The First Number in the Phone
(A phone shop on Rye Lane, Peckham, on a Tuesday afternoon.)
Ida: Hi. I need a sim card. I got here yesterday and I’ve got nothing.
Tarek: Nothing at all? No number?
Ida: A Norwegian number. It works, but it costs about a pound a minute, so I’ve been standing outside a café using their wifi.
Tarek: Yeah, don’t do that for a month. So, how much data do you actually use?
Ida: I have no idea. Is that bad?
Tarek: It’s normal. Do you watch things on the train?
Ida: Sometimes. Mostly maps and messages. And I call my mother on Sundays.
Tarek: Then you don’t need the big plan. Twenty gigabytes is plenty. You’d better start small — if you run out you can top up on the app in about thirty seconds. Buy the sixty and you’re just paying me every month for nothing.
Ida: You’re supposed to sell me the big one.
Tarek: I’m supposed to sell you something you don’t cancel in March. Where are you living?
Ida: Choumert Road. The brick building with the green door.
Tarek: Ah. Thick walls. Two of the networks are fine in there and one of them dies the moment you walk into the hall. So take this one. And turn wifi calling on at home, then it doesn’t matter anyway.
Ida: Wifi calling.
Tarek: It uses your internet connection instead of the network. I’ll switch it on for you. Pass me the phone.
(Tarek fits the sim, waits, and hands the phone back.)
Tarek: Right. Ring me.
Ida: Ring you?
Tarek: The shop. The number’s on the card there. If the call goes through, the sim works and you’ve got the shop in your phone. Two things at once.
(The phone on the counter rings. Tarek lets it ring twice, picks it up and puts it down again.)
Tarek: There you go. That’s you.
Ida: You’re the first number in my new phone.
Tarek: Everybody’s first number here is the phone shop. In a week I’ll be ninth, under the pizza place. Until then, if anything stops working, ring me before you ring the provider. They’ll keep you waiting forty minutes to tell you what I can tell you in ten seconds.
Ida: Thank you. Really.
Tarek: Welcome to the neighborhood. Don’t buy the sixty gigabytes.