LITMIR.BIZ

       HOW IT ALL BEGAN

      It all began, this life of crime, while Maude and Horatio were still living in South London. Superman must have been only five or six months old. Mrs Haunt had just returned to work at the vast graphic-design company where she and her husband happened to rediscover each other, and they were celebrating said return – or marking it, anyway – by providing dinner for a bunch of their friends. It was not a good dinner. The Haunts were – still are – strangely disinterested cooks, in spite of all the magnificent French ingredients now surrounding them. Neither of them is particularly bothered about food.

      So dinner was finished without much regret, and the Haunt parents and four or five others, most of them new parents themselves, were flopping about at the cramped kitchen table, glugging back wine and discussing the things new parents in South London tend to discuss: local schools, and so on; Tesco’s delivery service. It was all OK, all quite pleasant, because the Haunts, being nice people, had (with a few exceptions) nice friends. But it wasn’t an evening anyone would be likely to remember. Or it wouldn’t have been. Until boisterous, big-breasted Rosie Mottram put her oar in. Rosie had been in the same antenatal class as Maude when Maude was pregnant with Superman, and had somehow inveigled her way into the Haunts’ lives ever since. She lived only three streets away and seemed permanently to be sitting at Maude’s kitchen table. Here she was again. Since giving up joint partnership with her husband, Simon, in their TV production company, to become what she insisted on calling a ‘full-time mum’, Rosie had also proclaimed herself member of some trendy subdivision of a Born Again Christian group. In any case, that evening Rosie decided to perk things up a bit by starting another argument about the Haunt parents’ choice of name for their baby son.

      Maude and Horatio were already tired of having to justify it to people. Maude’s mother had actually sobbed when they first told her, and though Horatio’s parents, who were very English, never voiced their objections, they had so far noticeably failed to call their only grandson anything more specific than ‘the baby’.

      Rosie squeezed her boisterous bosoms together (always on show, regardless of the weather), making the body glitter shimmer around her canyon cleavage, and she said, because she was a bit drunk, fuelled with low-level dinner-party boredom and a lot of Dutch courage, ‘No but come on,’ (an annoying way to begin) ‘you’re not actually going to christen the poor sod “Superman”, are you? For Christ’s sake! Apart from anything else, no church would allow it.’

      ‘The church doesn’t need to worry about it,’ muttered Maude. ‘Heck, could you pass me some more wine?’

      ‘No but seriously, Maude,’ persisted Rosie, like a dog with a bone. ‘I know I’m not his godmother or anything. A-hem. You might say it’s none of my business. But you haven’t gone and put that idiotic name on the birth certificate. Have you? I mean you can’t. It’s just too bloody cruel.’

      ‘Of course we have,’ snapped Maude. ‘It’s his name, isn’t it?’

      Horatio glanced at her, slightly shocked. Actually ‘HUCKLEBERRY’ was the name on Superman’s birth certificate: ‘Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt’. But then a few weeks after registering him, Maude and Horatio had agreed HUCKLEBERRY sounded too effete and they had over-compensated, most people agreed, by calling him Superman instead. At any rate he was listed for a place at Tiffany’s nursery school under the name of Superman. Superman Huckleberry Dorian Philip Haunt – and that, to Maude, seemed more than official enough.

      ‘It’s probably illegal, anyway,’ Rosie said. ‘I bet you’re not allowed to register someone under a silly name like Superman.’

      ‘Of course you are.’

      ‘Show me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Go on, show me his birth certificate. You must have it around here somewhere.’

      ‘Show you?’ repeated Maude. ‘Certainly not.’

      ‘Why not?…Otherwise, how can I believe you?’

      ‘Well – you can believe me or not –’ By this stage Maude was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. She had lied without thinking, just to avoid a drawn-out conversation. It clearly hadn’t worked.

      Rosie chortled. ‘I bet he’s actually called Vernon or something…Vernon,’ she said again, very pleased with herself. ‘I bet he’s bloody well registered as Vernon.’

      Horatio followed this to and fro with some interest. He noticed his wife’s earlobes were turning red, and also the edges of her nostrils – as they did, he’d come to notice, whenever she felt cornered, or was about to lose her temper. Maude was – is – notorious for her temper.

      ‘Of course he’s not called Vernon,’ Maude snapped. ‘You’re being incredibly boring, Rosie. I told you. He’s called Superman.’

      ‘Liar, liar,’ Rosie sing-songed, giggling drunkenly. ‘Pants on fire! You must have his birth certificate in the house somewhere. So show me. Come on! I’m interested. I want to see an official document with the words “SUPERMAN HAUNT” printed on it. It’ll be funny. And I want to see it.’ She banged the table, trying to be amusing but only succeeding in spilling coffee and making everyone jump. ‘I insist on seeing it right now!’

      At which point Horatio decided to step in. ‘Wait there,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’ll go and find it.’ He stood up. ‘Maude –’ he turned to his wife. She was staring at him, aghast, and he had to clear his throat to stop himself from laughing. ‘Darling. Can you remember where it is?’

      ‘N-N-NO! Heck, of course I bloody well can’t.’

      ‘I’m pretty certain I saw it up in the office. Somewhere. In your desk, or mine. Come and help me find it.’

      ‘W-well…’

      ‘Come on,’ he said, smiling that nice, lazy smile. He turned affably to his wife’s friend, keeping his eyes averted from her cleavage, so vast that just looking made him want to gasp for air. ‘Anything to shut you up, Rosie.’

      And that’s how it all began. That’s how the seed of an idea was first planted. Because a Born Again Christian called Rosie from the Brixton Antenatal Natural Birth class chose to taunt them one night about their decision to call their son Superman.

      Maude and Horatio disappeared from the kitchen for almost half an hour. Giggling like teenagers, they dug out Huckleberry Dorian’s genuine paperwork and copied it, using their joint skills in desktop graphic design, changed the name and printed out a replica – or something similar enough for the drunken party downstairs, none of whom had made a particular study of birth certificates and would have been satisfied with just about anything, so long as the ink was dry.

      So. And that was it. Nothing much. They kept the phony birth certificate because it reminded them of a funny time – and also, in truth, because it was surprisingly good and they thought it might

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