The Parent Agency. David Baddiel

syllables. And go right down on the second one. On the -ad.” This was Barry’s mum speaking.

      Barry looked over, but couldn’t see her because, as usual, she was speaking from behind the dishwasher. As far as Barry could tell, Susan Bennett spent her whole non-working life either loading or unloading the dishwasher. Days would go by when he never saw her, but only heard her voice, in between the clanking of plates and saucepans.

      “I don’t do that!” said Barry.

      “Yeah, Mu-um!” chorused The Sisterly Entity.

      Barry’s mum and dad both laughed at that. His dad did that laugh which was also half a cough, and Barry could hear his mum’s high-pitched giggle in between the clanking of plates and saucepans.

      “Don’t laugh at that!” said Barry, annoyed at having to acknowledge something said by The Sisterly Entity. “It’s not even funny!”

      “It was quite funny,” said his mum, still not coming up from behind the dishwasher. All Barry could see, in fact, was her collection of egg timers – she had them in every colour of the rainbow – sitting above the dishwasher on the kitchen counter. “You do make me laugh, you two girls…”

      “Excuse me!” said Barry, feeling like he wanted to stamp his foot, but couldn’t because his feet still didn’t quite stretch to the floor from his chair. “Did anyone hear what I was saying at all?”

      “Write that down, Ginny!”

      “Well, I would, Kay, but I couldn’t actually hear anything…”

      “Oh yes, you’re right. I thought I heard someone say something, but it must just have been the dustbin men shouting in the street!”

      Barry pulled a face at The Sisterly Entity. Then felt annoyed at himself as he realised that this meant that he was, in effect, recognising them. But it still made him feel better. Until Sisterly Entity One said:

      “Write that face down, Ginny!”

      “I’m… a… really… stupid… looking… boy…” said Sisterly Entity Two, moving her finger slowly across her palm.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Having broken his resolution never to recognise The Sisterly Entity, Barry thought he might as well kick them under the table (his feet, being free-floating, were well placed for this).

      The last time Barry had kicked his sisters he had lost his pocket money for the week. But, seeing as that was only 75p, he reckoned it was just about worth it, and he had actually swung his feet back, in readiness to swing them forward towards their dainty little shins, when his dad said:

      “Were you talking about your birthday party again?”

      Barry let his feet swing back to their midway point. “Yes!”

      “Oh, OK. Well, it’s all sorted.”

      Barry’s heart lifted at this. His dad was really going to organise the car and the casino and the gadgets and everything?

      Geoff smiled at him, revealing his yellow bottom teeth, and bent down to rummage in his IKEA bag (one of those enormous blue ones made out of, as far as Barry could make out, a tent: his dad always had one to hand). “I was going to save this as a surprise for the day, but you’ve forced it out of me…”

      He sat up again, holding a DVD with the title: CASINO ROYALE.

      “What’s that?” said Barry.

      “What do you mean what’s that? It’s a James Bond film. One of the most famous. Come on, Barry, I thought you of all people would know that.”

      His dad handed it over. On the front cover was a man with a pencil-thin moustache who sort of looked like James Bond, but not one Barry had ever seen before. It wasn’t Sean Connery, or Roger Moore, or George Lazenby, or Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan. And it especially wasn’t Daniel Craig. Who Barry knew was in Casino Royale.

      “And I’m not just going to put it in the DVD player. We’ve got a projector at work that I can borrow and we can project it on to the living-room wall. That’s probably white enough if we shut the curtains really tight – although they never close completely in that room, do they, Susan? Oh well, it’ll probably be all right. Anyway, I thought that would be a great thing to do at your party…”

      Barry looked up. “What? That’s it?”

      “Huh?”

      “No casino? Or car? Or tuxedo? Or gadgets?”

      “Susan, what’s he on about?”

      “I knew it! I knew you weren’t listening!”

      “Barry, calm down…” said his mum.

      “And this isn’t even the proper Casino Royale!”

      His dad frowned. “It isn’t?”

      “No.” Barry turned it round, reading off the back. “‘An all-star cast spoof the James Bond films in this hilarious 1960s comedy!! 007 has never been so funny!’ It’s a joke version! It makes fun of the whole thing!”

      “Oh, Geoff,” said Barry’s mum. “You haven’t gone and got the one with David Niven in it?”

      “I don’t know, Susan! I just went for the cheaper one on Amazon!”

      “Da—” said Barry, and then realised he’d started to do the two-syllable thing again. Seeing The Sisterly Entity looking at him eagerly, as if willing him to do it, Barry made a fatal mistake. Which was to just repeat the first syllable again.

      “…Da,” he said.

      “I beg your pardon?” said TSE One, grinning madly. “Did you say… Da-Da?”

      “I think he did, Ginny!” said TSE Two. “He said Da-Da. Like a baby. Like a baby trying to say its first words. To its da-da!”

      “I didn’t! I didn’t! Shut up shut up shut up!”

      “Barry, don’t tell your sisters to shut up!” said his mum sharply. Still no sign of her head above the dishwasher, though.

      “Does Diddums want his dummy from his da-da!?”

      “Or does he want Da-Da to change his Nap-Nap?!”

      “OK, Ginny. Kay. That’s enough,” said Geoff, although not very strictly, and like he was trying not to smile. “But Barry, that’s enough complaining too.”

      “No it isn’t! I hate you!”

      “Oh, do you?”

      “Yes! And Mum!”

      And suddenly a feeling that had been welling up inside Barry for… well, since his dad had closed the door on Jake and Taj and Lukas just before tea, but in another way for much longer than that, maybe ever since he’d understood that, unfortunately, his name was Barry – a feeling that he wanted to both cry and shout and break something all at the same time – exploded out of him.

      “I hate you because you’re boring! And tired ALL THE TIME! And always TELLING ME OFF FOR NOTHING! And saying, ‘That’s a swear,’ when all I’ve done is say BUM!”

      “Barry. That’s a swear!” said his mum.

      “NO IT ISN’T! And because you’re so much nicer to THEM…” He pointed at TSE. They both grinned at the same time. “…than to ME! And because…” Barry realised by now that he was doing the list in his bedroom. He decided to miss out Numbers 8 and 9 – ‘Not being glamorous’ and ‘Being poor’ – since even in his rage he knew that they might just sound a bit too horrible out loud. Especially as loud as he was speaking