LITMIR.BIZ

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place and locked ourselves in her bedroom (away from her little brother) and read each other our latest episodes. My one about Carlito, Pilch’s about Alastair.

      Pilch’s was in-ter-min-able! She has now decided that Alastair’s parents are hugely noble and live in a castle somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland. She’s got this book all about clans and she’s written pages and pages describing in excruciating detail the tartans that people are wearing. She seems to think that men in kilts are sexy. She’s even got Alastair wearing one! Blue and green, the clan of Mackenzie. He keeps saying things like “Och ay the noo”, which I thought was a bit odd considering that last week she said he was speaking in “very cultured English”. She explained, however, that when he’s back home in the Highlands (or Heelands, as she calls them) he goes all Scottish and speaks “in a soft lilt”.

      Hm!

      I didn’t say anything, as it obviously turns her on.

      After Pilch had read her bit, I read mine about Carlito in the night club. Pilch kept going “What?” just as I’d known she would. I told her to shut up and listen. After all, I hadn’t gone “What?” about all that tartan stuff, and this was far more inspired! I’d pictured the whole scene. Carlito sitting there all smouldering and sultry and this pale geeky English type believing himself to be so-o-o-o superior and everyone thinking he’s just dross. I’d written how Carlito curls his lip and goes “Tu madre!” with the candlelight glinting in his jet black hair.

      All Pilch could think to say was, “What’s he going on about his mother for?”

      Honestly. I bet people didn’t ask Tolstoy things like that!

      I am writing this in the evening. Mum and Harry are downstairs watching telly. They asked me if I was going to stay and watch with them, but I said I’d got to make a start on War and Peace.

      “It’s nearly fifteen hundred pages,” I said.

      Harry then made one of his coarse earthy remarks which is totally unprintable. Four-letter words just spew out of that man! It is simply no use trying to impress him. Or Mum. I don’t know why I bother.

      Anyway, I don’t really think they’d want me there with them. They’re still at the stage of snogging on the sofa. I nearly caught them at it the other day. I swear I heard this slurping noise as they prised their lips apart. I cannot see the attraction! I could if it were Carlito. But that is another matter…

       Sunday

      Managed twenty pages of War and Peace last night. It is rather hard to get into, but I suppose that’s because it is a classic. Classics are not meant to be easy. Anyone could read them if they were.

      Harry the Hunk seems to have become a permanent weekend fixture. He stayed overnight on Friday and was still here this morning. And I don’t think he sleeps on the sofa. Mum used to pretend that he did. She used to make this big production out of lugging bedclothes downstairs and saying how inconvenient it was living in a two-bedroom terrace and not having a spare room. But I used to lie awake and hear the stairs creaking, so I’m sure it was just for show. Now he’s, like, here every weekend, all weekend, Friday night till Monday morning.

      I’m not sure how I feel about this. OK, I guess. I mean, if it makes Mum happy. She’s had lots of boyfriends over the years. Most of them have been dire; some of them have made her cry. And they’ve all regarded me as a definite impediment. Like, “Oh, that horrible spotty snot-nosed brat.”

      Harry just accepts me, like I am trying very hard to just accept him. It is not always easy, as I said to Pilch. It is all right for her, as she is used to living with a man, i.e. her dad. But when you are not accustomed to having a great hairy male about the place there are certain things that you have to try and remember. Like for instance you cannot just leave your underwear and stuff dripping over the bath. Well, I mean, you can. You could. It’s not like there are any rules about it. But then I would feel embarrassed, and it is the same with the loo. To think that you are sitting where a male bum has been sitting. Not that there is anything very much that you can do about it, unless you carry your own portable loo seat with you.

      Pilch giggles when I say this, but I am serious! It is a big intrusion into one’s life. However, I will accept it for Mum’s sake. She is obviously one of those women who needs a man to make her feel complete, and it is probably too late for her to change now.

      But just imagine! If she didn’t spend all that time snogging on the sofa she could be educating herself. She could be going to evening classes! She could be taking an OU course! She could be doing almost anything. And then instead of just being a bank clerk, she could be the actual manager!

      I did once suggest this to her, but she said, “I cannot think of anything more boring!”

      It is strange how different Mum and me are. I have this burning ambition, while Mum, it seems, is content with her lot. All she asks is a man in her life. And now she has one! So I must be happy for her and not worry about trivial things such as lavatory seats.

       Monday

      (2nd Week)

      Pilch rang last night. It was almost half-past eleven, so I thought it must be one of Mum’s friends. They are always ringing at these weird hours. They are a pretty weird bunch of people. Always shrieking and giggling. They don’t act their age at all. But Mum seems to think they are amusing.

      Anyway, it wasn’t one of Mum’s friends. Harry came back from the hall and said, “There’s a fish on the phone.”

      “A what?” said Mum.

      Harry said, “A fish of some kind. It wants to speak to another fish.”

      “Oh, you mean Pilch,” I said.

      It was his idea of a joke. He knows perfectly well that we call each other Pilch. We have done for years. I remember the day we started doing it. It was when we were really young, like nine or ten, and we had this simply humungous row, and Pilch yelled, “You look like a stupid pilchard!” To which, with immense wit, I instantly retorted, “So do you… you… pilchard!” And we have called each other Pilch ever since.

      Rather silly, really, but these things stick. I expect we will still call each other Pilch when we are middle-aged. Sometimes I forget that Pilch is really Charlie. Well, Charlotte, actually, but no one ever calls her that.

      So anyway I charged out to the phone and said, “Why are you ringing me at this time of night?” I mean, it is practically unheard of. People simply do not do that sort of thing in Pilch’s house. Unlike Mum and Harry, who behave like teenagers, Pilch’s mum and dad go to bed at reasonable grown-up type hours. Pilch says they are always safely snoozing by eleven o’clock. That is what grown-ups ought to do. Not sit around playing loud music and keeping their children awake till after midnight.

      “I wanted to tell you,” said Pilch. “I’ve found some more swear words for you. For Carlito. He could say… caramba.”

      I said “What?”

      “Caramba,” said Pilch.

      I asked her what it meant and she said she didn’t know, but she thought it had to be swearing of some kind. She had just read it in a book.

      “In Anna Karenina?” I said, somewhat surprised.

      Pilch said, “Well - n-no. Not in Anna Karenina. I’m not actually reading that just at present.”

      I said, “Why not?”

      “I’ve read nearly a whole chapter!” said Pilch. “How much have you read?”

      “More than you,” I said.

      It’s true. I have now reached page 55! (It is still rather difficult, but I think maybe this is because the print is so small.)

      When

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