My phone beeped and I grabbed hold of it. A notification from the new app APPROVE of Me. I grinned and opened the app. The smile fell from my face with a disappointing clatter. You are NOT APPROVEd! the message said. Another rejection. More points taken from my ever more pathetic APPROVE-al Rating. I was heading towards being blacklisted by even the people who had previously APPROVEd me. Mary looked over the desk at me.
"Bad news?" she asked. I shook my head, hoping to cover.
"Nothing," she looked unconvinced. "Just my mother's cat has just died."
Mary made sympathetic noices and asked if I needed her to cover for me. Mary was a cat person.
My mother, of course, was not.
She'd hated cats (when she was still alive - I'm sure in death she would feel the same way, as the local strays in the graveyard seemed to favour using her final resting place as a litter tray).
...
