The Parent Problem Read Online Free PDF Page B

her head and goes next door to her bedroom to answer it.
    ‘Oh, hellooooo, Milly!’ I hear her say in her talking-to-batty-old-cat-people voice. ‘Awwwww. Awwwwww. Really? Awwwwwww, noooo! That
is
a shame.’
    What’s this, I wonder? Sounds as though there’s a problem. Most likely a cat-related one, as Milly only ever talks about her cats. But why is she phoning to tell Mum when she was supposed to be coming round here in a bit to ‘babysit’ me and Harris?
    Mum comes back into my room. She is frowning and her face has gone pink. ‘That was Milly,’ she says.
    ‘Yes,’ says Harris. ‘We heard you say “Hello, Milly”. Then we heard you say “Awwwww” a lot of times. What’s wrong?’
    Mum sighed. ‘She can’t babysit because Fluffball, or whatever his name is, has got a poorly tummy so she has to take him to the emergency vet clinic.’
    ‘Oh no!’ Harris cries. ‘Not Fluffball! He’s the white one with the pink nose and the black splodge on his tail.’
    ‘You mean the one that’s so fat and so fluffy that he looks like a huge ball of fluff?’ I add.
    Mum and Harris look at me as though I am the idiot. ‘Obviously,’ they say in unison.
    ‘So I guess this means I can’t go ballroom dancing,’ Mum says. She pulls at her swishy skirt and stares down at her shoes.
    At this, I feel even more sorry for her than I did when was thinking about her wearing second-hand clothes. She looks likes Cinderella being told she can’t go to the ball: she must have been looking forward to this evening more than I had thought.
    Then I remember what Aubrey said about babysitting earlier.
    ‘I could babysit instead,’ I say, beaming. ‘I am nearly thirteen, after all. It’s Harris that needs the babysitting, not me. And it’s not as if Milly ever does anything when she comes round. She just spends all evening trying to get Gollum to sit on her lap and eats all the best biscuits and tells Harris what a lovely boy he is and makes me go to bed at eight o’clock.’
    Mum looks at me with a thoughtful expression. ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘I don’t know, Skye, you are still very young. What if you and Harris started fighting?’
    ‘Of course we won’t fight. If you
pay
me to be a responsible babysitter, I will do the job to perfection.’ I say.
    I watch Mum’s mouth twitch into a smile.
    Was it cheeky of me to ask to be paid? So what? If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
    ‘PAY YOU?’ Mum explodes into laughter. ‘You must be joking!’
    Turns out you still don’t get, even if you do ask.
    ‘But you would have been paying Milly—!’ I begin.
    Mum holds up a hand to stop me and I can see that babysitting money slipping through my fingers when . . .
    BRRRIIING!
    The doorbell goes.
    Mum fixes me with a patronizing look and says, ‘Looks like I’ve been saved by the bell. Good try, Skye.’

Mum goes down to answer the door, her skirt billowing out behind her like a ship in full sail. I can see through the wobbly glass that there are two people standing outside. Which means that two random people are about to see my mum in a too-tight sequinned top and a shiny purple skirt. Which means I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole.
    Mum opens the door, and for a moment she is blocking my view, so all I can see is the top of a man’s head.
    ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing anything . . .’
    ‘Oh no!’ Mum says. Her voice is high-pitched and ultra-cheery.
    No, you’re not disturbing us, I think. This is just a regular evening in our looney-tune household.
    ‘Right, er . . .’ I can sense the man taking in Mum’s outfit. I am torn between wanting to creep up the stairs to see who he is and wishing that I had my own Invisibility Cloak so that I cannot be seen to be linked to Mum in any shape or form.
    Mum gives a little giggle. ‘So, do you want to come in?’ she asks him.
    WHAT? She is asking a strange man into our house and she doesn’t CARE that she looks like a bag of