Free Gucci Mamas by Cate Kendall

not her fault, it’s actually quite important for her store of essential omega-three fatty acids.’
    ‘Don’t care, she’s just a stinker, and how come she gets the beautiful pressie and all I got was this dumb dress?’
    They were late. Mim had already gone three rounds with Charley, who had flatly refused to put on the spangly tights and leotard of the jester’s costume and was now sitting defiantly in the Mercedes in his everyday clothes. Mim had given in for peace, but now Chloe? This was too much.
    ‘But if you don’t come you’ll miss out on the lolly bags– remember last year you got a Strawberry Care Bear in your bag? I wonder what they’ll have this year?’
    ‘Don’t care.’ Chloe stuck out her bottom lip and crossed her arms defiantly. She pointed with her chin at the elaborately wrapped gift. ‘Want that.’
    ‘But sweetheart, that’s for Sophie. Mummy spent all day trying to find it, we can’t just give it to you – but how about I promise to get you the same thing for your birthday?’
    ‘Not going,’ Chloe answered as she started to shred the netting on her fairy skirt.
    Mim dragged her hands through her hair in frustration. She should just punish Chloe by making her stay home. It was no skin off her nose – except the other mums would think she couldn’t control her own children, and how would it look to not turn up now after she had RSVPd weeks ago. Her stomach tensed in tight knots. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she whispered under her breath, and then looked Chloe in the eye and spoke desperately. ‘I will get you the same gift tomorrow if you get in the car right now and be a happy, friendly little girl at the party, okay?’
    ‘Okay, Mummy,’ Chloe sang, then kissed Mim on the cheek and ran to get in the car with her brothers.
    Mim shot a desperate look at the Pimm’s bottle through the glass of the kitchen cabinet and prayed for patience.
     
    The Mason-Jacksons’ Georgian mansion was gaily festooned with coloured flags and festive bunting. Catering vans, amusement floats, an ice-cream truck and several animal trailers stretched around the gravel driveway and the Hooley Dooleys were singing up a storm on the front lawn. It looked like the circus had arrived in the centre of Toorak.
    Mim parked in the first spot she could find, and did a harried last-minute check of the children’s costumes. She couldn’t believe Charley had refused to wear his costume,but she was almost past caring now. Where had she gone wrong with this child? Why wouldn’t he simply join in like the others? Why did he have to be so damn uncooperative? Now she had to walk into the party with an inappropriately dressed child. Some days were just too hard.
    Charley’s therapist had encouraged her to provide dress-up opportunities at home, as a window to imaginative role-playing, but no matter how she tried, Charley had just never gotten into it. He kept drifting back to his Tintin comics and the other countless favourite books he kept under his pillow. It was obviously inappropriate for a six-year-old boy to have his nose stuck in a comic book all the time, but no amount of therapy had managed to stem the problem.
    So there he was, her ‘recalcitrant one’, dressed in white Bermuda shorts, tan OshKosh sandals, Country Road checked shirt and sleeveless sweater-vest in stone with a pale blue trim.
    Shepherding the children, juggling the gift, her Chanel bag and the children’s props (whip and fairy wand), she made her way up the wide stone steps to the ballooned entrance. The day had been drizzly on and off, creating small puddles at the foot of the steps. Charley couldn’t resist. Seeing Mim distracted by Chloe’s tiara, he let out a whoop of joy and stamped in the biggest puddle, splashing mud onto the white steps, the perfect white roses and his pristine outfit.
    Mim looked up to see Charley’s guilty, mud-specked face and soaked clothes, but found herself incapable of speech. As she opened her mouth only