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‘Who is this fishmonger? – Oh, look! Here’s Kenneth now.’
Kenneth Garside, wearing grey slacks and a pink sweater, did a little dancey step towards us. And for a second it could have been Uncle Geoffrey. Uncle Geoffrey, Una’s husband, Dad’s best friend, with his slacks and golfing sweaters and little dancey steps and ‘How’s your love life? When are we going to get you married off?’
I started spiralling into grief about Dad, and what he would have made of all this. Then Kenneth Garside snapped me out of it by flashing an enormous set of very white false teeth in the midst of his orange face, and saying creepily, ‘Hello, beautiful young lady. I’m Ken69. That’s my “press age”, my secret preferences and my Internet-dating profile name. But maybe I won’t be needing that now I’ve met you!’
Euww! I thought, then instantly shrank at my own hypocrisy, as my mind careered into mental arithmetic, demonstrating, horrifically, that the age difference between me and Roxster was four years more than the gap between me and Kenneth Garside’s ‘press age’.
‘Hahaha!’ said Mum. ‘Oh, there’s Pawl, I’ll just have a quick chat to him about the profiteroles,’ she said, diving off towards a man in a chef’s outfit, leaving me with Kenneth Garside’s dazzling false teeth, just as Una, mercifully, started banging on a wine glass with a spoon. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! The Cruise Slideshow Event is about to begin!’
‘Can I offer you my arm?’ said Kenneth, grabbing my arm and parading me into the Ballroom, where rows of ornate cream chairs with gold edges were filling up in front of a giant screen showing a picture of the cruise liner.
As we sat down, Kenneth Garside said, ‘What have we got on our trousers?’ and started rubbing at my knee with his handkerchief, as Una took to the platform and began.
‘Friends! Family! This year’s St Oswald’s cruise marked the high spot of an already full and fulfilling year.’
‘Stoppit,’ I hissed to Kenneth Garside.
‘It’s all computerized now!’ Una continued. ‘So! Without further ado, I’m going to talk over the “Macslideshow” and some of us can relive while others dream!’
The cruise-ship shot morphed into a mosaic of pictures, zooming in on a photo of Mum and Una boarding the ship and waving.
‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!’ said Una into the mic, cueing the slideshow soundtrack of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell singing ‘Two Little Girls from Little Rock’ over a shot of Mum and Una in a horrifying Gentlemen Prefer Blondes homage, lying side by side on a double bed in the cabin, looking coquettishly towards the camera, one leg each raised in the air.
‘Oh, my word,’ said Kenneth.
Then suddenly the soundtrack was masked by a familiar electronic tune and the slideshow was replaced by a lurid cartoon of a dragon belching fire at a one-eyed purple wizard. Sat, frozen, realizing that this was Wizard101. Could it possibly . . . could Billy possibly have got on a computer and . . .? Suddenly the Wizard101 page disappeared to be replaced by my EMAIL INBOX PAGE, saying ‘Welcome, Bridget’, with a list of subjects, the first one, from Tom, entitled ‘St Oswald’s House Cruise Event Nightmare’. What was Billy DOING?
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ I said, panicking, making my way along the row, amidst the general consternation, trying to avoid Mum’s eye.
Rushed out into the hallway and back to the balloon room, to find Billy, oblivious, tapping furiously at a MacBook Air, which was attached to a lot of wire and Ethernet hubs on a side table.
‘Billy!’
‘Wait! I just got to finish this leveeeeel! I didn’t go on your email. I was trying to retrieve my password.’
‘Come off that,’ I rasped. I managed to forcibly get him off, close the Wizard101 and Yahoo windows, and drag him back to the balloons, just as a man in wire glasses rushed in and up to the laptop, looking traumatized.
‘Has anyone touched this?’ he said, eyes darting incredulously around the room. I looked at Billy’s face, hoping Billy would remain silent or lie. He frowned thoughtfully, and I could see him remembering all my bloody lectures about the importance of honesty and telling the truth. ‘Not now!’ I wanted to yell. ‘It’s all right to lie when Mummy needs you to!’
‘Yes, it was me,’ said Billy ruefully. ‘And I didn’t mean to go on Mummy’s email but I forgot my password.’
9.15 p.m. At home. In bed now. On top of the whole appalling disaster, the question still remains of what I am going to do about babysitter on Friday. Tried suggesting Friday night to Mum, after the furore had died down, but she just looked at me coldly and said it was Aqua-Zumba.
9.30 p.m. Tried Magda, but she is going to be on a short break to Istanbul with Cosmo and Woney.
‘I wish I could, Bridge,’ she said. ‘We always had my mother for babysitting emergencies, it must be tricky having had the children older. Is it that the kids are too young for you to help her, and she’s too old to help you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s got Aqua-Zumba.’
Am going to have to try Daniel.
10.45 p.m. Called Daniel.
‘Who are you shagging, Jones?’
‘No one.’
‘I demand to know.’
