A/N Phew this took a while to write today! Hope you all enjoy!

Disclaimer: Still not mine, but I did make some of them go on a school trip to the zoo.

SPOV

I think I was more nervous about Amelia and Eric's first school trip than they were. Amelia was so excited she was practically vibrating as I got her ready on Tuesday morning. "I'm going to the zoo!" she shouted at me. "With Daddy!"

"Yes" I agreed, taking the sandwiches I'd made her out of the fridge and putting them in her Disney princess lunchbox.

"We're going to see giraffes! Leesha, we're going to see giraffes. You're not!"

"No da'raffes?" Felicia asked. Yeah, giraffes had never been more popular in our house; Amelia was doing a good job of selling their appeal to her sister.

"Well, maybe you can draw a giraffe at daycare?" I suggested to Felicia. She gave me a look which said my ideas were stupid, and wandered off clutching Sockie.

I finished packing Amelia's backpack and went to check Eric was OK. He'd shunned the idea of taking a packed lunch himself. I hoped he wasn't thinking he'd be able to share Amelia's.

"So are you sorted?" I asked him, when I tracked him down to the bedroom.

"Yeah. It'll be fine. I'm basically just giving some kids a ride there, and then, I don't know, making sure no one climbs into the tiger's enclosure or anything. I think it'll be fine. Don't worry." He went back to searching his bedside table, lifting up books and random pieces of paper. He was on a hunt for either his keys or his phone I figured.

Trouble was that I did worry just a bit. I'd done parent-help the day before for the first time and it was bloody hard work trying to get a table of five year olds to write stories. Sebastian showed zero interest in putting pencil to paper at all, and mostly just stared at the wall. Amelia wanted to know how to spell all sorts of bizarre words and somehow me trying to tell her that her giraffe could just be bright and not fluorescent didn't cut the mustard. Chloe spent twenty minutes chatting to Emily, and then had a bit of a tearful moment when she realised she hadn't done anything and had to be persuaded it was all going to be OK, and then I had to hold her hand as she painstakingly wrote three sentences about her dog. Emily argued with me over whether 'with it' was one word or two. And Maisie just kept saying "Meela's mummy? Meela's mummy? You've got a fat tummy."

It was just lucky that Amelia and I had had another little talk in the weekend and I'd done my utmost to persuade her that private body parts were for talking about at home, and not at school. She looked like she wanted to butt in and tell Maisie a few home truths a few times but she managed to keep her mouth shut. And I got thoroughly sick of the sound of my own voice as I tried to deal with 5 kids who all wanted my attention. Well, except Sebastian. He just looked like he wanted to be left alone. He did produce a lovely picture of a giraffe. With stripes. But he wasn't so hot on the writing.

And all the while I was managing my table of kids I had to keep one eye on Felicia. At least Eric wasn't going to have to worry about her running off, or being too loud, or generally creating mayhem today. Felicia was annoyed about that, but I wasn't sure Eric was. Although I was still convinced he hadn't really grasped just what he was getting himself into. For one thing, I knew the kids had worksheets to complete while they were there. Given my insight into just how miniscule the attention span of some of these kids was, I wasn't sure that Eric wasn't going to be doing a lot of the work.

He stopped picking stuff up and looked at me. "Have you seen my phone?" he asked.

"Was it in the bathroom? I thought I saw it in there."

"Oh. OK." Eric wandered into the bathroom and came out clutching his phone.

Amelia burst in, carrying her backpack. "I'm ready!" she announced. "Are you ready?"

"Um. I think so" Eric said. I was inclined to disagree slightly, but from this point he was kind of on his own.

Felicia came in next and just stood there looking sad until Eric picked her up. "You have a good day at daycare" he said to her. She put her head on his shoulder and looked even more miserable. "I no gonna zoo" she said sadly.

"No, not today. It's for Amelia's class today. The kids who go to school" Eric tried explaining. Felicia wasn't buying it.

"I wenta school yes'day" she said. "Wif Amala."

"We're going to see the giraffes and the hippos and the lions and the zebras and all the animals that live in Africa! But they're in the zoo, aren't they Daddy? And we'll see them!" Amelia was still bouncing around full of excitement and completely oblivious to Felicia's feelings on the matter.

"I wanna see da'raffes" Felicia pouted.

"Um" Eric said, his eyes flicking to me. "Um, well how about I take you to the zoo on Saturday? After soccer?"

"OK" Felicia agreed after a few seconds. And then a grin of pure triumph flashed across her face. Yeah, Eric missed that because she still had her head on his shoulder, but, boy, he'd just been played. Felicia was learning a few things. I was pretty sure that if he could have figured out how to get a giraffe on the internet, one would have been winging its way to our house about now if he thought it would put a smile on Felicia's chubby little face.

Amelia wasn't thrilled about sharing the attention with Felicia. "But we're going today aren't we, Daddy?"

"Yes, we're going today. In fact we're going right now. Bye Leesh." Eric kissed Felicia's head, and put her down on the ground. "Come on, Ames, let's go and find these giraffes."

"Yeah, and lions and zebras and rhinos…"

"Yes, them as well." Amelia grabbed Eric's hand and started dragging him out of the bedroom, well; I guess he was letting her drag him along. Eric managed to slow Amelia down long enough to kiss me briefly, and then the pair of them were off.

EPOV

Amelia was buzzing about the trip to the zoo. It was probably a good thing one of us was excited. Me, I just wanted to get through it and get back to the office. I figured I'd just be driving the kids there and then following them round a bit. Sounded really boring. And now I'd agreed to take Felicia back on Saturday because she was feeling left out of the whole thing. I was probably going to be totally over giraffes pretty soon.

I followed Amelia into her classroom to find it was full of a bunch of other kids who were all displaying similar levels of excitement. Fuck, it was noisier than the fucking zoo in here.

The woman that keeps annoying Sookie came bustling over to me. "Oh, good. You're here" she said to me.

"Yep" I agreed.

"One of the other dads who was supposed to come pulled out at the last minute, saying he had a meeting. Honestly, who can't make time for their children? "

"So is your husband here instead?" I asked.

"What? Oh no. Charles couldn't make it. He's far too flat-out at the moment. It's nearly tax-time of course. That's why I don't work of course, so that one of us is always available. No, Tanya agreed that she'd do it instead."

Tanya came over and I recognised her as the kind of flirty mother from the meeting at the school. "Hi Eric" she said. "Hi Debbie."

"Hi" I replied, wondering if she was going to get into another debate about the risk of alcohol during pregnancy. She didn't, she just stood there for a moment.

Debbie handed us both little piles of paper. We had a list of the kids we were looking after, nametags for them, tickets for those without their own zoo passes, and a map of the zoo. OK, remember to label kids before letting them run around.

Debbie left and I surveyed the classroom and briefly wondered how I'd ever remember which kids were with me. They were all dressed the same for a start. I sighed. Amelia would have to be in charge of that bit. I'd concentrate on transportation.

"Ugh" Tanya said. "I'm really not looking forward to this. I can't say I'm that fond of other people's kids."

"Yeah…" I agreed.

"Of course Sookie said she works with kids, doesn't she?" Tanya asked.

"Little ones, yeah."

"God, that would be worse I couldn't do that. What do you do?"

"Oh, well I've got my own consulting business" I was wondering if it was a bad thing that I'd lost sight of Amelia in the crowd of kids. "What about you?"

"I'm an HR manager for the City Council. So you'll be like me, then. Glad to be out of the office today, at least. Unlike Debbie over there" she nodded towards the bossy woman. "She's probably had to give up a tennis lesson to do this."

"Yeah" I agreed, finally spotting Amelia in a group of other girls.

I thought Tanya might say something else, but the teacher announced at that moment that we were all to make our way outside and take our groups to the carpark to start heading to the zoo.

Amelia came bouncing over. "I'm with Maisie!" she said, and I noticed she was holding onto Maisie's hand really tightly. I wondered if she was likely to cut off her circulation.

"Yep" I agreed, checking my list. "And…Chloe, by the looks of it."

Amelia sighed, rolled her eyes, then looked back over her shoulder and screamed "Chloe!"

After a bit a really tiny blonde girl with pigtails appeared out of the crowd of kids and shuffled towards Amelia. When she reached us she just stood next to Amelia and blinked a few times. "You're with us, with Maisie and me" Amelia informed her. "So you have to stay with us and not go off, OK?"

"'K" Chloe agreed. Then she looked up at me and blinked a bit more. I surveyed the three girls, trying to memorise what they all looked like. Yeah, I had no hope really, but I did note that I had a blonde, a brunette and a redhead so at least I had a complete set. Yay me.

"OK, well you guys had better stick your labels on" I said, handing them their name tags. Chloe managed to put hers on upside down, but I figured it didn't matter. We collected Maisie and Chloe's booster seats, from outside the classroom, and then we trooped out to the car. Amelia and Maisie skipped ahead, but Chloe dawdled along and seemed to be in a little world of her own.

After everyone was settled in the car, it was just a matter of actually driving to the zoo, and ignoring the chatter from the backseat. If Amelia on her own was loud, three of them in a small confined space were deafening. Even Chloe seemed to come around at this point and joined in a particularly rousing version of The Wheels on the Bus.

I looked at the clock in the dashboard. I estimated I had another three hours of this. At least.

I was probably going to need coffee.

We pulled up at the zoo, parked the car and joined the rest of the class inside the gate. The teacher was saying something about worksheets but I was kind of occupied by making sure Amelia and Maisie's skipping around didn't lead to running off.

Eventually people started to drift towards the ticket booth. "OK" I said. "I've got Amelia's pass, a ticket for Maisie and Chloe, have you got your pass?"

Chloe looked at me, blinked a few times, and then burst into tears. Fuck, this was all I needed. The sooner I could get the kids actually inside the zoo, the sooner I could give them back to the teacher. "Um" I said crouching down so I was on her level. "Is it in your bag?"

"I don't know!" she wailed.

"She can use my pass" Amelia said, helpfully.

"No, she can't Ames. You have to use your pass."

"Oh, yeah" Amelia agreed, and then she lost interest totally and ran off with Maisie to climb on the big lizard statue.

I was stuck emptying Chloe's bag onto the pavement and hoping against hope she had a pass in there and I didn't have to pay for a ticket for her. She had a fair amount of junk in her bag. The bruised apple was particularly nasty, and most of what I was pulling out was coloured orange due to a felt pen that was lurking at the bottom without a cap. But there was no zoo pass. Fuck.

"I don't think it's in there" I said to Chloe. "Do you know if your mom put it in there?"

"Who?" she said quietly.

"Um. Your mummy, what did she do with it?"

"I don't know!" she wailed, and then the tears started again. Fuck. Why did I get the weepy kid? I started to put the big pile of crap back into the bag. There was something that looked like a tissue, perhaps partially used, and I passed that to her to use, but she just cried harder.

By the time I had everything back in the bag, none the wiser as to where the cap for that pen was, Amelia and Maisie had come skipping back to us. "Are you guys ready yet?" Amelia asked.

"No" I replied. "We can't find Chloe's pass."

"I'll have to stay out here?" Chloe whispered, looking at me through wet eyelashes.

"No, I'll get you a ticket" I said, looking over at the kiosk where they sold them. I could see this was going to be an expensive trip as well.

Amelia frowned, and looked at the back of Chloe's neck. "It's here" she said.

"What?" I asked. Amelia reached out and pulled the cord that Chloe had around her neck. Tucked down the front of her sweater was the zoo pass. "Oh" Chloe said, as it appeared. "Yeah."

"OK, let's get going then" I said. We were the last ones left now, as all the other groups had gone through and were now well out of sight. I handed over the passes and tickets for the kids, grateful at least that Amelia's pass got me in for free, and then we walked on and down towards the Pridelands group of exhibits.

By the time we caught up to the rest of the class, they were all assembled on a platform which jutted out over the enclosure and were listening to a zookeeper talk about giraffes. I hoped we hadn't missed anything important.

The talk went on for a bit, and I decided I might as well just enjoy the fresh air. I lent against some of the fencing and thought about the car situation. Maybe I could get Sookie to come out this weekend and look at cars with me? Well, check out the make and model I'd picked anyway. And then that just left the house problem. I hoped Maudette came up with something soon, although I wondered if I should try contacting a few other realtors, just to make sure I had everything covered.

I was still lost in my own thoughts when the zookeeper finished talking and the kids were given the opportunity to feed pieces of vegetable to a bunch of rather hungry giraffes and slightly worried looking zebras. The giraffes managed OK in this exchange, because they could reach the platform we were on and take the food out of the kids' hands. I was a bit worried they might knock a couple of the kids off in their enthusiasm for the bucket of food, but no one got flattened. The zebras had the worse deal, as they were stuck with being pelted with the rest of the food that wasn't handed to the giraffes. Some of the boys were rather obviously aiming at the animals and I watched them for a bit before I suggested that maybe they watch where they were throwing. I saw Debbie glare at me when I did that, but the geriatric teacher didn't seem to care, and I'm pretty sure the zebras were kind of thankful.

After everyone had had a turn at feeding something, we carried on to the lions where there was another talk. Maybe Sookie was right, and I was overly concerned with blood and gore, because this talk was slightly more interesting. Although the lions themselves looked pretty bored of it all. They were all asleep in the sun and didn't even look our way. Also, there was no feeding at this exhibit, although one little shit decided he'd pass the time by kicking me repeatedly in the back of the leg and I was tempted to throw him over the barrier and see how he fared in there.

"Knock it off" I hissed at him. "What?" he asked, rather belligerently.

"You know exactly what you were doing, don't push your luck kid" I said back to him. We stared at each other for a moment and then he ran off. Amelia looked at me "That's Connor" she said. "He's naughty."

After the lions it was on to see the rhinos. They had to be the least exciting animals here. Then the cheetahs, who spent their time stalking up and down in front of the glass sizing up which child they could outrun and pick off, and the hippos, who were completely submerged and we could barely glimpse at all.

When she'd finished her spiel on how many people hippos killed a year, the zookeeper took off and the teacher stood up in front of the group of kids and parents. I did another quick check to make sure we still had Chloe with us, and was pretty satisfied that I'd done my job well, and we could all go get back in the car in a minute.

"So" the teacher began "As I said at the beginning, Katie gave us the answers to lots of the questions on the worksheets in her talks, so I hope you've been paying attention class. Now it's time to make sure you have all your answers filled out before we go back to school. Find your group and your parent will help you complete the sheet using the information boards on each enclosure. We'll meet at the seating area in front of the café by the elephant enclosure at midday to eat lunch."

Fuck. The worksheets. I had forgotten about that. Maisie and Amelia started pulling very crumpled pieces of paper out of their backpacks but Chloe just stood there. "Chloe, have you got one?" I asked her.

"No" she said, a tell-tale quiver in her voice. Shit. I walked over to the teacher and grabbed a spare copy, glancing at it as I walked back to the girls. Fuck, there seemed to be a lot of questions for a bunch of five year olds. Just how long were we supposed to be spending here today?

I decided we'd work backwards and start with the hippos. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and there was a crowd of kids around the information board when we got there. It took a while, but we got the questions answered, although it took a lot of coaxing to get Chloe to write anything down and she had to borrow a pencil off Amelia so everything wasn't written in orange.

Then it was back to the cheetahs. I saw that Debbie was stuck with that kid Connor, and he was banging on the glass. I was kind of wishing he might break it and get eaten, but I guessed someone would miss him.

Or maybe he came from a big family and they wouldn't.

"Don't do that, Connor" Debbie tried, but Connor ignored her. "Connor!" she tried again. "I said not to do that. The cheetahs don't like it."

Connor kept on banging. "I want them to come over HERE!" he yelled. Debbie gave up and looked the other way. "Sebastian, sweetie, how are you going?" she asked her kid. He kept staring at Connor who was poking his tongue out at him and pulling a face. I was really fucking sick of Connor.

Next we went back to the rhinos. They still didn't seem to be doing much. And there were some weird, jumpy deer-things with huge antlers in there with them. "What country are the, um, springboxes from?" Amelia asked me.

"Fuck knows" I replied, peering at the information board. "South Africa it says here. And they're springboks, Ames"

"Like Uncle Calvin?"

"Guess so."

"Em's dad's South African. Wanker" said a voice next to me. It was Tanya, she'd arrived with her group of kids trailing behind.

"Oh, right" I said, not sure what else to say really.

"Although he was quite good when I had cancer and he looked after Em a lot for me, the treatment left me pretty flat, but now he's got a new girlfriend and a baby on the way, well, it's alright for him."

I really fucking wished she would stop talking right about now because I didn't need to hear all her personal problems, and there wasn't anything I could fucking do about the ex.

"He moaned all the time about being here when he was with me, but now he's with her he bloody thinks New Zealand is the greatest place ever. Do you like it here, Eric?" she asked.

"Yeah. I do."

"I'd give anything to go to the States. Furthest I've ever been is the Gold Coast. And now of course I can't afford any trips anywhere. No when we only have the one income. And renting in Mt Eden in so expensive. We're only in a one-bedroom flat and it's costing me the earth, but I don't want to move out and make Em change schools and have to face the motorway to get to work in the morning. It's such a hassle."

Tanya looked at me. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. "Yeah. It must be." I said in the end. I felt sorry for the woman, but, fuck. She was kind of draining the life out of me.

Luckily she got distracted at that point by one of the kids in her group asking her a question. I stood behind Amelia and hoped we'd be done soon. She seemed to be chatting to a new girl who, from the look of her, had to be Tanya's daughter, the particularly badly named Em.

"Look" Maisie yelled, pointing at one of the rhinos. "I can see its willy!"

Amelia turned to Maisie. "It's not called a willy, Maisie. You have to use the correct term, it's a penis."

"Same thing" Em said, dismissively, which made Amelia pout.

"I don't think that's on the worksheet" I tried. "Let's just worry about the questions on there." I was really questioning the whole 'let's tell Amelia where babies come from' decision about now. Sookie had been so adamant it was the right way to go, given the questions she'd been asking, but now I was a bit afraid she knew too much. And so was Sookie, who kept asking me if she'd done the right thing. I told her she had, but quite frankly, who knew? I was just as worried as Sookie that Amelia was just going spend the next few months telling all and sundry all about sex, and right at this point in time, I was really fucking worried. Especially when I saw where that male rhino was headed.

"Hey" I said. "Is it time to go back to the lions?"

"In a minute" Amelia said, looking down at her worksheet. And then she looked back up at the rhinos. For a minute I thought she might not notice, but no, she was pretty fucking observant. "Look!" she shouted, pointing. "They're doing that thing! Sex!"

"What's sex?" Maisie asked, looking from Amelia to the rhinos.

"That's enough, Ames" I warned her, but she ignored me in her determination to share her new-found knowledge with her best friend.

"It's…it's that! What they're doing. It's like a…magic cuddle with a penis and a vagina and mummies and daddies do it in bed and make babies." She turned to me. "You did it, didn't you? With Mummy? That's what made the baby?"

Fuck, could she be any louder. Tanya was now clutching my arm and doubled over, trying not to laugh out loud, and Debbie, who was now standing a little way further down the fence, glared at me as if it was all my fault. Fuck.

"Um, let's just talk about it at home, Ames" I tried.

She opened her mouth as though she wanted to say something else, but instead Em butted in. "Is that adult nap time?" she asked. "Mum has naps with her friend Terry. And sometimes with her other friend Cam. Josh comes over too, sometimes. I have to be quiet, and stay in the living room. Don't I Mum?"

Tanya had stopped laughing now. She straightened up and pressed her lips together. "Um, it's not quite like that, Em"

"It is!" Em argued. "You take really long naps. It's so boring."

"My parents don't have naps" Maisie said, trying to work it all out.

"And I don't think you need to worry about that" I told her.

"You won't get a baby then." Amelia informed her.

"Oh. I want a baby sister" Maisie complained.

"You can have mine" Amelia volunteered, helpfully.

"Really?" Maisie asked.

"No" I said. "Felicia is not free to a good home."

Amelia sighed, exaggeratedly. "Fine!" she said.

Chloe, who'd been mostly quiet this morning, apart from the random outbreaks of crying, now decided to join in the conversation. "My mummy says it doesn't matter if you love a boy or a girl, as long as it's love and not just sex. I have two uncles, Uncle Chris and Uncle David. They sleep in our spare bed when they come to stay, but Mum says that's OK. Except sometimes they move a lot of furniture around at night and keep us all awake. That's not OK."

OK, this was getting way too enlightening for me.

"Two daddies?" Amelia asked no one in particular "I don't think that's right." Yeah, I wasn't going to explain how that one worked to her. With any luck, she'd forget for a while and ask Sookie later.

"So are we done here?" I asked, hoping we could just go and there'd be no further embarrassment. The male rhino had finished now and wandered off, probably to sleep in the sun content in the knowledge that none of his kids were ever going to start talking about his sex-life in front of random springboks.

"Almost" Amelia said. "So will there be baby rhinos now? Now that rhino put his pe…"

"I don't know Amelia, but I'm pretty sure it's not on your worksheet. Let's concentrate on that for now."

"OK" she said, looking back at it.

Tanya seemed to have recovered from her earlier embarrassment and lent over to me. "Kids! They think it's all so simple, don't they? It's really not." I looked at her, I wasn't sure if she was trying to tell me not judge her for the seemingly endless stream of guys she was taking naps with, or whether she was simply trying to commiserate with me. In the end I went with the old standby. "Yeah."

"OK, done" Amelia announced brightly and the four of us trudged over to the lion enclosure. I was glad to leave Tanya and her kids behind because, fuck, quite frankly I think we both knew more about each other's sex lives than was really necessary. Not that I was exactly ashamed of having sex with the woman I was actually married to, and knocking her up. And I was still kind of proud of the fact I'd done that, of course. But all the same. I didn't really need what we'd done to be compared to a couple of rhinos, a woman with a string of nap-partners, and two guys who were obviously way too enthusiastic for their own good.

So I was hoping that little interlude was behind us.

Instead of Tanya though, I was now stuck back with Debbie and her group. Fuck. I hoped there wasn't going to be any more sex-talk because she'd given us all a few evil glares before and I was pretty sure she'd murder Amelia if her precious Sebastian found out the facts of life. Poor fucking kid.

As it was he had to contend with that fucking Connor trying to make his life miserable. Sebastian was sitting there drawing a lion when Connor wandered over and knocked the pencil out of his hand. "Ow!" Sebastian said loudly.

"Connor!" Debbie admonished. "We say sorry to our friends!" Connor gave her a look which made it pretty clear that he didn't think Sebastian was his friend and he certainly wasn't going to say sorry. Instead he wandered off to run his hand up and down the railings, which made a rather loud noise. "Connor" Debbie tried again. "Have you finished your worksheet?"

Connor shrugged, and then wandered further up the path towards us. Debbie just let him go, and turned back to Sebastian. "That's a lovely drawing, darling, but maybe we should try writing some words?"

Amelia was having no problem coming up with words she wanted to write. "How do you spell aggressive?" she asked me.

"Oh, can't you just say mean?" I countered.

"No. I want to spell vicious too. And blood-thirsty."

"I don't know that they're blood-thirsty Ames." The largest male was lying with his belly in the air in exactly the same way Bob did, satisfied with the knowledge he had a harem of women bringing him his dinner every night. He didn't look particularly threatening. But I wasn't volunteering to go in and pat him.

I was busy helping Amelia write her long spiel on the hunting habits of the female lions, and missed what Connor got up to next. I heard the wail from Chloe though. She was sitting on the ground in tears. "He pushed me!" she sniffed, before bursting into tears again.

Amelia sighed. "She cries a LOT."

"Well, she's sad, Ames. Do you have any tissues in your bag?" As Amelia was digging out the packet of tissues Sookie stashed in there, Connor looked over at me and sneered. Fuck, I'd never wanted to hit a five year old more in my life. Probably not since I was five years old myself.

I'd fucking had it with that kid.

Connor continued up the path and back towards the giraffes and zebras. "You guys stay here and finish up the stuff on the lions" I said to Amelia, handing a tissue to Chloe. "You'll be OK" I told her.

I caught up to Connor pretty quickly and he just glared at me. "What?" he asked.

"I noticed you pushed Chloe over back there" I said to him. "That really wasn't nice." Connor looked at me and kind of shrugged, in a 'what are you going to do about it' way.

"Did it ever occur to you to wonder" I continued, "why I'm the only guy here today?" He thought about for about two seconds and then shrugged again. I guess thinking about stuff other than who he could push over next was kind of outside his comfort zone. "Or why I sound different to everyone else around here?" Connor stopped walking at that one. "Why?" he said in the end.

"I'm actually a secret agent" I told him. He looked me up and down, thought for a minute and then said "Nah, you're not."

"Yeah, I am. For Santa." Well, it was worth a fucking shot, I thought. He was only 5 after all. And fuck it, Amelia knew how babies were made, but I was pretty sure she was still prepared to believe in Santa as long as he kept the presents coming.

"But…Santa's in the North Pole!" Connor spat out, obviously thinking I was slightly retarded.

"Well, why do you think I sound like this?" I retorted. That stumped him. "Secret agent?" he asked. "What, like a spy?"

"Kind of. I look after the, uh, naughty list. I'm looking for people to add to it."

"But it's not Christmas!" Connor said, sounding kind of worried.

"No, but it's never too early to start adding kid's names to it." I bent down so I looking him right in the eye. "I would really love to add your name to it, so just watch you step OK? I don't want to see you push anyone, tease anyone and you'd better do everything Sebastian's mom tells you to do."

"Or what?" Connor decided to go for a last-ditch attempt at bravado.

"Or else you'll be very, very sorry come Christmas morning. Understand?" He nodded. "Great, now go back to where you're supposed to be and behave." Connor took one last look at me, then turned around and started jogging back the way he'd come.

"Hey, Connor" I called out and he turned around. "I'm watching you, remember that." He looked a little pale at that, and then he really started running away from me. Hopefully that was mission accomplished.

I started to walk back too, but met Amelia, Maisie and Chloe coming towards me. "I thought you guys were staying put?" I asked them.

"We got bored" Amelia replied. "We have to do the giraffes then its lunch." We all walked over to the platform we'd started at and stared at the giraffes again. After a small disagreement between the three of them over whether I was as tall as the giraffes, and some discussion on whether the zebras were just coloured ponies, we were finally able to go back to the seating area and join the rest of the class for lunch.

Once again, we were about the last there and had to sit on the ground under a tree. Amelia unpacked her lunch and started swapping sandwiches with Maisie. Chloe dug out her bruised apple and chewed it kind of forlornly. And I, well I fucking needed coffee.

"Stay here" I said to them. "I'll be back in a minute." Except that I wasn't, because the guy making the coffee at the kiosk had no fucking clue what he was doing. I suspected some of the orangutans would probably have done a better job had they been left in charge of the espresso machine.

So of course, when I got back to the spot under the tree there were no kids where I'd left them. Only Chloe's abandoned backpack, which I picked up. Fuck, most of the class had finished eating and was scattered everywhere and I had no idea where they'd gone. "Amelia!" I called. "Amelia!" But she couldn't hear me. Or didn't answer. Or had possibly been eaten by lions.

I turned around to look at the lion enclosure. Yeah, they hadn't moved.

I started walking through the throngs of kids and mothers with pushchairs who were also congregating. Fuck, it seemed like years since I'd come with Sookie and the kids to the zoo on my first real day at her house. It was the first time I'd ever spent any time with kids and now, well now I'd been left in charge of three of them.

And I'd lost them. Maybe I wasn't doing as well as I thought I was.

I walked over to the elephant enclosure where the one remaining elephant stood eating some hay. No Amelia. Or Maisie, or Chloe. I walked past the flamingos, who somehow weren't even pink, the cheetahs again, who were now completely AWOL, and the pond that supposedly contained hippos. Still no Amelia. Maybe they'd gone the other way.

I was walking back to where I'd started from when I spied some bleachers beside the elephant's field. Sure enough, sitting right up the top were the three girls I was missing.

I was just heading up there to round them up when I just about bumped into Tanya again. "Oh" she said, pointing to my coffee. "That looks good." Fuck, I thought, should I have got her one too? How friendly did I have to be?

"It's not" I assured her. "They fucked it up completely."

"Oh. Right. Well, it should perk you up a bit for the drive back anyway."

"Uh, yeah."

"Are your lot behaving? Mine are driving me a bit mental. I mean, Em's OK of course, I'm used to her, but the other two. My God, their parents must be driven mad." She laughed.

"Mine ran off. I need to go and get them back. So, I'll see you later."

"Yep. See you Eric" she said, and I headed up the steps to collect my charges.

"I thought I said stay put" I said, sitting down in front of Amelia.

"Oh, well I thought you meant stay in sight" Amelia said, airily.

"How is this in sight, Ames? I couldn't see in here from where we were before." Amelia shrugged. Obviously that was my problem. "Here" I said to Chloe. "You left this." I held out her backpack.

"That's not mine" she said, holding up an identical pink backpack.

"Well who's is it then?" I asked. All three of them looked at each other, then looked back at me. "Dunno" Amelia said, and that seemed to be the general consensus. Fucking fantastic, now I was in possession of a backpack for which I didn't have the matching owner. The day was just looking up.

Just then I heard the teacher's voice yelling out that Room 5 needed to come and gather around her now. I hustled the girls out of the bleachers and we joined the group of kids. One of the other parents I didn't know announced that Sunita had lost her backpack, and I could get rid of that problem, but I got a few more when I was instructed to lead the boys to the bathroom.

Sometimes it sucked being the token guy.

Connor wouldn't look me in the eye anymore, but he did seem to be on his best behaviour at least. The same couldn't be said for the rest of them and there was a certain amount of shoving going on, combined with the desire that most of them seemed to have to kick everything in sight. Fuck, I wasn't sure that girls weren't easier. At least I was fucking used to them. This was like being in charge of a small, aggressive horde of fucking barbarians. The amount of farting and burping alone was enough to set your teeth on edge.

Fuck, I really couldn't remember it being this bad when I was one of them.

Eventually I got through that chore, and reclaimed my party of tiny, chattering people, who'd probably talked all the way through their bathroom visit and not kicked one single thing the whole time.

And then we could finally leave. Thank fucking God. I would be happy if I never saw the zoo again.

Except that I'd promised Felicia I'd take her back on Saturday.

The drive back to school was probably noisier than the drive there, the girls having been revved up the morning's activities. There was a nasty moment when Chloe thought she'd left her worksheet behind somewhere, but I got Maisie and Amelia to help her look for it and eventually it was discovered in a very crumpled state in the pocket of her skirt.

Thank fuck for that.

And then all that remained was to get the kids, and the extra booster seats, back to the classroom safe and sound. Maisie fell over on the playground, so perhaps I kind of failed that test, but Nurse Amelia inspected her knee, announced "It's not bleedin'" and everything seemed OK.

I left the seats outside the door and said goodbye to Amelia, who looked pretty keen to ditch me now she was back at school. Maisie followed her into the classroom as did Chloe, but only after she'd briefly hugged my knees and whispered "Bye Meela's daddy" to me.

Well, it was nice to be appreciated.

Unfortunately, as I turned around to walk back to my car I almost bumped straight into Debbie. "Eric" she said. "Everything go OK?"

"Uh, yeah. No problems."

"Great. Thanks for your help today. I just have one question?"

"OK. Shoot."

"Did you say something to Connor? When we were at the zoo?"

Oh. Fuck. Little fucker had ratted me out. Now I was probably going to be blamed for lowering his self-esteem and hurting his feelings. Fuck, fuck, fuck. "Oh. Well I may have suggested he find a better way to behave."

"Mmm. I thought you had" Debbie said. She looked at me for a moment or two and I wondered what was coming next. "He's a little shit, that one" she whispered, before continuing on at a normal volume "He'd been hounding Sebastian all bloody morning. Sebby only wanted to be friends with him too. So, thank you for that. It was a big help."

"Oh." Fuck, that was so not the response I expected. "No problem."

"Excellent. Well, I'll look forward to doing this again with you Eric. I think the next trip will be to the museum. That should be a great morning out."

"Uh, yeah. Sure, Debbie. I'll, uh, see what my schedule is like…"

"You do that. You're a valuable member of our school's parent team, Eric. We'd hate to lose you."

"Yeah. OK. Bye, Debbie."

"Bye Eric!" she said, brightly.

I walked back to my car, picturing the slippery marble staircases at the museum and the dozens of nooks and crannies you could possibly lose children in, not to mention the numerous displays that wouldn't be enhanced by sticky fingerprints, discarded apple cores or orange felt pen.

Fucked. I was utterly, utterly fucked.

Thanks for reading!