Mum brings me soup and sits on my bed and strokes my hand.

‘It’s too soon,’ she says. ‘Too soon. These doctors get carried away. You’ll get there in your own time.’

My own time, I think after she’s gone. What’s that? What’s Audrey time? Right now it feels like a slow-motion pendulum. It’s lurching forwards and back, forwards and back, but the clock’s not ticking round. I’m not getting anywhere.




And then three days have passed and the darkness has lifted and I’m out of bed, having an argument with Frank.

‘Those were my Shreddies. I always eat Shreddies. You know that.’

‘No you don’t,’ I say, to be annoying. ‘Sometimes you eat pancakes.’

Frank looks like he might spontaneously combust. ‘I eat pancakes when Mum makes pancakes. When she doesn’t, I eat Shreddies. Every morning for the last five years. Ten years. And you just go and finish the packet.’

‘Have muesli.’

‘Muesli?’ He looks so aghast at the idea, I want to giggle. ‘Like raisins and shit?’

‘It’s healthy.’

‘You don’t even like Shreddies,’ he says accusingly. ‘Do you? You only took them to wind me up.’

‘They’re OK.’ I shrug. ‘Not as good as muesli.’

‘I give up.’ Frank rests his head on his hands. ‘You’re just trying to ruin my life.’ He shoots me a dark look. ‘I preferred you lying in bed.’

‘Well, I preferred you plugged into a computer,’ I shoot back. ‘You were much less of a pain when we never saw you.’

‘Frank!’ As Mum bursts into the kitchen, holding Felix on one hip, she looks shocked at the sight of him, collapsed on the table. ‘Sweetheart. Are you OK?’

‘Shreddies!’ Felix yells as soon as he sees my bowl. ‘I want Shreddies! Please,’ he adds sweetly as he slithers down from Mum. ‘Please may I.’

‘Here you are.’ I pass the bowl to Felix. ‘You just had to ask nicely,’ I inform Frank. ‘Try learning from your brother.’

Frank doesn’t move a muscle. Mum comes over and prods him.

‘Frank? Darling? Can you hear me?’

‘I’m fine.’ At last he lifts his head, looking wan and pale. ‘Tired.’

Now that I look at him, he does have black shadows under his eyes. ‘I think I’ve been overdoing it,’ he says weakly. ‘Homework and everything.’

‘Are you sleeping well?’ Mum peers at him anxiously. ‘You teenagers need sleep. You should be sleeping fourteen hours a night.’

‘Fourteen hours?’ We both stare at her.

‘Mum, even comatose people don’t sleep fourteen hours a night,’ says Frank.

‘Ten hours, then,’ she amends. ‘Something. I’ll look it up. Are you taking vitamins?’

Mum starts randomly pulling vitamin bottles out of the cupboard. TeenVit, KidVit, Well Woman, Osteocare . . . I mean, it’s a joke. None of us ever takes them.

‘Here.’ She plonks about ten capsules in front of Frank and another load in front of me. ‘Felix, sweetheart, come and have some magnesium.’

‘Don’t want nesium!’ he yells, and hides under the kitchen table. ‘No nesium!’ He clamps his hands over his mouth.

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Mum swallows the magnesium pill herself, and sprays herself with something called Skin Enhancer, which has been sitting in the kitchen cupboard for three years, I know for a fact.

‘You need some iron,’ she adds to Frank. ‘And an early night. I’ve got a DVD planned for this evening, which we can all watch, and then straight to bed.’

‘That sounds super-fun,’ says Frank, staring blankly into the middle distance.

‘It’s a classic,’ adds Mum. ‘Dickens.’

‘Dickens. Right.’ Frank shrugs, like, Who cares?

‘At least we’ve got you off those wretched computer games!’ says Mum, sounding a bit too bright. ‘It just shows, you don’t need to play them, do you? I mean, you’ve barely noticed, have you?’

‘Barely noticed?’ Frank finally lifts his gaze to meet hers. ‘Barely noticed? Are you joking? Barely noticed?’

‘Well, it’s not like you’re counting down the days until—’

Mum stops abruptly as Frank lifts his sleeve to reveal a digital watch strapped to his arm.

‘Sixty-one hours, thirty-four minutes, twenty-seven seconds till the ban is lifted,’ he says tonelessly. ‘I’m not just counting down, all my friends are counting down. So yes, Mum, I have “noticed”.’

Frank can be pretty sarcastic when he wants, and I see two little red spots appear on Mum’s cheeks.

‘Well, I don’t care!’ she snaps. ‘Tonight we’re all going to watch Great Expectations, as a family, and believe it or not, Frank, you’ll be amazed. You children think you know it all, but Dickens was one of the greatest story-tellers ever, and you will be blown away by this film.’

As she strides off again, Frank slumps down further on the kitchen table.

‘You are so lucky,’ he says indistinctly. ‘No one’s on your case. You can do what the hell you like.’

‘I can’t do what the hell I like!’ I say defensively. ‘I have to do this documentary the whole time. And now I’m supposed to go to Starbucks.’

‘Why Starbucks?’

‘Dunno. Starbucks therapy. Whatever.’

‘Right.’ Frank sounds supremely uninterested. But then, all of a sudden, he sits up. ‘Hey. Can you tell your therapist you’ll be cured if you attend this year’s European Gaming Expo in Munich and you have to take your brother?’

‘No.’

‘Phhhmph.’ Frank subsides onto the table again. Mum’s right, he does look rough.

‘You can have these.’ I give him the last remaining dregs of Shreddies, which Felix has abandoned.

‘Yeah, right. Soggy, third-hand Shreddies covered in Felix dribble. Thanks, Audrey.’ Franks gives me a death stare.

Then, a moment later, he reaches for a spoon and starts shovelling them in.


MY SERENE AND LOVING FAMILY – FILM TRANSCRIPT

INT. 5 ROSEWOOD CLOSE. DAY

Camera pans around the living room. It is in semi-darkness. Mum is gazing raptly at the TV. Dad is surreptitiously on his BlackBerry. Frank is staring at the ceiling.

Music crashes from the TV. The camera pans to the TV screen. Black-and-white writing reads ‘The End’.

MUM

There! Wasn’t that amazing? Wasn’t it just the most gripping story?

FRANK

It was all right.

MUM

‘All right’? Darling, it was DICKENS.

FRANK

(patiently)

Yeah. It was Dickens and it was all right.

MUM

Well, it was better than one of your inane computer games, you have to admit that.

FRANK

No it wasn’t.

MUM

Of course it was.

FRANK

It wasn’t.

MUM

(erupts)

Are you telling me that your ridiculous games can compete with a classic Dickens story? I mean, take the characters! Take Magwitch! Magwitch is unique!

FRANK

(unimpressed)

Yeah, there’s a Magwitch character in LOC too. Only he has, like, a better backstory than the Dickens one. He’s a convict, the same, but he can help any competitor.

AUDREY (VOICE-OVER)

He transfers powers.

FRANK

Except the competitor has to take on one of his crimes and pay the penalty—

AUDREY (V.O.)

Exactly. So you have to choose which power structure to go in at. And—

FRANK

Shut up, Aud! I’m explaining. Except you don’t know which penalty you’ve got till they make the choice. So it’s like a gamble, only the more you play, the more you can work it out. It’s awesome.

Mum is looking from Frank to Audrey and back again, in total bafflement.

MUM

OK, this makes no sense to me. None. What power structures? What is that?

FRANK

If you played, you’d find out.

AUDREY (V.O.)

Magwitch is a pretty amazing character.

MUM

Exactly! Thank you.

A slight pause.

MUM

The Dickens Magwitch or the LOC Magwitch?

AUDREY (V.O.)

The LOC Magwitch, of course.

FRANK

The Dickens one is just a bit . . .

MUM

(sharply)

What? What’s wrong with the Dickens Magwitch? What could be wrong with one of the great literary characters of our time?

FRANK

He’s less interesting.

AUDREY (V.O.)

Exactly.

FRANK

Two-dimensional.

AUDREY (V.O.)

I mean, he doesn’t DO anything.

FRANK

(kindly)

No offence. I’m sure Dickens was a great guy.

MUM

(to DAD)

Are you hearing this?




Mum’s been pissed off with us ever since Dickensgate. She made us tidy our rooms today, which hardly ever happens, and she found a cheeseburger in Frank’s room and it all kicked off.

I don’t mean a cheeseburger carton, I mean an actual cheeseburger. He’d taken about two bites and put it back into the box and left it on the floor, like, weeks ago. It was buried under a pile of rank sports kit. The weird thing is, the cheeseburger didn’t moulder. It kind of fossilized. It was pretty gross.

Mum started on the hugest lecture about rats and vermin and hygiene, but Frank waved her away and said, ‘I have to go, Mum – Linus is, like, a minute away. You always say we have to be polite to guests and greet them.’ He stomped downstairs and I felt a bit swoopy in my stomach.

Linus again. I didn’t think we’d be seeing so much of Linus while Frank was banned from computers.

Mum obviously thought the same thing, because she looked a bit thrown and called down the stairs, ‘He does know about your computer ban, doesn’t he?’ and Frank said impatiently, ‘Of course.’ Then he added, as he swung round into the hall, ‘But Linus can play LOC on my computer while he’s here, can’t he?’

Mum looked a bit flummoxed. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. A moment later she was heading off to her bedroom, saying, ‘Chris? Chris, what do you think of this?’