Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Finding Audrey
About the Author
Also by Sophie Kinsella
Copyright
FINDING AUDREY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19684 5
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company
This ebook edition published 2015
Copyright © Sophie Kinsella, 2015
First Published in Great Britain
Doubleday 978 0 857 53458 3 2015
The right of Sophie Kinsella to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
To all my children, who in their different
ways have helped inspire this book.
OMG, Mum’s gone insane.
Not normal Mum-insane. Serious insane.
Normal Mum-insane: Mum says, ‘Let’s all do this great gluten-free diet I read about in the Daily Mail!’ Mum buys three loaves of gluten-free bread. It’s so disgusting our mouths curl up. The family goes on strike and Mum hides her sandwich in the flowerbed and next week we’re not gluten free any more.
That’s normal Mum-insane. But this is serious insane.
She’s standing at her bedroom window which overlooks Rosewood Close, where we live. No, standing sounds too normal. Mum does not look normal. She’s teetering, leaning over the edge, a wild look in her eye. And she’s holding my brother Frank’s computer. It’s balanced precariously on the window ledge. Any minute, it’ll crash down to the ground. That’s £700 worth of computer.
Does she realize this? £700. She’s always telling us we don’t know the value of money. She’s always saying stuff like, ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to earn ten pounds?’ and, ‘You wouldn’t waste that electricity if you’d had to pay for it.’
Well, how about earning £700 and then deliberately smashing it on the ground?
Below us, on the front lawn, Frank is scampering about in his Big Bang Theory T-shirt, clutching his head and gibbering with panic.
‘Mum.’ His voice has gone all high-pitched with terror. ‘Mum, that’s my computer.’
‘I know it’s your computer!’ Mum cries hysterically. ‘Don’t you think I know that?’
‘Mum, please, can we talk about this?’
‘I’ve tried talking!’ Mum lashes back. ‘I’ve tried cajoling, arguing, pleading, reasoning, bribing . . . I’ve tried everything! EVERYTHING, Frank!’
‘But I need my computer!’
‘You do not need your computer!’ Mum yells, so furiously that I flinch.
‘Mummy is going to throw the computer!’ says Felix, running onto the grass and looking up in disbelieving joy. Felix is our little brother. He’s four. He greets most life events with disbelieving joy. A lorry in the street! Ketchup! An extra-long chip! Mum throwing a computer out of the window is just another one on the list of daily miracles.
‘Yes, and then the computer will break,’ says Frank fiercely. ‘And you won’t be able to play Star Wars ever again, ever.’
Felix’s face crumples in dismay and Mum flinches with fresh anger.
‘Frank!’ she yells. ‘Do not upset your brother!’
Now our neighbours across the close, the McDuggans, have come out to watch. Their twelve-year-old son, Ollie, actually yells, ‘Noooo!’ when he sees what Mum’s about to do.
‘Mrs Turner!’ He hurries across the street to our lawn and gazes up pleadingly, along with Frank.
Ollie sometimes plays Land of Conquerors online with Frank if Frank’s in a kind mood and doesn’t have anyone else to play with. Now Ollie looks even more freaked out than Frank.
‘Please don’t break the computer, Mrs Turner,’ he says, trembling. ‘It has all Frank’s backed-up game commentaries on it. They’re so funny.’ He turns to Frank. ‘They’re really funny.’
‘Thanks,’ mutters Frank.
‘Your mum’s really like . . .’ Ollie blinks nervously. ‘She’s like Goddess Warrior Enhanced Level Seven.’
‘I’m what?’ demands Mum.
‘It’s a compliment,’ snaps Frank, rolling his eyes. ‘Which you’d know if you played. Level Eight,’ he corrects Ollie.
‘Right,’ Ollie hastily agrees. ‘Eight.’
‘You can’t even communicate in English!’ Mum flips. ‘Real life is not a series of levels!’
‘Mum, please,’ Frank chimes in. ‘I’ll do anything. I’ll stack the dishwasher. I’ll phone Grandma every night. I’ll . . .’ He casts about wildly. ‘I’ll read to deaf people.’
Read to deaf people? Can he actually hear what he’s saying?
‘Deaf people?’ Mum explodes. ‘Deaf people? I don’t need you to read to deaf people! You’re the bloody deaf one around here! You never hear anything I say – you always have those wretched earphones in—’
‘Anne!’
I turn to see Dad joining the fray, and a couple of neighbours are stepping out of their front doors. This is officially a Neighbourhood Incident.
‘Anne!’ Dad calls again.
‘Let me do this, Chris,’ says Mum warningly, and I can see Dad gulp. My dad is tall and handsome in a car advert way, and he looks like the boss, but inside, he isn’t really an alpha male.
No, that sounds bad. He’s alpha in a lot of ways, I suppose. Only Mum is even more alpha. She’s strong and bossy and pretty and bossy.
I said bossy twice, didn’t I?
Well. Draw your own conclusions from that.
‘I know you’re angry, sweetheart,’ Dad’s saying soothingly. ‘But isn’t this a little extreme?’
‘Extreme? He’s extreme! He’s addicted, Chris!’
‘I’m not addicted!’ Frank yells.
‘I’m just saying—’
‘What?’ Mum finally turns her head to look at Dad properly. ‘What are you saying?’
‘If you drop it there, you’ll damage the car.’ Dad winces. ‘Maybe shift to the left a little?’
‘I don’t care about the car! This is tough love!’ She tilts the computer more precariously on the window ledge and we all gasp, including the watching neighbours.
‘Love?’ Frank is shouting up at Mum. ‘If you loved me you wouldn’t break my computer!’
‘Well, if you loved me, Frank, you wouldn’t get up at two a.m. behind my back, to play online with people in Korea!’
‘You got up at two a.m.?’ says Ollie to Frank, wide-eyed.
‘Practising.’ Frank shrugs. ‘I was practising,’ he repeats to Mum with emphasis. ‘I have a tournament coming up! You’ve always said I should have a goal in life! Well, I have!’
‘Playing Land of Conquerors is not a goal! Oh God, oh God . . .’ She bangs her head on the computer. ‘Where did I go wrong?’
‘Oh, Audrey,’ says Ollie suddenly, spotting me. ‘Hi, how are you?’
I shrink back from my bedroom window in fright. My window is tucked away on a corner and no one was meant to notice me. Least of all Ollie, who I’m pretty sure has a tiny crush on me, even though he’s two years younger and barely reaches up to my chest.
‘Look, it’s the celebrity!’ quips Ollie’s dad, Rob. He’s been calling me ‘the celebrity’ for the last four weeks, even though Mum and Dad have separately been over to ask him to stop. He thinks it’s funny and that my parents have no sense of humour. (I’ve often noticed that people equate ‘having a sense of humour’ with ‘being an insensitive moron’.)
This time, though, I don’t think Mum or Dad have even heard Rob’s oh-so-witty joke. Mum is still moaning, ‘Where did I go wroooong?’ and Dad is peering at her anxiously.
‘You didn’t go wrong!’ he calls up. ‘Nothing’s wrong! Darling, come down and have a drink. Put the computer down . . . for now,’ he adds hastily at her expression. ‘You can throw it out of the window later.’
Mum doesn’t move an inch. The computer is rocking still more precariously on the windowsill and Dad flinches. ‘Sweetheart, I’m just thinking about the car . . . We’ve only just paid it off . . .’ He moves towards the car and holds out his hands, as though to shield it from plummeting hardware.
‘Get a blanket!’ says Ollie, springing into life. ‘Save the computer! We need a blanket. We’ll form a circle . . .’
Mum doesn’t even seem to hear him. ‘I breastfed you!’ she shrieks at Frank. ‘I read you Winnie-the-Pooh! All I wanted was a well-rounded son who would be interested in books and art and the outdoors and museums and maybe a competitive sport—’
‘LOC is a competitive sport!’ yells Frank. ‘You don’t know anything about it! It’s a serious thing! You know, the prize pot in the international LOC competition in Toronto this year is six million dollars!’
‘So you keep telling us!’ Mum erupts. ‘So, what, you’re going to win that, are you? Make your fortune?’
‘Maybe.’ He gives her a dark look. ‘If I get enough practice.’
‘Frank, get real!’ Her voice echoes around the close, shrill and almost scary. ‘You’re not entering the international LOC competition, you’re not going to win the bloody six-million-dollar prize pot, and you’re not going to make your living from gaming! IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!’
A month earlier
It all begins with the Daily Mail. Quite a lot of things in our house begin with the Daily Mail.
Mum starts twitching in that way she does. We’ve had supper and cleared away and she’s been reading the paper with a glass of wine – ‘Me time’, she calls it – and she’s paused at an article. I can see the headline over her shoulder:
THE EIGHT SIGNS YOUR CHILD IS ADDICTED TO COMPUTER GAMES.
‘Oh my God,’ I hear her murmur. ‘Oh my God.’ Her finger is moving down the list and she’s breathing fast. As I squint over, I catch a sub-heading:
7. Irritability and moodiness.
Ha. Ha ha.
That’s my hollow laugh, in case you didn’t get that.
I mean, seriously, moodiness? Like, James Dean was a moody teenager in Rebel Without a Cause (I have the poster – best film poster ever, best movie ever, sexiest movie star ever – why, why, why did he have to die?). So James Dean must therefore have been addicted to video games? Oh, wait.
Exactly.
But there’s no point saying any of this to my mum, because it’s logical and my mum doesn’t believe in logic, she believes in horoscopes and green tea. Oh, and of course the Daily Mail.
THE EIGHT SIGNS MY MUM IS ADDICTED TO THE DAILY MAIL:
Anyway. There’s nothing I can do about my mum’s tragic dependency except hope that she doesn’t do too much damage to her life. (She’s already done major damage to our living room, after reading an ‘Interiors’ piece – ‘Why not handpaint all your furniture?’)
So then Frank ambles into the kitchen, wearing his black I MOD, THEREFORE I AM T-shirt, his earphones in and his phone in his hand. Mum lowers the Daily Mail and stares at him as though the scales have fallen from her eyes.
(I’ve never understood that. Scales?
Anyway. Whatever.)
‘Frank,’ she says. ‘How many hours have you played your computer games this week?’
‘Define computer games,’ Frank says, without looking up from his phone.
‘What?’ Mum looks at me uncertainly, and I shrug. ‘You know. Computer games. How many hours? FRANK!’ she yells as he makes no move to respond. ‘How many hours? Take those things out of your ears!’
‘What?’ says Frank, taking his earphones out. He blinks at her as though he didn’t hear the question. ‘Is this important?’
‘Yes, this is important!’ Mum spits. ‘I want you to tell me how many hours you’re spending per week playing computer games. Right now. Add it up.’
‘I can’t,’ says Frank calmly.
‘You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t?’
‘I don’t know what you’re referring to,’ says Frank, with elaborate patience. ‘Do you mean literally computer games? Or do you mean all screen games, including Xbox and PlayStation? Do you include games on my phone? Define your terms.’
Frank is such a moron. Couldn’t he see Mum was in one of her pre-rant build-ups?
‘I mean anything that warps your mind!’ says Mum, brandishing the Daily Mail. ‘Do you realize the dangers of these games? Do you realize your brain isn’t developing properly? Your BRAIN, Frank! Your most precious organ.’
Frank gives a dirty snigger, which I can’t help giggling at. Frank is actually pretty funny.
‘I’ll ignore that,’ says Mum stonily. ‘It only goes to prove what I was saying.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ says Frank, and opens the fridge. He takes out a carton of chocolate milk and drains it, straight from the carton, which is gross.
‘Don’t do that!’ I say furiously.
‘There’s another carton. Relax.’
‘I’m putting a limit on your playing, young man.’ Mum bats the Daily Mail for emphasis. ‘I’ve just about had enough of this.’
Young man. That means she’s going to drag Dad into it. Any time she starts using Young man or Young woman, sure enough, the next day there’s some ghastly family meeting, where Dad tries to back up everything Mum says, even though he can’t follow half of it.
Anyway, not my problem.
Until Mum arrives in my bedroom that evening and demands, ‘Audrey, what is Land of Conquerors?’
I look up from Grazia and survey her. She looks tense. Her cheeks are pink and her right hand is all clenched, as if it’s just come off a computer mouse. She’s been Googling ‘computer-game addiction’, I just know she has.
‘A game.’
‘I know it’s a game’ – Mum sounds exasperated – ‘but why does Frank play it all the time? You don’t play it all the time, do you?’
‘No.’ I’ve played LOC and I really don’t get the obsession. I mean, it’s OK for an hour or two.
‘So what’s the appeal?’
‘Well, you know.’ I think for a moment. ‘It’s exciting. You get rewards. And the heroes are pretty good. Like, the graphics are amazing, and they just released this new warrior team with new capabilities, so . . .’ I shrug.
Mum looks more bewildered than ever. The trouble is, she doesn’t play games. So it’s kind of impossible to convey to her the difference between LOC 3 and, say, Pacman from 1985.
‘They show it on YouTube,’ I say in sudden inspiration. ‘People do commentaries. Hang on.’
As I’m finding a clip on my iPad, Mum sits down and looks around the room. She’s trying to act casual, but I can sense her beady blue eyes scanning my piles of stuff, looking for . . . what? Anything. Everything. The truth is, Mum and I haven’t done casual for a while. Everything is loaded.
With everything that’s happened, that’s one of the saddest things of all. We can’t be normal with each other any more. The tiniest thing I say, Mum’s all over it, even if she doesn’t realize it. Her brain goes into overdrive. What does it mean? Is Audrey all right? What’s Audrey really saying?
I can see her looking closely at a pair of old ripped jeans on my chair, as though they hold some dark significance. Whereas in fact the only significance they hold is: I’ve grown out of them. I’ve shot up about three inches in the last year, which makes me five eight. Quite tall for fourteen. People say I look like Mum, but I’m not as pretty as her. Her eyes are so blue. Like blue diamonds. Mine are wishy-washy – not that they’re particularly visible right now.
Just so you can visualize me, I’m fairly skinny, fairly nondescript, wearing a black vest-top and skinny jeans. And I wear dark glasses all the time, even in the house. It’s . . . Well. A thing. My thing, I suppose. Hence the ‘celebrity’ quips from Rob our neighbour. He saw me in my dark glasses, getting out of the car in the rain, and he was all, like, ‘Why the shades? Are you Angelina Jolie?’
I’m not trying to be cool. There’s a reason.
Which, of course, now you want to know.
I assume.
OK, it’s actually quite private. I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you yet. You can think I’m weird if you like. Enough people do.
‘Here we are.’ I find a clip of some LOC battle with ‘Archy’ commentating. ‘Archy’ is a YouTuber from Sweden who makes videos that Frank loves. They consist of ‘Archy’ playing LOC and making funny commentaries on the game, and as I expected, it takes me for ever to explain this concept to Mum.
‘But why would you watch someone else playing?’ she keeps saying, baffled. ‘Why? Isn’t that a complete waste of time?’
‘Well. Anyway.’ I shrug. ‘That’s LOC.’
There’s silence for a moment. Mum is peering at the screen like some ancient professor trying to decipher an ancient Egyptian code. There’s an almighty explosion and she winces.
‘Why does it always have to be about killing? If I designed a game it would centre around ideas. Politics. Issues. Yes! I mean, why not?’ I can tell her brain’s firing up with a new idea. ‘What about a computer game called Discuss? You could keep the competitive element, but score points by debating!’
‘And that is why we’re not squillionaires,’ I say, as though to a third party.
I’m about to find another clip when Felix comes running into the room.
‘Candy Crush!’ he says in delight as soon as he spies my iPad, and Mum gasps in horror.
‘How does he know about that?’ she demands. ‘Turn it off. I’m not having another addict in the family!’
Oops. It may possibly have been me who introduced Felix to Candy Crush. Not that he has any idea how to play it properly.
I close down the iPad and Felix stares at it, crestfallen. ‘Candy Crush!’ he wails. ‘I want to play Candy Cruuuuush!’
‘It’s broken, Felix.’ I pretend to press the iPad. ‘See? Broken.’
‘Broken,’ affirms Mum.
Felix looks from us to the iPad. You can sense his mind is working as hard as his four-year-old brain cells will let him. ‘We must buy a plug,’ he suggests, with sudden animation, and grabs the iPad. ‘We can buy a plug and fix it.’
‘The plug shop’s closed,’ says Mum, without missing a beat. ‘What a shame. We’ll do it tomorrow. But guess what? We’re going to have toast and Nutella now!’
‘Toast and Nutella!’ Felix’s face bursts into joyous beams. As he throws up his arms, Mum grabs the iPad from him and gives it to me. Five seconds later I’ve hidden it behind a cushion on the bed.
‘Where did the Candy Crush go?’ Felix suddenly notices its disappearance and screws up his face to howl.
‘We’re taking it to the plug shop, remember?’ says Mum at once.
‘Plug shop.’ I nod. ‘But hey, you’re going to have toast and Nutella! How many pieces are you going to have?’
Poor old Felix. He lets Mum lead him out of the room, still looking confused. Totally outmanoeuvred. That’s what happens when you’re four. Bet Mum wishes she could pull that trick on Frank.
So now Mum knows what LOC is. And ‘knowledge is power’, according to Kofi Annan. Although, as Leonardo da Vinci said: ‘Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge,’ which might apply better to our family. (Please don’t think I’m super-well-read or anything. Mum bought me a book of quotations last month and I flick through it when I’m watching telly.)
Anyway, ‘knowledge is power’ isn’t really happening here, because Mum has no power over Frank at all. It’s Saturday evening, and he’s been playing LOC ever since lunch time. He disappeared into the playroom straight after pudding. Then there was a ring at the doorbell and I scuttled out of the way into the den, which is my own private place.
Now it’s nearly six and I’ve crept into the kitchen for some Oreos, to find Mum striding around, all twitchy. She’s exhaling and looking at the clock and exhaling again.
‘They’re all computer addicts!’ she says in a sudden burst. ‘I’ve asked them to turn them off about twenty-five times! Why can’t they do it? It’s a simple switch! On, off.’
‘Maybe they’re on a level—’ I begin.
‘Levels!’ Mum cuts me off savagely. ‘I’m tired of hearing about levels! I’m giving them one more minute. That’s it.’
I take out an Oreo and prise it open. ‘So, who’s with Frank?’
‘A friend from school. I haven’t met him before. Linus, I think he’s called . . .’
Linus. I remember Linus. He was in that school play, To Kill a Mockingbird, and he played Atticus Finch. Frank was Crowd.
Frank goes to Cardinal Nicholls School, which is just up the road from my school, Stokeland Girls’ School, and sometimes the two schools join together for plays and concerts and stuff. Although to be truthful, Stokeland isn’t ‘my school’ any more. I haven’t been to school since February, because some stuff happened there. Not great stuff.
Whatever.
Anyway. Moving on. After that, I got ill. Now I’m going to change schools and go down a year so I won’t fall behind. The new school is called the Heath Academy and they said it would be sensible to start in September, rather than the summer term when it’s mainly exams. So, till then, I’m at home.
I mean, I don’t do nothing. They’ve sent me lots of reading suggestions and maths books and French vocab lists. Everyone’s agreed it’s vital I keep up with my schoolwork and ‘It will make you feel so much better, Audrey!’ (It so doesn’t.) So sometimes I send in a history essay or something and they send it back with some red comments. It’s all a bit random.
Anyway. The point is, Linus was in the play and he was a really good Atticus Finch. He was noble and heroic and everyone believed him. Like, he has to shoot a rabid dog in one scene and the prop gun didn’t work on our night, but no one in the audience laughed or even murmured. That’s how good he was.
He came round to our house once, before a rehearsal. Just for about five minutes, but I still remember it.
Actually, that’s kind of irrelevant.
I’m about to remind Mum that Linus played Atticus Finch when I realize she’s left the kitchen. A moment later I hear her voice:
‘You’ve played enough, young man!’
Young man.
I dart over to the door and look through the crack. As Frank strides into the hall after Mum, his face is quivering with fury.
‘We hadn’t reached the end of the level! You can’t just switch off the game! Do you understand what you did just then, Mum? Do you even know how Land of Conquerors works?’
He sounds properly irate. He’s stopped right underneath where I am, his black hair falling over his pale forehead, his skinny arms flailing and his big bony hands gesticulating furiously. I hope Frank grows into his hands and feet one day. They can’t stay so comically huge, can they? The rest of him has to catch up, surely? He’s fifteen, so he could still grow a foot. Dad’s six foot, but he always says Frank will end up taller than him.
‘It’s fine,’ says a voice I recognize. It’s Linus, but I can’t see him through the crack. ‘I’ll go home. Thanks for having me.’
‘Don’t go home!’ exclaims Mum, in her best charming-to-visitors voice. ‘Please don’t go home, Linus. That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘But if we can’t play games . . .’ Linus sounds flummoxed.
‘Are you saying the only form of socializing you boys understand is playing computer games? Do you know how sad that is?’
‘Well, what do you suggest we do?’ says Frank sulkily.
‘I think you should play badminton. It’s a nice summer’s evening, the garden’s beautiful, and look what I found!’ She holds out the ropy old badminton set to Frank. The net is all twisted and I can see that some animal has nibbled at one of the shuttlecocks.
I want to laugh at Frank’s expression.
‘Mum . . .’ He appears almost speechless with horror. ‘Where did you even find that?’
‘Or croquet!’ adds Mum brightly. ‘That’s a fun game.’
Frank doesn’t even answer. He looks so stricken by the idea of croquet, I actually feel quite sorry for him.
‘Or hide-and-seek?’
I give a snort of laughter and clap my hand over my mouth. I can’t help it. Hide-and-seek.
‘Or Rummikub!’ says Mum, sounding desperate. ‘You always used to love Rummikub.’
‘I like Rummikub,’ volunteers Linus, and I feel a tweak of approval. He could have legitimately laid into Frank at this point; walked straight out of the house and put on Facebook that Frank’s house sucks. But he sounds like he wants to please Mum. He sounds like one of those people who looks around and thinks, Well, why not make life easier for everyone? (I’m getting this from three words, you understand.)
‘You want to play Rummikub?’ Frank sounds incredulous.
‘Why not?’ says Linus easily, and a moment later the two of them head off towards the playroom. (Mum and Dad repainted it and called it the Teenage Study when I turned thirteen, but it’s still the playroom.)
Next moment, Mum is back in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine.
‘There!’ she says. ‘They just need a little guidance. A little parental control. I simply opened their minds. They’re not addicted to computers. They just need to be reminded what else is out there.’
She’s not talking to me. She’s talking to the Imaginary Daily Mail Judge who constantly watches her life and gives it marks out of ten.
‘I don’t think Rummikub is a very good game for two,’ I say. ‘I mean, it would take ages to get rid of all your tiles.’
I can see Mum’s thoughts snagging on this. I’m sure she has the same image I do: Frank and Linus sitting grimly across from each other at the Rummikub table, hating it and deciding that all board games are rubbish and total pants.
‘You’re right,’ she says at last. ‘Maybe I’ll go and play with them. Make it more fun.’
She doesn’t ask me if I want to play too, for which I’m grateful.
‘Well, have a good time,’ I say, and take out the Oreo packet. I scoot through the kitchen, into the den, and it’s only as I’m zapping on the telly that I hear Mum’s voice resounding through the house from the playroom.
‘I DIDN’T MEAN ONLINE RUMMIKUB!’
Our house is like a weather system. It ebbs and flows, flares up and subsides. It has times of radiant blue bliss, days of grey dismalness and thunderstorms that flare up out of nowhere. Right now the storm’s coming my way. Thunder-lightning-thunder-lightning, Frank-Mum-Frank-Mum.
‘What difference does it make?’
‘It makes every difference! I told you not to go on those computers any more!’
‘Mum, it’s the same bloody game!’
‘It’s not! I want you off that screen! I want you playing a game with your friend! IN REAL LIFE!’
‘It’s no fun with two players. We might as well play, I don’t know, bloody Snap.’
‘I know!’ Mum is almost shrieking. ‘That’s why I was coming to play with you!’
‘Well, I didn’t bloody KNOW THAT, DID I?’
‘Stop swearing! If you swear at me, young man . . .’
Young man.
I hear Frank make his Angry Frank noise. It’s a kind of rhinoceros bellow slash scream of frustration.
‘Bloody is not swearing,’ he says, breathing hard as though to rein in his impatience.
‘It is!’
‘It’s in the Harry Potter films, OK? Harry Potter. How can it be swearing?’
‘What?’ Mum sounds wrong-footed.
‘Harry Potter. I rest my case.’
‘Don’t you walk away from me, young man!’
Young man. That makes three. Poor Dad. He will so get an earful when he arrives home—
‘Hi.’ Linus’s voice takes me by surprise, and I jump round in shock. Like, I literally jump. I have pretty sharpened reflexes. Over-sensitive. Like the rest of me.
He’s at the doorway. Atticus Finch shoots through my brain. A lanky, brown-haired teenager with wide cheekbones and floppy hair and one of those smiles like an orange segment. Not that his teeth are orange. But his mouth makes that segment shape when he smiles. Which he’s doing now. None of Frank’s other friends ever smile.
He comes into the den and instinctively my fists clench in fear. He must have wandered off while Mum and Frank were fighting. But no one comes in this room. This is my space. Didn’t Frank tell him?
Didn’t Frank say?
My chest is starting to rise in panic. Tears have already started to my eyes. My throat feels frozen. I need to escape. I need – I can’t—
No one comes in here. No one is allowed to come in here.
I can hear Dr Sarah’s voice in my head. Random snippets from our sessions.
Breathe in for four counts, out for seven.
Your body believes the threat is real, Audrey. But the threat isn’t real.
‘Hi,’ he tries again. ‘I’m Linus. You’re Audrey, right?’
The threat isn’t real. I try to press the words into my mind, but they’re drowned out by the panic. It’s engulfing. It’s like a nuclear cloud.
‘Do you always wear those?’ He nods at my dark glasses.
My chest is pumping with terror. Somehow I manage to edge past him.
‘Sorry,’ I gasp, and tear through the kitchen like a hunted fox. Up the stairs. Into my bedroom. Into the furthest corner. Crouched down behind the curtain. My breath is coming like a piston engine and tears are coursing down my face. I need a Clonazepam, but right now I can’t even leave the curtain to get it. I’m clinging to the fabric like it’s the only thing that will save me.
‘Audrey?’ Mum’s at the bedroom door, her voice high with alarm. ‘Sweetheart? What happened?’
‘It’s just . . . you know.’ I swallow. ‘That boy came in and I wasn’t expecting it . . .’
‘It’s fine,’ soothes Mum, coming over and stroking my head. ‘It’s OK. It’s totally understandable. Do you want to take a . . .’
Mum never says the words of medication out loud.