This time, though, I don’t think Mum or Dad have even heard Rob’s oh-so-witty joke. Mum is still moaning, ‘Where did I go wroooong?’ and Dad is peering at her anxiously.
‘You didn’t go wrong!’ he calls up. ‘Nothing’s wrong! Darling, come down and have a drink. Put the computer down . . . for now,’ he adds hastily at her expression. ‘You can throw it out of the window later.’
Mum doesn’t move an inch. The computer is rocking still more precariously on the windowsill and Dad flinches. ‘Sweetheart, I’m just thinking about the car . . . We’ve only just paid it off . . .’ He moves towards the car and holds out his hands, as though to shield it from plummeting hardware.
‘Get a blanket!’ says Ollie, springing into life. ‘Save the computer! We need a blanket. We’ll form a circle . . .’
Mum doesn’t even seem to hear him. ‘I breastfed you!’ she shrieks at Frank. ‘I read you Winnie-the-Pooh! All I wanted was a well-rounded son who would be interested in books and art and the outdoors and museums and maybe a competitive sport—’
‘LOC is a competitive sport!’ yells Frank. ‘You don’t know anything about it! It’s a serious thing! You know, the prize pot in the international LOC competition in Toronto this year is six million dollars!’
‘So you keep telling us!’ Mum erupts. ‘So, what, you’re going to win that, are you? Make your fortune?’
‘Maybe.’ He gives her a dark look. ‘If I get enough practice.’
‘Frank, get real!’ Her voice echoes around the close, shrill and almost scary. ‘You’re not entering the international LOC competition, you’re not going to win the bloody six-million-dollar prize pot, and you’re not going to make your living from gaming! IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!’
A month earlier
It all begins with the Daily Mail. Quite a lot of things in our house begin with the Daily Mail.
Mum starts twitching in that way she does. We’ve had supper and cleared away and she’s been reading the paper with a glass of wine – ‘Me time’, she calls it – and she’s paused at an article. I can see the headline over her shoulder:
THE EIGHT SIGNS YOUR CHILD IS ADDICTED TO COMPUTER GAMES.
‘Oh my God,’ I hear her murmur. ‘Oh my God.’ Her finger is moving down the list and she’s breathing fast. As I squint over, I catch a sub-heading:
7. Irritability and moodiness.
Ha. Ha ha.
That’s my hollow laugh, in case you didn’t get that.
I mean, seriously, moodiness? Like, James Dean was a moody teenager in Rebel Without a Cause (I have the poster – best film poster ever, best movie ever, sexiest movie star ever – why, why, why did he have to die?). So James Dean must therefore have been addicted to video games? Oh, wait.
Exactly.
But there’s no point saying any of this to my mum, because it’s logical and my mum doesn’t believe in logic, she believes in horoscopes and green tea. Oh, and of course the Daily Mail.
THE EIGHT SIGNS MY MUM IS ADDICTED TO THE DAILY MAIL:
She reads it every day.
She believes everything it says.
If you try to take it out of her grasp, she pulls it back sharply and says ‘Leave it!’ like you’re trying to kidnap her precious young.
When it runs a scare story about Vitamin D she makes us all take our shirts off and ‘sunbathe’. (Freeze-bathe more like.)
When it runs a scare story about melanoma she makes us all put on sunscreen.
When it runs a story about ‘The face cream that really DOES work’, she orders it that moment. Like, she gets out her iPad then and there.
If she can’t get it on holiday, she gets major withdrawal symptoms. I mean, talk about irritability and moodiness.
She once tried to give it up for Lent. She lasted half a morning.
Anyway. There’s nothing I can do about my mum’s tragic dependency except hope that she doesn’t do too much damage to her life. (She’s already done major damage to our living room, after reading an ‘Interiors’ piece – ‘Why not handpaint all your furniture?’)
So then Frank ambles into the kitchen, wearing his black I MOD, THEREFORE I AM T-shirt, his earphones in and his phone in his hand. Mum lowers the Daily Mail and stares at him as though the scales have fallen from her eyes.
(I’ve never understood that. Scales?
Anyway. Whatever.)
‘Frank,’ she says. ‘How many hours have you played your computer games this week?’
‘Define computer games,’ Frank says, without looking up from his phone.
‘What?’ Mum looks at me uncertainly, and I shrug. ‘You know. Computer games. How many hours? FRANK!’ she yells as he makes no move to respond. ‘How many hours? Take those things out of your ears!’
‘What?’ says Frank, taking his earphones out. He blinks at her as though he didn’t hear the question. ‘Is this important?’
‘Yes, this is important!’ Mum spits. ‘I want you to tell me how many hours you’re spending per week playing computer games. Right now. Add it up.’
‘I can’t,’ says Frank calmly.
‘You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t?’
‘I don’t know what you’re referring to,’ says Frank, with elaborate patience. ‘Do you mean literally computer games? Or do you mean all screen games, including Xbox and PlayStation? Do you include games on my phone? Define your terms.’
Frank is such a moron. Couldn’t he see Mum was in one of her pre-rant build-ups?
‘I mean anything that warps your mind!’ says Mum, brandishing the Daily Mail. ‘Do you realize the dangers of these games? Do you realize your brain isn’t developing properly? Your BRAIN, Frank! Your most precious organ.’
Frank gives a dirty snigger, which I can’t help giggling at. Frank is actually pretty funny.
‘I’ll ignore that,’ says Mum stonily. ‘It only goes to prove what I was saying.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ says Frank, and opens the fridge. He takes out a carton of chocolate milk and drains it, straight from the carton, which is gross.
‘Don’t do that!’ I say furiously.
‘There’s another carton. Relax.’
‘I’m putting a limit on your playing, young man.’ Mum bats the Daily Mail for emphasis. ‘I’ve just about had enough of this.’
Young man. That means she’s going to drag Dad into it. Any time she starts using Young man or Young woman, sure enough, the next day there’s some ghastly family meeting, where Dad tries to back up everything Mum says, even though he can’t follow half of it.
Anyway, not my problem.
Until Mum arrives in my bedroom that evening and demands, ‘Audrey, what is Land of Conquerors?’
I look up from Grazia and survey her. She looks tense. Her cheeks are pink and her right hand is all clenched, as if it’s just come off a computer mouse. She’s been Googling ‘computer-game addiction’, I just know she has.
‘A game.’
‘I know it’s a game’ – Mum sounds exasperated – ‘but why does Frank play it all the time? You don’t play it all the time, do you?’