This isn't the time for the famed Grubbs Grady brand of cutting-edge humour.Ĭue the enraged Mum fireworks. 'Is breakfast a fry-up or some cereally, yoghurty crap?' is my response, and I know the second it's out of my mouth that it's the wrong thing to say. She's going to send me off to boarding school - no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred press-ups before breakfast. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder.

Her rant at school's nothing compared to the one I get at home. Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la! 'What are you grinning at?' she roars, and then she's off again - I'm smoking myself into an early grave, the school's responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr. I smirk at the thought, and of course that's when Mum pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. She's out of order - big time.īut it's not like I can tell her, is it? I can't pipe up with, 'Oi! Mother! You're disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!' If she stopped for a minute and thought back, she'd see what a bloody embarrassment she's being, I wouldn't mind her having a go at me at home, but you don't march into school and start laying down the law in the headmaster's office. She must! She was young once, like she's always reminding me. Safer to have them smoking at school than sneaking off the grounds during breaks and at lunch. Teachers don't approve, but they turn a blind eye most of the time. He has to sit there, looking like a schoolboy himself, shuffling his feet and saying he didn't know this was going on and he'll launch an investigation and put a quick end to it. She wants to know if the head's aware of this, of what the pupils in his school are getting up to. I've been seen smoking behind the bike shed (the oldest clich¨¦ in the book!).

Mum's ranting and raving about cigarettes. I groan, roll my eyes and mutter under my breath, 'Bring on the corpses!' Then I see Mum's face, white with rage, and I know she's here to punish, not comfort. Please don't let anyone be dead! Please! Please! Please! Ple. Her shining flesh, having to kiss her forehead, the pain, the tears. Now stiff and cold, tongue sticking out, a slab of dead meat just waiting to be buried. My immediate reaction - please don't let anybody be dead! I think of Dad, Gret, uncles, aunts, cousins. Either somebody close to you has been seriously injured or died, or you're in trouble. When a parent turns up at school, unexpected, it means one of two things.

But when there's a knock at the door, and it opens, and I spot my mum outside, I realise - life can always get worse. Double history on a Wednesday afternoon - total nightmare! A few minutes ago, I would have said I couldn't imagine anything worse.

Darren shan books lord loss