Flour Babies - Anne Fine [12]
‘When did you first realize I was a real person?’
He didn’t know what answer he was expecting. Maybe ‘When you were eight’ (when he’d refused to go to Hyacinth Spicer’s party). Even ‘As young as four’ (when he’d apparently thrown such a tantrum in a shoe shop that the manageress herself had stepped over and slapped him).
But what she said really astonished him.
‘Oh, weeks before you were born! I think we must have been in different time zones. If I was up and about, you were so restful you might not have been there at all. But the moment I lay my head on a pillow, you woke up and set about kicking me.’
‘Football practice, see?’ he said proudly.
And that reminded him. He glanced at the clock. First session of the term. Mustn’t be late.
‘Time to go.’
His mother lifted her knife and fork, and slid his plate on to hers.
‘Don’t let the little lady get muddy,’ she warned, nodding at the flour baby. ‘Make sure you put her somewhere safe.’
Simon was horrified.
‘I can’t take it to football!’
‘Not it, Simon. Her.’
Irritably, he brushed off the tease.
‘How can I take her to football?’
‘You have to take her, Simon. It’s in those rules you brought home.’
Simon cast about desperately for some reason not to take her.
‘I can’t! It’s not just people from our class, you know. There’s only me and Wayne from our class on the team. Everyone else will see. They’ll fall about laughing. We’ll get crucified!’
‘Just keep her out of sight.’
‘Mu-um!’ Had the woman never been in a locker room? Didn’t she know your sports bag was not your own? You would be lucky if one time in the whole season you got away without having some joker root through your kit to tug out your underpants and make a great drama of sniffing them and whirling them about, or even just borrowing your deodorant or nicking your bus fare.
He’d give a flour baby doll a life expectancy of minutes in a locker room.
Less.
‘You’ll have to look after it, Mum.’
‘Me?’
‘Just while I’m gone.’
She put on her Forget-it-Simon look.
‘Forget it, Simon. I’m out myself until nine. If you think I’m taking your homework with me –’
Simon made his mind up.
‘She can just stay here. She’ll be all right. It’s perfectly safe. I’ll shut Macpherson in the living room, so he won’t chew her or anything. She’ll be fine.’ There was a glint in Simon’s mother’s eye. Amusement? Interest? Mischief? He couldn’t tell.
‘And what about Rule 5?’
Rule 5? The snoopers! Simon snatched the list of rules towards him and struggled through Rule 5 again.
Certain persons (who shall not be named until the experiment is over) shall make it their business to check on the welfare of the flour babies and the keeping of the above rules. These people may be parents, other pupils, or members of staff or the public.
Members of staff! Old Carthorse must know about the football. What had he said this morning when he tossed the flour baby over? ‘Aren’t you supposed to be one of the school’s sporting heroes?’ Maybe he’d make it his business to sneak along and rummage through the changing rooms, looking for his and Wayne’s babies.
And ‘other pupils’. Maybe he’d ordered someone else to check up on both of them. Maybe that Jimmy Holdcroft had been signed on secretly as a nark. He was an oily piece of work. Being a stool pigeon would be right up his street.
And ‘members of the public’. Next door was always twitching her curtains. She was a natural spy. She’d love to gang up with the enemy. All in a day’s work for Mrs Spicer.
No. When it came down to it, no one was safe. You didn’t know if you could trust your own mother…
His eyes fell on the snooper rule again. “These people may be parents…’
Slowly, casually, he turned to look at her. That glint! It was still in her eye!
Oh, surely not. Surely not his own mother. The very idea was ridiculous.
Except –
They’d do anything, these parents, if they thought it was good for you, or for your education. In this respect, she had no pride at all. Didn’t he know from bitter experience