Contents
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Finding Audrey
About the Author
Also by Sophie Kinsella
Copyright
About the Book
Audrey can’t leave the house. She can’t even take off her dark glasses inside the house.
Then her brother’s friend Linus stumbles into her life. With his friendly orange-slice smile, and his funny notes, he starts to entice Audrey out again – well, Starbucks is a start. And with Linus at her side, Audrey feels like she can do things she’d thought were too scary.
Suddenly, finding her way back to the real world seems achievable.
Be prepared to laugh, dream and hope with Audrey as she learns that even when you think you have lost yourself, love can still find you . . .
‘Sophie Kinsella is beloved by millions’
Jojo Moyes, the bestselling author of Me Before You
To all my children, who in their different
ways have helped inspire this book.
OMG, Mum’s gone insane.
Not normal Mum-insane. Serious insane.
Normal Mum-insane: Mum says, ‘Let’s all do this great gluten-free diet I read about in the Daily Mail!’ Mum buys three loaves of gluten-free bread. It’s so disgusting our mouths curl up. The family goes on strike and Mum hides her sandwich in the flowerbed and next week we’re not gluten free any more.
That’s normal Mum-insane. But this is serious insane.
She’s standing at her bedroom window which overlooks Rosewood Close, where we live. No, standing sounds too normal. Mum does not look normal. She’s teetering, leaning over the edge, a wild look in her eye. And she’s holding my brother Frank’s computer. It’s balanced precariously on the window ledge. Any minute, it’ll crash down to the ground. That’s £700 worth of computer.
Does she realize this? £700. She’s always telling us we don’t know the value of money. She’s always saying stuff like, ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to earn ten pounds?’ and, ‘You wouldn’t waste that electricity if you’d had to pay for it.’
Well, how about earning £700 and then deliberately smashing it on the ground?
Below us, on the front lawn, Frank is scampering about in his Big Bang Theory T-shirt, clutching his head and gibbering with panic.
‘Mum.’ His voice has gone all high-pitched with terror. ‘Mum, that’s my computer.’
‘I know it’s your computer!’ Mum cries hysterically. ‘Don’t you think I know that?’
‘Mum, please, can we talk about this?’
‘I’ve tried talking!’ Mum lashes back. ‘I’ve tried cajoling, arguing, pleading, reasoning, bribing . . . I’ve tried everything! EVERYTHING, Frank!’
‘But I need my computer!’
‘You do not need your computer!’ Mum yells, so furiously that I flinch.
‘Mummy is going to throw the computer!’ says Felix, running onto the grass and looking up in disbelieving joy. Felix is our little brother. He’s four. He greets most life events with disbelieving joy. A lorry in the street! Ketchup! An extra-long chip! Mum throwing a computer out of the window is just another one on the list of daily miracles.
‘Yes, and then the computer will break,’ says Frank fiercely. ‘And you won’t be able to play Star Wars ever again, ever.’
Felix’s face crumples in dismay and Mum flinches with fresh anger.
‘Frank!’ she yells. ‘Do not upset your brother!’
Now our neighbours across the close, the McDuggans, have come out to watch. Their twelve-year-old son, Ollie, actually yells, ‘Noooo!’ when he sees what Mum’s about to do.
‘Mrs Turner!’ He hurries across the street to our lawn and gazes up pleadingly, along with Frank.
Ollie sometimes plays Land of Conquerors online with Frank if Frank’s in a kind mood and doesn’t have anyone else to play with. Now Ollie looks even more freaked out than Frank.
‘Please don’t break the computer, Mrs Turner,’ he says, trembling. ‘It has all Frank’s backed-up game commentaries on it. They’re so funny.’ He turns to Frank. ‘They’re really funny.’
‘Thanks,’ mutters Frank.
‘Your mum’s really like . . .’ Ollie blinks nervously. ‘She’s like Goddess Warrior Enhanced Level Seven.’
‘I’m what?’ demands Mum.
‘It’s a compliment,’ snaps Frank, rolling his eyes. ‘Which you’d know if you played. Level Eight,’ he corrects Ollie.
‘Right,’ Ollie hastily agrees. ‘Eight.’
‘You can’t even communicate in English!’ Mum flips. ‘Real life is not a series of levels!’
‘Mum, please,’ Frank chimes in. ‘I’ll do anything. I’ll stack the dishwasher. I’ll phone Grandma every night. I’ll . . .’ He casts about wildly. ‘I’ll read to deaf people.’
Read to deaf people? Can he actually hear what he’s saying?
‘Deaf people?’ Mum explodes. ‘Deaf people? I don’t need you to read to deaf people! You’re the bloody deaf one around here! You never hear anything I say – you always have those wretched earphones in—’
‘Anne!’
I turn to see Dad joining the fray, and a couple of neighbours are stepping out of their front doors. This is officially a Neighbourhood Incident.
‘Anne!’ Dad calls again.
‘Let me do this, Chris,’ says Mum warningly, and I can see Dad gulp. My dad is tall and handsome in a car advert way, and he looks like the boss, but inside, he isn’t really an alpha male.
No, that sounds bad. He’s alpha in a lot of ways, I suppose. Only Mum is even more alpha. She’s strong and bossy and pretty and bossy.
I said bossy twice, didn’t I?
Well. Draw your own conclusions from that.
‘I know you’re angry, sweetheart,’ Dad’s saying soothingly. ‘But isn’t this a little extreme?’
‘Extreme? He’s extreme! He’s addicted, Chris!’
‘I’m not addicted!’ Frank yells.
‘I’m just saying—’
‘What?’ Mum finally turns her head to look at Dad properly. ‘What are you saying?’
‘If you drop it there, you’ll damage the car.’ Dad winces. ‘Maybe shift to the left a little?’
‘I don’t care about the car! This is tough love!’ She tilts the computer more precariously on the window ledge and we all gasp, including the watching neighbours.
‘Love?’ Frank is shouting up at Mum. ‘If you loved me you wouldn’t break my computer!’
‘Well, if you loved me, Frank, you wouldn’t get up at two a.m. behind my back, to play online with people in Korea!’
‘You got up at two a.m.?’ says Ollie to Frank, wide-eyed.
‘Practising.’ Frank shrugs. ‘I was practising,’ he repeats to Mum with emphasis. ‘I have a tournament coming up! You’ve always said I should have a goal in life! Well, I have!’
‘Playing Land of Conquerors is not a goal! Oh God, oh God . . .’ She bangs her head on the computer. ‘Where did I go wrong?’
‘Oh, Audrey,’ says Ollie suddenly, spotting me. ‘Hi, how are you?’
I shrink back from my bedroom window in fright. My window is tucked away on a corner and no one was meant to notice me. Least of all Ollie, who I’m pretty sure has a tiny crush on me, even though he’s two years younger and barely reaches up to my chest.
‘Look, it’s the celebrity!’ quips Ollie’s dad, Rob. He’s been calling me ‘the celebrity’ for the last four weeks, even though Mum and Dad have separately been over to ask him to stop. He thinks it’s funny and that my parents have no sense of humour. (I’ve often noticed that people equate ‘having a sense of humour’ with ‘being an insensitive moron’.)
br /> 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?’
‘No.’ I’ve played LOC and I really don’t get the obsession. I mean, it’s OK for an hour or two.
‘So what’s the appeal?’
‘Well, you know.’ I think for a moment. ‘It’s exciting. You get rewards. And the heroes are pretty good. Like, the graphics are amazing, and they just released this new warrior team with new capabilities, so . . .’ I shrug.
Mum looks more bewildered than ever. The trouble is, she doesn’t play games. So it’s kind of impossible to convey to her the difference between LOC 3 and, say, Pacman from 1985.
‘They show it on YouTube,’ I say in sudden inspiration. ‘People do commentaries. Hang on.’
As I’m finding a clip on my iPad, Mum sits down and looks around the room. She’s trying to act casual, but I can sense her beady blue eyes scanning my piles of stuff, looking for . . . what? Anything. Everything. The truth is, Mum and I haven’t
done casual for a while. Everything is loaded.
With everything that’s happened, that’s one of the saddest things of all. We can’t be normal with each other any more. The tiniest thing I say, Mum’s all over it, even if she doesn’t realize it. Her brain goes into overdrive. What does it mean? Is Audrey all right? What’s Audrey really saying?
I can see her looking closely at a pair of old ripped jeans on my chair, as though they hold some dark significance. Whereas in fact the only significance they hold is: I’ve grown out of them. I’ve shot up about three inches in the last year, which makes me five eight. Quite tall for fourteen. People say I look like Mum, but I’m not as pretty as her. Her eyes are so blue. Like blue diamonds. Mine are wishy-washy – not that they’re particularly visible right now.
Just so you can visualize me, I’m fairly skinny, fairly nondescript, wearing a black vest-top and skinny jeans. And I wear dark glasses all the time, even in the house. It’s . . . Well. A thing. My thing, I suppose. Hence the ‘celebrity’ quips from Rob our neighbour. He saw me in my dark glasses, getting out of the car in the rain, and he was all, like, ‘Why the shades? Are you Angelina Jolie?’
I’m not trying to be cool. There’s a reason.
Which, of course, now you want to know.
I assume.
OK, it’s actually quite private. I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you yet. You can think I’m weird if you like. Enough people do.
‘Here we are.’ I find a clip of some LOC battle with ‘Archy’ commentating. ‘Archy’ is a YouTuber from Sweden who makes videos that Frank loves. They consist of ‘Archy’ playing LOC and making funny commentaries on the game, and as I expected, it takes me for ever to explain this concept to Mum.
‘But why would you watch someone else playing?’ she keeps saying, baffled. ‘Why? Isn’t that a complete waste of time?’
‘Well. Anyway.’ I shrug. ‘That’s LOC.’
There’s silence for a moment. Mum is peering at the screen like some ancient professor trying to decipher an ancient Egyptian code. There’s an almighty explosion and she winces.
‘Why does it always have to be about killing? If I designed a game it would centre around ideas. Politics. Issues. Yes! I mean, why not?’ I can tell her brain’s firing up with a new idea. ‘What about a computer game called Discuss? You could keep the competitive element, but score points by debating!’