Читать книгу Boys on the Brain - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 17

(3rd week)

Mum said to me over tea, “Harry and I have been invited to a party on Saturday.”

I said, “That’s nice.”

I know that Mum likes parties. She is a very sociable sort of person, which is one of the reasons I am such a huge disappointment to her. Mum really loves to be with a crowd! I just sort of shrivel. I am one of those people, if ever I go to a party (which mostly I don’t, because no one invites me) who end up standing in the corner with no one to talk to. It makes me feel very self-conscious. Like everyone’s looking at me thinking “Look at that boring girl standing in the corner.” I know that is what Cindy Williams and Tasha Lansmann would be thinking.

I don’t know why it is that I can’t behave the same as other people. Sometimes I really wish I could! I am sure it would make my life a whole lot easier, plus it would make Mum happy and stop her worrying over me. I hate it when she worries!

She started worrying this evening, about the party.

“I really don’t like leaving you on your own! Couldn’t you ask Charlie to come round? Ask her to stay the night!”

I will ask Pilch, as I think it would be quite fun; but as I said to Mum, “I’m fourteen. You don’t have to think you can’t go places, just because of me.”

“I sometimes feel so guilty,” said Mum. “I always seem to be out on the razzle!”

I told her that that was all right, she was obviously a razzling kind of person. I said, “It’s like having a teenager for a mother.”

Mum liked that. She laughed and said, “I still feel like a teenager!” And then she went all sort of regretful and said, “But it ought to be you going out, not me!”

I immediately thought, Oh, please! Don’t start!

She didn’t. Not exactly. She just launched into this speech about being a single mum and how difficult it sometimes was, knowing what to do for the best.

“What I desperately don’t want,” she said, “is to stop you going out and having fun.”

“I do have fun,” I said.

“Yes, but you know what I mean,” said Mum. “I feel you’re missing out on so much! And it bothers me that it might be my fault.”

I said, “It’s not your fault, and I’m not missing out, and in any case we are quite different people.”

Mum said, “Yes! I’m just a fun lover. You’re far more sensible!”

Even if I hadn’t been, she said, there was one thing she had always sworn, right from the beginning, and that was that she would never be an overprotective mother. She looked at me very solemnly as she said this.

“You don’t think I’m overprotective, do you? Tell me, Cresta! Tell me if you think I’m overprotective!”

I said, “No, Mum, I don’t think you’re overprotective.”

All the same, it is just as well, I can’t help feeling, that I keep my thoughts about Carlito under lock and key… Mum would probably have heart attacks if she knew what my imagination got up to!