Who was it speaking to her? They really shouldn't phone up like this unannouced. What time was it? It seemed to be quite dark.
"Glue?" she asked hopefully.
No, not glue. The muffled voice was clearly annoyed she had got it wrong. But what could she do? It was the fault of the phone. The one upstairs looked the same, but she never had people shouting in a muffled voice at her when she used that phone.
"I'm fine," she told the phone, because the person at the other end had apparently asked her. "Although I couldn't sleep last night."
And then the person speaking to her said something about glue again. It was a man. All men were bad at articulation. She did her best. Even her son, Adrian...
Suddenly she realised it was her son she was talking to. Why didn't he say so at the start? Phone calls are so expensive, like everything else these days. What a waste of time! She had so little left, probably.
Glue, glue... she never discovered what he had been on about. Still, it had been nice to hear from him.
