I made dinner.

That was all. That was all it took for the headache to return. Not the kids, not Frankie wrecking my nerves with YouTube shorts blaring. I had no underlying illness as far as I knew. Nothing weird that I could have inherited. Nothing. It just started.

The mental traffic was there though. Cars, buses, taxis congesting all roads, bumper to bumper. Everyone had their phones out. I could have taken a sledgehammer to them. The buzzing and ringing, the beeping and singing. And the pinging. The pinging. The bloody bloody pinging!

Of course I cannot leave the stove to sort out the noise pollution in my head. The whole place would burn to the ground. A sinister part of me might like that. That would be the end of it all . . . even the headache.

I thought something a bit different would be good. Three courses like a dinner party. No reason. The recipe book was there. I was bored.

Oh, to be bored and deprived of screen time.

I knew the tablets were a mistake. The kids are always on them. You would think ordinary human contact was the most terrifying thing in the world. Though I suppose their Aunt Trudy may not help disprove that theory. She never gets headaches and undoubtedly she would not pass up the chance to tell me so, in great detail.

I had celeriac and paracetamol . . . wait. No, parsley chopped and ready to add to the potatoes.

No, that wasn’t right? Bloody hell! I fretted over the whole thing for nearly an hour and that was only the soup course. The pot hissed until I had brown onions in place of the white. The mental traffic persisted.

The blood vessels tightened all around my skull. I had nearly convinced myself that Millie, my youngest, had cracked my head open and ripped out every vein and artery with her little fists like daisy stems. She had the back garden destroyed this morning, as she tore them up from the corner bed as far as the roots. It was a clean death at least. I really could have used her help clearing brambles.

What the hell is she going to be like at school?

“Here are some helpful tips to prep your kids for their first day at school” My smartphone had heard my thoughts and was now determined to answer my prayers. Thirty seconds of my life swiped away on another groundbreaking top ten post. Then another on the same topic. About six cat videos. Then about twenty angry reviewers who ranted and raved about the latest disastrous Marvel flick.

Then my eyes began to twitch.

Was I having a seizure?

I kept scrolling, abandoning dinner in the process.

A makeup tutorial. Even I was aware of how dated smokey eyelids were.

A fake news rant. Then a political rant to counter the fake news rant.

Some nightmarish AI generated caricature of some president’s head stretched out and fused onto a pig’s body.

The same cat videos from before.

It inevitably began to resemble a kind of technologically induced amnesia.

And it did not stop. It would not stop.

My eyes almost rolled back in my head as if Millie’s grip had found its way to my eye sockets.

My breathing quickened and I suddenly heard myself screaming.

Then I stopped.

I inhaled deeply as if emerging from underwater, and flipped the smartphone faced down on the wooden counter.

The metal traffic had died down. The tightness lessened. And the headache ceased.

But, the smartphone now on mute, vibrated still.

The drilling cry for my attention kept going, and going.

Though I wished with all my might that it would soon be gone.