Seeing my jowly, wrinkled 55-year-old face and turkey neck looking mockingly back at me from the video call on my phone screen — a disturbing mix of the woman I once was and my mother during her twilight years — was bad enough.
But beside that of the plumped-with-collagen beauty of my 19-year-old daughter FaceTiming me from university, it was nothing short of misery-inducing.
Video-calling is Isobel’s preferred way of communicating since she left home, so this past year I’ve