fact that it had all been about nothing. It was probably all her fault, when she came to think about it. From the moment she got up the next morning she was listening out for the message tone she had on her phone. It was a single high pitched bell. It was amazing how many things sounded just like it. In her kitchen that morning, as she was preparing her cereal, she kept hearing sounds that could be it, and had kept checking to see whether anything had been sent. Her anxiety was growing. On the bus, going in to work she was surrounded by other people’s phones making sounds that had her frantically checking for a message. In the office, it was more of the same. All through the day she was responding to false alarms. More and more she was experiencing feelings of despair and guilt. She was frantic, waiting for something… anything!
Finally, in the evening he called her. He apologised sincerely for not getting back to her sooner. His day had been really hectic and he had to work overtime. He had lost his phone on the way in to work that day, probably on the bus. He had just got in and was calling from his parents’ home phone. He asked her if she’d been worried about not hearing from him.
“Not at all,” she said.