Читать книгу ‘It’s OK, I’m wearing really big knickers!’ - Louise Rennison - Страница 15

Phone rang.

Mum yelled up at me, “Gee, will you get that, love? I’m in the bath.”

I yelled back, “You can wash the outside clean, but you can’t wash the inside!”

She yelled again, “Georgia!!!”

Dragged myself up from my bed of pain and went all the way downstairs and picked up the phone.

“I said, “Hello, Heartbreak Hotel here,” and all I could hear was just crackle, crackle, surf, swish, swish. So I shouted really loudly, “HELLO, HELLO, HELLO!!!!” and this faraway voice said, “Bloody hell!”

It was my father, or Vati as I call him. Phoning from New Zealand. He was, as usual, in a bad mood for no reason.

“Why did you shout down the phone? My ears are all ringing now.”

I said, reasonably enough, “Because you didn’t say anything.”

“I did, I said hello.”

“Well I didn’t hear you.”

“Well you can’t have been listening properly.”

“How can I not listen properly when I am answering the phone?”

“I don’t know, but if anyone can manage it, you can.”

Oh, play the old record again, it’s always me that does things wrong. I said, “Mum’s in the bath.”

He said, “Just a minute, don’t you want to know how I am?”

“Er, let me guess…funny moustache, bit bulky round the bottom department?”

“Don’t be so bloody cheeky! Get your mum. I give up on you. I don’t know what you learn at that school besides how to put on lipstick and be cheeky.”

I put the phone down because he can grumble on like that for centuries if you let him. I shouted, “Mutti, there is a man on the phone. He claims to be my dear vati but I don’t think he is because he was quite surly with me.”

Mum came out of the bathroom with her hair all wet and dripping and in just a bra and pants. She really has got the most gigantic basoomas, I’m surprised she doesn’t topple over. Good Lord.

I said, “I am at a very impressionable age, you know.”

She just gave me her worst look and grabbed the phone. As I went through the door I could hear her saying, “Hello, darling. What? I know. Oh I know. You needn’t tell me that…I have her all the time. It’s a nightmare.”

That’s nice talk, isn’t it?

As I point out to anyone who will listen (i.e. no one), I didn’t ask to be born. I am only here because she and Vati…urgh…anyway, I won’t go down that road.