May Contain Nuts (31 page)

David joined me in the doorway but our welcoming smiles were not returned.

‘You stole my child's place,' she spat.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘You stole it. Ruby told me she sat next to you in the Chelsea College entrance exam and you pretended to be your daughter.' I noticed that she was shaking.

‘Now hang on a minute,' interjected David.

‘No wonder your daughter got the scholarship! Because you stole it from mine by copying her answers.'

It was then I spotted a scared-looking Ruby waiting back on the pavement, failing to make herself invisible behind a lamppost.

‘That is a ludicrous allegation,' said David. ‘No one would ever believe you.'

‘Is that a challenge?' she said. ‘Right. Well, I'm going straight to Chelsea College to tell them.'

 

The Secret of Good Parenting

How to ensure your child has the best possible start in life

By Alice Chaplin – Prisoner number FG 489775

Sunrise Books £6.99

Children learn by example and the best start you can give your child is being sent to prison for fraud. Nothing will beat the quality time you'd be able to spend reading to your children during their monthly visits to Holloway Gaol. Watching Mum being found guilty of attempting to swindle a charitable trust fund will teach them all the values and morals that you always hoped they would take out into the world. A high-profile trial in which the child's name is constantly repeated in the press and on the television will do wonders for your child's self-esteem, especially if, for example, the world was to learn that you thought disguising yourself as a hideous and spotty weirdo was the best way to impersonate your sensitive eleven-year-old daughter.

And how much better if their father could be an accessory to the crime! If he too was to receive a
custodial sentence, your children might be lucky enough to be taken into care by social services, which is widely recognized as exactly the sort of stable, loving environment in which high-achieving children can really thrive!

‘Come on, come on!' shouted David throughout the interminable seconds that we waited for our electric gates to heave themselves open. David was poised in the driving seat like a greyhound in a trap. He revved the engine and then screeched off the moment that the gap between them was wide enough, our spinning wheels sending gravel from the drive flying up against our front door.

‘We have to get there before she does.'

‘What are we going to say?' Inside I was still hoping that there might be another way out of this that did not involve me entering that darkest of dragon's lairs, the headmistress's office. I had this nightmarish vision of me standing in front of the principal's desk staring at the floor in frozen silence as she repeatedly asked me to explain myself.

‘We'll say she's making it up, of course. I mean, that's just how desperate these parents are to get their kids into the right school; these are the sort of lengths that they will go to, inventing a story as ludicrous as this.' The 4x4 changed gear with a guttural roar as David drove it at full speed down the
long straight racetrack of Oaken Avenue. A mother with a pushchair had been about to cross the road but was forced to pull back from between the cars and shouted angrily at us as we zoomed past.

David was right. If we got to Chelsea College first, we could warn the headmistress that there was a desperate mother going around making wild allegations; we could say how distressing it was for us and that we just wanted to warn her so that she could protect the good name of the school. Then by the time Ruby's mother actually burst in, the head would treat her with scepticism and maybe outright hostility. I just thought it might be better if David did this on his own while I waited in the car.

‘And what was that nonsense about you copying your answers from Ruby? I mean, the woman's clearly unhinged!' he said, speeding down a side road.

‘Er, no, I um … I did copy some answers from Ruby actually …'

‘WHAT?' He turned his head to face me. A car tooted and David swerved to avoid it. ‘You copied your answers off Ruby?'

‘Only a few. Some of the trickier maths questions …'

‘But that's cheating …' he said as if some moral line had been crossed by this adult pretending to be a child.

We swung out into the main road. ‘Thank God!' he declared, seeing that the traffic was flowing freely. ‘We'll be there in five minutes.'

‘I still say we should have telephoned first …'

‘No, the head might have been in a meeting or something and we would've been given an appointment in a week's time while Ruby's mum was in there ranting and raving about us. About
you
copying off her daughter!'

‘Oh my God, there she is!' I shouted. Ahead of us the striking figure of Ruby's mother was standing on the pavement, looking out for a bus with Ruby standing beside her. Suddenly it felt as if it was going to be a lot more difficult to lie.

We drove straight past them. I realized I'd put my hand up to obscure my face as we'd got near, but Ruby's mother wasn't interested in passing cars. She still looked angry but I couldn't help but feel a tinge of pity mixed with guilt as I saw them standing there so helpless. I thought it probably not worth suggesting to David that we stop and offer a lift for a second time. We were two mothers engaged in a desperate race, but it was a race that she was forced to undertake using public transport. Her powerlessness could not have been more obvious if she'd been chained to the bus stop. This is how the battle lines were drawn: four-wheel drive versus double-decker bus. Public versus private, the past versus the future. Surely it would be no contest?

Objectively speaking, I knew that she was right and I was wrong. But I believed I possessed the card that counted for more than any collective social morality: I was a mother doing what I believed was best for my own children, and that is the ace of trumps that tops everything else in the pack. Yet after we passed her I could feel myself shaking. My insides felt like they were at the centre of some terrible earthquake: two tectonic plates impacting. In one world I had merely assisted my daughter through her entrance exam and then been kind enough to help another child. But in this other world that was now crashing into my consciousness I had robbed a disadvantaged child of her one chance to get a privileged education, cheated and lied and deceived my own daughter, and it was all about to erupt and I would be publicly disgraced.

‘Faster, come on!' I urged David as we hovered behind a lorry. ‘Overtake him on the inside …'

‘Shit!' said David, looking in his mirror. ‘Her bus is here …' I looked round to see a 137, the one route that went all the way there. We were still over a hundred yards ahead when Ruby and her mother climbed on board.

‘But the bus is going to have to keep stopping. Surely we must get there ages before they do,' I said. ‘I can't believe she was so stupid as to speak to us before she went to the school …' I added.

‘Well, she was acting emotionally, not rationally, wasn't she? Typical woman. WHAT IS THIS BLOODY IDIOT DOING?' ranted my husband as we ground to a halt and a stream of traffic flowed by on our nearside. ‘Oh, now he indicates right … Stupid bastard!' he screamed. Luckily David seemed to know some secret driver's code for this situation and he gave the special signal that meant: ‘The vehicle behind requests you move out of the way as quickly as possible.' It involved pressing his horn and holding it down for ages.

‘Can't you cut in?'

‘There's no gap …'

Cars continued to whizz by us as the bus got closer. It was then that we saw that the lorry driver had climbed out of his cab and was coming across to remonstrate with us.

‘What is your problem, pal?' he said aggressively. ‘Do you want some or what?'

On reflection David decided that he didn't ‘want some', although it was a very kind offer. He had a strict rule never to get into an argument with any man with cobweb tattoos on his neck. He quickly reversed back up the road and now at last he managed to cut into the traffic, but only after the bus had gone steaming straight past us.

Ahead of us I saw a little boy was walking beside his mother and my heart sank as I saw that they were passing a pelican crossing. No small child can pass a button without pressing it, and sure enough, as they ambled straight past, his little index finger casually activated the pedestrian light control. He didn't even look round to where a couple in a Land Rover Discovery were shouting obscenities as they screeched to a halt. David's fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel: ten seconds, twenty seconds – still the pointlessly red traffic light refused to change. And then he quickly looked all around to check there were no police cars within sight before he just took off, driving straight through the red light and prompting the elderly driver behind to begin to follow before anxiously stopping once again and looking confused.

Ms Osafo's bus was now a hundred yards ahead of us. It taunted us by stopping to pick up a few more passengers and then politely indicated while some idiot lorry driver actually stopped to let the bus pull out. It was so selfish. There was a big sticker on the back of the lorry that said, ‘How's my driving?' followed by the freephone number of some road safety agency that you were supposed to ring on your mobile while you were speeding along. I wanted to call the number to let them know. ‘This lorry's driving is completely inconsiderate. He just stopped to let a bus pull out.'

Ahead the road widened into two lanes. The right-hand lane was jammed solid with queuing private cars. The left-hand side was a completely empty bus lane, with only Ms Osafo's bus zooming up towards Chelsea. They never had this problem in the Monaco Grand Prix. ‘And there goes Schumacher in the Ferrari, but oh no, he's hit the rush-hour traffic and he's not allowed in the bus lane between 7am and
9pm, and suddenly he's overtaken by some elderly shoppers on board a big red double-decker …'

Public Transport was increasing its lead, Private Transport was not moving at all. ‘Go in the bus lane, go in the bus lane …' David shouted to the car that blocked the way in front of us. Public Transport sailed through a green light; Private Transport revved its engine hoping this might edge the rest of the traffic forwards. The empty road stretched out like some exclusive business-class avenue, but instead of crossing the white-painted Rubicon that separated the unused half of the road, the lemming in front patiently inched his way forward to take his place in the choking traffic jam that stretched out into the hazy distance.

Finally David was able to mount the pavement to squeeze past the car in front, manoeuvring the 4x4 into the bus lane where he could race past the line of patiently queuing traffic on our right. With half a dozen bus stops between here and Sloane Street, soon we would be back in front and first to Chelsea College; nothing was going to stop us now. It was then a policeman in a Day-Glo jacket stepped out into the bus lane and very unequivocally directed that we pull over. David may have momentarily considered running over and killing him, but though we'd already stretched the boundaries of acceptable morality, he must have concluded that this might have been overstepping the line.

We arrived at Chelsea College around twenty minutes later.

‘Remember we should remain calm and reasonable …' gabbled David as we scurried into the reception. ‘If she's been all angry and mad, that'll help when it comes down to our word against hers …'

‘You sound like you've got it all worked out – are you sure
you wouldn't rather speak to her on your own while I wait in the car?'

It turned out that Ms Osafo and her daughter had only been admitted to speak to the headmistress a few minutes earlier. The school secretary was adamant that we could not go in, but David insisted that we had come to help clear up a misunderstanding that was being discussed in the head's office at that very moment. A brief hushed conversation took place on the other side of the closed door and suddenly Miss Reynolds appeared with a smile and an outstretched hand. If it hadn't been the middle of summer the whole school could have been heated by the glow from my reddening face.

‘Mr and Mrs Chaplin, how nice to see you again …' she beamed, even though she'd never met David before. ‘It appears that we have another parent making a rather serious allegation about your daughter's entrance exam. If you bear with me I will try and finish with the lady in question and then perhaps we could have a little chat?'

This sounded ominous. David glanced at me and then blurted: ‘Well, if false allegations are being made against us then I think we have the right to hear them.'

‘Er, well, Ms Osafo has her daughter with her. I don't think we want her witnessing any sort of ugly scene.'

I saw a possible way through this.

‘Would it help if David came in on his own and I just waited in the car …'

‘Although,' Miss Reynolds continued, ‘Mrs Osafo seems quite calm and I usually find that animosity evaporates when people actually get together and talk these little problems through …'

And so the door was swung open. The headmistress's office beckoned, and I took a deep breath as I stepped over the
threshold. The witnesses for the prosecution were already seated on the other side. Ms Osafo was impassive; Ruby was even worse at hiding her embarrassment than I was.

‘Hello, Ruby,' I said as neutrally as possible.

‘Hello,' she said without her usual smile. Beside Miss Reynolds sat the clerk of the court, Mr Worrall, the nervous deputy head whom I recognized from our first visit to the school. He gestured for us to take a seat after his boss suggested we take a seat. Finally Lady Justice Reynolds took her place and inhaled deeply in preparation for a very difficult hearing. What would happen if I was found guilty here in this very courtroom? Would Miss Reynolds place a black cap upon her head before she passed sentence on me? Would the tabloids call me the most evil woman in Britain? Would a mob of fat people be waiting outside to spit at me as I was bundled into the police van with a coat over my head?