Dramatis Thingummy

Max	Chief Operations Officer but – for the purposes of this story – trainee mother.
Rosie Lee	PA to Chief Ops Officer. Competent mother.
Mr Dieter	Chief Technician. Tea maker. Almost certainly not a mother.
Polly Perkins	Head of IT. Probably not a mother.
Miss Lingoss	Member of R&D. Not a mother as far as anyone knows, but hard to tell under all that hair.
Leon Farrell	Recovering Chief Technical Officer. Father.
Matthew Farrell	Part-time son. Remembering his past.
Mrs Enderby	Head of Wardrobe. Maternal status not known.
Mrs Midgley	Housekeeper. Maternal status not known.
Mrs Mack	Kitchen Supremo. Maternal status not known.
Tim Peterson	Deputy Director. Still struggling but getting better. Not Max’s mother.
Mr Markham	Head of Security. Definitely not Max’s mother. Popular opinion says he never had a mother but was somehow spontaneously spawned…
Jamie and Joshua	Climbing boys, apprenticed to Jeremiah Scrope of Grit Court.
Mrs Scrope	Very definitely not a mother.
Mrs Scrope	No – you’re not seeing double. Unless you’ve been at the eggnog again. And why not? The author has.
Jeremiah Scrope	Ex chimney sweep.