lure
She doesn't do what Mummy says, often because she knows Mummy hardly ever fights back. Mummy gives in easily. Too easily is what Daddy says, but Daddy is working right now and Mummy is the only one home.
It is a Saturday and she has decided to be difficult. She is refusing to get dressed, to leave her bedroom and go shopping like her Mummy wants her to. She hates shopping. She hates constantly having to hold Mummy's hand as she whips them around shop after shop, making purchase after purchase. And none of it is ever, ever for her. Mummy is selfish. Mummy likes clothes and shoes and bags. Coats, too. Pretty, shiny things shop assistants are never keen on letting six year olds touch and none of it is fair at all.
She is pouting on her side of the door, the door which she is sat heavily against on a beanbag and is refusing to move from. Her arms are folded tightly across her chest.
"I don't wanna go," she protests.
She can hear Mummy sighing.
"Please, darling. I'm not gonna ask you again."
"Then don't!"
Mummy is taken aback by that. The teenaged cheek, arrived a decade too early. She doesn't even know what to say to it. All she knows is that she isn't giving in, not today. Not after Daddy spent most of the previous evening gently berating the way she parents.
The TV had been turned down and their daughter had been listening to every single word. She'd heard kitchen cupboards slam shut; the door of their bedroom very nearly knocked off its hinges, for Mummy had gotten rather angry by the end of their conversation, and had stormed off. She'd told Daddy to do something she knows she must never repeat. And wouldn't dare.
"I'll phone Daddy," Mummy says after a long pause. She is one step closer to admitting defeat and she hates herself for it.
"I don't care," comes the reply.
"Do you think he'll be happy if I interrupt him at work?"
"Yeah, but you told me Daddy hardly ever does any proper work."
She thinks Mummy is smiling at her retort. She thinks it because she cannot see her, but she is sure she can hear a smile in her voice when she explains, "I meant when we're around. Not when we're not. He does work then."
There is another long pause. She can hear rummaging on Mummy's side of the door. She's probably searching through that bag of hers, the one her daughter believes she is obsessed with.
"Can't I lure you out with something?" Mummy asks. It sounds like a rhetorical question, so she doesn't answer it. "What do you want, eh? Chocolate? A kiss? A cuddle?"
"I wanna shop where I want to shop for a change," she moans.
"Sorry?"
"I wanna look in the shops, Mummy. Shops for me for once."
Mummy is laughing. Like mother, like daughter.
"You little diva," she chuckles.
The door slowly opens.