The More You Ignore Me Read Online Free

with her mum. It felt dangerous and out of control
but she knew it would be even more dangerous if she disobeyed Gina.
    They
spent a couple of hours looking round the shops but Gina was in such a bad mood
it wasn’t a pleasure and every time Alice asked for something, Gina tutted
loudly, looked straight ahead and carried on walking, so in the end Alice gave
up.
    They arrived
home in time for the news. Keith always made an attempt to shield Alice from
the more tragic and violent stories but he wasn’t in, so Alice sat through a
couple of horrible murders and a war story and was just about to try for a
sandwich and a drink when the weather came on and Gina shushed her loudly and
urgently.
    Alice
was aware of her mother once again staring transfixed at the screen and
realised that the man talking and pointing to a map with clouds and sun on it
was ‘bastard’ from the house in Hereford. Gina became agitated and took her
shoe off and threw it at the television. It missed the screen and bounced off
the controls at the bottom, somehow managing to turn the television off. Gina
began to sob uncontrollably, managing to say through her tears, ‘Bastard
weatherman. Look what he’s done, he’s turned me off from his life, I hate him, I
hate him.’ Her tragic snot-covered face put Alice in mind of Susan Winston, a
girl in her class who often burst into tears if even slightly reprimanded by a
teacher. Alice wanted to give her mum a hug but knew there was a good chance of
this escalating the proceedings to hurricane level so she sat motionless,
wondering what to do, when like a mud-spattered knight in shining armour her
dad stepped into the room to rescue her.
    ‘What’s
up, sweetheart?’ he said to Gina. ‘Nothing much in the shops?’
    ‘Don’t
take the piss,’ said Gina. ‘Can’t you see the state I’m in?’
    ‘Come
on, Alice,’ said Keith perkily ‘Shall we go and see how Smelly is?’
    Smelly
was Alice’s guinea pig who lived in the porch; the overpowering aroma from the
emissions he was responsible for had been deemed too unpleasant to allow him
access to Alice’s bedroom.
    While
they checked Smelly’s progress, Alice said to Keith, ‘Mum’s gone a bit funny,
Dad.’
    Keith
tried to retain a normal expression but his heart jumped. It hadn’t occurred to
him that Alice had picked up the nuances of Gina’s deteriorating mental health.
    ‘Don’t
worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort it out. Did you and Mum have a nice
time at the shops today?’
    ‘Not
really,’ said Alice. ‘Mum kicked bastard Weatherman’s car.
    Oh
Jesus, Keith thought. It’s happening again.
    Just
after Alice was born, Gina had had what psychiatrists might call a psychotic
episode, which is to say she lost touch with reality for a few weeks. She was
eventually deemed to be a danger to others and sectioned under the Mental
Health Act and admitted to a local psychiatric hospital. This episode had
involved Gina becoming obsessed with a mechanic at the garage where Keith took
his van for servicing. The unfortunate mechanic in question had been
terrified, being a small, mousy and spotty little thing who still lived with
his mother. Eventually Gina had to be forcibly removed from under a Morris
traveller by the police and was taken to hospital. Alice had been only a few
weeks old at the time and Keith had had to take on a tiny baby, visit his wife
in hospital and somehow manage to keep the offers of help from the Wildgoose
family at bay One day, desperate to find someone to have Alice for the
afternoon while he went to see Gina whom he still loved fiercely with a blind
loyalty, he foolishly allowed Wobbly and Bighead to take Alice out for a walk.
The walk, of course, was to the pub and they took great delight in letting her
pushchair run down the hill and then racing to see who could catch up with it
first. The pair then decided to take her fishing and accidentally dropped her
in a pond while they were trying to show her a big carp