The Parent Problem (22 page)

‘Rob, are you coming in?’ Mum calls back into the hall.

Rob?

‘Hi, guys.’ Rob appears in the doorway behind Mum. ‘You ready to come home, Finn?’

Rob. As in Finn’s dad Rob. So not a date. So . . .

Mum, Harris and Rob come into the room and everyone begins talking at once.

‘Where have you been?’ I say. ‘Harris went to find you.’

‘I was worried about you, Mum!’ Harris whines.

‘We know you weren’t at the competition,’ says Aubrey. I nudge her to stay out of this.

‘Were you together?’ Finn asks. His voice is steady and calm, but it sends a chill through me.

Everyone stops talking as suddenly as they began.

No one says anything for what seems like an age.

Mum looks at Rob, and Rob looks away.

Then Mum laughs and says, ‘What a funny thing to say!’ Her face is redder than I have ever seen it. ‘Of course we were together – on the doorstep – just now. Rob saw me coming back from the competition and . . . er, well, ha ha! Now I’m back, Finn can go home, can’t he? So Rob came in with me to get him. Like he sometimes does. And now he’s here. With me.’

Mum is babbling. She gives another laugh – more uncertain this time. I scrutinize her face. She is nervous. But why?

Rob shuffles his feet and looks everywhere but at me and Finn.

‘Hellie,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time we . . . ?’

‘About time you what?’ says Finn. He draws his shoulders back and juts his chin out, as though he is challenging his dad. I don’t dare look at Aubrey in case she is swooning or something.

Rob and Mum exchange glances. They look guilty. As though they have been caught doing something they shouldn’t. As though . . . Hang on a minute!

‘Hellie?’ Rob says again.

I feel as though I am in a lift: I have gone right up to the top floor of the tallest skyscraper and then someone has cut the cords, sending me plummeting down the shaft.

They aren’t . . . ? They’re not . . . ?

Rob clears his throat. ‘Let’s all sit down,’ he says. He puts a hand on Mum’s shoulder.

‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Good idea. We . . . er, we should probably have a chat.’

By now it is pretty obvious, even to me, what they are about to say. I can’t look anyone in the eye. I am terrified of looking at Mum and I don’t want to think about what is going through Finn’s mind. As for Aubrey . . . I’m just glad the VTs aren’t in the wings, ready to witness this. Think of the gossip that would be going around school first thing on Monday morning!

Skye’s mum is going out with Finn’s dad!

Kill. Me. Now.

As Winnie-the-Pooh (greatest philosopher of all time) says: ‘Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.’

When I said this to Finn, he pulled a face and said, ‘It sounds like the kind of thing Mum – I mean
Yuki
– would say.’

Maybe, but Winnie-the-Pooh said it first. And it’s true: I have spent the last few weeks trying to solve The Parent Problem, The Aubrey Problem and The Finn Problem, when there were actually much bigger things going on right under my nose that I didn’t see at all.

Mum and Rob sheepishly told us that they had in fact been going out for months. Mum had been to a couple of dance classes, and then gave up once Rob asked her on a date.

‘We didn’t think we should tell you until we were sure it would work out,’ Mum told us the night Harris went missing.

‘Yes,’ said Rob. ‘We knew it would be weird for you, so we wanted to be certain. The best way of keeping it a secret was to use the cover of the dance lessons for our dates,’ he said.

Finn and I were not exactly over the moon about the fact our parents had been lying to us. Plus, it was weird, however they explained it. But Harris was thrilled at the news. ‘This means you kind of ARE like my big brother!’ he cried, much to my annoyance.

I got over that feeling pretty quickly, though, when Finn helped Harris stand up to the bullies. Turns out all you need to scare a load of eight-year-olds into being nice to you is to get your almost six-foot-tall fourteen-year-old friend to come and pick you up from school one day.

‘I didn’t even have to say that Finn would sort them out if they were mean to me again,’ Harris said, bursting with pride. ‘They just took one look at him and they knew they couldn’t mess with me.’

I had to smile at that. It was a pretty cool thing for Finn to do.

He also helped me and Aubrey out with the VTs. The main reason she had fallen out with them was that they had found photos of her and her family at the last HobbitCon and had sent them whizzing around the school. They were livid with her when The Hogs wouldn’t let them be backing singers and blamed her for ‘keeping Finn to herself’. Finn stepped in and told them to back off: otherwise there would be photos of
them
in matching pink dresses with bows in their hair going round the school. Apparently their mum had entered them for a ‘Twins’ Beauty Contest’ when they were three, and Finn had found the photos on the web by just googling them. It was their turn to be mortified, so they agreed to keep their mouths shut and leave me and Aubrey alone.

In return, I made Aubrey go and explain to The Hogs that Finn wasn’t ready to be their drummer. Even that worked out well, because they were so desperate they said they would have him anyway and let him play whatever he could manage. He was made up about that. (Not sure I am – he is practising more and more now, and the noise is horrendous. I have taken to wearing earplugs while I read and write.)

So things have kind of worked out OK in the end. Aubrey and I are best friends again; Harris is happy; Finn is happy; the VTs know their place.

The only mortifying thing in my life at the moment is that my mum has a boyfriend.

But the way she is smiling right now, I think I can live with that.

Anna Wilson used to edit children’s books until she discovered it was much more fun to write them. She took a flying leap from being an editor to being a fully-fledged author in 2008 and has never looked back (except when she has tripped over something). Inspired by her family, friends and pets, she writes funny yet heart-warming novels which are absolutely NOT based on any MORTIFYINGLY EMBARRASSING incidents which have happened
to her in the past.
¹

Anna lives in Bradford on Avon with her husband, two children and an array of pets including a dog, cats, a tortoise and a pair of extremely noisy ducks.

Endnote

1
This may not be entirely true.

‘I adore Anna’s books because her stories are really entertaining, with funny characters’ Jessica B, age 11

‘I love Anna’s books because she writes about funny things, which makes me giggle!’ Evie B, age 9

‘I like your books because they are funny and you can’t put them down, you just want to read them again!’ Hattie D, age 10

‘I think you are an amazing author and I am going to recommend you to all my friends’ Lydia M, age 9

‘I love your books. They make me laugh a lot when I read them’ Jessica H, age 11 and a bit

Books by Anna Wilson

The Great Kitten Cake Off

The Pooch Parlour series

The Poodle Problem

The Dotty Dalmatian

The Smug Pug

The Top of the Pups series

The Puppy Plan

Pup Idol

Puppy Power

Puppy Party

The Kitten Chaos series

The Kitten Hunt

Kitten Wars

Kitten Catastrophe

For younger readers

I’m a Chicken, Get Me Out of Here!

Monkey Business

Monkey Madness: The Only Way Is Africa!

And for older readers

Summer’s Shadow

www.annawilson.co.uk

First published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books

an imprint of Pan Macmillan

20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-5098-0132-9

Text copyright © Anna Wilson 2016

Illustrations copyright © Nicola Kinnear 2016

Cover illustration by Nicola Kinnear

The right of Anna Wilson and Nicola Kinnear to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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