by Asia Mackay
‘Hello there, Digby’. He looked at me silently. ‘You see that little girl over there?’ I motioned towards the toddler chewing on the USB stick. ‘What she’s playing with is mine and not meant for children. Could you go get it for me?’
The boy continued to look at me and then got up. ‘Okay.’
That was the joy of well-brought-up, privileged kids. They respected their elders. They had manners. They could follow orders.
I watched my helper jump from trampoline to trampoline until he got to the girl and the USB stick. He leaned down and snatched it out of her hand. The girl started crying and reaching out for it.
I gave him a thumbs-up and mouthed, ‘Now come back.’ I motioned him towards us. He looked me in the eye and then turned his back on me. The little shit.
‘You can’t have it, you can’t have it!’ sing-songed the boy as he waved it above the girl’s head. He started bouncing as the girl pulled his leg with one hand and hit him with the other. Jesus. I had started Kiddie Fight Club. I kept trying to get the boy’s attention, waving at him, reminding him of his mission. But it seemed he was enjoying antagonizing the smaller child.
And then he screamed. The girl had clamped down and bitten his left calf. With a yelp of rage, amid his tears, he pushed the girl over and as he bounced flung the USB stick up high above his head. I watched as it sailed up into the air and landed on one of the large steel beams criss-crossing the star-covered ceiling.
Bloody brilliant.
I quickly turned my back to the two wailing children as their mothers came racing forward to save them and slumped down into the ball pit. I waited until they had been safely removed from their bouncy arena before trying to determine how I could retrieve the USB stick. While it was now safely out of the reach of any more teething children, it was near impossible to get to. Even if I broke club rules and bounced for my life on the trampoline underneath it I wasn’t going to get within grasping distance.
On the other end of the room was a climbing wall. If I got to the top of it . . . I went into operation mode and scanned the potential path I could take towards the USB stick. It was doable. Definitely doable. Last time I had tried a move like this was breaking out of a Venezuelan prison. At least here if I fell to the ground padded mats, as opposed to barbed wire, would break my fall. And rather than heavily armed prison guards, the outrage would be from well-to-do parents furious at my putting their precious offspring at risk. Although the wish to see me dead would probably be about the same.
Gigi seemed in total bliss, throwing balls around her in hyperactive spasms and giggles. I whispered, ‘Back in a minute, darling.’
The climbing wall had glow-in-the-dark footholds and at the top was a small platform enclosed in safety netting with ‘Reach for the Stars!’ in giant letters emblazoned above it. The wall was thankfully free of adventurous children and I was able to scale it without anyone noticing a mum appearing to want to recapture her youth. Standing on the platform, I looked across at the nearest beam – it was a leap up of nearly a metre and a half to reach it. At least once I was up there the curtain of moons and stars would hide me from the view of the parents in the spaceships below.
I looked for Gigi and saw she was still happily playing with the balls. The joy of her still being unable to crawl meant I didn’t have to worry about her going anywhere. Now I just needed to pick the right moment to climb round the netting and make the jump.
‘Mine!’
‘No MINE!’
Another fight was breaking out. I could see two toddlers lying on the floor each clinging on to an oversized dinosaur. One was wailing. Their mothers hurried over. The one who got there first was wearing a trouser suit, her hair cut in a neat dark bob. She turned to the other. ‘It seems your son just hit mine on the head.’
Would this be enough to draw everyone’s attention away from any ceiling acrobatics?
‘In our family we don’t admonish. We believe in self-regulation.’
Oh yes, this was definitely going to be enough. There was a pause as I could hear everyone at the nearby spaceships stop stirring their coffees and strain to hear the impending showdown.
‘Excuse me? You aren’t going to tell him off?’ Trouser Suit stared at the other mother, who was wearing a long patterned dress, a wide belt cinched at her tiny waist. I was pretty sure I recognized her from a recent shampoo ad. The model gave her long blonde hair a shake.
‘We believe children need to learn for themselves what’s right and wrong. Not through adults telling them.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Trouser Suit said. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. How is a three-year-old meant to know anything if you don’t tell them?’
‘Just look at little Finlay’s face. He’s noticing your son’s tears. Absorbing them.’ They both looked down at the boy lying on the floor chewing his fingernail.
‘He looks like he couldn’t give a crap. You can’t let your son run wild in a public space and not tell him off.’
The sound from the tables remained muted; children were shushed as everyone continued to listen in.
I quickly climbed round the side of the platform and edged along the outside of the safety netting. I stood on the corner of the barrier, trying to work out how best to fling myself at the beam.
‘Are you trying to tell me how to parent?’ The model’s voice was now rising.
Neither mother had noticed that the two boys had got up off the floor and were now happily playing on a plastic see-saw together.
Trouser Suit continued to talk with big exaggerated hand movements. I made out the words, ‘Jesus, I bet you don’t believe in vaccination either.’ I couldn’t hear the model’s long response but judging by Trouser Suit raising her hands in despair it seemed her guess had been correct. A couple of staff members dressed as astronauts had noticed the disturbance and seemed to be discussing whether to approach. Now was the time.
I pulled back against the netting hoping it would help act as a spring.
I made the leap, my hands reaching out as I launched myself up towards the nearest beam.
I missed.
Only one hand managed to clasp onto the beam, leaving me hanging precariously. I risked looking down. No one had noticed. Except one little boy in a red T-shirt. He stared up at me, mouth open. I pressed a finger to my lips and propelled myself round, flinging my other hand up on to the beam and pulling myself on to it. I sat straddling the beam as I peered down again at Gigi in her kingdom of balls. From up here she was just a spiky-haired purple blob.
The astronauts had now stepped in and each of the irate mothers was being taken to a separate corner to calm down over one of the club’s signature Kombucha green teas. As quietly as I could I jumped between each beam until I reached the other side of the room and the one the USB stick was balanced on. I put it in my pocket and surveyed the best route back to the ball pit without attracting any attention. As long as I kept behind the star-spangled curtain, no one would see the acrobatic mum walking across ceiling beams.
And then Gigi started crying.
Dammit. She was clearly now very aware that she was seemingly abandoned.
Any attempt at a covert re-entry to the ground was forgotten at the sound of my daughter in distress. I leaped back across the beams until I was as close as I could get to Gigi. Her cries grew louder as she looked around the room, searching for me. The guilt at being the cause of her tears stabbed me in the gut. I needed to get down there now. I looked at the figures on the trampolines below, the only witnesses in close proximity would be under the age of five, and who ever believed what they had to say?
I slid across the beam until I was up against the back wall. It was too long a drop to jump. I looked at the wall; the ridges in it had big enough cracks I should be able to hang on. It had been a good couple of years, and I’d been a good couple of kilos lighter since I tried a manoeuvre like this, but the sound of Gigi needing me helped override any apprehension at attempting it. I
swung down from the beam, my bare feet grappling against the wall until I found some footing. I slowly climbed down, my arms and legs shaking with the effort of trying to keep me holding on. I was Spider-Mum. I made it far enough down the wall until I was in safe leaping distance of the ball pit. I took a deep breath and jumped in. A flurry of balls bounced out. I swept Gigi into my arms. ‘It’s okay, Mummy’s here.’
She stopped crying and nuzzled into my neck. I clambered out the ball pit and noticed the trouser-suited mother staring at me.
‘How did you . . . ?’ She trailed off.
I shrugged and flicked my hair. ‘Pilates.’
Chapter Twelve
‘I THINK A POTTY-TRAINING toddler may have had a little accident.’ I was watching Sandy hold the blueprints I had retrieved from the trampoline up against the light. They were a little damp and he was trying to see if he could still decipher them.
‘You’re telling me this is fucking wee?’ He dropped the papers.
‘Afraid so. All that jumping . . .’
‘Jesus.’ He wiped his hands on his combat trousers. ‘Any luck with the USB stick, G-Man?’
Geraint shook his head. ‘It’s too damaged. The files are corrupted.’
‘I thought this place was a kids’ club, not a bloody zoo. The items were only there for an hour and they ravaged them.’
I didn’t bother pointing out toddlers were every bit as destructive as wild animals.
Sandy sighed. ‘We need a new strategy on how Dasha can smuggle us the info we need.’
We were now at the planning stage of our mission. Here it was vital we meticulously plotted every detail of the upcoming Pop. One wrong move, a failed attempt, or even a successful one that no one bought as an accident, and we would spark an international incident and violent retaliation. The President couldn’t find out that we were on the attack. Nobody could know that Dimitri was a casualty of the silent war raging on the digital battlefield, nor that his elimination was a strike to protect our privacy. Protect our civil liberties. Protect our total reliance on electronic devices for parenting.
This was a mission very close to my heart.
After receiving Dimitri’s calendar we had trawled through it looking for areas where he was potentially vulnerable. It wasn’t easy. His sexual preferences were too vanilla for ‘the S & M Accident’. And he was too high-profile for anyone to believe the randomness of a ‘Hit and Run’ or ‘Mugging Gone Wrong’. ‘The Heart Attack’ and ‘the Laced Cigarette’ were both ruled out as a recent Harley Street medical recorded that he was a non-smoker and his heart was in excellent condition. He had no deadly allergies and no risky hobbies. There wasn’t a speedboat, motorbike, shotgun or light aircraft in sight. Dimitri was irritatingly boring.
It was therefore through lack of options that we unanimously settled on ‘the Drunk Driver’. This play involved a needle, containing a large quantity of alcohol, in this case, vodka – to adhere to the Russian stereotype – embedded into the driver’s car seat. One of the front tyres would have a small explosive fitted to it. Both mechanisms were radio operated and with a press of the button the explosive would go off and the needle inject. The car would veer off the road, crashing through a specially modified section of motorway sidebar before exploding into a fireball in the parkland below. Investigations would determine a tyre burst at a dangerous turn in a fast car driven by a drunk Ruski. Case closed. Weasel popped. Mission accomplished.
The whiteboard in the meeting room now had in scrawled red pen a long shopping list of information from Dasha that we needed to make the Drunk Driver happen. The dead-letter drop at the kids’ club had been our first attempt.
Jake looked up from his phone. ‘The bodyguards’ paranoia has ramped up another notch. Surveillance reported yesterday one actually examined the twenty-pound-note Dasha stopped to put in a charity collection box.’
Sandy looked round the table. ‘Anyone got any bright ideas?’
In a more normal set-up we would’ve gone for a simple briefcase exchange. Put down a briefcase, pick up another identical one. But an exchange is so much harder when the switch item is not a briefcase but a snakeskin Hermès Birkin handbag with a five-figure price tag and a six-month waiting list. And that was only the bag Dasha used for bonfire committee meetings. I remembered from the surveillance photos there were a few Fendi, Chanel and Mulberry masterpieces in there as well. I imagined broaching the subject with Sandy: ‘Sorry everyone! You’ll have to forget those new self-propelling rocket launchers, Lex wants to blow the budget on fucking handbags.’
‘What about the baby’s nappy?’ offered Robin. ‘She could stick items in the lining and bin it in a restaurant toilet when she changes her?’
I shook my head. ‘She’s got two nannies. The bodyguards would be suspicious if they saw her personally handling her daughter’s crap.’
Nicola was scanning her computer. ‘Ocado deliver to Dasha and Dimitri’s house four times a week. Can’t she put things in their plastic bags when she returns them to the driver?’
Again her staff were the problem. ‘She has a full-time housekeeper and cook. I doubt Dasha ever goes into the kitchen, let alone takes deliveries.’
Sandy turned to me. ‘As you’re the expert, Lex, what would you suggest?’
‘Let’s keep it simple. We tell Dasha what we need through the chatroom and if it’s too big for the scooter she gets it to me at our weekly committee meeting.’
‘How?’ Sandy frowned.
‘Forget Trojan horses. We’ll use Trojan toys.’
*
‘Alexis, my youngest, Irina, has grown out of so many of her toys. Maybe Gigi would like them? It would also give her something to play with, as you insist on bringing her to these meetings.’
‘Dasha, that would be wonderful. Thank you.’
Our initial scripted interaction went smoothly and the regular hand over of toys that followed was routinely ignored by the bodyguards, allowing me over the course of the next few weeks to take receipt of everything we needed. At our first meeting I received detailed drawings of their secure garage within a singing bear. There was a nerve-racking moment when Gigi clutched it for the first time and all that could be heard was a loud crackling of the paper inside its tummy before it launched into a high-pitched rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’.
I also got a lesson in the proper terminology for certain parts of the anatomy.
‘Walter calls it a fanny?’ Tamara had sounded horrified at Shona’s recounting of a story involving one of her sons’ confusion over exactly what a period was.
‘Yes, Tamara, he does. Blame my husband. But, honestly, what else can you call it?’
‘Front bottom.’
The others had then all joined in. ‘Come on! Really? We call it “foofoo”.’
‘That doesn’t even make sense.’
‘We call it “lily”.’
‘That’s Flora’s middle name, of course we aren’t going to call it that.’
‘Veejay.’
‘So Essex.’
And on it went. A year ago I never would have imagined my Tuesday morning would involve sitting around heatedly debating what to call a vagina.
*
At the next meeting I was given a toy xylophone, which Gigi could only get the most tinny and muffled notes out of despite her most vigorous banging with the plastic sticks. Inside it was a sheaf of papers listing the model and make of all Dimitri’s cars, notes on which ones were used for what purpose and the chauffeur’s schedule and home address.
I also received an important lesson in how appearance was everything from Frankie.
‘If you’re at soft play and want to kick back and dick around on your phone, just announce, “I’m encouraging independent play,” to anyone looking your way.’
Shona had followed up with, ‘When I can’t face being in the playground another minute and Freddie is screaming his head off, I calmly and loudly say, “Darling, use your words. I know you’re frustrat
ed but it’s now time to go home,” – while secretly handing him Smarties and whispering a promise of more if he just gets in the fucking buggy.’
*
Next I was able to receive Dimitri’s actual fingerprint imprinted into a tub of Play-Doh, while I learnt that Facebook was an essential tool in the daily game of killing time before bath time. Although Shona warned of the pitfalls: ‘Last week I discovered a guy I shagged fifteen years ago had just moved in with someone who’d been married to a guy the year before who’d since married another woman who looked look like a less pretty version of his first wife but with bigger boobs and that her sister had a daughter who looked unbelievably similar to my Willow. Does anyone else get so bored looking after their children they end up on the profile of an ex-fling’s girlfriend’s ex-husband’s new wife’s sister?’
*
The end of the month was approaching fast. We had become so confident with the toy exchanges that Dasha even got her driver to deliver me a Fisher-Price Jumperoo. Hidden within each leg of the world’s most irritating toy were alarm codes for each entry point to the house. Those codes could have easily fitted in the scooter’s horse head. She probably just wanted the bloody thing out of the house.
It was a strange dual life I was leading. Mornings could be spent discussing which symphony was best to set fireworks to and enjoying tasting sessions of mulled wine. Afternoons were more about locating a Lamborghini that was the exact same model as Dimitri’s and testing the radio range of a remote detonator. And then there were the daily sessions at the gym that Candy kept dragging me in for. She was taking getting my pre-baby body back a lot more seriously than I was.
*
A song from one of Gigi’s CDs kept playing in my head on repeat. ‘Jelly on a plate, Jelly on a plate, Wibble Wobble, Wibble Wobble, Jelly on a plate.’
I was running in front of a mirrored wall.
‘Okay Lex, you can stop.’ Candy looked down at her stopwatch. ‘Not a totally crap effort but huge room for improvement. Are you not doing any exercise outside of here?’
‘I run twice a week before work.’ Dragging myself out of bed to jog round the expansive gardens of Chiswick House had started as a chore but seeing as anything outside of work and Gigi could be considered ‘me time’ I had started to appreciate the solitude of an early-morning run.