I do feel slightly sorry for him. I mean, he’s only just got in from his Friday night out with his golf mates. Probably had a fairly nice time, telling crappy work stories and then gets home to this. The thing that stops me from feeling fully sorry for him though is knowing that he married her – by choice of his own free will. She’s changed tack now, he must have agreed to do the chat thing so now she’s whining on about how he doesn’t understand her, how he hasn’t got the slightest clue what makes her tick. She must have had a glass of wine because her voice has got that horrible shrill quality to it; it’s like nails down a blackboard.
I wonder why he married her? I realise that he probably didn’t have women queuing up to go out with him and Mum is good looking but, Jesus, she’s annoying. And it’s not just the way she thinks she knows everything, including what’s best for everybody else, it’s much more than that. I can’t even put my finger on what it is I dislike most about her. I suppose it’s the full package. And I know she doesn’t like me. She’s constantly bandying words like ‘difficult’ or ‘challenging ‘ about and she doesn’t even care that I’m right there in front of her when she’s saying it.
One night, when dad was on a business trip, she had a friend round and as they got pissed, on ‘fizz’ as she so annoyingly calls it, I could hear her talking about me. It wasn’t even like I was trying to hear, Mum’s not exactly got a quiet voice and, after a few drinks, she may as well just use a megaphone. Anyway, she told her friend that I was an embarrassment, constantly slouching about like a serial killer in the making. She had that fake tone to her voice, the one that people use when they want other people to think that they know they’ve crossed some sort of line but it had to be said. She just kept saying over and over, “Where did I go wrong?” The next morning when she was fussing about in the kitchen, making a big show of having a hangover, I wanted to tell her exactly where she’d gone wrong. But I didn’t, I just looked at my little sister, Emily, and I could see that she knew as well and she’s only ten.
The irony is Mum thinks she’s a great mum. She comes to every parent’s evening and does that look with the teachers. You know that look that says I’ve done everything I can, what more can I do, so that the teachers feel sorry for her and are on her side. Not that it bothers me, teachers have never liked me. They enjoy using words like ‘difficult’ and ‘challenging’ as well. When the truth is I’m just bored, bored of the whole stupid game. All anybody keeps telling me is, I’ve got my GCSEs coming up and I need to be working hard but, I don’t care about stuff like that so what’s the point?
That’s all Mum cares about. She works in a hospital, she’s a nurse but she thinks she’s a doctor. In fact, she thinks she’s better than a doctor, she’s always going on about how thick doctors are, with no common sense and, if it wasn’t for nurses, the entire NHS would just collapse. She has this sneery attitude towards people with degrees and loves to point out how she went to the university of life. It’s pretty obvious though that the only people who ridicule qualifications are the ones who haven’t got any. And, if they don’t matter then why is she so obsessed about mine?
When I was younger, in primary school, she would constantly be telling people that I was gifted and I suppose I was cleverer than the other people in my class. She would tell everybody how I wanted to be a doctor even though I’d never said that but then, after awhile, I started saying it as well. I used to feel special when she complained that my teacher wasn’t challenging me and, walking home from school with her, I’d give her all the evidence she needed to prove that the teacher was thick. You know, like when she didn’t use a capital letter for the month or got her verb and noun spellings confused.
Everything changed though once I started secondary school. I realised that I wasn’t that special. I even made a couple of friends but of course Mum didn’t like them, especially Connor. He lives on the estate and Mum thinks his parents are unfit because they let him drink cider at the weekend. Anyway, by Year 9, the teachers no longer hated me because I was a superior little swot but because I was ‘underachieving’. I was given a mentor and everything but he isn’t even a teacher, just some random bloke. I think he’s maybe the person who chases up the kids who truant. I have to meet him once a week and he goes on about how I’m squandering my talent. Once when I asked him, “What talent?” he looked really confused, like I’d asked him something that wasn’t on his script. I think he’s probably a bit thick to be honest. Not that I’m judging or anything but it’s all a big, fat waste of time.
Once Mum sensed that she was losing her grip on me, I think she focused more of her attention on Emily. She’d always been involved, taking her to dance classes and stuff but it all got a bit more intense. She decided Emily was the creative one; she was going to be an actress or an artist. Emily joined this drama group and we all went to see her in The Secret Garden but it was shit and Em forgot all her lines. Emily didn’t want to do drama anymore after that but Mum said she had to. She said it was important to stick with things and show some commitment. I think she’s scared Em might turn out like me.
I can hear them coming up the stairs now, Mum still nagging at Dad. She’s started on the, he’s got to be a more involved father, theme. God, that means he’ll probably cancel his golf tomorrow and Mum will make us go on some terrible family day out. It’s like she’s trying to force us all into being this stupid, lame, perfect family. I hate her so much!