The Parent Problem (14 page)

Aubrey replies straight away.

Thank goodness for my BFF.

I am soon engrossed in texting back and forth and telling Aubrey the whole sorry story. She is being really sympathetic and making me laugh with more emoticons and silly selfies. It feels good to be joking around with her again.

I have almost forgotten that I am stuck in the bathroom.

Until I hear voices again. A lot of voices. Oh my LIFE. They have brought Rob. I can hear his deep voice over everyone else’s.

This is it. I am going to have to face everyone laughing at me. May as well prepare myself.

I get up and put my phone on the shelf above the basin. I catch my reflection in the mirror and see I am looking stressed, so I rearrange my facial features into a suitably blank mask. Then I hear Rob saying he’ll soon have me out of there and there is some giggling and simpering, which must be Mum.

‘Hurray for Rob!’ shouts Harris.

Give me strength.

‘Stand back,’ Rob says in a fake action-hero-type voice. ‘We’re coming in.’

There is a rattle and a thud, followed by a loud grunt as Rob shoulders the door. It springs open with more speed than I am prepared for.

It all happens so fast, there is no time to think. No time to stop myself.

Rob hurtles towards me.

I cry out and topple backwards. I feel myself falling but I can’t stop the momentum. I am heading back towards the loo. I land on the seat with such force I fall back into it. Just my luck: the lid is up. I shriek as I feel my bottom sinks down. My arms flail up and my elbow catches on something painfully.

‘Ow!’

Before I know it, there is a flushing noise.

I have landed in the loo and flushed it at the same time. Genius. You couldn’t do it on purpose if you tried.

A crowd of laughing, grinning people bear down on me: Harris is holding his sides he is laughing so much; Finn is guffawing too, and stabbing at his phone; Rob is trying to look concerned, but his mouth is twitching and . . .

Aubrey’s here! Thank goodness. My best friend is here to save the day. She will make this all OK. She will give me a hug and we will get away from this nightmare.

Then I see she is frowning in concentration at
her
phone. She is not even looking at me.

I wriggle and try to get up while struggling to calm myself. Everyone is still laughing at me. I can’t speak. Thought after thought rushes into my head: Why isn’t Aubrey rushing to help me? Who is she texting now? It can’t be me. Why is she here? How did she even get here so fast if she was shopping?

And then a chilling thought rushes in to override all the others: Maybe she wasn’t shopping at all, in which case – has she been lying to me again?

Aubrey stuffs her phone in her pocket and makes a move towards me. As she does, I watch her rearrange her features into an exaggerated expression of pity.

‘Aww, poor you,’ she coos. ‘It must have been soooo traumatic, getting locked in!’ She offers me a hand. ‘Let me help you.’

She pulls me rather too hard and I topple forward, water dripping off me. My jeans are soaked.

‘Please,’ I whisper. ‘Get me out of here!’

Aubrey’s eyes narrow. ‘Not just yet,’ she says through her smile (which has soured considerably now that no one else can see her face).

She raises her voice for the benefit of everyone else: ‘Let me get you a towel,’ she says.

‘I – I’m fine,’ I gasp, pushing at her to let me go.

‘How did you know to come and help, Aubrey?’ Mum asks.

‘Oh, Skye texted me,’ Aubrey says, before I have a chance to speak.

Finn does his irritating-snigger thing that seems to be his default setting. ‘Texting from the toilet?’ he says. ‘Smooth.’

Aubrey rolls her eyes and gives Finn a sugary smile. ‘I know,’ she says.

Harris bellows with laughter. ‘She takes her phone EVERYWHERE!’ he says. ‘I bet she even texts while she is actually wiping her bum!’

Mum smirks and rearranges her features unconvincingly to say, ‘Harris, that’s not nice.’

I take in her pink-and-purple satin ballgown and matching tiara and a little part of me dies inside. This whole scene is like something out of a weird circus act, and Finn and Aubrey have ringside seats.

Any more mortifying moments you would like to throw at me, Universe? I think, as I watch them smirk and exchange knowing looks.

‘Great. The freak show is over, you can all go home,’ I mutter.

Mum clears her throat. ‘Skye, dear,’ she says, ‘you could at least say thank you to Rob – and Aubrey.’

‘Thank you, Rob,’ I say. I cannot bring myself to look at him. At anyone.

‘No worries,’ he says. ‘I – er – I’m really sorry you fell . . . I didn’t think the door would be that flimsy.’

‘You don’t know your own strength!’ Mum says, nudging Rob’s arm.

‘Yeah, Rob is really, really STRONG!’ Harris says. He bounces up and down in delight. ‘I reckon he could even lift you up, Mum. Like in those dances—’

Mum cuts him off with a fake laugh and says brightly, ‘Go and get changed, Skye. I’ll make everyone a nice cup of tea, shall I?’

Oh yes, great idea, I think, as I slip off to my room. Cos that’s what all normal people do when their daughter has just flushed herself down the loo in public: hold a tea party. Why don’t we crack open the bubbly while we’re at it and have a full-on celebration?

I want to stay in my room once I’m changed, but I know Mum will only come and find me and tell me off for being antisocial. Or worse, Aubrey will come and find me and have a go at me. She looked so angry when she ‘helped’ me to get up. I shall just have to keep my head down so that I don’t have to look at anyone.

I sneak quietly into the kitchen while everyone is chatting. Mum is fussing with the kettle, mugs and tea bags and laughing and enjoying herself like a hostess at a ball. (She probably thinks she
is
at a ball, dressed like that.)

Why can’t everyone just leave?

Harris is so excited by the turn events have taken that he is now running round the table, still covered in silver foil, with Pongo, who has lost most of his foil by now.

Mum catches him as he goes past and says in a low voice, ‘That’s enough, sausage. And although your outfit is very – er – imaginative, can you take it off? It’s rather loud and rustly.’

Rob laughs. ‘What you are, Harris? A spaceman?’

That’s right, let’s all talk about Harris and then I can go back upstairs unnoticed and we can all forget about my latest performance on The Clumsy Klutz Show.

‘No, I’m a dancer,’ says Harris, beaming and giving a pirouette for good measure.

‘Ah,’ says Rob. ‘Nice one.’

Finn ruffles Harris’s hair. ‘Harris is dancing with his mum, aren’t you, mate?’

‘Yeah!’ says Harris. ‘Mum’s entering a competition and I’ve said I will help.’ He peels off a strip of silver foil and says, ‘I need to think about the music she will use. Can you help me choose, Finn?’

‘I’m sure Finn would be great at that,’ says Aubrey. She does the whole dipping-head-fluttering-eyelashes routine. ‘He’s an awesome musician.’

Finn frowns. ‘Nah. Not really.’

‘Don’t be so modest, Finn,’ says Rob. ‘Finn’s learning the drums,’ he says to Mum. ‘Hopefully you won’t be disturbed for long,’ he adds hastily. ‘I’m soundproofing the garage, but the drums are in the back room for now.’

‘Amazing!’ says Mum. She looks as thrilled as if Rob has announced that he has found a cure for cancer.

Rob is blushing now. ‘Not really. I’m a builder by trade, you see. Well, more of a site manager these days. That is why we moved here – new job, you see.’

Great. So we are all going to drink tea and make small talk while I die of embarrassment and my brother prances around dressed in tinfoil.

I try to catch Aubrey’s eye but she is too busy staring at Finn while he wrestles with Harris and Pongo. Surely she can see this is all a nightmare? Has she changed that much that she would rather watch a boy she doesn’t know roll around with my brother than talk to me, her best friend?

I sidle up to her. She pretends she hasn’t noticed and sips her tea, keeping her eyes averted from mine.

‘So,’ I say quietly. ‘I, er, I thought you were out shopping with Cora and your mum today?’ Great opening line, Skye.

‘Yes,’ says Aubrey. She puts a lot of meaning into that one small word. ‘I bet you did,’ she says, through gritted teeth. ‘Which is why you have
him
round –’ she nods her head at Finn – ‘without telling me!’

‘What?’ A fluttering starts up in my chest. ‘You don’t think – surely you don’t think I
asked
him round?’

She turns and looks at me, one eyebrow arched. ‘All I know is, you are always making promises you don’t keep,’ she says.

‘So,’ says Mum, clapping her hands together. ‘Seeing as we’re getting along so well, how about I make us all some lunch?’

Aubrey sends me a barrage of texts after she leaves while I remain hunkered down in my room. Most of them are along the lines of: