The Evil Apprentice

Look at that face.

Butter wouldn’t melt, right?

You’d think this is the face of a sweet, innocent child.

Friends, you could not be more wrong.

This weekend, Flea and I headed off to London for some fun – we were invited to a Muppets screening and taste-along at The Electric Cinema with Now TV, then we headed off to see Billy Elliott in the evening, and finished off with a morning’s shopping in Covent Garden.

It’s been a busy few weeks and it was so nice just spending some proper time together, without worrying about work or any other distractions.

That said, by the time I got home last night, I was exhausted, and grubby, in that way you always feel after a day of navigating the London Underground followed by a train journey.

“You read down here, and I’m going to head up for a hot shower,” I told Flea, who glanced up from her new book for about a nano-second.

“Okay, Mummy.”  

I dashed up to my room to change and a few minutes later, jumped into the hot shower. Bliss.

I called down to Flea to come up and get ready, figuring she could jump in the shower after me.

No reply.

Kids! Always deaf until you sneakily try and open a chocolate bar somewhere in the same building as them.

I leaned around the shower curtain to shout again. “FLEAAAAAA!!!!” 

I heard her from downstairs. “Coming!” 

And then, out of the corner of my eye, there it was.

On the mirror, above the sink, spelled out in capital letters, a message was written in the shower steam:

I’LL GET YOU BACK. 

What the actual…?

My mind started spinning. The cleaners were in the bathroom on Thursday and deep cleaned the house. Flea and I left the house early Friday morning and nobody else has been here since.

Or have they…?

My heartbeat quickened.

Flea came into the bathroom, remarking on how steamy the bathroom was. She saw the writing on the mirror. “What’s that, Mummy?” 

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It’s a bit weird. I’m sure it’s nothing though.” 

By this time, I confess, my brain was rapidly cycling through all the possible people who could have been in the house while we were away – the ex who has a key, the cleaner, my Mum, that weird stalker woman who follows all my social media a bit too enthusiastically…

“I’ve got an idea,” said my small, innocent, blonde child.

“What is it, darling?”

Flea shifted her feet so she was half in, half out of the bathroom.

“Maybe… it’s the work of the Evil Apprentice!” 

And then she laughed a laugh of pure evil.

The wretched child had snuck into the bathroom seconds before me and written the message in soap, knowing it would only show up once the bathroom was filled with shower steam.

I’m simultaneously horrified at her evil, and secretly proud.

Not least because that sort of stunt takes real nerve only four days before Santa gets here…