The World's Worst Mothers (8 page)

‘I've never heard such nonsense,' hissed Earth Mother to her neighbour.

Sophie's mother rolled her eyes scornfully.

‘A bedtime story doesn't always have to be logical. It's a question of imagination. And – this is very important – there must be a happy ending,' said Wohlfarth.

To everyone's relief, the bell rang. It was much more pleasant to sew dolly clothes or to build a tower of bricks than to be scolded by Wohlfarth.

There was fried flounder for lunch that day, as Hinnerk had had a good catch. There was no need for the manageress of Dune View to marinate it in yoghurt and diet lemonade either, as the so-called trainee models seemed to have healthy appetites. Except Earth Mother, of course, who would eat nothing that had eyes, except potatoes.

After lunch, Wohlfarth came out of his office and down the stairs to the dining area.

‘I would like to inform you of a change to the timetable. Unfortunately the workshop “Introduction to Computer Games”, led by Herr Kruschke, has had to be postponed. Instead, Sven-Ole will accompany you to the beach and show you how sandcastles are built, since Herr Kruschke is unavailable at the moment.'

Wohlfarth did not mention that Kruschke was having some trouble. One of his Annas had disappeared. At least, she wasn't communicating any more. It might be just a little glitch, or it might be something bigger. Wohlfarth was very annoyed. Everything had gone swimmingly so far, but this he could do without.

The mothers, however, were very pleased. Most of them found computer games boring. And besides, the sun was shining today and it was surely better to be at the sea than to be indoors hunching over a screen. And so, chattering like a flock of birds, they set off in the afternoon with buckets and spades to see who could build the most beautiful sandcastle.

While Bruno's mother was digging away busily in the sand on this Monday afternoon, screaming when she came upon a dried-up crab, her son was idly clicking the buttons on the remote control. Aunt Anna started to spin, faster and faster, and then she suddenly keeled over. Bruno pressed rewind, and Aunt Anna stood up, stared at him out of extraordinarily glassy eyes and left the room.

She wasn't real! Aunt Anna was a robot! Bruno had only discovered this by accident. On Saturday, his father had presented him with his latest technical gadget: a remote control that you could use to control all the appliances in the house. The electric shutters, the stereo, the digital camera, the television. Bruno's mother was always moaning about all the remotes there were lying all over the house and how you were always sure to pick up the wrong one.

‘Your mother will be delighted,' Bruno's father had said. ‘It's so simple, even she will be able to use it.'

Bruno wasn't too sure about that. The thing seemed to be complicated enough.

When Bruno's father had headed off on Saturday evening to the local, Bruno had sat down in front of the television and pressed a button. Wouldn't you know it, it was the wrong one. The electric shutters came humming down. When he tried again, loud music came out of the radio. Bruno was starting to get impatient. There was going to be a bantamweight boxing match any minute now on the sports channel. He pressed all the buttons, one after another. At last the TV screen flickered and crackled. Then two men appeared, punching each other on the nose.

Bruno was watching the television with such interest that at first he didn't notice the funny noise. It was a humming kind of sound, and it was getting louder and louder. He turned around irritably. Aunt Anna, who'd been sitting the whole time at the table, flicking through a magazine, had leapt up and begun to spin.

‘What are you doing?' asked Bruno.

She didn't answer. She just spun faster and faster.

‘Stop!' cried Bruno. ‘Please stop.'

Without thinking, he grabbed the remote and pressed one of the buttons. Aunt Anna immediately stopped spinning and stayed quite still. Then she started to speak.

‘You don't have to play the piano. You don't have to play the piano. You're allowed to box. You're allowed to bobobobbox, bobobobobobox, bob …' Her voice was high and squeaky, like when you run a film in fast motion.

Bruno pressed the remote again, and the voice got deep and slow, until it finally came to a halt with a gurgle.

Bruno was by no means a scaredy-cat. He was the only one in his class who was able to watch even the bloodiest scenes in horror films without so much as batting an eyelid. But now he came out in goose pimples and he wished his father were at home. What was wrong with Aunt Anna? Was she crazy, or was she sick? Was there not some awful illness that made you get the wobbles? He'd seen a woman once in a horror movie who was possessed by the devil, and she talked in a distorted voice like that.

‘Aunt Anna, what's wrong?' asked Bruno.

But Aunt Anna just stood there with not a budge out of her. Could her strange behaviour have something to do with the remote control? Bruno pressed speculatively on the start button. She stood up, went to the table and started to leaf through her magazine again. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Every evening since she'd arrived, she'd sat at the table looking through a magazine.

‘Anna really is a treasure,' Bruno's father had said only yesterday. ‘She works like a trooper and doesn't get on your nerves.'

Bruno didn't know much about women. Apart from his mother, the classroom assistant at school and various piano teachers, he hadn't had much experience of them. But all these women had one thing in common: sooner or later, they got on your nerves. But Aunt Anna didn't. That was suspicious. She never accused you of anything. She hadn't even complained when he'd dropped the honey jar at breakfast yesterday, even though it had created the most terrible mess. She'd just bent down with a smile and wiped it all up.

Bruno got up from the sofa and carefully approached the table where Aunt Anna was looking at one of his mother's fashion magazines. His heart was beating wildly. He took the magazine from her and in its place he laid his maths book. Aunt Anna went on leafing blithely through it, nodding every now and again and saying, as she looked at boring exercises, ‘Lovely, chic' or ‘Far too expensive, I'm afraid'.

Bruno watched her closely. He'd never done that before. Why would he? And now it hit him like a blow: Aunt Anna was a doll! Perfectly made, down to the little birthmark on her upper lip; the glowing, rosy cheeks; the eyelashes. And now he understood why she never ate or drank anything. Until now, he'd thought nothing of it, as long as he'd got something to eat himself.

He touched her speculatively on the arm. It felt smooth. Far too smooth to be skin. She turned to him and said, in her normal voice, ‘Hello, Bruno. Are you hungry? Should I stick a pizza in the oven for you?'

‘No, thank you,' said Bruno.

Baffled, he went back to the sofa and tried to concentrate on the boxing, but he couldn't. Why was there a doll in his house? To be precise, she wasn't just a doll, but a robot. And what did this all have to do with his mother's absence? Bruno decided to stay up until his father got home and tell him everything. His father would know what to do.

He stood up, said good night to Aunt Anna, who was still flicking gleefully through his maths book, letting out an occasional cry of delight, and took the precaution of locking himself into his room. He waited and waited, but his father must have been very late home.

Bruno's father hadn't surfaced at all on Sunday, and then this morning, he'd left the house very early. That conversation was going to have to wait. But by the time Bruno came home from school, he'd decided not to say anything. He wanted to work out for himself what was going on with this Aunt Anna.

In the meantime, he thought he would tease her a bit. And that's what he was doing this afternoon. As soon as Aunt Anna had straightened herself out, he asked, ‘Where is my mother?'

‘She's well, very well, well, well …'

She never stopped until Bruno pressed the Stop button.

‘Where do you come from?'

‘Your mother is gone to a health farm on the North Sea. She's well.'

He couldn't get any more out of her, so he went into his father's study and turned on the computer. He entered ‘dolls', ‘robots' and ‘artificial humans' into the search engine and he was astonished to see how far the technology in this field had developed. But this wasn't much good to him. He needed to try some other search term. Just for the fun of it, he typed in, ‘Who knows Aunt Anna?'

Emily opened the door to the flat. It was lovely to get home from school without having to be afraid that some catastrophe or other had occurred in her absence. There was no note on the table saying,
I'm in A & E, cut my hand peeling potatoes.
No rubbish bin inside the door to fall over, no burning smell because the iron had been left plugged in for hours. Nothing like that.

When Emily came into the flat these days, there was a nice, clean smell of detergent or a pleasant smell of food. Everything was tidy. It was only now that Emily realised how much she'd hated the constant chaos and how relieved she was not to have to be always worrying about her mother. She didn't have to do that now – or did she?

After the first postcard, a second one had come with almost exactly the same message, and this one was also unusually neatly written. Emily had finally decided that it was a good sign. Her mother was relaxed, rested, and that showed in her handwriting.

As usual, the table was laid today. Emily sniffed. They were having tuna pizza from the Italian place across the road. She loved tuna pizza, but this was the fourth time they'd had it now. Emily found herself longing for her mother's overcooked pasta.

There were two place settings but Aunt Anna never took more than a tiny piece, and she never ate it anyway. She probably didn't like pizza.

‘What's your favourite food?' Emily asked her.

‘I like everything, as long as there isn't too much of it,' said Aunt Anna, serving Emily her pizza.

If her mother were here, she'd have sprinkled cayenne pepper on it, or poured chilli sauce all over it. Food could never be spicy enough for her mother.

‘Did Mum always like spicy food?' asked Emily.

‘She loves spicy food,' said Aunt Anna, nodding.

‘Yes, I know that. I'm asking you if she always did, when you were at school together.'

Aunt Anna had told Emily that she had been to school with her mother, and that they'd met again by chance in town a few weeks ago. Emily wasn't surprised that her mother hadn't mentioned this meeting, because she forgot pretty well everything.

‘And was she always so …' Emily was looking for the right word. ‘So chaotic?'

‘Chaotic,' said Aunt Anna. ‘Your mother is dreadfully chaotic. Everything she does goes wrong.'

‘And was she always like that?' Emily asked.

‘Yes, she was always like that,' said Aunt Anna.

Then she stood up, scraped her untouched plate into the bin and put it in the dishwasher.

‘I've gone off pizza,' said Emily.

Aunt Anna looked at her.

‘Tuna pizza is your favourite food,' she said.

‘Yes, but we never have anything else. Could you not cook a proper meal?'

‘Like what?' asked Aunt Anna.

‘Tinned ravioli, for example,' said Emily. ‘Mum often does that.'

‘I don't know how to do that. You'll have to show me.'

Emily thought this was a great joke and she laughed. Aunt Anna laughed too, her eyes bright with pleasure.

‘I've ironed your blouse,' she said.

‘The white one?' asked Emily. ‘The one with the ruffles?'

It had been a present from her father to replace the one her mother had ruined.

‘Dry-clean only,' her mother had said, reading the label. ‘Well that's just great. Now I have to pay for that too. What is your father thinking of?'

And now here was Aunt Anna, holding out the blouse to her. It looked almost better than before. The ruffles billowed at the neck, the lacy bits on the sleeve were lightly starched and brilliant white. Nothing was hanging loose or had gone brownish from a too-hot iron. Emily put out her arms in delight.

‘Thank you,' she said, ‘thank you very much. My mother would never have done that for me.'

Kruschke was sitting at his computer screens. While the mothers were on the beach learning how to build sandcastles, how to channel the water with wooden dams and how to make bizarre grottos out of egg boxes, he was zapping from one camera to the next, looking at what his Annas were also looking at: children slumped happily in front of the television, stuffing themselves with crisps and chocolate, getting crumbs all over the furniture. He could see that his Annas hoovered, wiped things clean, smoothed out bed sheets and he was very pleased.