Being called Barry was just one – although it was pretty near the top of the list – of the many things Barry blamed his parents (Susan and Geoff: go figure…) for.
Here, in fact, is that list, which Barry kept hidden under the pillow on his bed (a bed that didn’t, by the way, have the fantastic Lionel Messi duvet on it that Lukas had):
THINGS I BLAME MY PARENTS FOR
Being boring.
Calling me Barry. (You see – told you it was near the top of the list.)
Being tired all the time.
Not letting me play video games.
Not buying me any video games. Or a Lionel Messi duvet.
Being REALLY, REALLY, REALLY strict. Examples: making me go to bed at 8.30 when all my friends stay up MUCH later; not letting me eat any sour Haribos in case they give me a tummy ache; and saying, “That’s a swear,” when all I’ve done is say BUM, which isn’t even a proper swear.
Being always much nicer to my twin sisters TSE than to me, just because they’re a pair of goody two-shoes.
Not being glamorous or famous or all the things that the grown-ups in Mum’s magazines are. (Barry realised after he’d written this that it was a bit similar to Number 1, but he’d already started the list when he got to this point, and had written in pen, not pencil, so didn’t want to cross it out and start again.)
Being poor. (Barry felt a bit bad about writing this one as he did sort of know it wasn’t his parents’ fault. His dad worked in IKEA, checking the flat-packed stuff into the warehouses or something, and his mum was a primary school assistant. So he knew that meant they didn’t earn very much. But he did think that if only they had more money then a fair amount of issues 1 to 8 – although not being called Barry – would probably not apply.)
NOT EVER MAKING MY BIRTHDAY REALLY GOOD.
This was the biggest thing. All his friends had had their tenth birthdays recently, and all of them had been fantastic. Jake had had a go-kart party. Lukas had had a bowling party. And Taj had had a limo! They’d all gone in it to the cinema to see the latest James Bond film!
Barry loved James Bond. It was partly why he hated being called Barry, as he knew that James Bond would never have been called that. I mean, he knew James Bond’s name was James, but even if it hadn’t been it would probably have been John or David or Michael. Or – as Jake often pointed out – Jake. Barry said this wasn’t true, although in his heart he knew it kind of was, what with Jake being, in name terms, really quite like James.
Sometimes, Jake would even raise one eyebrow – which Barry, try as he might, just couldn’t do: both of them always went up at once – and say, “The name’s Bond. Jake Bond.”
Barry agreed, without saying so, that it sounded kind of OK. Certainly better than, “The name’s Bond. Barry Bond.”
Jake (and his eyebrow) were at Barry’s house on that Sunday, six days before his birthday, when Barry got really cross with his mum and dad.
All three of Barry’s best friends were on the doorstep, listening to Geoff Bennett say, “No, sorry,” which, Barry thought and not for the first time, was something his dad said a lot.
Jake was holding a Nike Premier League football, Lukas had on a pair of black Converse trainers and Taj was wearing a brand-new, this-season Chelsea top. Which made Barry feel, in his discount-store jeans and discount-store top and discount-store shoes, a bit rubbish. Although not rubbish enough to stop him wanting to go out and play with them.
“Dad,” said Barry, “it’ll only be for half an hour!”
“No, sorry,” said his dad again. “You know we don’t let you go in the park without a grown-up…”
Barry looked back at his father’s frowning face. He looked very tired, although Barry couldn’t work out how tired, as Geoff Bennett always looked tired these days. There were bits of grey in his hair. In fact, it would be more accurate to say there were bits of black in his hair, because most of it was now grey. He was wearing his navy IKEA shirt, which he didn’t have to at weekends. Barry wished he wouldn’t, especially in front of his friends. Every time he’d seen them, Jake’s dad had been wearing a smart suit, Taj’s a leather jacket and Lukas’s dad – who, some of the time, played in a band! – skinny jeans and sunglasses (even, Barry noticed, when it wasn’t sunny).
“But…” said Barry, indicating with his hand the three boys on the doorstep, “all my friends are allowed to!”
“Well, that’s up to their mums and dads, I’m afraid.”
Barry turned and looked at his friends. At which point, Jake raised one eyebrow. Which gave his face an expression that seemed to say, very clearly, “Oh dear, Barry – such a shame that you’re lumbered with these silly, strict (and tired, bad-clothes-wearing) parents…”
He didn’t say this, though. He just said: “Sorry, Barry,” and turned round, bouncing the football as he went.
“Yeah, sorry, Barry,” said Taj, joining Jake.
“Me too. Sorry…” said Lukas, who for some reason waited until he’d got to the end of the Bennetts’ front path before turning round again to say, “Barry.”
And even though Barry knew that it was good to feel sorry for some people, like starving children on the sad bits of the news, he found that he really, really didn’t like it that his friends were feeling sorry for him.
CHAPTER TWO
But that was just the start of Barry’s bad day. It got worse later, when he was trying to talk to his dad during tea.
“…so I thought maybe on my birthday – next Saturday – when I wake up, it would be good if waiting outside was an Aston Martin DB6…” Barry was saying, in between forkfuls of Asda low-sugar, low-salt baked beans on jacket potato.
“An Aston Martin! Write that down, Ginny!”
“I’m writing it down, Kay!”
Barry carried on looking at his dad. He had chosen not to recognise his younger twin sisters. Barry often snuck a glance at his dad’s Daily or Sunday Express, as he knew that James Bond would have to be aware of when dangerous stuff was happening in the world, and he had read that some countries did this to other ones. He had read that Iran, for example, did not recognise Israel, calling it instead – his dad had read this phrase out for him – the Zionist entity. Which made it sound all villainous, like Spectre (the secret world-controlling gang in James Bond). So, similarly, he did not call his eight-year-old twin sisters Ginny and Kay, but The Sisterly Entity. Or TSE for short.
He did, however, out of the corner of his eye, catch them doing that sarcastic thing they did, where one of them – Barry didn’t like separating TSE into two, as that was kind of recognising that they existed, but if he had to, he would refer to them as Sisterly Entities One and Two – would pretend to write down something he said, as if it was really important. Which of course was their way of saying that it wasn’t important at all. Barry really hated it when they did that.
“…so, Dad, on our birthday can you take us somewhere in a Rolls-Royce? Which you can keep in the garage next to the Aston Martin!” said Sisterly Entity One.
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Sisterly Entity Two, who was still running her index finger across her palm as part of the pretending-to-write-down-stupid-stuff-Barry-says mime.
“Yes, well, they’re not that expensive to hire. I checked online,” said Barry, trying as much as possible not to look at them. “And then maybe you can have, like, a tuxedo ready for me to wear and a cake with 007 on it, and all my friends can come dressed as Bond villains, and maybe you can have the film soundtrack playing, and you, Dad, can be Q, showing me gadgets, like a jet pack and a pen that’s actually a gun, and—”
“Sorry, Barry, what?” His dad put down his Sunday Express.
“Weren’t you listening? Da-ad!”
“Barry, please don’t say Dad like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like when you give it two 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 bec
ause, 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 now. “And… YOU NEVER, EVER MAKE MY BIRTHDAY REALLY GOOD!!”
There was a short pause after he shouted this. Then Sisterly Entity One said:
“Write that down, Ginny.”
“I’m writing it down, Kay.”
“Right,” said Barry’s dad. “Well, if that’s how you feel, we won’t have a screening of Casino Royale on your birthday!”
“GREAT!” shouted Barry and he threw the DVD across the room. It spun round in the air as it made its way towards the sink area. Barry was secretly quite proud of the throw; his wrist had flicked sharply as he’d released the disc, like an Olympic discus champion.
“BARRY!!” his dad shouted. So loudly that, for the first time this dinner time, Barry’s mum looked up from the dishwasher. Just in time to be hit in the eye by a copy of Casino Royale, starring David Niven.
“OW!” she said, falling backwards and out of sight again. Barry heard a bump; then one of the egg timers, the red one, fell off the kitchen counter and smashed.
Uh-oh, he thought.
“RIGHT, BARRY, THAT’S IT! GO TO YOUR ROOM!” said his dad, pointing upstairs – stupidly, really, as Barry knew the way.
&n
bsp; “ALL RIGHT I WILL!” Barry shouted back. And because he was a little frightened by now, he ran out of the kitchen as fast as he could, swerving at the last minute to avoid the bits of glass and sand from the egg timer which were sprinkled all over the floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
Barry lay in his bed, fuming. He’d gone straight to his room, without cleaning his teeth or anything, and slammed the door. But it had just come back at him as his door didn’t really shut properly unless you closed it carefully, jiggling the handle up as you did it. So he’d had to do that after his slam, which felt completely at odds with a show of rage.
He lay there in his onesie – a zebra one, with ears and a tail, which was too big for him because it had been passed down from Lukas – and stared at his room. His head hurt. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he’d read in another part of the Sunday Express once that stress brought on headaches, and he knew that he was very stressed at the moment.
It wasn’t that easy to sleep in his room at the best of times as the Bennetts lived on a main road called the A41, and Barry’s room faced it. The Sisterly Entity had, of course, been given the quieter room at the back facing the garden, which was BIGGER as well: some rubbish about them needing to have the bigger room because there were two of them. Barry did not recognise this.
As each vehicle went past, it would light up a different section of Barry’s room, depending on which way it was going.
A car driving down the road would light up his wardrobe, or DEJN NORDESBRUKK as it had been called in IKEA.
A car driving up the road would illuminate the ceiling and the browny-yellow patch of damp immediately above Barry’s bed, which he sometimes pretended was a map of Russia that he had to study for a secret mission.
A car turning into the road from the other side would throw a sweep of white light across the far wall, which had a James Bond poster on it – Daniel Craig in a tuxedo – and another poster, of FC Barcelona, which was a couple of years out of date but still had Lionel Messi sitting in the front row. Barry had always liked the way that both of his heroes stared out of the posters with intense eyes: Lionel like he was ready to go and beat eleven players single-handedly and score with a back-heel chip, and James Bond like he was ready to kill someone.
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