The More You Ignore Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked,
panicked, around the small garden.
    A
strange moaning noise from the top of the house distracted her and she turned
to see her mother sitting naked on top of the roof, holding aloft the
aforementioned Smelly and crooning a song with which Alice was unfamiliar.
    ‘Mum,’
she called. ‘Why are you on the roof with no clothes on?’
    This
perfectly reasonable question was greeted with a string of random words which
Alice didn’t understand and she thought she’d better call her father. Sucking
her thumb, as she did when the world presented an insurmountable problem, she
climbed the stairs to her parents’ bedroom and gently shook her dad. He opened
his eyes.
    ‘Hello,
sweetheart,’ he said, his voice thick with sleep. ‘Everything OK?’
    ‘I
think so,’ said Alice, because at this point no one had fallen or died. ‘But
Smelly and Mum are on the roof and Mum’s got no clothes on.’
    Keith,
still half in his dreaming state, laughed.
    ‘Alice,’
he said, ‘what a daft thing to say Come on, let’s get you and Mum some
breakfast.’
    ‘But
how are we going to get Mum and Smelly down for breakfast?’
    Keith
sat up in bed. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
    ‘I
think he’s too busy to get Mum and Smelly down,’ said Alice.
    Keith
threw the bedcovers back and ran downstairs and out into the garden, the last
few blissful seconds of half sleep tearing away from his brain and catapulting
him into the familiar waking nightmare of his wife’s deteriorating mental
state.
    Sure
enough, there was Gina, on the roof holding the guinea pig — minus her clothes.
    ‘Go
away,’ she screamed at him. ‘I don’t want you, I want little Teddy Fairfax.’
    The
possibility of luring the local news programme’s best-loved weather forecaster
down to their scruffy cottage seemed unlikely and Keith found himself shifting
into the most banal of communications to try and resolve this farcical
scenario.
    ‘Come
down for breakfast and we’ll talk about it, love. ‘He tried to say this as if
his wife wasn’t sitting naked on the roof clutching the family pet.
    ‘Mum, I
want Smelly!’ shouted Alice and began to cry, realising that even for her
unpredictable mother this was most unusual.
    ‘Smelly’s
my present for Teddy,’ she called back, ‘to show him I truly love him.’
    By this
point Smelly had set up a fearful squeaking and was wriggling dangerously in
Gina’s hands.
    ‘Come
on, love,’ said Keith. ‘Poor old Smelly’s scared. Let him come down and we’ll
clean him up a bit and feed him. We couldn’t give him as a present to anyone in
that state.’ Keith realised with some surprise that he was as concerned for
Smelly’s safety as Gina’s.
    Gina turned
Smelly to examine him as if he was a piece of old rag.
    ‘All
right,’ she said. ‘Here you go,’ and she rolled Smelly from the top of the roof
down towards Keith.
    Alice
squealed with delight. Not realising the consequences of Smelly hitting the
ground at some considerable speed, this was the funniest thing she’d seen for
ages, her rotating pet heading earthwards, a bit like when she rolled down the
top meadow in summer, gathering speed until, hysterical with laughter, she
landed in a heap at the bottom.
    ‘Fuck!’
Keith braced himself for the most important catch of his life.
    Smelly
dropped off the bottom of the roof and landed in Keith’s large and capable
hands. Alice clapped with joy and gently relieved Keith of the luckiest guinea
pig in Herefordshire.
    ‘Take
Smelly inside,’ said Keith, ‘and I’ll talk to Mum.’
    Alice,
only too happy not to be caught up in the naked-mum-on-the-roof-drama any
more, disappeared inside the cottage while Keith came at the problem from
another direction.
    ‘Gina,
come down and I’ll drive you to Hereford to see Teddy,’ he called.
    ‘I
don’t believe you,’ she shouted back, clinging to some vestige of sanity.
‘You’re just saying that to make me come down.’
    Never
had Keith felt such a strong