Читать книгу Mrs Whippy - Cecelia Ahern - Страница 5

My sixteen-year-old, Brian, has taken to smoking pot in his bedroom. I’m not one of those snooping mothers that roots through her children’s things when they are at school. I don’t need to. He doesn’t hide his habit. He doesn’t care if I object. He doesn’t lock his door. He doesn’t even open his window. No amount of threats of being grounded can stop him. He’s sixteen. He’s taller than me, stronger than me and apparently knows better than me. So he does what he likes.

My youngest child’s name is Mark. He is five years old. Unfortunately, yesterday he was hiding under Brian’s bed. It’s a new habit of his. He appeared to have inhaled too much smoke. He wandered down to breakfast like a zombie in his Power Rangers pyjamas and cowboy boots. He was complaining that he had the munchies. His eyes were as wide as saucers. He had pupils like Charlie’s when he used to watch late-night porn.

Apart from becoming high every day from inhaling second-hand pot, he has now decided that breakfast, lunch and dinner must be eaten under the bed. Whenever we need to leave the house, it takes me twenty minutes to find which bed he has hidden under.

My eight-year-old, Vincent, has taken to not speaking. His school principal has called me into the school twice in two weeks because of his behaviour. But nobody can do anything to convince him to talk.

So I eat dinner practically alone every evening. Mark hides under the bed. Vincent doesn’t speak to me. Brian rarely comes home to eat dinner. There’s not much I can do about this, unfortunately. How can you drag someone into the house on time when you don’t know where they are? How can you force someone to speak? And how can you tell someone to stop hiding when you can’t find them?

And I’ve just realised that each of my boys has copied their father in some form or another.

My eldest son, Charlie Junior, has my heart broken too. He’s in prison. He has a sentence of four years for burglary. He’s been there for two years. My second eldest, Terry, went on one of those year-long world trips with a group of friends. That was three years ago. He has decided to settle in Thailand. He sends me an e-mail once a month. I don’t really know how to work e-mail, so I have to ask Brian to read it to me. He rarely does.

I try my hardest with the boys. I really, really do. I’m a good mother. I know I am. But I can’t seem to get through to them. There isn’t anyone around me to help. My husband refused to recognise his own bad behaviour during our married life. I doubt he has noticed his sons’ carry-on. Any time something was wrong, it was always my fault. He could never compromise. The only time we met in the middle was when we both rolled into the dip in the centre of our twenty-five-year-old bed. If my husband won’t listen to me, why on earth would the boys?

My dear mother died last month. My older brother has moved to Ohio. He’s opened an Irish store that sells Irish butter, sausages, bacon, chocolate bars, crisps and tea to the homesick Irish community. My very best friend, Susan, is a mother of four and married to a saint of a husband for twenty-five years. She has just begun an affair with the window cleaner. He is twelve years her junior. I feel I can’t talk to her any more.

I’m feeling very alone these days. Every day, as I sit on my twenty-five-year-old sofa, I begin to think that it and my life are very similar. It’s falling apart at the seams.