13 bowler hats, drink Earl Grey tea out of little china teacups, and recite Wordsworth poems to each other. Mum must have figured out what the English were really like before her parents did, since she came to England when she was quite little, and her quirky upbringing doesn’t seem to have done her much harm. It’s given her plenty to write about in any case. Dad builds things. To be honest, we don’t really know what he does for a living. Mum says he is a chartered accountant, but we thought that was boring and made up a story that he was really a spy on top-secret missions. Somehow the idea stuck. Every time Dad has to go away on business, we try to imagine him being James Bond, jumping out of planes and outsmarting criminals. When Dad’s not traveling, he works from home most of the time in his office at one end of the garden. I say office, but it’s more like a man cave. He built it himself a few years ago to escape from the rest of us. It’s huge inside, with plenty of space for his desk and all that, and also for his inventions. When I said that he builds things, I really mean he invents and builds stuff. Mum says he’s a genius. In spite of living in an enormous house, we never have any money, and Dad tries to make up for this by building us exciting things we can’t afford to buy from the shops. He built the boys a bunk bed that looks like a space rocket because Hugo was obsessed with space at the time. It’s a bunk bed that has built-in reading lights that change color, a climbing wall up one side, and a small helter-skelter at the other end so they can slide out of bed in the morning.
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