May Contain Nuts (12 page)

And now my mission was to go undercover, as a secret agent on behalf of my daughter, and so we set off for the King's Road to try on suitable children's outfits. Inevitably David was keen to be involved and scurried about Gap Kids finding
glittery pink sweat-tops which he held up against me. He seemed oblivious to the fact that we had started to attract the attention of the staff; it never occurred to him that it might strike some onlookers as a little bit suspect to see a man trying to persuade his wife to try on various items of young girls' clothing. I came out of the changing room in a pre-teen T-shirt and his voice boomed across the shop, ‘No, your bosoms look too well established. We should get you a training bra so your breasts look like they're just budding …' I had to send him home in the end before he was put on some sort of national police register.

I stood alone in the changing room, facing the full-length mirror dressed in ‘aged 10–12' spangly jeans and a pink
sk8er gal
sweatshirt and feeling like some sort of zany fancy-dress nut. These clothes so clearly did not match the maturity of my face or the grey-streaked haystack on my head. I tried everything: baggy tracksuits, long flowery dresses, and a green skirt and tights that made me look like I was playing principal boy in some provincial pantomime. I stayed locked in there getting crosser and crosser as each item looked more ridiculous on me. Despite what the T-shirt claimed, I did not look like one of the
Koool Kidz
. Why did I have to have these crow's feet and these great big bags under my eyes and this little hammock chin and liver spots on my forehead? I couldn't remember any point at which I'd been happy with my age. I seemed to have spent my entire childhood wishing I was older and my entire adult life wishing I was younger. I'm not sure when the crossover happened but there must have been a period when I thought: This is just the right age, I'm happy being exactly the age I am now. I think it was one weekend back in the 1980s.

There must be a way of covering up this ageing face, I thought. David and I had toyed for a while with the idea of
making me a devout Muslim girl. For a moment this had seemed like the perfect solution. I could walk into the examination hall at Chelsea College with just my eyes visible through the narrow slit in the yashmak and dark make-up around my eyes and on my hands. Who would have the courage to tell me to take a Muslim headdress off ? Who would dare appear racist and say, ‘You can't wear that in here, young lady, you might not be who you say you are.' And then I realized that
I
would have to say who I was in order to register for the exam, and that the name ‘Molly Chaplin' didn't sound particularly Saudi Arabian.

I had hung the last of the girly tops on the back of the changing-room door and was studying my face close up in the mirror, checking that my tongue didn't have any wrinkles—

‘No, darling, you don't want clothes with words all over the front, do you, darling, hmm, it's not very cool to be a walking advert for Gap, is it, darling, I mean they're not paying you, darling, are they, so you don't want that one, darling, do you, darling, do you?'

I recognized the oppressively persuasive voice immediately.

‘That's a nice top, isn't it, Bronwyn, darling, try that one on, you like that sort of thing, don't you, that's your favourite colour, isn't it, no, not that one, the one underneath, you like that, don't you?'

What was Ffion doing in Gap? I thought she got all her children's clothes hand-made in Milan. I couldn't come out of the changing room now with piles of children's clothes but no child. She'd start asking herself all sorts of questions.

I resolved to sit it out in there until they had wandered off. That way I'd be completely safe. Suddenly the handle of my cubicle rattled.

‘Oh, there's someone in there, darling, don't you have any other changing rooms for goodness' sake …'

‘There's more downstairs,' said the assistant, coming to my rescue.

‘It's all right, we can wait. Just stand here with me, Bronwyn, so that no one else jumps in front of us.'

I lifted my feet off the ground, thinking that if my shoes were visible it might give me away. I was trapped. Ffion was going to wait outside and I couldn't possibly come out – it was an impossible situation. Then I heard some tourists outside the door and I thought maybe the path was clear.

‘
Il fait beau aujourd'hui, n'est-ce pas?
'

‘
Oui, il fait très beau
.'

No, they weren't tourists. It was Ffion taking this opportunity to practise talking to her daughter in French.

‘
Quelle heure est-il?
'

‘
Il est onze heures et demie
.'

My Molly barely knew any French. She did know the French for ‘yes', but only in the context of a joke that ended ‘
Oui?
' ‘No, poo!'

The oral exam continued outside: ‘
Qu'est-ce que tu as mangé pour petit déjeuner ce matin?
'

‘What?'

‘Don't say “what?”, darling, say “
comment?
”. We're speaking French, aren't we?'

‘You're not.'

‘Well, I'm not now, because you started speaking English.'

‘
Il fait beau aujourd'hui, n'est-ce pas?
'

‘All right, that's enough now. Anyway, I already said that.'

The handle was rattled again, and I realized that there was no way that Ffion and Bronwyn were giving up and that I had no choice but to brave it. I had a plan to front it out. It might
work, it might not, but there was nothing else for it. I unlocked the door and marched straight out.

‘At last …' I heard Ffion say to me. ‘Oh! I think you've got that on the wrong way round, dear,' she added, seeing me stride out of the cubicle wearing a top back to front with the hood pulled up covering my face. ‘She's wearing that back to front,' she reiterated to the assistant. But the strange child wearing the hood over her face completely ignored her, carried on walking and crashed into a pillar a few yards further on.

‘Cool,' said Bronwyn. ‘Can I try on one of those?'

In the end I selected a couple of dresses, a glittery light blue sweatshirt and some trainers that lit up when you ran along. But the experience made me realize that the clothes weren't the main issue. It was the head that stuck out of the top that counted against me. I had my teeth polished and then shelled out the most money I had ever spent on myself to have my hair coloured blonde at the best hairdresser in the West End. In the salon the stereo was playing ‘Teenage Dirtbag' and I tried to feel like a film star in the transformation scene where they stick in a song to liven up the pace a bit.

I got home and shouted to David to stay in his office. I put on the most appropriate outfit and stood in front of the mirror. I thought I looked years younger: no grey hair, my waist slim, I looked at myself from every angle in the mirror and attempted an immature giggle.

‘OK, cover your eyes …' I said at the doorway to David's office. ‘Ta da!'

‘Wow. You look beautiful …' said David as he gazed upon his child bride.

‘Thank you,' I said, spinning round and pretending to take a swig from my
Simpsons
water bottle.

‘It's amazing. You look slim, young, healthy – just gorgeous.
It's an incredible achievement, really.'

‘Well, I've worked pretty hard at it …'

‘Yeah, and well done. You look fantastic. Except …'

‘Except what?'

‘Except I fancy you.'

‘What?'

‘I'm really sorry but I fancy you. And seeing as there is no way I could fancy you if you looked eleven, it simply can't be working. You're obviously a woman. A gorgeous, slim, healthy young woman, but there is just no way that you could ever pass for eleven. It's just not going to work. I'm sorry.'

I felt totally deflated. Either our plan for my daughter's future was fatally flawed or I was married to a paedophile. From where I stood both possibilities looked pretty grim.

 

The Ape-Man in Your Kitchen

By Simon and Sally Marrable

Sunrise Books £6.99

In the 1930s the British anthropologist Dr Walter ‘Wattie' White did a groundbreaking study of the behaviour of African mountain gorillas. He discovered that male gorillas that were robbed of their food and all their possessions displayed significant levels of RESENTMENT towards their human tormentors, but, interestingly, male gorillas who were given lots of fruit and chocolate showed less antipathy towards the research team. Tragically Dr White was killed when he was attacked by an incensed 400-pound male gorilla, but his work remains valuable today.

When your ‘ape-man' returns from ‘the jungle', respect his need to grab hold of food, drink and his status symbols. For some primates this DOMAIN ASSERTION might involve clinging to a big stick to bash against the ground, for others it might be the TV remote control. Most female primates have learned not to monkey about with these trophies; show respect and understanding for the gorilla in your love life and your primate partner won't go ape!

David and I had argued at length about another school for Molly. I was already angry because he'd said I looked old; he kept saying, ‘I didn't say you looked “old”, I said you didn't look eleven.'

‘So you're saying I'm just a wrinkly old pensioner and I should only wear knitted bedjackets and fluffy slippers, is that it?'

‘No, for God's sake. I'm just saying we need a back-up plan if you get turfed out of the examination hall for impersonating an eleven-year-old.'

‘You know what this is, don't you?' I said. ‘It's called
Domain Assertion
. I've read about it; you get this with all the male primates. If a female has a plan, the male has to take control of it in order to feel that he is still the dominant partner.'

‘I am her father …'

‘It's like the TV remote control is the same as a stick.'

‘What?'

‘Gorillas have to have the TV remote control, no, hang on, they have sticks, but they use them for the same purpose.'

‘What, changing channel?'

David was so ignorant sometimes – it was hard to understand how he ever managed to win the school quiz night that evening he kept disappearing to the toilets with his mobile phone. But he remained so unconvinced by my plan to disguise myself as a child, he eventually persuaded me to at least consider the boarding school option. It was either that or we start knocking on doors trying to sell copies of
Watchtower
in the hope of getting Molly into that new Jehovah's Witness convent. But even though I offered to accompany David and Molly on a tour of St Jude's, I was determined not to abandon her to some faraway institution, to leave her loveless and alone and forced to develop a crush on the captain of the lacrosse team, only to turn bulimic when her hourly text messages went unreturned.

My husband's own formative years had been at an all-boys minor boarding school in Yorkshire, where he had been admitted despite failing to demonstrate an aptitude for talking too loudly or masturbation. He always said that he'd been miserable there. But in the same way that some victims of child abuse grow up into abusers, David convinced himself that boarding school would be good for Molly.

‘But you hated it.'

‘Yes, but it made me what I am,' he said.

As if this was a good thing.

‘Welcome to St Jude's,' intoned our deadpan teenage escort. ‘We'll start in the main block and then I'll take you across to the swimming pool …'

‘Wow, a swimming pool, Molly, how about that?' said her overenthusiastic father.

‘Pah! Swimming pool,' I tutted. ‘Imagine being forced to jump into a freezing-cold school swimming pool!'

‘No, it's heated,' corrected David glancing at the school prospectus.

‘Oh yeah, they say that in there, obviously. But as soon as the last parents' cars disappear through the gates, the boiler's switched off and the girls are made to rub cooking fat all over their skin before they break the ice and get thrown in …'

Molly looked in amazement at the way in which this famous old institution managed to combine classical grandeur with the very latest state-of-the-art digital technology.

‘This is where we have our Spanish lessons …' narrated our tour guide in a flat monotone.

‘Wow, this looks nice, doesn't it, Molly?' said her father.

‘Oh dear, look at that bull-fighting poster, Molly. I think that's really cruel, don't you?'

David had volunteered to take Molly round on her own ‘just to see what she thinks', but there was no way I was leaving my daughter for a whole afternoon of intensive lobbying from her father. He'd have her signed up on the spot and Molly would be taken away from me and condemned to a lifetime of believing that rowing was an interesting sport and being given some stupid nickname from a character in
Winnie the Pooh
.

‘Through here is the gymnasium …' droned our thirteen-year-old guide, avoiding eye contact and constantly pushing her glasses back up her spotty nose. I had presumed that the gymnasium wouldn't have very much to excite my daughter, but as we walked in we were confronted by trampolines. Trampolines! Damn, why didn't they go the whole hog and have water chutes and a bouncy castle?

‘Oh, this looks fun, doesn't it?' enthused David.

‘Wow!' said Molly.

‘I don't suppose you get very long on the trampoline?'

‘We have to take turns.'

‘I bet. Shame. So you'd mostly be watching other girls on it, Molly …'

The dispute between her parents had handed all the power to Molly. She was suddenly the empress and we were two fawning courtiers persuading her of the merits of our contradicting counsel, knowing that if either of us was too obvious about our intentions it might count against us.