The World's Worst Mothers (7 page)

‘Anna!' she called over the noise of the vacuum cleaner. ‘Aunt Anna!'

Aunt Anna did not react. Emily stood up from the sofa and went out into the hallway. She pulled out the plug.

‘The hoover is broken,' said Aunt Anna, looking down the tube.

‘I pulled out the plug,' Emily explained. ‘Could you please give me Mum's telephone number? I'd like to phone her.'

Aunt Anna smiled. ‘She has no signal.'

‘Of course not,' said Emily. ‘She hasn't even got her mobile with her.'

When Emily had phoned her mother's number, it had rung in the cutlery drawer.

‘She has no signal,' repeated Aunt Anna.

‘But there must be a landline where she is.'

‘She can't be disturbed. Under no circumstances may she be disturbed. She's very well,' said Aunt Anna. ‘She's very, very well.'

Kruschke rubbed his eyes. He'd spent half the night looking at the screens in the cellar, checking the pictures that his Annas sent to him. He had fitted cameras in their beautiful blue eyes, cameras that allowed him to monitor everything that went on around them. Except at night. Of course, the dolls did not sleep, but they lay down and closed their eyes.

So far, everything had gone without a hitch. Nobody had any suspicions. The only false note had been struck by Anna 13. She had stupidly given that horrid little boy cat food. But Sophie had ticked ‘none' in the ‘pets' field on the questionnaire. Otherwise he'd have programmed the doll accordingly. So of course Anna 13 didn't have a clue about how to deal with the cat. But if that was the worst thing that happened, he would be quite happy.

Now he just needed to get the mothers a few pretty pictures of their children so they wouldn't be worried. Here was a good one. There was a girl – was she called Emily? Kruschke looked at a sheet of paper. Quite right. So, here was Emily on the sofa watching television and Anna 01 was hoovering away around her.

Anna 05 wasn't doing too badly either. Kruschke chose a scene that showed a boy called Dennis sitting at a table doing his homework. A hand was ruffling his hair, and Dennis raised his head gratefully and looked straight into the camera. Dennis's mother had never had time for that kind of thing. If she wasn't in the gym or out jogging, she was sunbathing. Well, that would soon change.

Oh, no! He quickly pressed the delete key. Nobody must ever see that. Anna 13 was making a sandwich, only she put the butter on the cheese instead of on the bread.

Kruschke looked at his watch. Half past one. High time he was in bed. Tomorrow would be another hard day. None of them had ever imagined how demanding seventeen mothers could be. It was like minding mice at crossroads.

It had started as soon as the rooms were allocated. There were complaints after the first night. Nobody wanted to share a room with Susie, Emily's mother, because she talked in her sleep. Jacqueline, Dennis's mother, got stick for hogging the bathroom for hours in the evening. And everyone fell over her dumb-bells. Katherine, Bruno's mother, complained that she was allergic to goose down. If Vibke Paulsen wasn't so good at smoothing ruffled feathers, the whole thing would have got completely out of hand.

Since classes had started, things had been going better. They began at eight in the morning. At half past twelve they had an hour for lunch. Then class started again, and in the afternoons there were workshops. After dinner in the evening the mothers were allowed to watch television for precisely ninety minutes. There was always a row about what programme to watch.

Kruschke sighed. He was very happy that he only had to deal with the mothers during class time. He taught the correct way to use a motor track and how to build model aeroplanes. Mothers who only had daughters could opt out of these lessons and instead go to Vibke Paulsen to learn how to knit dolly clothes, make soft toys and sew the scariest costumes for Hallowe'en. She also gave lessons in ‘how to bake biscuits in such a way that there is as much mixture left over as possible' and ‘how to comfort girls going through puberty', and she was in charge of the reading-aloud workshop.

Ramona Bottle, on the other hand, had the thankless task of instructing the mothers in practical theory. In her class they dealt with things like ‘raising children in changing times' and ‘how do I recognise my child's true self?' Hardly any of them were interested in this, and accordingly it was nothing but bad grades. Only Sophie's mother managed to do well in the subject.

Sven-Ole's classes were everyone's favourite. Not only because he was a relatively young man, but also because he set hardly any homework. He taught the mothers the right way to play badminton and hide and seek, how to draw hopscotch boxes and how to do French skipping. Of course, not an hour went by without him coming up with some silly joke.

Kruschke turned the monitors off and left the room. He was dead tired, but he couldn't go to bed yet. First, he had to pay someone a visit.

Emily's mother, Susie, was standing at her bedroom window, looking out. She saw Kruschke crossing the yard and setting off in the direction of the dunes. What was he going to the sea for in the middle of the night?

Kruschke didn't give the impression of having a special love of nature. But as for her, she loved the sea. No matter what the season – whether it was blue-grey and choppy or turquoise blue and smooth as silk. She'd wanted to go to the seaside with Emily this summer, but as long as she had no job that would just be a pipe dream. And now here she was on this island, missing her daughter dreadfully.

She wondered if Emily missed her too. Probably not, because she was so awful, as Emily had said on the questionnaire. She was probably getting along much better without her.

Wohlfarth had told the mothers that trained carers were looking after their children while they were in the school for mothers. After four weeks, they would get a certificate and then they could go home.

Four whole weeks. Four weeks without Emily's sleepy grumbling when Susie woke her up in the mornings, her chuckles when she was watching cartoons on the television. Of course that was all wrong. Children shouldn't laugh only at the television. Their mothers should make them laugh too. This much Susie had learnt by now. But how? She'd never been able to make Emily laugh. She made her cry, more likely.
I want to improve,
thought Susie.
I really want to be a better mother to Emily.

If only she wasn't so homesick! She could feel a sob coming, and she put her hand in front of her mouth. But someone was hissing from the bed next to hers, ‘Can you please be quiet! I want to sleep.'

Susie tiptoed back to bed as quietly as possible. She pulled Porky out from under her pillow. Porky was the lucky piggy that Emily had made her. ‘You must carry it with you always, then it will bring you luck, Mum,' Emily had said. And Porky was the only thing that Susie never lost or mislaid or left behind her some place. But it hadn't exactly brought her loads of luck. She pulled the duvet over her head and let the tears come.

A siren shrieked at seven in the morning. The mothers got up, yawning and stretching. Only one of them had got up before the siren. She'd leapt out of bed and raced into the bathroom so that she could be first in the shower. Two other mothers, in the same white nightshirts with the squiggly letters ‘WIMI' on the breast pocket, ran after her.

‘Today, I'm going to be first,' cried one of them.

‘No, me. I haven't washed my hair for three days!' Then more and more mothers started to appear, all chattering and nattering over each other.

‘What's going on here?' Vibke Paulsen, prim and proper in her starched apron, was in the doorway of the washroom, her hands on her hips.

‘Jacqueline is always first into the bathroom and then she takes hours to shower,' Bruno's mother complained, pulling distractedly at her wretched perm. ‘But I absolutely must wash my hair.'

‘There are three showers,' said Vibke Paulsen. ‘So what's the problem?'

‘One of them is leaking, and the drain is blocked in the other one,' said the scrawny one, whom the others called Earth Mother, though her name was Liebgard.

‘No wonder, if you keep filling it up with sand,' commented the short fat one, whose name was Christa, though nobody ever called her anything but Clingy Mum.

‘Full of sand?' asked Vibke Paulsen in astonishment.

‘I mixed a scrub made of sand and bran,' said Earth Mother. ‘I can't tolerate these perfumed shower gels.'

A storm of indignation broke out among the mothers.

‘Typical!'

‘Her and her special sausages!'

‘What about my sausages?' said Earth Mother crossly. ‘I'm a vegetarian.'

Vibke Paulsen raised her arms in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Sort it out between you. There's half an hour to breakfast, and I expect to see every one of you there, washed and dressed.'

Meals were taken in the former factory. Sven-Ole had put boards over the conveyor belts and Vibke Paulsen had covered them with white tablecloths. If the high windows with reinforced glass were not so dirty and the walls were not so bare and grey, you might almost think you were in an English boarding school.

At breakfast, they all tried to make a decent impression, because Wohlfarth could see the whole factory floor from the window in his office, and he immediately noticed if one of the pupils misbehaved.

Now, for example, Clingy Mum was nicking a slice of sausage from her neighbour while she wasn't looking. Vibke Paulsen and two mothers who were on kitchen duty were running around between the rows, pouring out tea and coffee. Sven-Ole was doling out rolls.

‘So, which is better,' he was asking Jacqueline, known to the mothers as Fitness Mother, ‘three four-seed rolls or four three-seed rolls?'

Everyone laughed except Jacqueline, who, because of the piercing in her tongue, couldn't eat any rolls with seeds in them at all.

‘Have you done your storytelling homework?' Sophie's mother asked her neighbour, Clingy Mum. ‘I just couldn't think of anything.'

‘I could,' she replied proudly. ‘I wrote an absolutely lovely story about a boy who loves his mother so much that he never leaves her. I'll definitely get an A for it.'

She got an E.

‘Do you know how your son would feel if you told him this story?' asked Wohlfarth. This was the only subject he taught. ‘He will always have a guilty conscience when he tries to become independent. When I think of my mother …' Wohlfarth got a faraway look in his eyes, as he always did when he spoke about his mother. ‘Ah, when I think of my mother! She made me, she actually
made
me buy my first ice cream all by myself. She put the money into my hand, saying “You'll manage it, son.” And I did manage it. You can't imagine how proud I felt afterwards. And so was she.'

Wohlfarth secretly wiped a tear from his eye and cleared his throat. ‘Who can tell me what the poet Goethe said once?'

Half a dozen hands shot up.

Sophie's mother, Marie, snapped her fingers. ‘I know!' If he asked her now, maybe he wouldn't ask about her homework later.

But Wohlfarth asked Susie, Emily's mother, whose nickname was Snivelling Susie.

‘Goethe said we should give small children roots, and older children wings.'

‘Very good, Susie. Now I'd like to hear another story. A better one. How about you, Marie?'

Sophie's mother paled. ‘I … I couldn't think of anything,' she stammered.

Wohlfarth glanced at the list of names. ‘As far as I know, Marie, you have not only a thirteen-year-old daughter, but also a small son. What bedtime stories do you tell him?'

‘I read to him …'

‘How often?' asked Wohlfarth acidly. ‘Every night?'

‘Well, I don't always manage to do it every night. In that case, he is allowed to listen to a CD.'

Wohlfarth's face darkened, and Marie quickly added, ‘No rubbish, of course. Good children's literature, read by actors, and they cost a pretty penny too. But …'

She broke off in confusion and Wohlfarth wrote something in his notebook.

‘It's your turn then, Liebgard.'

Earth Mother stood up and read a horrific story about a little woolly lamb that gets sent to the slaughterhouse.

Sophie's mother commented dryly, ‘Any child would definitely drop off to sleep easily after a story like that.'

Wohlfarth banged his fist on the desk. ‘Quiet, please!' And to Earth Mother, he said, ‘Sit down. F.'

Earth Mother was very disappointed with her grade, and so were most of the others who came in for Wohlfarth's criticism. By the end of class, they were all frustrated.

Everyone except Snivelling Susie. She'd got a B for her homework. It was a rather wacky story about a princess that gets eaten by a dragon who then gets indigestion, and so he spits her out again. And in the end, they fell in love.