Fly in the Ointment by Anne Fine

now, my own determined ignorance of what was going on had been a comfort I had rested on like a soft pillow.
    Now my brief tangle with Janie Gay had shredded it, the worries spun like feathers round my head.
    I had ignored the problem long enough. Something would have to be done.

14
    EASY THINGS FIRST. Over the next few days I filled a large plastic laundry tub with second-hand toys just right for a child of his age. I rummaged happily through charity shops each lunch time and on Saturday morning. There were some real finds. I was continually astonished at the high quality of things I managed to unearth, and their low prices. I bought a bear on wheels, a complicated but sturdy garage with ramps and a carwash area, an inspection pit and even a little working wind-up lift to the car park on top. I found a set of jigsaws on a farm-animal theme. Someone had taken the trouble to draw a symbol on the back of each little wooden piece so, though the colours of all three pictures were similarly bright, it would be easy to sort the bits into the right boxes whenever they got muddled.
    Just in case, I threw in a small selection of the sort of toys that any baby in a normal home would have already: an interesting rattle, a cuddly owl, a box of bricks and bright plastic rings stacked on a cone. I found a good jack-in-the-box, and even bought one of those flat plastic affairs designed to hang in the cot that offer a fat round mirror and various buttons to flick or twirl or press to make things spin, or set a nursery tune playing.
    That evening, I wrote a note:
Dear Janie Gay, I was just chucking things out and thought you might be able to use these
. After a bit of thought, I signed it ‘
M
’. Janie Gay might scratch her head, but no doubt like the rest of us she lived in a world of Margarets and Michelles, of Megans and Marys, and was unlikely to be suspicious.
    Next morning I got up an hour before dawn, loaded the car, and drove to Forth Hill. I parked as close to Janie Gay’s house as I dared. There wasn’t a soul about, and not a sound, except for odd scatterings of birdsong. First I slid out the large and unwieldy garage. I took great care with Janie Gay’s broken gate for fear it would creak and wake her or the baby. Propping the garage against it to hold it open, I went back for the plastic basket, then tiptoed up the path. Not overly trusting her neighbours, I went round the side, out of sight of the street. Amotorbike festooned with chains made it quite awkward to get past, and at the back the crumbling concrete path gave way to the scuffed earth of a pocket-handkerchief garden. I put the basket down a step or two before my shadow fell across the window. Suppose she was up? I tucked the note I’d written under one wing of the furry owl, and hurried back to fetch the garage. Then I slipped away, feeling as cheery and triumphant as any bank-robber after the perfect heist.
    Flushed with success, I went back to the charity shop the following week. I can’t really say what I was after this time. More toys? A sailor hat? Some bedtime-story books? But from the moment I walked through the door I saw what I wanted. It was propping open the door to the stockroom: a padded child’s safety seat – one of the sort that fits in any make of car.
    I lugged it over to the woman behind the sales desk. ‘How much is this?’
    She said she couldn’t sell it. It was their policy, she explained. No second-hand electrical goods, no helmets and no car seats. ‘Just in case.’
    â€˜Just in case what?’
    â€˜In case they don’t work properly.’ Her tone of voice made her contempt for such a jobsworth policy perfectly plain. ‘In case they’re “compromised”, they tell us. No longer “fit for the purpose”.’
    â€˜So what’s it doing here,’ I asked her, ‘tempting a browser like me?’
    â€˜It was left in the doorway along with a heap of