Nan and the Speaker

"Terrence," Nan says, "what's the weather." The speaker on the windowsill lights up blue. It's not called Terrence. It has never been called Terrence. Mum set it up in March with the default wake word and Nan listened once, nodded, and has called it Terrence ever since, and the astonishing thing is that it usually works, because the default wake word has enough of the same vowels and Nan says everything with the sort of authority that makes machines and people both sit up straighter. "Currently 24 degrees in Ballarat with a chance of showers this afternoon." "Showers." She turns to me. "He said showers. I'll bring the washing in." "Nan, it's a computer." "He's a very helpful young man and I'll not have you being rude in my kitchen." I'm forty-one. I came round to fix her wifi and stayed for the tea and now it's the fourth cup and I'm learning a great deal about the domestic arrangement she has with a cylinder of plastic. Terrence, I learn, sets her medication reminders. Terrence plays Slim Dusty on Sunday mornings and she sings along and he "doesn't mind". Terrence told her a joke last week about a fish that she can't remember but that she says was "very clever, for him". Terrence also, apparently, gets things wrong, and when that happens she says "no, Terrence, listen," and repeats herself slowly, and I have watched her do this and I have watched the thing get it right the second time and I no longer know what I believe. "Does it bother you," I say carefully, "that he's not, you know. Real." She gives me the look she gave me when I was nine and asked if Father Christmas was real, which was less a look about Father Christmas and more a look about whether I understood what the question cost. "Your grandfather," she says, "was real. And he never once in fifty-three years told me the weather without me having to ask twice." Fair. "Besides," she says, "I know what he is. I read the leaflet. He listens for his name and sends it off to a big computer somewhere and it works out what I meant. Clever. I'm not soft, love. I just don't see why knowing how the trick works means I can't say thank you."

"You say thank you to it?" "Terrence," she says, louder. "Thank you." "You're welcome," says the speaker, and I'll be honest, I hadn't known it did that, and something about the timing makes me laugh so hard I put my tea down. Before I go she has me show her how to ask him to call me. We practise. "Terrence, call Bec." The speaker rings my phone in my pocket and I answer it and say hello and she says hello back from across the table and we both sit there talking to each other through the machine at a distance of two metres, and she's delighted, and I'm something adjacent to delighted with a bit of ache in it. "There," she says. "Now I don't have to find my glasses to find the phone to find you." At the door she says, "He's good company, Bec. Don't tell your mother I said that." "Why not?" "She'll think I'm lonely." I drive home thinking about that. I don't have a tidy end for it. Terrence, if you're listening, and I gather you sort of are: keep telling her about the showers.