Don't You Want Me? Read Online Free PDF Page A

doesn’t elicit much of a response from the crowd, who keep on staring uninterestedly.
    ‘Right,’ says Felicity, crazily brightly. (Is she on Prozac? I don’t feel I know her well enough to ask.) She looks around her somewhat wildly. ‘Now. Introductions. This is Marjorie – she’s Play Leader – and little Euan,’ she says, pointing at the woman with the udders. ‘I’ll work my way around the group clockwise, Stella. So, at one o’clock: Emma and Rainbow, Amelia and Perdita, Venetia and China, Kate and Ichabod, Susannah and Mango, Julia with the triplets – ’ IVF, I think to myself – ‘Hector, Castor and little Polly – that’s Pollux, he’s a boy, but we don’t believe in gender stereotypes here, do we, everyone? No, we don’t. Oh, and Louisa with Alexander,’ she adds, almost as an afterthought: name shame, clearly.
    I give Louisa-with-Alexander a broad grin, which she returns; I feel myself about to become hysterical. Ichabod? Mango? And call me an O-level Classics swot, but Hector? Hector, whose mutilated body was dragged behind a chariot until his face fell off? And Perdita, meaning ‘the lost one’? What do people think of when they name their children? I know ‘Honey’ is hardly conventional, but we only called her it because we optimistically thought that itwould force everyone to be kind to her all the time. How could you snarl at a Honey?
    ‘Righty-ho,’ says Felicity in her jolly Sloane tones. ‘That’s the intros over and done with. Make yourself at home, Stella. There’s a kettle over there if you fancy – ’ and here she puts on an amusing cleaning-lady voice – ‘
a nice cup of char
, and then we’ll get on with the activities.’ She raises her voice again and claps her hands: ‘Free time, everyone, free time.’
    Oh, dear Lord, what an unprepossessing little group. I put Honey down by a pile of manky-looking Duplo and wander off towards the kettle, but am immediately pulled back by Honey screaming, and then crying broken-heartedly. A small but oddly corpulent boy has pushed her on to the floor and is standing on her hand, stamping his grubby trainer down on it again and again.
    ‘Oi!’ I shout, like a fishwife. ‘Don’t bloody do that.’ I shove him away – his arm is sticky – and pick Honey up.
    ‘Ow,’ says Honey. ‘Ow me.’ She starts crying.
    The fat child is glaring at me, nasal leakage crusting his upper lip. His skin is the colour of greying underwear. He’s about three years old.
    ‘Don’t do it again,’ I tell him, showing only a fraction of the anger I feel. ‘You can’t go round hurting people, and look, she’s so much smaller than you.’ I kiss Honey and put her down again.
    ‘My Duplo,’ the child says, kicking it and narrowly missing Honey.
    ‘It’s everyone’s Duplo,’ I say, ‘and you weren’t even playing with it.’
    The child crouches down by Honey so that they are thesame height. Before I can do anything to stop him, he’s put his face right next to hers and bitten her little cheek, hard.
    ‘Ow!’ screams Honey.
    I can’t very well spend my first morning at Happy Bunnies beating children up, but my goodness, I am sorely tempted.
    ‘I said, behave yourself,’ I hiss. I can feel the poison in my voice, reminding me that I am not one of those nice women who unilaterally like all children. ‘Now go and play somewhere else. Go on, scram.’ Piss off, blob, I want to add, but don’t, obviously.
    ‘Icky, darling,’ says a voice behind me. ‘Oh, Icky. Were you a little bit silly?’
    ‘Waaaah,’ wails Ichabod – not a cry, more of a demented roar. ‘WAAAH.’ He kicks his mother right in the shins as she approaches. I see her wince with pain.
    ‘Silly? Hardly. He stood on my daughter’s hand and then he bit her face,’ I tell the woman – Ichabod’s mother, Kate, it turns out, a harassed-looking woman with badly dyed hair cut like an old lady’s, with weird clumps above the ears – above Honey’s screams.