I’ll look it up for you, Sacha says. No. Don’t, her mother says. The don’t is said with all her mother’s fierceness in it; these days her mother is constantly forgetting things and constantly trying not to look up online the things she’s forgotten. I’m so menopausal. It’s the menopause. Like you can defy the inevitable by shouting its name at it. She is trying to make herself remember things rather than look them up. In real terms, what this means is her mother annoys everybody for half an hour then goes online and looks up whatever it is she can’t remember.
