‘THEY’RE SO AMAZING, MAMA.’
Gigi was staring at my lopsided emergency-baked cupcakes, covered in pink icing and rainbow sprinkles.
‘They best cupcakes ever, Mama.’ It was moments like this that made it worth having children. Blind adoration. I was already dreading the day she grew up and knew better.
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ Will came up behind me.
‘Passed out on the sofa down here.’
‘And already been baking?’
‘A mother’s work is never done.’ I looked over at Will pouring himself a coffee. ‘Did you know Rochelle lives round here? Her son is at Gigi’s nursery.’
Will took a sip of coffee. ‘I did know that, yes.’ He went to sit down at the table with Gigi. I watched him continue to drink his coffee as he stared at his phone.
I wondered if Rochelle was the one texting in the middle of the night.
If he was going to betray our marriage vows and cheat on me, it had better be with someone worth it. One of those human rights lawyers he sometimes came across at work. An intense, worthy sort, who he fell deeply in love with because she was saving children in Syria.
That I could take. And kind of understand. But Rochelle? A simpering busybody in wedge trainers? Fuck no. He didn’t get to screw up our life for someone like that.
It was useful to know that there were different levels of how angry I could get if he was cheating, dependent upon how good a woman his mistress was.
I watched him continue to scroll.
Had things got so bad I would be setting Special Projects on him as soon as Platform Eight were off lockdown? Instruct them to do a deep dive through all his emails, texts, WhatsApp messages? I had always resisted the temptation to use the many avenues available to me as a government operative. If I didn’t trust him, what was the point?
Will’s phone pinged as a text message came in. He smiled as he read it and then slipped his phone into his pocket.
The point was I would know for sure.
And knowledge was power.
If I was fighting for my marriage I needed to know what I was up against.
*
After a coffee morning where I heard the words ‘are these gluten-free?’ as often as ‘they look amazing but I won’t, thank you’, I came home and slept for two hours. Enough to reset and feel vaguely ready for what would be another long day.
I woke to an urgent email with the title: ‘HOT CHICKS AVAILABLE NOW$$!!’. I tapped in my authorisation code and the X-rated content merged into a request from Hattie that I go to a church in Putney where Dionne had taken Peppa’s daughter Bella. My mission was to retrieve a bag that was currently in the base of the pram.
On Robin’s morning round of collecting the audio from the receivers at the three Pigs’ houses, he’d seen Peppa and her daughter rush into a café down the road from her house and then reappear five minutes later, clutching a very small bag bearing a green logo. She had put it in the base of the pram and, despite meeting Dionne on the corner and saying goodbye to her daughter in her buggy, she did not take the bag with her. Considering we had nearly ruled out Daddy Pig, the Snake was now either Peppa or George. Hattie considered this a big enough lead that whatever was in there could be anything from a security pass to a USB stick of intel for the Coyote.
I arrived in time to see Dionne enter the church hall with Peppa’s daughter, Bella. Robin came up beside me.
He nodded towards the stream of mothers, nannies and toddlers going into the church. ‘There’s a buggy parking area round the side but it’s overlooked by the whole hall.’
‘OK, I’ll go look. What kind of buggy is it?’
Robin frowned. ‘Black? With wheels?’
I realised that although I may be able to recognise and list buggy brand names as easily as if they were cars, this talent may not extend to childless colleagues.
He stretched and yawned. ‘Sorry, late night.’ I noticed he was in the same clothes as yesterday.
‘Stuck with Peng?’
‘Stuck in Shawna.’ He reached out for a high five. I left him hanging. ‘We got talking on the Northern line one night and just had our third date.’ He sighed. ‘She’s so beautiful she makes my balls ache.’
‘Robin, we talked about this.’
‘You said girls liked compliments? I want to marry her.’
I looked at him smiling to himself. Robin had been a trainee Rat for coming up to three years now – nearly double the time it took most Rats, including Jake and me. Despite this Robin had never really complained – the odd jibe about it being time to move on was as far as he got. Finding someone so upbeat and nice in this industry was rare. He never had dark moments or silent moods you had to tiptoe around. I realised a lot of why I was stalling on Robin graduating from Whistle was because, as much as I complained about him and his crap jokes, I would miss having him around. And that wasn’t fair.
‘I’m going to talk to Jake about you getting your own unit.’
‘Really? You mean it?’ He grinned. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ And held out his arms for a hug.
I waved him off. ‘Just get back to the Platform. I’ve got this.’
He blew me a kiss as he walked away, whistling to himself.
Everyone was always in a better mood when getting some. Maybe that’s what Will and I needed to do. Have more sex. Maybe then we’d argue less. Although when to fit it in? I thought of our plans for the week. Scheduling sex. Sexy.
There was a ‘Buggy Park’ sign with an arrow pointing round the side of the church. I turned the corner to be confronted with around thirty buggies.
I checked each one. A plastic bag with a green logo. That’s all I was looking for.
It was on buggy number twenty that I finally found it. I opened it.
Poo.
Poo in a small pair of Princess pants.
Bella was clearly not doing so well at the potty-training.
If Peppa was using her daughter’s crap to smuggle information to Tenebris, all power to her. But I was pretty sure the suspicious behaviour and suspect package could be explained away as a rush to prevent an accident and a clearing up of the aftermath.
Either way I wasn’t going to rummage through it to check. I handled enough at home.
*
I was on my motorbike back to the Platform when my phone rang. I looked down at the screen as I approached a red light. It was Gigi’s nursery. I clicked answer and a voice crackled through my Bluetooth.
‘You need to come immediately.’ The line broke off slightly and I just heard ‘unacceptable’.
‘Ms Yvonne? I can’t hear you? Is everything OK?’
‘I . . . really . . . Gigi nearly killed someone.’ That last line came in very clear. I screeched to a halt and turned the bike around.
As I sped across London, going through nearly every red light, all I could think was: nature v nurture. Clearly it’s in her genes. How could the violence of my working life already have filtered through to my two-year-old daughter? The biting was the start. And now . . . Now what? What the hell could she have done? Water-boarded Felix at the water-play table? Tried to suffocate Sophia in the sandpit? Stabbed little Lulu with the safety-scissors? My mind burst with toddler Hunger Games scenarios.
*
A solitary peanut was placed in the middle of the table.
‘Do you not think . . .’ I cleared my throat. ‘Do you not think this is a slight over-reaction?’
Yvonne observed me silently. ‘This is a nut-free environment. It is on all our literature. It is proudly written underneath our sign in the entrance hall.’
‘Is there any child here, right now, who has a nut allergy?’
‘That is not the point. We have rules for a reason.’
‘I understand that. And, Ms Yvonne, I totally respect that. But just hear me out. If currently no one at this nursery has a nut allergy, Gigi accidentally bringing in a nut, which must have been in one of her pockets, could not be classed as having “nearly killed someone”.’
‘There could be children who have nut allergies that have not yet manifested. We are not going to have children put in danger. Not on my watch.’ She straightened her back and puffed out her chest.
I had come across people like Yvonne before. There was no point arguing with her. Health and safety was her religion. And she worshipped at the altar of form-filling and box-ticking. I just needed to pay my dues and get back to work.
‘I’m very sorry. This will never happen again. We will become a nut-free household – just in case any of us are perhaps allergic and it has not yet manifested.’ I tried to smile.
I saw Frederick at the head of the queue for picking up on the way out. ‘Everything OK?’
He looked confused that I had already been inside and that the doors were now once again closed. Ms Yvonne was a stickler for timekeeping and there were officially still three minutes until pick-up.
‘Nuts are a problem.’ I rolled my eyes.
He frowned.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it sorted. Anything on the Pigs?’
‘Nothing to report.’
‘There’s a WAF play date at your house after lunch. Hopefully I might learn something from the wives.’
‘I’ll make sure I’m out of the way. I need to get back to Peppa and George anyway.’
‘Oh God, those pigs,’ a Scottish mother behind Frederick in the pick-up line cut in. ‘I swear I go to sleep humming that theme tune.’
A conversation among the waiting parents was then launched as to just how many millions the creators must have made, followed by a debate as to why their town had both a doctor and a vet when they were all animals, and then there were more specific questions between a few mothers at the back:
‘Is it just me or is Danny Dog hot?’
‘Marianne, he’s a dog.’
‘And a child.’
‘And a cartoon.’
The doors opened and Ms Yvonne waved the other children out.
‘Don’t forget, everyone, it’s our Roald Dahl celebration tomorrow. We can’t wait to see some beautiful costumes!’
The demands from this nursery never seemed to end.