Free Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva by Sarah May

nip in and get Tobessaves me locking it up. Bless you,’ she said, squeezing Kate’s arm and jogging past her through the security gates and into Village Montessori.
    Kate put Flo, in her car seat, down on the pavement nextto the railings and got Findlay into the car, pushing on a nursery CD whose tracks she now heard in her sleep. Satisfied that Findlay’s head was bobbing in time to the music, and that his laughter wasn’t hysterical, merely effusive overflow from some complex childhood game, she scanned the contents of the Sainsbury’s Organic Bag bulging out of Ros’s bicycle basket, and had just managed to uncover a tub of natural cherries and a bar of Valrhona chocolate, some luxury Jersey cream and a gluten-free swiss roll, when Findlay’s window whirred down and Findlay called out, ‘That’s not yours.’
    ‘I know that, FindlayI wasn’t looking in it, I was looking after it,’ Kate explained as Findlay swung his head out the window. ‘There’s a difference.’
    Findlay grinned, nonplussed.
    What did that grin mean? Was Findlay being ironic ?
    ‘My bike’s got four wheels,’ he said.
    ‘Four?’ she said, uninterested, but relieved he’d changed the subject. Her mind swung back to the natural cherries and gluten-free swiss roll…she was sure there’d been something heavy at the bottom of the bag as wellpotatoes? Keeping her eyes on Findlay, she gave them a quick squeeze. Definitely potatoes. Was Ros making tortilla for the PRC that night as well?
    Kate had, she realisedstaring into the abyss of perfectly honed merchandise in Ros’s bicycle basketset her heart on tortilla for the PRC that night, and making something else instead just wasn’t an option at this stage. She had eggs in the fridgein fact eggs were about all she had.
    Findlay was saying, ‘Soon it’s only going to have two.’
    ‘Two what?’ Kate asked, preoccupied.
    Findlay was staring at her and there was a baby whimpering somewhere nearby. ‘Wheels,’ he said after a pause, still staring.
    Did she have time to get up to the allotment this afternoon? If Ros was making tortilla as well, wouldn’t home-grown potatoes give her tortilla the edge? Kate let out a sharp, involuntary chuckle: a home-grown tortilla.
    Behind her, the nursery security gate clanged shut, the sound searing through her cranium as her entire head continued to pulsate with migraine.
    ‘Thanks for that,’ Ros called out, and was soon strapping Toby and Lola into the child-carrier attached to the back of her bike.
    Toby sat staring blankly through the PVC window at Findlaywho was still hanging out of the caras if he’d never seen him before. Kate thought Toby Granger might be autistic, but even if he wasor ever turned out to beRos would somehow manage to turn her son’s autism to her advantage. As Ros always pointed out, whenever she had an audienceeven a non-paying audience: everything you do, right down to whether you decide to pick up that piece of litter on the pavement or just walk on past, defines you. So why, with a maxim like that, didn’t Ros look more exhaustedsurely there were only so many definitive moments one person could sustain in the course of a lifetime, let alone on a daily basis.
    ‘Harriet wants us there by eight tonight,’ Ros said, as she tucked in the ends of the Sainsbury’s bag that Kate had undone and forgotten to push back down again. ‘A Labour councillor’s meant to be turning up.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘To talk to us about getting speed bumps on Prendergast Road. It was Evie’s idea.’ She paused, adjusting the Sainsbury’s bag again. ‘You know Evie’s been campaigning for speed bumps? I meanI’m thrilled about the speed bumps, it’s just the focus of tonight’s meeting has to be the street party: it’s less than two months away now.’
    ‘My digger,’ Findlay started to yell, ‘I want my digger.’
    The digger was in the boot of the car and Kate was about to get it when she remembered that the Pampers