The World's Worst Mothers (11 page)

‘What a hole this is!' said Bruno.

‘That's the way to the harbour,' said Sophie, pointing at a battered signpost.

‘I'm hungry,' cried Nicholas.

‘You had biscuits on the train,' said Sophie. ‘That wasn't very long ago.'

‘I'm still hungry,' said Nicholas.

‘Maybe there'll be some sort of a snack kiosk at the harbour,' said Bruno.

‘Should we just leave these here?' asked Sophie, pointing at the two Annas who had got out of the train with them. They really were like two peas in a pod. Except that Sophie's Anna was wearing a green flowery skirt and Bruno's wore a red one and had a suitcase. The ticket collector on the train had nearly fallen over with astonishment. ‘Good Lord! Absolutely identical identical twins.'

‘We'd better take them with us,' said Bruno. ‘Less chance of things going wrong if we have them than if they are just hanging around here.'

He pulled the remote control out of his rucksack and pressed a button. The dolls started to move.

‘We'll have to pay full fare for the pair of them on the ferry,' said Sophie. ‘That's going to eat a hole in our money.'

Bruno looked in his wallet. ‘I have thirty-three euro left,' he said. ‘What about you?'

‘Only twenty-one. If I'd known she was going to come after me, I'd have brought more money with me.'

‘You didn't look too happy when you got out of the train with her in Hamburg,' said Bruno.

‘I told her I was only taking Nicholas to the toilet, but apparently she didn't believe me.'

Bruno pressed on his remote control again and the two Annas hopped forward.

‘She's probably programmed to follow you everywhere.'

‘I thought I'd been very smart about that,' said Sophie, tapping on her schoolbag. ‘She's never followed me to school. But Nicholas let the cat out of the bag.'

‘I only said we were going to find Mummy,' said Nicholas.

‘Exactly,' said Sophie with a sigh.

It was only a few paces to the little harbour. A few boats were bobbing on the waves. Seagulls were circling and screeching over a fishing boat. A few nets were hanging out to dry on the harbour wall. It all looked very sleepy.

A bigger ship, with the name
MS Nordfall
on its hull, was drawn up beside the pier.

‘There it is,' cried Sophie. ‘That's the ferry for sure.'

But it wasn't due to sail again until the next day, as they could see from a timetable that was hanging beside a locked-up ticket office.

‘What'll we do for all that time?' asked Sophie in dismay.

‘First we'll buy ourselves a shrimp roll,' said Bruno. ‘There's a fish stall over there, and they are open.' They bought two shrimp rolls and, for Nicholas, a fried fish roll. They asked the stallholder if there was any way of getting to Nordfall sooner.

The stallholder shook her head. ‘Why would you want to go there anyway? There's nothing to see, except this weird mannequin school.'

‘Mannikins?' asked Sophie.

‘Oh, they're called models, these days,' said the fish stallholder. ‘But it's the same thing. Those two, they come from there.' She pointed at the two Annas who were standing by the ferry dock looking over the water.

‘What do you make of that?' Sophie asked Bruno as they sat chewing their fish lunch on a bench. ‘What on earth do our mothers want with a model school? I don't know what yours looks like, but mine is far too old for that sort of thing.'

‘Mine is far too fat,' said Bruno.

‘My mama is beautiful,' crowed Nicholas, nibbling at his roll.

‘Was I the only one who answered your question, “Who knows Aunt Anna?”' asked Sophie.

‘No. There was a Nadine, but she thought her Anna was super and she was delighted that her mother had gone off. She had done nothing but snoop around after her. She was really dreadful.'

‘A terrible mother,' said Sophie thoughtfully. Then she leapt up and cried, ‘I've got it! Did you fill out a questionnaire about the worst mother in the world?'

‘Yes,' said Bruno. ‘But what's that got to do with anything?'

‘I don't know, but we're going to find out. If only we were on that damned island!'

Emily couldn't sleep. After she had thrown the chocolate whip over her, Aunt Anna had disappeared into her room, or rather Emily's' mother's room, and she hadn't come out.

Emily had knocked on the door and called, ‘Aunt Anna, I'm sorry.' Not that she really was sorry.

Now what was she going to do? Should she ring her father and tell him the whole story? He had his mobile with him, of course, and he had said before he left that she could get in touch with him any time. He would be able to get Aunt Anna to talk, and he'd find out where Emily's mother was.

But then he'd have proof that Emily would be much better off being brought up by him and his Saskia than by her mother. Emily felt sick even thinking the name Saskia.

Now she was lying awake, wondering what her mother was doing right now. Was she asleep, or was she awake too and thinking of her?

Then she heard, from the next room, the sound of the wardrobe opening. Aunt Anna must be changing. Her blouse was covered in chocolate whip. Emily put her ear to the wall. She heard the rattle of coat hangers and the squeak of a drawer. It didn't sound like changing. It sounded like packing.

Emily leapt out of bed, pulled on her freshly ironed blouse and a skirt and slipped into her sandals. She could hear the sound of the flat door closing. Where could Aunt Anna be going? Maybe to her mother? It could be that her mother hadn't gone away at all but was in hospital and nobody had dared to tell her. She was going to have to follow Aunt Anna.

Emily picked up her purse, stuck it into her heart-shaped shoulder bag and left the flat.

On the street, she looked around. Aunt Anna was standing at the corner. What could she be waiting for? At that moment, a taxi drove by and Aunt Anna raised her arm. The taxi stopped. Emily ran forward. The driver was just about to put his foot on the accelerator when Emily yanked the back door open. ‘I'm coming too,' she cried, throwing herself onto the back seat.

‘Is that all right, young lady?' the taxi driver asked Aunt Anna, who was sitting next to him, staring straight ahead.

‘Please drive me to the North Sea, to Südersiel. There's a ship waiting there to take me to Nordfall.'

Nordfall? Could that be the island where her mother was staying? Emily wondered.

‘That's a long way off. That'll cost you a pretty penny.'

Aunt Anna took a note out of her bag.

‘Five hundred euro!' said the taxi man in amazement. ‘Put your money away, young lady. It won't cost that much.'

He put his foot down and off they went.

Kruschke leant back happily. It was all going swimmingly. Anna 01 was on her way home. On the monitor, he could see the steady trajectory of her journey and the hazy back lights of the car in front.

Of course, Wohlfarth must never know that he had prematurely set the ‘return home' function in one of the dolls. But how could he have left Anna 01 with that Emily? She had actually attacked her! Someone who starts by flinging chocolate whip around can end up doing something much worse.

There was definitely a bit of a spanner in the works today. Anna 15's speech mode had gone wrong. She was with Timmy, the son of Clingy Mum. Kruschke reckoned that Timmy's having taken her with him to the swimming pool and pushed her into the water could have something to do with it.

The lifeguard had rescued Aunt Anna immediately, and had given Timmy a right telling-off. Her adventures in the pool had robbed Aunt Anna of the power of speech. Kruschke had been trying in vain all morning to restore her speech via a remote connection. Oddly enough, nobody was too concerned about it. Timmy was delighted that there was nobody to nag at him, and his father was equally pleased to have a bit of peace.

Then came this business with Anna 01. It had been a difficult decision for Kruschke to make, but his dolls were too valuable to be the target of flying desserts. But now he'd solved this problem. As soon as Anna 01 arrived in Südersiel, he would be there to meet her.

But first, he had to just check up on the other Annas. One by one, he called them up on his monitors. In most cases, the screen remained blank. That was good. It meant the Annas were in sleep mode. But then, on one screen, a second, smaller screen appeared. King Kong was just stepping on a skyscraper with a wriggling blonde in his hands. Someone was watching television, even though it was a school night.

If Kruschke had been looking at monitor 07 and monitor 13 at that moment, he'd have seen something that he definitely wouldn't like, even though it looked really lovely. He would have seen that two of his Annas had their arms around each other and were waltzing around. Not very far away from him, either. Just an hour's boat ride away, in fact. But Kruschke had turned the monitors off by now. He had a boat to catch, and besides, someone was waiting for him.

Bruno pressed the remote control and the two Annas detached themselves from each other.

‘That thing is amazing,' Sophie said. ‘What else can you make them do?'

‘Haven't a clue,' Bruno admitted. ‘I'm just experimenting. Once I pressed one of the buttons and she started ironing like mad, only she used the toaster!'

Sophie laughed softly. She was sitting with Bruno on a bench at the ferry dock. In her lap was the sleeping head of Nicholas.
Small children can sleep anywhere,
she thought enviously. She couldn't as much as close her eyes.

Bruno yawned loudly. It had been a long day. They'd walked out to the lighthouse and back and got something more to eat at the fish stall. And when it started to rain, they'd gone to the railway station to see if there was a waiting room there where they might be able to spend the night, but they were out of luck.

When they got back to the harbour, the fish seller had shut up shop and gone home. The children were all alone. Bruno looked at his watch.

‘Nearly eleven.'

‘It will be ages before the ferry goes. What'll we do all night?'

‘Sleep,' said Bruno. ‘Lucky it's stopped raining.' He stretched out on his bench and put his rucksack under his head as a pillow.

Sophie tried to move Nicholas a little, but he woke up immediately and murmured sleepily, ‘Mama?'

‘Go back to sleep,' said Sophie. ‘We'll see Mum soon.'

Nicholas closed his eyes, only to open them again as the beam of a car's headlights fell on his face. Bruno sat up in fright and put his hand over his eyes. Fifty metres away, a taxi came to a halt, leaving its engine running. A woman got out and came towards them. The taxi turned around with a squeal of tyres and drove off.

The woman came closer. At first, they couldn't make her out in the darkness, but when she went past them to the two Annas sitting on the harbour wall, Sophie said, ‘Oh my God, it's another one!'

‘Hello,' said a little voice behind them. Bruno and Sophie turned around. It was a dark-haired girl with a pageboy haircut. She was very unsuitably dressed in a ruffled blouse and a lacy skirt.

‘My name's Emily. What's yours?'

Kruschke was peering ahead. He'd much rather be tucked up in bed than sailing over the waves in this old tub. He checked his watch. He wouldn't be home before midnight. What a waste of time! And all because of this Emily and her dessert strike!

Salty spray spattered his face. His eye was stinging. The moon was shining and he could see the tree stumps that marked out the ferry channel. In the distance he could see the Südersiel lighthouse. He'd soon be there. Anna 01 would be waiting for him. Then it would be into the boat with her, and after that all he had to do was smuggle her into the factory and put her with the others. Wohlfarth would never notice one doll more or less.

That would all change when Kruschke had completed his work on Sarah. In any case, this trip through the night was a good opportunity to test something out.

‘Sarah,' he called down into the cabin. ‘Come on up.'

A woman with long brown hair came up the steps and stood next to him.

‘Take a look at the moon,' he said to her. ‘Well, what do you say?'

Moonlight was streaming over the black, black sea like liquid silver. Sarah stood and looked. She looked, as if she wanted to keep this image in her heart for all eternity. Kruschke's fingers were damp with anticipation. How would she react?

‘The moon is the only natural satellite of the earth. It orbits it in twenty-seven days, seven hours and forty-three point seven minutes. Its axis is …'

‘Yes, yes, that'll do,' Kruschke interrupted her, disappointed.

Sarah had been his first model, and when he had programmed her, he had fed her encyclopaedic information as a way of saving time. He'd only wanted to be able to test if speech mode would work at all. Now he was trying the whole time to reprogram her. He had to make her not only express emotions but actually feel them. If he could achieve that, he would be a greater genius than Einstein.

‘Believe me, Sarah, one day Einstein will look like a dunce in comparison to me.'

‘Albert Einstein is the inventor of the theory of relativity. The formula goes like this …' Sarah was really cranking it out now.

‘Ssshhh!' Kruschke put a hand over her mouth. ‘We're nearly there. Go back down into the cabin.'

The day he'd found Sarah sitting in the dunes had been the best day of his life. The swim in the North Sea hadn't done her any harm. All her functions were intact. He was so proud of her. It was such a pain that he had to keep her under wraps. ‘But not for long, I promise you that,' he told her.

He was getting closer and closer to the lighthouse. It was lighting up the boat at regular intervals. Kruschke could make out the pier alongside which the ferry was berthed, its white prow gleaming in the moonlight. And someone was standing on the dock. Anna 01, of course.

Kruschke screwed up his eye. Was he seeing double? No, he was seeing triple! There were three Annas standing on the pier, waving their arms.

‘Here comes a boat!' cried Bruno excitedly. ‘Maybe it can take us.'

‘Wake up, Nicholas. Wake up!' cried Sophie, shaking her little brother.

‘Mama?' asked Nicholas.

‘Yes, yes, we're going to see Mum,' said Sophie.

‘But suppose they're gangsters?' asked Emily. ‘Maybe it's the people who kidnapped our mothers.'

‘I don't think our mothers were kidnapped,' said Bruno. ‘We'd have got a ransom note if they had been. But instead, we got these dolls sent to us. And they're probably quite valuable.'

Emily had by now learnt from Sophie and Bruno that her Aunt Anna was no schoolfriend of her mother's but a robot in human guise. That explained a lot. But not everything.

‘I still don't see why anyone would go to the trouble of swapping a mother for a robot,' said Emily

‘That's what we hope to find out,' said Bruno.

The sound of the motor got louder. The three children went towards the pier but made sure to stay in darkness. Sophie was carrying Nicholas in her arms. He was still half asleep. They watched as the motorboat made its way towards the pier and finally stopped near the three Annas. A pudgy man wearing a bobble hat was standing on deck, throwing a rope around a mooring post.

‘He doesn't look like a gangster,' said Bruno. ‘And he seems to be on his own. Let's go!'

The man helped the three Annas aboard, one by one. He was just about to undo the rope again, when Bruno approached the boat.

‘Excuse me, where are you taking them?'

‘What are you doing here?' asked Kruschke in surprise.

‘We're looking for our mothers,' said Bruno, waving at the others, who were coming hesitantly forward. ‘And we believe that they are on an island called Nordfall. You're not going there, by any chance?'

Bemused, Kruschke looked from Bruno to Emily and from Emily to Sophie and Nicholas.

‘How do you know? I mean, where did you get that idea?'

‘Are you going to Nordfall, yes or no?' asked Sophie, putting her schoolbag on board. ‘If so, we want to go with you.'

‘I have to make a phone call,' Kruschke managed to get out, and he went into the cabin.

‘Come on,' said Bruno, climbing aboard.

The children sat down opposite the three Annas.

‘You didn't think we'd rumbled you, did you?' Bruno said to them.

The three kept silent and stared vacantly past him.

‘That guy probably turned them off,' whispered Sophie.

Nicholas was crying. One Aunt Anna had been too much for him, and now here were three of them!

‘They're not real,' Sophie said, trying to calm him down. ‘They're dolls. You know, there's, like, a battery inside them.'

Nicholas nuzzled into Sophie's arms and she put her jacket gently around him.

‘OK, I'll take you to Nordfall, to the bossman,' said Kruschke, reappearing.

‘The boss?' asked Emily, puzzled. It looked like there was a gangster chief after all. She wanted to get off the boat, but Kruschke had already started the engine, and the boat went puttering out to sea.

It was a silent journey. The aunts weren't able to speak, and the children's eyelids kept drooping. All except Bruno. With the first heave of the boat, he had started to feel most unwell. He felt as if his stomach was almost in his throat. Just look at the horizon, he told himself. Only at the horizon, not at the prow of the boat, which was constantly moving up and down. He belched noisily.

‘If you must throw up, please be careful where you do it,' said Kruschke.

He was angry. Wohlfarth was going to give him hell. He could have hidden the three Annas from him, but four children? Still, he could hardly throw them overboard.