Today was no different.
Fortunately, the majority of kids at this particular party were pretty sweet and a couple even made me yearn to breed. A handful of others, however, had the opposite effect and made me want to perform an immediate hysterectomy on myself with no anaesthetic. The worst offender was a girl called Maisie. Maisie was, frankly, a little cow. This sounds strong I know, but I do not buy into the view that all children are delightful beings. They’re not. Some are, but others are most definitely hideous and will undoubtedly grow into mean-minded, horrid adults.
Anyway, the party was drawing to a close so I started to hand out treats and to squirt them with my plastic flower. Hilarious … But Maisie, the little charmer, kept wriggling round me so that she could delve into my bag herself and grab more sweets than she was really entitled to.
‘Can you put those back please, angel?’ I asked nicely between gritted teeth for about the twelfth time. By now I was really hanging in rags, my headache had returned and I was desperate to get into something more comfortable. This wouldn’t be hard. I was wearing a hot, heavy, itchy clown suit for goodness sake. I could have slipped into an eighteenth-century crinoline and it would have felt like leisure wear.
‘No,’ Maisie answered defiantly, looking deep into the bowels of my soul in the way that only the most brattish of children are capable of doing.
‘Please Maisie, otherwise there won’t be enough for all the other boys and girls.’
Unblinking, Maisie put her hand back into the bag and extracted yet another handful.
‘But I haven’t had any sweets yet,’ said another little girl, who’d been waiting patiently for ages and who was watching the scene in horror. This little girl was of the cherubic variety. She was small, cute and very polite.
‘I know. You’ve been waiting very nicely,’ I said. ‘So listen Maisie, you need to give some of those sweets to Georgia here, because she hasn’t had any and you’ve had loads.’
‘No,’ said Maisie.
‘Yes,’ I replied. My tone was icy. My patience was wearing thin and I was so weary that at this point I just needed her to do as I’d asked.
‘Please Maisie,’ begged Georgia rather pitifully, her blue eyes brimming with tears at the sheer injustice of the situation. At this rate I’d be crying with her soon. ‘Just let me have one.’
I looked at Maisie and nodded hard, indicating that she should do the right thing – though admittedly it’s hard to be taken seriously when dressed as a clown, unless someone suffers from a phobia of them, which a surprising amount of people do, then it’s easy – but Maisie ignored me and simply shoved nearly every single one of the stolen sweeties into her precocious gob. ‘Can’t have them now,’ she lisped meanly, syrupy dribble pouring out of the sides of her engorged cheeks.
At this point two things happened. Firstly Georgia burst into tears, and secondly I decided that I’d had enough. I was not going to let a four-year-old dictate to me, and I wasn’t going to let Georgia go home unhappy. So I tried to grapple the few sweets that were left in Maisie’s sticky mitts away from her, at which point she threw her head back and screamed so piercingly I honestly thought the conservatory-style kitchen we were standing in would shatter and that shards of glass would kill us all.
‘Blinking heck,’ said Jack’s mum, bounding over, looking all concerned. ‘Is she OK?’
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ I replied airily, but probably not that convincingly given that Maisie had turned a startling shade of purple and was punching me hard with her fists.
I tried to shake her off.
‘She can be a bit of a madam that one,’ admitted Jack’s mum. ‘Still, someone should be here to collect her soon. You’re doing a great job.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said, trying to sound jolly, which was difficult. Maisie’s punches were surprisingly painful. Lots of parents were starting to trickle in by this point though so the hostess left me to it and went to start helping match children up with their shoes, coats and parents.
‘You’re not a nice clown,’ spat Maisie. ‘You’re an evil clown.’
Looking around to make sure no one was in earshot I bent down so that I was at eye level with Maisie and said in as menacing a tone as I could summon up, in order to really exude a ‘clown gone psycho’ sort of vibe, ‘And you’re a horrid, mean little girl, aren’t you?’
Immature I know, but worth it to see the stunned look on her face before she burst into tears. This time the tears were genuine.
With mums and dads arriving the timing wasn’t great. When it comes to bookings I pretty much depend on word of mouth so a child standing next to me wailing in distress isn’t exactly the best advertisement for my skills in entertaining. Then things suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse, at which point Maisie’s histrionics became the least of my worries. For headed my way was someone who looked scarily identical to Simon.
What the hell?
The world seemed to tip on its head as my scrambled brain searched desperately for an explanation of any kind that might explain his presence. Maybe he had a twin? Or a clone? Maybe I was so dehydrated I was hallucinating? Swiftly however, I came to the horrific realisation that none of these things were true at all and that, of course, it was definitely him. Shortly after this revelation it also dawned upon me that I was dressed as a clown, and that I’d told him I was working on a glamorous advert today. Him seeing me dressed as Custard the freaking Clown was never the plan and what the hell was he even doing here? Panic started bubbling upwards.
Mortification flooded through my system and if I’d been capable of running in my comedy shoes I would have seriously considered fleeing the building. As it was I was trapped, fenced in by a ring of small people, so I turned around, hoping to blend into the background as much as possible. Not easy in a tailcoat and blue curly wig. Plus Maisie was still bleating on, hell-bent on creating a scene, so in desperation I bent down and buried my red nose into my bag of tricks, hoping to look like a busy clown. One who was too busy to say goodbye to any of the children. A clown who just didn’t give a shit.
Then, confirming my worst fear, I heard someone who sounded identical to the Simon I’d been flirting with last night. ‘Maisie darling, what’s wrong sweetie?’
And she said back. ‘That clown said I was a nasty little girl.’
Mind racing, I wished sincerely that the ground would open up, or that a shovel would appear so I could at least start digging and give it a helping hand. Was Simon her uncle? Of all the flipping brats he could be related to.
‘That clown there?’ he said and at this point I felt a sort of calm, defeated acceptance of the situation. I also thought his question was stupid. How many other bloody clowns could he see?
‘Yes Daddy.’
Daddy?
Suddenly I was filled with a new, quite horrid, sense of enlightenment that superseded any of the embarrassment I was suffering from. That one word had changed everything. Slowly, I turned around and without making eye contact demanded to know, ‘Is she your daughter?’ As I asked, I surreptitiously pulled my wig down a bit to obscure my face. My red nose had started to pinch a while back, but now I was grateful for it.
‘Yes,’ replied an aggrieved-looking Simon, clutching the revolting Maisie to him protectively. Knowing that ‘Daddy’ couldn’t see, she stuck her tongue out at me. ‘And I think you owe her an apology,’ Simon continued, totally unaware that I was me. ‘She said you upset her.’
I was just about to make up some bullshit excuse before making my escape when my gaze was drawn to something else. Simon was wearing a gold band on his left hand, which he certainly hadn’t been wearing in the club. And that did it. Prior to seeing that ring I had still been grappling with explanations for everything. Simon was divorced but remained devoted to his hideous daughter. Simon had adopted Maisie as a single father because her natural parents