The Parent Agency. David Baddiel

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СКАЧАТЬ this isn’t even the proper Casino Royale!”

      His dad frowned. “It isn’t?”

      “No.” Barry turned it round, reading off the back. “‘An all-star cast spoof the James Bond films in this hilarious 1960s comedy!! 007 has never been so funny!’ It’s a joke version! It makes fun of the whole thing!”

      “Oh, Geoff,” said Barry’s mum. “You haven’t gone and got the one with David Niven in it?”

      “I don’t know, Susan! I just went for the cheaper one on Amazon!”

      “Da—” said Barry, and then realised he’d started to do the two-syllable thing again. Seeing The Sisterly Entity looking at him eagerly, as if willing him to do it, Barry made a fatal mistake. Which was to just repeat the first syllable again.

      “…Da,” he said.

      “I beg your pardon?” said TSE One, grinning madly. “Did you say… Da-Da?”

      “I think he did, Ginny!” said TSE Two. “He said Da-Da. Like a baby. Like a baby trying to say its first words. To its da-da!”

      “I didn’t! I didn’t! Shut up shut up shut up!”

      “Barry, don’t tell your sisters to shut up!” said his mum sharply. Still no sign of her head above the dishwasher, though.

      “Does Diddums want his dummy from his da-da!?”

      “Or does he want Da-Da to change his Nap-Nap?!”

      “OK, Ginny. Kay. That’s enough,” said Geoff, although not very strictly, and like he was trying not to smile. “But Barry, that’s enough complaining too.”

      “No it isn’t! I hate you!”

      “Oh, do you?”

      “Yes! And Mum!”

      And suddenly a feeling that had been welling up inside Barry for… well, since his dad had closed the door on Jake and Taj and Lukas just before tea, but in another way for much longer than that, maybe ever since he’d understood that, unfortunately, his name was Barry – a feeling that he wanted to both cry and shout and break something all at the same time – exploded out of him.

      “I hate you because you’re boring! And tired ALL THE TIME! And always TELLING ME OFF FOR NOTHING! And saying, ‘That’s a swear,’ when all I’ve done is say BUM!”

      “Barry. That’s a swear!” said his mum.

      “NO IT ISN’T! And because you’re so much nicer to THEM…” He pointed at TSE. They both grinned at the same time. “…than to ME! And because…” Barry realised by now that he was doing the list in his bedroom. He decided to miss out Numbers 8 and 9 – ‘Not being glamorous’ and ‘Being poor’ – since even in his rage he knew that they might just sound a bit too horrible out loud. Especially as loud as he was speaking now. “And… YOU NEVER, EVER MAKE MY BIRTHDAY REALLY GOOD!!”

      There was a short pause after he shouted this. Then Sisterly Entity One said:

      “Write that down, Ginny.”

      “I’m writing it down, Kay.”

      “Right,” said Barry’s dad. “Well, if that’s how you feel, we won’t have a screening of Casino Royale on your birthday!”

      “GREAT!” shouted Barry and he threw the DVD across the room. It spun round in the air as it made its way towards the sink area. Barry was secretly quite proud of the throw; his wrist had flicked sharply as he’d released the disc, like an Olympic discus champion.

      “BARRY!!” his dad shouted. So loudly that, for the first time this dinner time, Barry’s mum looked up from the dishwasher. Just in time to be hit in the eye by a copy of Casino Royale, starring David Niven.

      “OW!” she said, falling backwards and out of sight again. Barry heard a bump; then one of the egg timers, the red one, fell off the kitchen counter and smashed.

      Uh-oh, he thought.

      “RIGHT, BARRY, THAT’S IT! GO TO YOUR ROOM!” said his dad, pointing upstairs – stupidly, really, as Barry knew the way.

      “ALL RIGHT I WILL!” Barry shouted back. And because he was a little frightened by now, he ran out of the kitchen as fast as he could, swerving at the last minute to avoid the bits of glass and sand from the egg timer which were sprinkled all over the floor.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Barry lay in his bed, fuming. He’d gone straight to his room, without cleaning his teeth or anything, and slammed the door. But it had just come back at him as his door didn’t really shut properly unless you closed it carefully, jiggling the handle up as you did it. So he’d had to do that after his slam, which felt completely at odds with a show of rage.

      He lay there in his onesie – a zebra one, with ears and a tail, which was too big for him because it had been passed down from Lukas – and stared at his room. His head hurt. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he’d read in another part of the Sunday Express once that stress brought on headaches, and he knew that he was very stressed at the moment.

      It wasn’t that easy to sleep in his room at the best of times as the Bennetts lived on a main road called the A41, and Barry’s room faced it. The Sisterly Entity had, of course, been given the quieter room at the back facing the garden, which was BIGGER as well: some rubbish about them needing to have the bigger room because there were two of them. Barry did not recognise this.

      As each vehicle went past, it would light up a different section of Barry’s room, depending on which way it was going.

      A car driving down the road would light up his wardrobe, or DEJN NORDESBRUKK as it had been called in IKEA.

      A car driving up the road would illuminate the ceiling and the browny-yellow patch of damp immediately above Barry’s bed, which he sometimes pretended was a map of Russia that he had to study for a secret mission.

      A car turning into the road from the other side would throw a sweep of white light across the far wall, which had a James Bond poster on it – Daniel Craig in a tuxedo – and another poster, of FC Barcelona, which was a couple of years out of date but still had Lionel Messi sitting in the front row. Barry had always liked the way that both of his heroes stared out of the posters with intense eyes: Lionel like he was ready to go and beat eleven players single-handedly and score with a back-heel chip, and James Bond like he was ready to kill someone.

      Every so often, his bed would shake as a lorry went by.

      But today he wasn’t trying to get to sleep anyway. He was too angry. And he knew that, if he went to sleep, by tomorrow the argument would all be forgotten about, and he didn’t want that. He had meant it. In his anger, he had come to a deep and important realisation: his parents just weren’t very good parents. It made him sad to have this thought – his tummy fell as the words appeared in his mind, like it sometimes did when he was scared – but another part СКАЧАТЬ