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Auriol does adore her big brothers; especially Sebastian, who looks most like his father – he grew out of his red-haired stage. Henry still has Rose’s colouring – summers are a curse for him.
    I just hope the school does the job. If not, I’ll have her out of there before the end of the academic year, but I can’t imagine I’ll have much to worry about; after all, Auriol’s genes are phenomenal – she’ll be straight As all the way. I wonder if she’ll be Mary or the Angel Gabriel in the school nativity? Mary doesn’t get to say much but she is on stage all the time. But the Angel Gabriel normally has a darling costume. I must give that some thought and then put my recommendation to Mr Walker.
    Right now I’d better go and buy those double espressos.

3
Monday 4 September

John
    Bloody hell – is the Queen in town or something? What’s with the traffic round here? I understood from Craig that his school was a sleepy, leafy bit of snooty Holland Park. I finally find a space to park about half a mile from the school and ditch my Z4 series BMW. As I get out of the car, I can’t help but caress her wing. She’s a beauty. I’d marry her if she had tits. What a ride. I soon ascertain that the gridlock is caused by frantic mothers who drive four-by-fours; I’ve heard about these women. You know, on the radio some DJ is always taking a pop at this weird breed that drive a four-by-four but loathe the sight of mud and break out in a rash if they leave a London postcode. I’d thought they were an urban myth, not unlike everyone believing they are four snogs away from their fantasy celebrity snog. Turns out they are not just an urban myth, crap to chatter about to fill the airwaves, they do exist. For the record, crap filling the airwaves is fine by me. I’m a simple guy. I accept that crap fillers are a big part of what life’s about.
    I watch these demon mothers aggressively out-stare one another. They mouth ‘fuck you’through the window at drivers who nick their parking space and when they get out of their tanks they smile and wave at each other and start to chat about daytime TV. Unbelievable. What a laugh.
    I immediately scan the crowd of women clustering at the school gate. Disappointingly, there is a dearth of scrummy mummies. I watch
Desperate Housewives
; I was expecting a plethora of women needing a decent and immediate seeing to. Women who were going to throw their knickers at me as though I was Tom Jones, just as soon as I threw a smile at them. I look round; nothing doing. All these women look like mothers. Unsurprising really, as they all
are
mothers and we are stood at the school gate waiting for their bratty offspring to appear to prove the point. I just thought, hoped maybe, for something a bit more…well, Kate Moss is a mum, isn’t she? And Liz Hurley and that Kate whatsherface, the actress. I’d do any of them. You can’t blame a man for hoping.
    I push against the mass of kids charging out of school; I feel like a fish swimming against the tide. Their little squirming bodies create quite a formidable force. I’m not often near kids. My sister has a couple of them – girls – and they are cute enough. They are related to me, right, can’t be a bad start in life. When I see them at Christmas, birthdays and other family events they seem good enough, bit spoilt, bit demanding, not my scene but OK on balance.
    They weren’t at the last family do as it was my uncle Ronny’s funeral. My sister’s gone all middle-class and wouldn’t dream of bringing the kids to the wake in case she caused some deep-seated psychological issue which might manifest itself in years to come. Imagine, the girls might break down and weep uncontrollably whenever they were faced with a glass of sherry or an egg sandwich with its crust cut off, or some such bollocks. I reminded her that when we were kids, from what I can remember, we were at a wake just about every month and it hasn’t done us any harm. I