My Secret Lover

older sister.
    ‘Miss?’
    She stands up straight.
    ‘Ever so sorry, Miss, but I’ve got
strict instructions.’
    ‘That’s all right, Kylie. You’re
doing a good job. Are you actually old enough to work here?’
    ‘I’m part time,’ she says hurriedly,
and presses the device that unlocks the turnstyle. ‘Tell you what, I’ll let you
in free.’
     
    I’m probably too easily bought. But
then she’s probably better off working underage than anything else she might
get up to.
     
    No sign of Ethan’s dad, but Ethan
spots me immediately from inside the vast cage of netting and tunnels that is
the Spider’s Web Play Centre.
    ‘Miss!’
    His smile makes the slight smell of
feet and the noise of a hundred small children shrieking easier to bear.
     
    I am in a rope tunnel suspended
twenty feet above the floor. I was heading for the slide, which now seems to be
on the other side of the web. How do kids find their way round these places?
    If I hadn’t been wearing the stupid
knapsack Michelle’s Charlene gave me for Christmas, I wouldn’t have got caught.
    ‘You don’t want to wear a handbag on
your back,’ my mother said, as soon as I had it out of the wrapping paper.
    I should know better than to defy her
in a pathetic attempt to look younger than my age.
    ‘Are you imagining what it’s like to
be a fly?’ Ethan asks.
    He’s crawled the wrong way up one of
the tubular tunnels to keep me company.
    What a rewarding child to apply his
new-found knowledge of mini beasts to the present situation.
    ‘It’s rather uncomfortable being a
fly. And hot,’ I tell him. ‘Why don’t you go and get someone to help me out?’
    Ethan does a fire-engine siren as he
slides down for help. You’d think the plastic tube would deaden the noise, but
it has more of a brass instrument effect.
     
    ‘There is a notice prohibiting
adults,’ the manager shouts up at me.
    ‘The vertical slide was unmanned and
two toddlers were about to launch themselves to certain death,’ I shout back.
    It was manned, actually, but from the
ground you couldn’t see the boy behind the giant spider.
    I was fine shimmying up the rope
ladder, but then I got overconfident.
    ‘It’s not really designed to hold
your weight,’ the manager shouts up.
     
    Eventually Kylie cuts the knapsack
from my shoulders with my folding nail scissors. When the manager hears that
I’m a teacher, he offers me a complimentary Diet Coke for my trouble. Or possibly
because I mention the Youth Employment Act in passing.
     
    ‘I admire you for going in,’ says
Ethan’s dad. ‘I just take a deep breath and let them get on with it.’
    ‘I’m sure it’s best to be relaxed,’ I
tell him.
    ‘Oh, I’m not relaxed. Not at all. You
never quite get over the shock of being a parent, do you?’
    ‘So people tell me.’
    ‘You don’t have children of your own?
I assumed... you’re so good with them.’ He smiles.
    ‘Probably because I don’t have
any of my own,’ I say.
    It’s my standard response.
    There’s a short pause as we stare at
the group of children eating their party tea. I can tell he’s trying to think
of something nice or comforting to say like, ‘well, there’s still time,’ but he
doesn’t know me well enough, and maybe I’m a lesbian anyway. Not that it really
matters these days.
    ‘Can I offer you some jelly? Or a bag
of crisps?’ he says.
    ‘Thanks but I really ought to be
off,’ I tell him. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got Ethan a present, because if I
bought one for him, I’d have to buy them all one, and, you know, teacher’s
salary!’
    I did actually buy him a Super Soaker
Water Pistol. They had just come in with the barbecue stuff at Sainsbury’s,
which they were putting in the Seasonal Section alongside the cut-price Easter
eggs. I had second thoughts at the till, in case I was frowned on for giving
guns, or trying to replace his mother, or something. But the check-out girl had
already rung it through, so I gave it to Andy, who was eager to try it out in
my garden.
    ‘We’re honoured you came,’ says
Ethan’s dad.
    ‘I provided some entertainment,
anyway.’
    ‘It was certainly different!’ he
says, but nicely.
    ‘Perhaps I should hire myself out?’
     
    If I ever lose my job, a new career
awaits me.
    Clown.
    Not that teachers do lose their jobs,
unless they do something really bad. It’s one of the trade-offs for the low
pay.
     
    I have to tie the balloon to my
handbrake because it keeps wandering