The Mummyfesto (27 page)

I smiled at him and got up to go into the kitchen.

‘Any chance of getting some tea tonight then?’ asked David. ‘Or is that not included in your manifesto?’ He said it with a half-smile on his face which meant I had to treat it as an attempt at humour rather than being patronising.

‘The enchiladas will be about five minutes,’ I said. ‘It’s called multi-tasking and yes, it’s in the mummyfesto.’ I said it with a half-smile on my face too. So he couldn’t accuse me of sarcasm.

My laptop was still on the kitchen table. I decided to have a quick check on Twitter before I packed it away. I wanted to know if the exposure had brought in some new followers for the Lollipop Party. I was thinking maybe fifty or sixty. A hundred if we were lucky. I was not thinking 3,782. Neither was I expecting to see mummyfesto trending. I was still scrolling down all the @mummyfesto tweets five minutes later when a combination of hunger and the smell of enchiladas brought first Will, Charlotte and finally Esme into the kitchen.

‘We’re trending,’ I said, looking up at them with barely concealed glee. ‘Mummyfesto is trending on Twitter.’

‘Woo-hoo,’ said Will. ‘My mum’s bigger than Justin Bieber.’

‘Who’s Justin Bieber?’ asked Esme, at which point I gave thanks that we lived in one of the few places in the country where a seven-year-old girl wouldn’t know that.

‘He’s a so-called singer from Canada with rubbish hair and like, really cheesy songs who, for some unknown reason, is fancied by loads of twelve-year-old girls,’ explained Charlotte. Esme looked suitably bewildered. I was pleasantly surprised to find Charlotte that opinionated about anything.

‘And he’s got twenty-odd million followers on Twitter,’ I added, ‘so I’m not bigger than him really.’

‘But right this minute, you’re trending and he’s not,’ said Will. ‘Therefore you own him.’

David walked into the kitchen.

‘Mummy’s trendy and she owns Justin Bieber,’ announced Esme.

David stared at me blankly.

‘I’ll explain later,’ I said, closing the lid of the laptop. ‘It’s not important.’

By the time I arrived at school the next morning it had all gone seriously crazy. I was practically mobbed by parents stopping me outside the school gates and promising to vote for us. Jackie arrived with Alice a few minutes later and had to fight her way through to me. ‘Quick, there,’ she said, pointing to a baby in a buggy, ‘you’d better start kissing them if you want to get elected.’

I smiled at her. A great big ‘I can’t believe this is happening to us’ smile. Alice and Esme ran off together into the playground.

‘We’ve got more than ten thousand followers on Twitter,’ I said.

‘That’s incredible,’ said Jackie. ‘Actually, I have no idea if it’s incredible or not but I guess you wouldn’t have told me if it wasn’t.’

‘Well, I only set the account up on Sunday so it’s not bad going in forty-eight hours. We’ve had five hundred people join as party members, too, so that’s ten grand in the kitty. And lots of people wanting to stand for us in the election.’

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jackie, very quietly, of course, given our location.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s more than a bit scary, isn’t it?’

At that point we spotted Sam coming up the hill, or rather we spotted Oscar, who had a skull and crossbones
flying from his wheelchair, was wearing a massive homemade pirate hat and shouting ‘School ahoy’ at the top of his voice. Zach was walking a few steps behind, brandishing a telescope. Sam herself was wearing her purple hat and scarf and sporting a smile so wide it was in danger of sprouting wings and flying off her face altogether.

‘Woo-hoo,’ she shouted from across the road. All the parents turned to look and started cheering. I’d never felt anything quite like it. This sense that we had been unleashed on an unsuspecting nation and anything was now possible.

‘So,’ said Jackie, when at last Sam reached us, ‘world domination beckons, I guess.’

‘What, for Pirate Oscar here?’ She smiled. Oscar did a disturbingly convincing pirate laugh.

‘I saw you skipping on telly,’ Oscar said to Jackie, with a giggle.

‘And I bet you’re laughing because you think I’m a rubbish skipper and you can do better than me,’ replied Jackie. She clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she said it.

‘It’s OK,’ said Sam.

‘Yeah,’ said Oscar. ‘I
can
skip better than you.’ He zigzagged across the playground in his wheelchair. Zach dutifully skipping along behind. The other kids started joining it. A few minutes later half the school was skipping along behind Oscar around the playground.

‘See,’ said Sam. ‘Now look what you’ve started.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jackie. ‘I don’t have size seven feet for nothing, you know.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Sam. ‘I like the fact that people forget there are things he can’t do. I wouldn’t want it any other way.’

Jackie put her thumb up in the air as Oscar ‘skipped’ past.

‘So, have you looked at Twitter this morning?’ I asked, turning to Sam.

‘Yep. This is only the start though. It can only get bigger.’

‘So what do we do next?’ asked Jackie.

‘We need to have a meeting,’ said Sam. ‘How about tonight at my place?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t do tonight. David’s got a town council meeting.’

‘You should tell him you’ve got bigger fish to fry,’ said Jackie. She meant it jokily. I knew that. Only I couldn’t think of anything particularly jokey I could say in return. I looked down at my feet.

‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Sam quickly. I nodded. Jackie nodded too.

‘I’ll chase up the companies I approached about donations,’ I said. ‘Maybe the publicity will spur them into action.

‘Good stuff,’ said Sam. ‘If we’ve got people queuing up to stand we need to work out how many candidates we can field.’

‘Are you sure this isn’t going to get too big for us to handle?’ I asked.

Sam looked at me as if she couldn’t quite believe what
she’d heard. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘is going to be too big for us to handle.’

I could tell as soon as Charlotte got home that something else had happened. It was the way she was trying to appear less miserable than usual which gave it away.

That and the fact that I noticed the smell as soon as she came into the hallway.

‘Oh, that’s a bit pungent,’ I said. ‘You’d better slip your shoes off, I think you might have trodden in something.’

Charlotte did as she was told. She also put her violin case on the doormat and tried to walk past me in a crablike fashion so I couldn’t see her face.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

She mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘Sorry?’

‘I said it’s not my shoes.’

‘Well what is it?’ She nodded towards her violin case. ‘How did it get on that?’ I asked. I knew, of course, as soon as the question passed my lips. It hadn’t got on it at all. It had been put on it.

‘At lunchtime,’ she said quietly. ‘I must have left my locker open. They took it out without me realising. Took it into town, I guess.’

‘Oh Charlotte.’ I held my arms out to her, she came to me without a fight. Emptied herself into my arms. Sobbing, shaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘No, I mean they took my violin out of the case. They’ve basically ruined it.’

I realised my hands were trembling. My whole body was pulsating inside, trying to repel the bad smell. And feeling increasingly sick.

‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘Only Mrs Partington. I had to explain why I couldn’t do my lesson. Well, not really explain. Make something up about dropping it, I mean. I cleaned it best I could in the girls’ loos, but I still can’t get rid of the smell.’

I nodded slowly. ‘I’m going to get this sorted first thing tomorrow morning,’ I said, my voice on the edge of breaking. ‘I want you to go upstairs, love, and get a shower and then I’m going to run you down to choir practice. I don’t want you to worry about anything. Esme’s gone to Alice’s for tea and I’ll put the case in the shed before she gets back so she won’t need to know what’s happened. And tomorrow, I’ll go to school and get this whole thing sorted once and for all and we’ll get your violin replaced, OK?’

She nodded. Muttered some thanks. She didn’t even have enough left in her to protest. I hugged her to me. Told her I loved her. Watched her go upstairs like a disgraced puppy with her tail between her legs and vowed silently that I would never let anything happen to her again.

Sam sat at the head of the kitchen table, seemingly unable to speak for smiling.

‘Will you tell us whatever it is you’ve got to tell us before you burst or do yourself an injury,’ said Jackie.

Sam looked at us both in turn and took a deep breath, ‘We’ve been asked to do some media appearances,’ she said.

‘Go on,’ I replied.

‘
Newsnight
.’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Jackie.

‘And
Question Time
.’

‘You’re having us on,’ said Jackie.

‘Nope. And an alternative leadership debate on Radio 4, just for good measure.’

Jackie whooped a little and did a series of air punches. Sam laughed and grinned some more. And I sat there trying to take it all in. The first thing that went through my head was that David was going to hate me for this, not having ever made it past the
Hebden Bridge Times
. And the second thing was that I was going to have to leave Charlotte while I went down to London.

‘Are you OK?’ It was Sam who was asking. I realised I had been sitting there silently while they had been staring at me.

‘Me? Yes, sorry. I was miles away.’

‘What’s up? You don’t seem very pleased.’

I sighed. I hadn’t wanted to mention it, more because I couldn’t trust myself to stay composed while I told them rather than a desire to keep it to myself. And I hated crying in front of Sam. Always felt so bloody ungrateful.

‘It’s this whole thing with Charlotte,’ I said. ‘She had
dog shit smeared all over her violin today. She’s in a bit of a state.’

‘Oh Anna,’ said Sam. ‘That’s awful. How could anyone do that to her? I just don’t understand.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I do either. All I know is that it’s got to stop. I’m going to see Freeman first thing in the morning.’

‘Sorry,’ said Jackie, looking down at her hands.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It’s my bloody school, though. I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. If Freeman doesn’t do something about this he wants shooting.’

‘He won’t have any choice this time,’ I said.

‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, inside information, whatever, just let me know, OK?’

I nodded.

‘Are you sure you’re up to doing this tonight?’ asked Sam.

‘Yes, absolutely. It’s good to have something to take my mind off it, to be honest. And to get out of the house.’

Sam and Jackie nodded. None of us said anything for a moment.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you were saying about the TV stuff. When are they?

‘
Newsnight
’s next Monday,’ said Sam, ‘they’re having a debate about new-style politics,
Question Time
’s next Thursday and Radio 4 on the Friday morning. I say we do one each. Anyone got any preferences?’