‘Hi there. We’ve not met before,’ she said, offering her hand with a smile. ‘I’m Lillian, Jake’s mum.’ We shook hands and I said that it was nice to meet her. The precision of her hair and the delicateness of her thin white cardigan made her seem fragile, but this was just a front. ‘We’re just about to play pass the parcel.’
‘Oh right.’
‘Yes, and I’m concerned about the other children catching…’ She opened her mouth, showing that her teeth were clenched together, and she nodded, hoping that I understood, that she wouldn’t need to suffer the embarrassment of spelling it out.
‘It’s just a toy,’ I said.
‘Still, I’d prefer…’
‘You make it sound like…’
‘If you wouldn’t mind…’
I shook my head at the lunacy of the situation, but agreed to take care of it.
When I told Luke I had to take Meemoo away for a minute he went apeshit. He stamped and he made his hand into the shape of a claw and yelled, ‘Sky badger!’
When Luke does sky badger, anyone in a two metre radius gets hurt. Sky badger is vicious. He rakes his long fingernails along forearms. He goes for the eyes.
‘Okay okay,’ I said, backing away and putting my hands up defensively. ‘You can keep hold of Meemoo, but I’ll have to take you home then.’
Luke screwed up his nose and frowned so deeply that I could barely see his dark eyes.
‘You’ll miss out on the birthday cake,’ I added.
Luke relaxed his talons and handed Meemoo to me, making a growl as he did so. Meemoo was hot, and I wondered whether it was from Luke’s sweaty hands or if the Tamagotchi had a fever.
I held Luke’s hand and took him over to where the pass-the-parcel ring was being straightened out by some of the mums, stashing Meemoo out of sight in my pocket. I sat Luke down and explained to him what would happen and what he was expected to do. A skinny kid with two front teeth missing looked at me and Luke, wondering what our deal was.
When we got home, Gabby was pissed off. ‘There’s something wrong with the computer,’ she said.
‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘What were you doing when it broke?’
‘I didn’t do anything! I hate the way you always blame me!’
I showed her my palms, backing away. After the party, I didn’t have the strength for an argument.
The computer was in the dining room and switched off. I made tea while it booted up and forked cold pesto penne into my mouth. After I’d tapped in my password, the computer got so far into its boot-up sequence, and then made a frightening buzz. The screen went black with a wordy error message that didn’t stay up long enough for me to read it. With a final electronic pulse, and a wheeze as the cooling fan slowed, it died.
‘That’s what it keeps doing,’ Gabby said.
‘Were you on the internet when it happened?’
‘For God’s sake!’ Gabby spat. ‘It wasn’t anything I did.’
In my frustration, I jabbed the forkful of penne into my lip, making a cut that by the following morning had turned into an ulcer.
I had to wait until Monday to check my e-mails at work. There was still nothing from the makers of Tamagotchi. At lunch, while I splashed bolognese sauce over my keyboard, I googled ‘Tamagotchi’ along with every synonym for ‘virus’. I could find nothing other than the standard instructions to give it medicine when the skull and crossbones appeared.
Halfway through the afternoon, while I was in my penultimate meeting of the day, a tannoy announcement asked me to call reception. When a tannoy goes out, everyone knows it’s an emergency, and because it was for me, everyone knew it was something to do with Luke. I stepped out of the meeting room and ran back to my desk, trying hard not to look at all the heads turning towards me.
Gabby was on hold. When reception put her through, she was crying. Luke had had one of his fits. A short one this time, just eight minutes, but since he’d come round, the right side of his body was paralysed. This happened the last time too, but it had got better after half an hour. I hated the thought that his fits were changing, that it seemed to be developing in some way. I told Gabby to stay calm and that I would leave right away.
When I got home, Luke’s paralysis was over and he was moving normally again, except for a limpness at the edge of his mouth that made him slur his words. I hoped that this wrinkle would smooth out again soon, as it had last time.
I hugged Luke, burying my lips into his thick hair and kissing the side of his head, wishing that we lived in a world where kisses could fix brains. I stroked his back, and hoped that maybe I would find a little reset button there, sunk into a hole, something I could prod that would let us start over, that would wipe all the scribbles from the slate and leave it blank again.
Gabby was sitting on the edge of the armchair holding her stomach, like she was in pain.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and nodded. Gabby’s biggest fear was that Luke’s problems weren’t just part of her, but part of the factory that had made him – what if every kid we produced together had the same design fault?
The doctors had all said that the chances of it happening twice were tiny, but I don’t think we’d ever be able to fully relax. I knew that long after our second kid was born, we’d both be looking out for the diagnostic signs that had seemed so innocuous at first with Luke.
This fit wasn’t long enough to call out an ambulance, but because the paralysis was still new, our GP came round to the house to check Luke over. Luke hated the rubber hammer that the doc used to check his reflexes. The only way he would allow him to do it was if he could hit me with the hammer first.
‘Daddy doesn’t have reflexes in his head,’ Gabby said as Luke whacked me.
‘Not anymore I don’t,’ I laughed.
Luke has a firm swing. I wonder whether one day he’ll be a golfer.
A letter came home from school banning Tamagotchis. I knew this was my fault. Another three kids’ Tamagotchis had died and could not be resurrected.
‘People are blanking me when I drop Luke off in the morning,’ Gabby said. She was rubbing her fingers into her temples because she had a headache. It felt like everything in the house was breaking down.
‘You’re probably just being a bit sensitive,’ I said.
‘Don’t you dare say it’s my hormones.’
The situation had gone too far. Meemoo would have to go.
I was surprised at how hard it was to tell Luke that he’d have to say goodbye to Meemoo. He was sitting on the edge of the sand pit jabbing a straw of grass into it, like a needle.
‘No!’ He barked at me, and made that deep frown-face of his. He gripped Meemoo hard and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Help me out will you?’ I asked Gabby when she came outside with her book.
‘You can handle this for a change,’ she said.
I tried bribing Luke, but he wouldn’t fall for it, and just got angrier because I was denying him a biscuit now too. I tried lying to him, saying that I was going to take Meemoo to hospital to make him better, but I had already lost his trust. Eventually, I had only one option left. I told Luke that he had to tidy up his toys in the garden or I’d have to confiscate Meemoo for two whole days. I knew that Luke would never clean up his toys. The bit of his brain in charge of tidying up must have been within the damaged area. But I went through the drama of asking him a few times, and, as he got more irate, stamping and kicking things, I began to count.
‘Don’t count!’ He said, knowing the finality of a countdown.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’ve got four seconds left. Just pick up your toys and you can keep Meemoo.’