Finding Audrey (11 page)

‘Oh, well,
Downton
.’ Mum looks wrong-footed. ‘That’s different. That’s . . . you know. History.’

‘And
The Killing
?’

My parents are addicted to
The Killing
. They gorge themselves on, like, four episodes at a time, and then say, ‘One more? Just one more?’

‘I’m talking about the
children
,’ says Mum at last. ‘I’m talking about the
future generation
. They should be reading books.’

‘Oh, good.’ Dad exhales in relief. ‘Because whatever else I do in my life, I’m finishing
The Killing
.’

‘Are you kidding? We have to finish
The Killing
,’ Mum agrees. ‘We could watch one tonight.’

‘We could watch two.’

‘After we’ve spoken to Frank.’

‘Oh God.’ Dad rubs his head. ‘I need a drink.’

The house is quiet for a while after that. It’s the calm before the kick-off. Felix comes home from a playdate where they made pizza, and unveils the most revolting tomatoey-cheesy mess and makes Mum heat it up in the oven. Then he refuses to eat it.

Then he refuses to eat anything else, because he wants to eat the pizza he made,
even though he won’t eat it
. I know. The logic of a four-year-old is beyond weird.

‘I want to eat MY pizza!’ he keeps wailing, whereupon Mum says, ‘Well, eat it, then! Here it is.’

‘Nooo!’ He gazes at it tearfully. ‘Nooo! Not that one! Not THAT one!’

Eventually he swipes it off the table altogether, and seeing it collapsed on the floor is too much for him. He descends into hysterical sobbing and Mum says darkly, ‘They probably gave him Fruit Shoots,’ and hauls him off for a bath. (Half an hour later he’s all fluffy and clean and smiling and eating sandwiches. Baths are like Valium for four-year-olds.)

Then I’m put on make-sure-Felix-eats-his-crusts duty, so I’m stuck at the kitchen table. I kind of thought I might get to Frank first and warn him. But it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, because Mum’s like a sentry on speed. She goes into the hall every five minutes and opens the front door, and once she actually goes into the street, scanning the horizon all around, as if Frank might fool her by coming from some different direction. She’s pretty revved up for seeing him. She keeps addressing the hall mirror with phrases like ‘It’s the
deceit
as much as anything else,’ and ‘Yes, this
is
tough love. It
is
tough love, young man.’

Young man.

Meanwhile I’ve kept my head well down, although I’m dying to ask Frank whether he’s really been getting up at two a.m., and whether Linus was playing with him. I’m just secretly eating a couple of Felix’s crusts for him, to speed things up, when I hear a yell from Mum. She’s out in the front drive squinting along the road.

‘Chris! Chris! He’s coming!’ She comes striding into the house, her head swivelling around on full alert. ‘Where’s your father? Where’s he gone?’

‘Dunno. Haven’t seen him.’

OK, Mum’s totally wired. I wonder whether I should tell her about breathing in for four counts and out for seven, but I think she’d bite my head off.

‘Chris!’ She stalks out of the kitchen.

I creep forwards so I have a view of the hall. I should really get my video camera, only it’s upstairs, and I don’t want to venture across the battlefield. Dad appears at his study door, holding his BlackBerry to his ear, pulling an agonized face at Mum.

‘Yes, the figures
were
unexpected,’ he’s saying. ‘But if you look at page six . . .
Sorry
,’ he mouths at Mum. ‘
Two minutes
.’

‘Great!’ she snaps as Dad disappears again. ‘So much for a united front.’ She peers out of the hall window. ‘OK. Here he comes. Here we go.’

She positions herself in the hall, her hand placed on her hip, glary eyes focused right on the door. After a tense ten seconds the door opens and I catch my breath. Frank saunters in, just the same as usual, and looks at Mum without much interest. I can see her draw herself up and take a deep breath.

‘Hello, Frank,’ she says in steely tones, which make me shiver, even though I’m not the one in trouble. But Frank has his earphones in, so I’m guessing he didn’t pick up on the steely tones.

‘Hi,’ he says, and makes to go past, but Mum pokes him on the shoulder.

‘Frank!’ she says, and gestures to his ears. ‘Out!’

Rolling his eyes, Frank takes out his earphones and looks at her. ‘What?’

‘So,’ says Mum, in yet more steely tones.

‘What?’

‘
So
.’

I can see her aim is to make him quake in fear with just that one syllable, but it hasn’t really worked. He just looks impatient.

‘So? What do you mean? So what?’

‘We’ve been expecting you, Frank. Dad and I.’ She takes a step forward, her eyes like lasers. ‘We’ve been waiting for you for
quite a while
.’

OMG. She’s totally channelling a Bond villain, I realize. I bet she wishes she had a white cat to stroke.

‘What’s my computer doing there?’ Frank suddenly notices it, perched on the hall table with its flex coiled around the plug.

‘Good question,’ says Mum pleasantly. ‘Would you like to tell us about your computer activity over the last week or so?’

Frank’s shoulders sag, like,
Not this again.

‘I was playing
LOC
,’ he says in a monotone. ‘You caught me.’

‘Just the once?’

Frank lets his school bag slither to the ground. ‘I dunno. I’ve got a headache. I need some paracetamol.’

‘And why would that be?’ Mum suddenly loses it. ‘Would that be because you haven’t had any sleep this week?’

‘What?’ Frank gives her his special, blank, I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about look, which, actually, is really annoying.

‘Don’t play ignorant with me! Don’t you dare play ignorant!’ Mum is breathing really hard by now. ‘My friend Arjun looked at your machine today. And
what
an interesting story.’

‘Who’s Arjun?’ Frank scowls.

‘A computer expert,’ says Mum triumphantly. ‘He told me all about you. You’ve left quite the trail, young man. We know everything.’

I see a flicker of alarm pass across Frank’s face. ‘Did he read my
emails
?’

‘No. He didn’t read your emails.’ Mum looks momentarily distracted. ‘What’s in your emails?’

‘Nothing,’ says Frank hastily, and glowers at her. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe you hacked into my computer.’

‘Well, I can’t believe you’ve been lying to us! You’ve been up at two a.m. every night this week! Do you deny it?’

Frank shrugs with a sullen expression.

‘Frank?’

‘If
Arjun
says it, it must be true.’

‘So it
is
true! Frank, do you understand how serious this is?
Do
you? DO YOU?’ she suddenly yells.

‘Well, do you understand how seriously I take
LOC
?’ he yells back. ‘What if I become a professional gamer? What will you say then?’

‘Not this again.’ Mum closes her eyes and massages her forehead. ‘Who were you playing with? Do I know them? Do I need to call their parents?’

‘I doubt it,’ says Frank sarcastically, ‘since they live in Korea.’

‘
Korea?
’ This seems the last straw for Mum. ‘Right. That’s it, Frank. You are banned. Banned, banned, banned. For ever. No computers. No screens. No nothing.’

‘OK,’ says Frank limply.

‘Do you understand?’ She stares at him, hard. ‘You’re banned.’

‘I get it. I’m banned.’

There’s a silence. Mum seems dissatisfied. She’s peering at Frank as though she wanted to hear something else.

‘You’re banned,’ she tries again. ‘For good.’

‘I know,’ says Frank with elaborate patience. ‘You told me.’

‘You’re not reacting. Why aren’t you reacting?’

‘I
am
reacting, Mum. I’m banned. Whatever.’

‘I’m locking this computer right away.’

‘I get it.’

There’s another weird, tense silence. Mum is studying Frank closely, as though searching for the answer. Then suddenly her whole face seems to ping, and she draws breath.

‘Oh my God. You don’t take this seriously, do you? You think you’ll get round it. What, you’re already planning how you’ll creep around the house at night and find your computer?’

‘No.’ Frank sounds sulky, which means
Yes
.

‘You’re already planning how you’ll pick the lock?’

‘No.’

‘You think you can beat us!’ She’s quivering now. ‘You think you can beat us, don’t you? Well,
beat this
!’

She grabs the computer, which is pretty bulky, and heads up the stairs, trailing the cord.

‘This is going. It’s going! I want it out of our house! I want it in smithereens.’

‘Smithereens?’ Frank springs to life.

‘You’re banned anyway, so what does it matter?’ Mum shoots back over her shoulder.

‘Mum, no,’ says Frank in a panic. ‘Mum, what are you doing?’

‘
You stay there, young man!
’ Mum’s voice is suddenly on a whole different level. She sounds properly scary, like she did when we were little kids, and Frank pauses, his foot on the step. I’ve never seen him look so freaked.

‘What’s she going to do?’ he says in a low voice.

‘I dunno. But I wouldn’t go upstairs.’

‘But what’s she
doing
?’

At that moment Felix comes bounding into the hall from the garden, in his dressing gown.

‘Guess what?’ he says in tones of joy. ‘Mummy is
throwing the computer out of the window
!’

I can’t believe she did it. I can’t believe she actually chucked Frank’s computer out of the window.

It wasn’t
quite
as dramatic as it might have been, because she suddenly got all health and safety and shouted to the neighbours to get out of the way, and then said to Dad that he should move the car if he was that worried.

Meanwhile Frank was lurching between total gibbering panic and trying to be one of those guys in the movies who talk the terrorist out of setting off the bomb.

‘Mum, listen,’ he kept saying. ‘Put the computer down. You don’t want to do this, Mum.’

Which didn’t work. Mostly because she
did
want to do it.

The computer didn’t actually smash into smithereens when she threw it. It kind of bounced twice and landed on its side. In fact, it barely looked broken at all, once it was sitting on the lawn. There was just a bit of shattered glass from the screen, which Dad immediately cleared up because of Felix playing outside in bare feet or whatever.

But I guess it’s messed up enough inside that Frank can’t use it any more. It looked a bit sad, sitting on the grass with his ancient
Minecraft
stickers all over it.

Everyone stared at it for a while, and a couple of people took photos, and then they all drifted home. I mean, hand on heart, it was a bit of an anticlimax. But not for Frank. He’s devastated. I tried to say ‘I’m sorry’ as we went inside, and he couldn’t even answer.

I think he’s in shock. He hasn’t really spoken all evening. Mum is grimly triumphant and I think Dad is just relieved that the car didn’t get trashed.

And although I really don’t want to get into it, I’m wondering one thing. Does this mean Linus won’t come round any more?

MY SERENE AND LOVING FAMILY – FILM TRANSCRIPT

INT. 5 ROSEWOOD CLOSE. DAY

Mum is sitting in the kitchen with a coffee cup, looking straight to camera.

MUM

I did the right thing. OK, it was a bit extreme. But sometimes you have to take extreme measures, and everyone’s shocked, but afterwards they say, ‘Wow. That was really adventurous and far-sighted of you.’

Silence.

MUM

I mean, I KNOW I did the right thing. And yes, things are tense at the moment, but they’ll get better. Of course Frank didn’t react well, of course he’s angry – what did I expect?

Silence.

MUM

Well, I didn’t expect it would be as bad as this. To be honest. But we’ll get through it.

Mum lifts her coffee cup, then puts it down without drinking.

MUM

The thing about being a parent, Audrey, is that it’s no picnic. You have to make difficult choices and you have to see them through. So yes, I’m finding Frank a little challenging right at the moment. But you know what? He’ll thank me one day.

Silence.

MUM

Well, he might thank me.

Silence.

MUM

OK, so the thanking is unlikely. But the point is, I’m a mother. Mothers don’t run away when things get tough.

Camera pans to Mum’s BlackBerry and focuses in on a Google search:

Mum hastily covers it with her hand.

MUM

That’s nothing.

So Frank’s basically not speaking any more. To anyone.

Actually, I quite like a silent Frank. It’s peaceful around the place. But it’s stressing Mum out. She even spoke to his teacher at school, who was, according to her, ‘Useless! Worse than useless! He said Frank seemed “fine” to him and we should “let him alone”. “Let him alone” – can you believe it?’ (I know this because I was outside Mum’s room while she was sounding off to Dad.)