Free The World's Worst Mothers by Sabine Ludwig Page B

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