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growled.
    Dad, it seemed, was utterly oblivious to the exchange and was still thinking about Danny’s star turn.
    ‘I’ve always wondered how stage hypnotists get people to do all those things,’ he said. ‘I mean, it has to be some kind of trick, hasn’t it? The people can’t really be hypnotised, can they?’
    ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ Mum said. ‘Wasn’t there a man who was hypnotised and then died and carried on living because no one had given him the command to wake up?’
    ‘That was a film, dear,’ Dad said.
    ‘It was a story by Edgar Allan Poe,’ I offered.
    ‘I didn’t know the Teletubbies
had
first names,’ Mum said, and I rolled my eyes at her.
    NOTE – ‘Teletubbies’
    Many theories exist about this word, but none are particularly satisfactory. Or, indeed, convincing. Kepple in his essay ‘A Pantheon of Teletubbies’ seems sure that it is a word of deep religious significance, referring to a collection of gods or goddesses almost exclusively worshipped by children, although his evidence is seen by most scholars as, at best, fanciful.
    ‘Danny says he hypnotised Annette,’ I said. ‘Made her think she was late for school.’
    Mum screwed her face up. ‘That was a bit mean of him,’ she said.
    ‘
Was
she late for school?’ my dad asked, missing the point, as usual, by about twenty-five metres.
    Chris pulled a face at me, but I turned the other cheek and ignored him.
    ‘The point is that she
must
have been hypnotised,’ I said.
    Blank looks from Mum and Dad said I needed to explain a little further.
    ‘It’s the
summer holidays,
’ I said. ‘You don’t get ready for school when there’s no school to go to.’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ Dad said.
    ‘And it was night time,’ I finished.
    Mum was looking over at Dad with one of the strange expressions that had become all too frequent in our house.
    Even the simplest, most innocent statements could be met with tension, with Mum and Dad always on the lookout for traps and pitfalls in everything said within the walls of the house.
    Because, I guess, they spent so much of their time setting them for each other.
    This is a portrait of the Straker family
before
the talent show.
    So, when things get crazy you have a suitable base for comparison.
    You see, Mum and Dad were ‘having problems’, and were ‘trying to make a go of things’. Both of those phrases, it turns out, are a sort of grown-up code for ‘their marriage was in trouble’.
    My dad had left us almost a year before, and he’d only come back a couple of months ago.
    Anyway, to trim a long story not quite so long, Mum couldn’t cope when he was away. And so I stepped in to help her. I became the honorary ‘man’ of the family, with responsibilities that I really didn’t want or need placed upon my shoulders.
    I ended up being responsible for Chris an awful lot.
    Which meant I ended up telling Chris off an awful lot.
    It wasn’t something that sat very easily with me.
    It certainly didn’t sit very easily with him.
    Mum was too emotionally drained to do battle with Chris, so it fell to me to make sure he did his homework, cleaned up his room, ate everything on his plate.
    I became a miniature dictator.
    I might have been helping Mum, but I sure as heck wasn’t helping myself.
    Or Chris, for that matter.
    Then Dad came back, begging for forgiveness.
    Things had been weird ever since he moved back in.
    Every silence, action or look held hidden meanings.
    And I suddenly wasn’t so important any more. I went back to being a kid again. Any power I had assumed was gone in an instant.
    I had been forced into a role that I didn’t want, so why should I feel bitter about being squeezed out again?
    Powerlessness, I guess.
    Chris doesn’t let me forget.
    He resents any attention our parents offer me, and rejoices in seeing me fail.
    Mum and Dad act as if nothing has changed, when even I can see everything has.
    That’s my family.
    Drive you absolutely crazy.
    But you miss them