Roaming

The lake was behind the N road and the country house on the lake, at least that’s what it said on Waze. But the signal kept going out, and ‘No Network connection’ appearing at the bottom of the screen and then ‘Searching network’ in the urgent red font at the top, plus the Spigen air-vent magnetic car mount he employed for phone holder had never been strong enough to securely hold the  greater bulk of the iPhone 11 Pro Max (in reinforced plastic case of course) he’d upgraded to last July and the phone kept threatening to fall, so he had to watch that and keep his left hand ready as a safety net, all whilst keeping his eye on the road which refused any reasonable expectations to be simple and straight and just kept hair-pinning one way then the other, not to mention that he needed to go to the toilet really badly now, it was the kind of urgency that called on him to inwardly suck something into something else for fear that urine would actually seep out, and this was generally the sort of bad time you never really foresaw, the trip was supposed to be part of the whole fun of getting to the house, of having driven his car all the way here in the first place. And they said they had parking.

 

He was going to have to stop. There was a small clearing beneath trees and he stopped there and walked in as far as he adjudged necessary so as not to be seen. There were no cars on the road so it wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. He decided to leave the phone in the car which he only realised was a bit imprudent when he saw it plumb on the magnet when he got back in, since it cost him nothing to take it with him, put it in his pocket, and although there was no one around, you just never knew.

 

He sort of hoped that the signal would be back in. It wasn’t. Every time he wanted to use the phone, every time he pressed on the screen, it said ‘Swipe up for Face ID or enter passcode’ and he had to enter his six digit passcode to get in. Such a laborious process. He didn’t know why this happened so often. Then he tried restarting the phone, which always took longer than expected, the apple logo just staying there on the screen for aeons as he mentally hurried it on, and then all the things the phone and the chip needed to do before being able to put the home screen back up with all its fancy apps and widgets and then still having to enter the passcode if you didn’t catch it quickly enough and the phone drifted off to sleep. Now instead of even having a the 3G sign there was nothing, just no bars of anything by the battery sign, so how was he going to find the place now, was he seriously going to stop and ask someone, with their funny accents and their inevitably slow and ponderous dispositions, taking next to an age to even assimilate the question, that’s how he imagined them here, and then if all else failed, asking where the lake was, to which they’d inevitably ask him which lake because there all sorts of lakes around here, this was lake country, and then they’d probably ask him if he didn’t have Google because he could just put the address in to it and it would be the best way to find where he needed.

 

This was the only place in the world you couldn’t get signal, surely. He tapped on the Waze icon from the Home screen to see if the dark blue navigation line was still there. Surely it wouldn’t just disappear because there was no cellular reception. It had, the fucker. All this money for roaming and just nothing. He wondered how much money he’d racked up at god knows what rate per minute.

 

Still he tried opening Google Maps and Apple Maps and putting the postcode in without signal. Sometimes, somehow it remembered the map from your last connection and you could see the road names but this time all there was the blue flashing dot indicating him, and the whiteness of everything else indicating nothing.

 

But he had the guy’s number. Was he really going to have to find a phone box? Did those things even exist anymore? Was he going to have to knock on someone’s front door and meekly ask to use their phone? No of course not. All he’d need is a WiFi network. There must be a shop or pub with an unsecured network or one of those free ones you just had to put your personal details in. Worst comes to worst he’d find whatever the equivalent of BT WiFi was here and pay the bloody 9.99 an hour just to get a signal. Then reconnect to Waze, simple, zoom out to get the whole route in one shot, take a screenshot. Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt. 

 

A few miles down the road he saw an old shop with nothing much outside, he almost didn’t feel like stopping. But he stopped, his eyes still constantly peeled on the phone screen looking for any hint of reception. He happened to take in the phone’s display wallpaper which he very much liked, it was the collage of the seven colours of the rainbow in seven diagonal stripes against a simple black background which had been one of Apple’s default wallpapers when he first bought the phone. He had not deemed it necessary to download a third party one, this one was perfectly adequate. He remembered someone asking him once why he hadn’t used a family photo and he hadn’t known how to respond. Bizarrely he then had a random thought about upgrading. Was he due one? No, not for at least another 5 months. Did upgrades have the same impact they had in the late 2000’s anyway? Could you negotiate a better deal? He wasn’t going to be able to upgrade here anyway but that was fine as he really liked this phone. There were no shops for starters. With his mind wandering he barely noticed that the phone now showed two bars of cellular signal, but there was no 3G symbol, instead replaced by the dreaded ‘E.’ Fuck it, he was just going to have to phone.

 

He mentally prepared himself, put himself in speaking mode, almost thought about clearing his throat. No he didn’t have a Bluetooth earpiece; if he did he wouldn’t use them to call, not trusting in its ability to remit his voice through some dot for a microphone which was nowhere near his mouth and where the person called would hear loads of background noise at the very least. 

 

He scrolled through the contacts. There it was, for better or worse. Cameron, the only Cameron he’d ever saved to contacts. Not the most unusual name where he was from, but here maybe quite commonplace. He pressed on the name. It felt foreign, unhabitual. The phone menu binged up with the reassuring phone ringing icon. It was ringing now he could hear it. A low drone tone, unfamiliar. Now he knew he was paying shitloads, there was no EU carve out or 3 Home from Home thing here, this was the sticks, and he’d have to pay his carrier, their carrier, every single part of the call would be charged back to him somehow. This was like calling Earth from the moon.

 

A voice.

 

-Hi, this is Cameron Small.

 

Ever so slightly spiky, emphasis on the ‘this’. A guy used to having his time encroached on.

 

-Cameron, it’s Sam.

 

-Hi Sam.

 

-Sorry to call you mate, I don’t have any signal so I couldn’t text.

 

-That’s absolutely fine.

 

He almost thought of saying 5G to show he knew it was a thing, but then he felt it was inappropriate to mention something that was way out of reach here.

 

The line was bad and kept coming in and out. There were long stretches of silence bar a few haphazard telecommunication blips.

 

-Cameron, I can’t hear you.

 

He was holding it intently to his ear, right up to it. Then it dawned on him and he just sensed there was nothing, he took it away from his ear and saw that the call had ended.

 

-SHIT.

 

He looked at it as if in confirmation but also a good deal of aggravation. Then the phone started vibrating and it caught him unawares. He never had the sound turned up. Didn’t need to. He saw ‘No number’ come up on the display.

 

-Sam, you cut off.

 

-Hi again. Yeah, sorry, my fault. I’m just not sure how to find you. I’m on Route H.

 

-You just carry on and it’s signposted.

 

-On this road?

 

-Yes.

 

-I won’t have signal, so-o..

 

-You won’t miss it.

 

 

When he got there it had been that easy. There had been several very large signposts and the house was as impressive as it had looked in pictures. 

 

Cameron Small was not there however, having gone to the hypermarket to buy cheese.