Mum and Tammy looked about at the wrecker’s yards, mechanics and wholesale organic produce businesses with interest.

  ‘There are so many interesting things to see here,’ said Mum.

  ‘There are a lot of weeds,’ said Tammy.

  ‘That’s because it’s an industrial area,’ said Mum. ‘People are too busy being industrious to have time to do the weeding.’

  As they made their way up to the main road, there were less businesses and more houses.

  ‘Eurgh,’ said Tammy.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Mum. Mum was fluent in the language of Tammy, so she knew ‘eurgh’ meant Tammy was upset about something.

  ‘This is the road that all the school buses travel along. Everyone will see us,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Everyone always sees us when we walk to school,’ said Mum.

  ‘Everyone from our side of town sees us when we walk to school,’ said Tammy. ‘This is the other side of town. Now everyone on both sides will know how embarrassing you are.’

  ‘I’m not embarrassing,’ said Mum. ‘I’m awesome.’

  ‘That’s why you’re embarrassing,’ said Tammy. ‘Most mums don’t say they’re awesome. They just try to appear normal.’

  ‘It’s the long socks, isn’t it?’ said Mum. Mum liked to wear long socks. She was wearing them at that moment because she would be going to the gym later and she had a tendency to scrape the equipment on her shins.

  ‘No, it’s not the long socks,’ said Tammy. ‘It’s the long socks, with the stupid t-shirts and the ridiculous tights.’

  ‘Lots of mums wear activewear,’ said Mum.

  ‘They don’t buy it at Aldis,’ said Tammy.

  ‘They’re black tights,’ said Mum. ‘No one can tell where I buy them.’

  ‘Hmmpf,’ said Tammy.

  A bus drove pass.

  ‘That was the tropical fish,’ said Tammy.

  In their town, all the school buses had different animal signs so that kids who couldn’t read yet would know which bus to catch.

  ‘Ryan catches the tropical fish,’ said Tammy. ‘I’m never going to hear the end of this.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mum. ‘I am so concerned.’

  Mum was not concerned. Tammy was irritating her, but she was sincerely trying not to be irritated. She was trying to concentrate on how nice it felt to be warm in the sunshine. But if Tammy kept this up much longer she was going to snap – then there would be wrestling.

  Mum looked about at the houses they were passing. There was an over-fifties retirement community across the street, but on their side they were walking towards a house with a FOR SALE sign out front.

  As they drew alongside, they both turned to look at the sign. There was a large picture of the real estate agent who was selling the property in the middle of the picture. She was a young, pretty woman who was smiling happily. A red SOLD sticker was placed carefully just below her picture.

  ‘That real estate agent has beautiful blue eyes,’ said Mum. ‘She looks very happy.’

  ‘Well, she just sold a house,’ said Tammy.

  Mum looked up at the house behind the sign. It was an ordinary-looking family home on a quarter-acre block. Probably thirty years old with three or four bedrooms, but nothing fancy.

  ‘Do you think the people inside the house are as happy as the real estate agent?’ asked Mum.

  Tammy looked at the house. This was a strange notion. She didn’t know what to think. ‘I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘But what if they didn’t want their house to be sold,’ said Mum.

  Tammy looked at Mum. She wanted to know what Mum meant, but she didn’t want to ask and encourage her.

  ‘What if that pretty blue-eyed real estate agent came along and sold it without asking them,’ said Mum.

  ‘How could she do that?’ asked Tammy.

  ‘She put up the sign,’ said Mum. ‘That’s why she’s smiling. Because she’s so good at selling things. The people inside were really annoyed. Perhaps they were going into town to get some milk and when they got back, they saw the sign out here, and that’s how they found out their house had been sold.

  ‘The real estate agent would have to give them the money,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Yes, but what if she’d sold the house for much less than it was worth,’ said Mum. ‘Much less than the home-owners had paid for it.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ asked Tammy.

  ‘Well, real estate agents work on a percentage,’ said Mum. ‘So she wouldn’t care. Three per cent of not much is still money in the bank. That’s why she’s so smiley. She’s figured out you can sell lots and lots of houses, all the time, if you sell them for a quarter of what they’re worth. They’ll be snapped up in no time.’

  ‘I don’t think she’d get away with it,’ said Tammy.

  ‘With eyes that blue you can get away with anything,’ said Mum. ‘No-one naturally has eyes that blue. She’s clearly a robot impersonating a human.’

  ‘The photo has probably just been put through an Instagram filter,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Why would anyone use a filter that made them look like a robot?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Most people don’t assume that someone with blue eyes is a robot,’ Tammy pointed out.

  ‘And that’s when their houses get sold out from under them,’ said Mum.

  ‘So you think someone built a robot that perfectly matches the appearance of a pretty young woman with beautiful blue eyes, then programmed it to start an elaborate real estate scam.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Mum. ‘Or maybe someone built a super-smart robot. That robot evolved and developed independent artificial intelligence. Then it used its far-superior intellectual capacity to build another robot that was pretty and had blue eyes, so it would have someone nice to keep it company. But then the nice, blue-eyed robot ditched the nerdy, super-intelligent robot to start up its own project – an elaborate real estate scam.’

  ‘Surely a pretty, blue-eyed, super-intelligent robot would have better things to do,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mum. ‘They’d probably want to take over the planet and subjugate our species using us as slaves for their material gain. But in their downtime they’d have to have hobbies to unwind after a long day of planetary domination. And what better hobby than real estate chicanery?’

  ‘Croquet would be more relaxing,’ said Tammy.

  ‘That’s your earth human brain speaking,’ said Mum. ‘You don’t know what robots do to unwind.’

  ‘You think they sell real estate?’ said Tammy.

  ‘Well, think of the hobbies humans have,’ said Mum. ‘Fishing is ridiculous when you think about it. You stand in the baking hot sun for hours trying to catch a sea creature. When you catch it, you have to scale it and gut it. And then what? It’s a fish. No-one likes fish! It’s only just bearable to eat if it’s covered in batter, salt, pepper and vinegar and served with chips. But even then, people would rather just eat the chips. So why don’t people do potato farming as a hobby?’

  Tammy shrugged.

  ‘And sport,’ said Mum. ‘Grown men and women go out in the hot baking sun and spend an hour and a half running around yelling at each other as they chase an inflated sphere. Then, when the inflated sphere goes through one goal more often than the other, they care about the result. Half of them are happy. Half of them are upset. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘But a robot real-estate scam does?’ asked Tammy.

  ‘No,’ said Mum. ‘It just makes more sense than sport.’

  Tammy nodded. She didn’t particularly care for sport. There was too much running, sweating and people being disappointed in you when you couldn’t catch.

  ‘Should we report her to the police?’ asked Tammy.

  ‘For what?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Being a robot,’ said Tammy.

  ‘No,’ said Mum. ‘If she realised we were on to her, she’d just alert the robot king and we’d be over run before the weekend.’

  ‘And we’re going to the beach on the weekend,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mum. ‘We’ll have to hold off on reporting any robots until Monday.’

  ‘I only hope she doesn’t come round and sell off our house in the meantime,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Our house is too messy,’ said Mum. ‘You have to clean a house if you’re going to sell it.’

  ‘You never clean,’ said Tammy.

  ‘I know,’ said Mum. ‘Which is why no robots have ever sold our house.’

  ‘That’s convenient,’ said Tammy.

  ‘Convenient, or was it my brilliant plan all along?’ asked Mum.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said Tammy.

  ‘An idiot still who owns their own home,’ said Mum.

  ‘Their own messy home,’ said Tammy.

  ‘That’s what makes a home homey,’ said Mum. ‘Your own unique brand of mess.’

  ‘Then the garbage dump would be the homiest place in town,’ said Tammy.

  ‘I’m sure it is for all the rats and cockroaches,’ said Mum.

  ‘Gross,’ said Tammy.

  ‘True,’ said Mum. ‘But the robots haven’t sold the dump yet either. Perhaps the rats are onto something. Or perhaps the rats are in on it with the robots.’

  At this point they arrived at the back gate to the school.

  ‘I’m going in here,’ said Tammy, quickly ducking through the entrance.

  ‘You didn’t kiss me goodbye,’ said Mum. ‘Come back and kiss me goodbye.’

  ‘No,’ said Tammy, sprinting up the staircase that led into the playground. ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

  ‘Everyone knows I’m your mother,’ said Mum. ‘I’m a beloved local eccentric.’

  ‘You’re a robot impersonator,’ said Tammy. ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

  Mum smiled. ‘Good one. See you this afternoon. I LOVE YOU TAMMY!’ Mum yelled loudly so everyone in the playground and the supermarket carpark across the road could hear, for maximum embarrassment.

  Tammy didn’t turn or acknowledge that she heard. Although, as she sprinted away, Mum was sure her ears turned red.

  Mum smiled and walked Stanley home.

  The end.

  Fun Fact

  If you’re worried that your real estate agent may be a robot, there are several ways you can check. First of all, make them walk up a flight of stairs. Robots are never good with stairs. Secondly, ask them to tell you a joke. Robots have a poor sense of irony. Thirdly, throw a glass of water on them. If sparks and fizzing noises emerge, that is a sure sign they are run by electronic circuitry.

  It was two o’clock in the morning and the Green children were just going to bed. I know this sounds dreadfully late for three children to be up, especially on a school night but, to be fair, they had gone to bed once that night already.

  They’d all been sound asleep at midnight when the smoke alarm in the kitchen had gone off – emitting a deafening pulsating squeal. The children were sound sleepers, but even they couldn’t sleep through that. They’d hurried downstairs and out into the front garden as any sensible child should when they have reason to believe there is a fire in their house. Boris was already there, having rescued his teddy bear. And Nanny Piggins emerged moments later, wearing a slightly singed apron over her own pyjamas.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she assured them. ‘False alarm. Well, not really a “false alarm”. There was a fire, but I put it out. I think. There were only three-foot-high flames for a few seconds.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Well, after you’d gone to bed, I was feeling a little bit peckish,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘Nannying requires a lot of energy, you know.’

  ‘It does the way you do it,’ agreed Michael. Nanny Piggins did tend to incorporate more acrobatics into her day than most nannies.

  ‘And obviously I couldn’t go to bed while I was starving,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But there was not a thing to eat in the kitchen.’

  ‘There was a family-sized chocolate cake in the fridge when we went to bed,’ said Samantha.

  ‘That was gone in seconds,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It barely touched the sides. So I was seriously concerned I was going to faint from lack of nutrition.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Michael.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Luckily there was a litre of cream in the refrigerator. I had been planning to eat it with the chocolate cake, but I forgot and the cake was gone, so there was nothing I could do about it.’

  ‘What a terrible story,’ said Boris sympathetically.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I got a little emotional about the tragedy of it all, but that’s when I remembered. Crème brûlée!’

  ‘What’s crème brûlée?’ asked Michael.

  ‘It’s a fabulous dessert,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You just get a bowl of cream and some sort of flame-thrower, which you use to burn the top of it.’

  ‘And that’s a dessert?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘It’s a delicious one,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh it is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Crème brûlée literally means burned cream in French.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Samantha.

  ‘But how can burned cream taste good?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I think it’s the sugar,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You also add a lot of sugar, and an egg. Then apparently some sort of magic takes place at a molecular level, because if you blast the surface with a naked flame, the results are spectacular. The surface caramelises, so you get a hard, clear caramel layer on top.’

  ‘Now I’m hungry,’ said Derrick.

  ‘The only problem was, I didn’t have the proper type of torch they use in restaurants,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘So I popped over to the colonel’s house.’

  There was a retired army colonel who lived around the corner and was deeply in love with Nanny Piggins. He didn’t mind at all when she borrowed things in the middle of the night without asking, in fact, he dearly loved it.

  ‘I knew he had some of those torches on poles in his poolside tiki bar,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘So I borrowed eight of them, strapped them together to make one big torch, and lit them up.’

  ‘And that set off the fire alarm?’ guessed Samantha.

  ‘No, it worked a treat,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The cream started to caramelize instantly. Unfortunately, it was a bit too instantly. It went from caramelized cream to blazing fire before I could put the tiki torch out. Smoke billowed everywhere and that’s when the smoke alarm went off.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Michael.

  ‘But the real tragedy is,’ said Nanny Piggins. She dabbed a tear from her eye as she recalled this. ‘All that beautiful cream mixed with sugar is totally ruined.’

  ‘Surely not totally ruined,’ said Boris, aghast with horror.

  ‘Totally,’ said Nanny Piggins, burying her face in her brother’s chest fur to hide her tears. ‘It would be like eating a charcoal barbecue briquette.’

  ‘Oh no,’ wailed Boris. ‘They don’t taste good at all!’ He’d learned this the hard way when he had once mistaken a charcoal briquette for a piece of honeycomb.

  ‘And worst of all,’ sobbed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m still hungry.’

  At this point, the fire brigade turned up with sirens wailing and lights flashing. The trucks always looked so beautiful with their bright red paint work that Nanny Piggins soon cheered up. She explained to the fire chief all about the crème brûlée and he was deeply sympathetic. He was used to the predicaments Nanny Piggins got herself into. In fact, he’d been a regular visitor to the house when she went through her Cajun cookery phase.

  Nanny Piggins offered to show the fire chief just how the fire got started by making him and his crew some crème brûlée, so they would all understand that some things are worth nearly setting fire to your house for. The fire chief agreed it was important to their fire-based education for them to taste this dessert. So, they all came in and drank hot chocolate, while Nanny Piggins popped next door to Mrs Simpson’s house to ‘borrow’ some more cream.

  This time the crème brûlée turned out much better. The fire truck had an oxyacetylene torch that they used for rescuing people from car wrecks, and this worked much better than tiki torches. Only one serving caught fire, and of course, being fire fighters, they were soon able to put it out with a fire extinguisher before any damage was done. And all the desserts turned out perfectly.

  They were just about to start eating when the police turned up, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Apparently, when Nanny Piggins ‘borrowed’ the cream from Mrs Simpson, she had tripped the silent alarm in her house. Nanny Piggins would not have dreamed of waking Mrs Simpson to tell her she was borrowing something from her kitchen. That would have been rude – Mrs Simpson was eighty-two and needed her rest. So the police had been automatically called by the security company.

  Luckily, Nanny Piggins had made extra servings of crème brûlée, so she had plenty to share with the Police Sergeant and his officers, so they soon forgave her. It ended up being quite a party. Mrs Simpson came over to join them and they all had a lovely time. And that is how it came to be two am on a weeknight and the children were going to bed.

  ‘You’d better go straight to sleep,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’ve got school tomorrow, and you don’t want to fall asleep in your maths lessons. You won’t be able to enjoy your rest properly if some teacher is prattling on about decimals when you’re trying to dream about ice-cream.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can fall asleep,’ said Samantha. ‘I feel all whizzy.’

  ‘That’s the crème brûlée,’ said Derrick. ‘You should have stopped at six servings.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘A growing girl can’t be expected to have self-control where dessert is concerned. To do so would show a total lack of propriety. I have raised Samantha to have principles and integrity. She knows when there is dessert to be eaten it would be rude to do otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t feel sleepy either,’ said Michael. ‘It was exciting having the fire trucks here in the street.’