Читать книгу The Parent Agency - David Baddiel - Страница 20

The Head took out, from under his desk, a gold laptop. “So…” he said. “Let’s begin by having a quick look at the profiles…”

He opened the lid, pressed a button and then turned the laptop round so Barry could see the screen. On it, a series of pages, a little like Facebook ones, were flicking past in a slide show.

“These are the Parent Profiles,” said the Head. “Every prospective parent has to create one of these and send it in…”

Barry could see, as the pages went by, photographs of grown-ups smiling, mostly posing outside their houses. Some of them stood in front of trampolines, or swimming pools, or big collections of toys. Others in front of tables laden with delicious-looking food.

“Each one includes a short filmed message too…”

The Head clicked on a box on one of the pages. A couple in their front garden suddenly started moving. “Hello, I’m Sheila,” said the woman.

“And I’m Michael!” said the man, who was holding a guitar. “And this is our song about us!”

“And hopefully…” said the woman, pointing at camera, “you…”

Strum strum strum went Michael’s guitar. “We are the Radcliffes,” they sang cheerfully. “And we never have any bad tiffs! We like to go to parks and zoos. And our house…” At this point, they turned and gestured towards their front door. “…has seven loos!”

The Head clicked pause. “I don’t like them much,” said Barry.

“No,” said the Head, doing, by his standards, quite a small eyebrow-raise. “They seem a bit weird. But you get the general idea.”

The slide show carried on, each new page showing a new set of parents with their photos. Then a page came up on which the photo of the parents was really blurry. Barry couldn’t make out what these two looked like at all, although there was something familiar about them. But he didn’t have much time to think about it as the Head turned the laptop away from him.

“So,” said the Head. “That’s just a few of the couples on our books. There’s many more…”

“And,” said Secretary One, “as we said, if you let us know what you might want to do with each set of parents, we can inform them of your preferences.”

“Oh… right,” said Barry. This being a question that he didn’t quite know the answer to, he dug his hands in the pockets of his onesie. And felt, in the left-hand one, a piece of crumpled paper.

He took it out and unfolded it. It was the list of things that he blamed his parents for.

For a second, just seeing this familiar object made him feel homesick. But he put that feeling out of his mind quickly and looked at the list. It had suddenly become really useful.

The last item, Number 10 – the one about his parents never making his birthday any good – gave him an idea. “Well, it’s my birthday in five days’ time,” he said. “I was going to have a party. Maybe… maybe each set of parents could organise a… party?”

The Secretary Entity looked at each other, then at the Head.

“You want to have… five parties?” he said.

Barry nodded. The Head thought for a second, then shrugged and nodded back at The Secretary Entity. On their pads the Secretary Entity started writing down a word. It seemed to be the same word, beginning with G. Barry frowned. G, he saw, R, E, E, D and what looked like the start of a Y, when the Head spoke again.

“So, Barry. Perhaps if you could tell us what kind of parents you’d like to have…? Then we can begin.”

The Secretary Entity turned a leaf together and looked up at Barry expectantly.

“Uh…?” said Barry.

“Shoot,” said the Head.

“Shoot what?” said Barry.

“Say what sort of parents you’d like. In an ideal world. Which this is.”