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from the phone. I pulled him in to the bedroom by the tasselled cord of his dressing-gown, because I had read somewhere that this sort of behaviour would excite him. I pulled him down on to our bed.
    I remember the way he moved inside me, like a clock with its mainspring running down. I pulled his face close to mine and I whispered, Oh, God, Andrew, are you all right} My husband didn’t reply. He just closed his eyes against the tears and we began to move faster while small, involuntary moans came from our mouths and fled into the other’s moaning in wordless desperation.
    In on this small tragedy walked my son, who was more at home fighting evil on a larger, more knockabout scale. I opened my eyes and saw him standing in the bedroom doorway, watching us through the small, diamond-shaped eyeholes of his bat mask. From the expression on the part of his face that could be seen, he seemed to be wondering which (if any) of the gadgets on his utility belt might help in this situation.
    When I saw my son, I pushed Andrew off me and scrabbled frantically for the duvet to cover us. I said, Oh, God, Charlie, I’m so sorry .
    My son looked behind him, then back at me.
    “Charlie isn’t here. I’m Batman.”
    I nodded, and bit my lip.
    “Good morning, Batman.”
    “What is you and Daddy doing, Mummy?”
    “Er…”
    “Is you getting baddies?”
    “ Are you getting baddies, Charlie. Not is you.”
    “Are you?”
    “Yes, Batman. Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
    I smiled at my son, and waited. I wondered what Batman would say. What he said was, “Someone done a poo in my costume, Mummy.”
    “ Did a poo, Charlie.”
    “Yes. A big, big poo.”
    “Oh, Batman. Have you really done a poo in your suit?”
    Batman shook his head. His bat ears quivered. Beneath the mask an expression of great cunning settled upon the visible part of his face.
    “I wasn’t me that done the poo. It was the Puffin .”
    (The italics were his.)
    “Are you telling me that the Puffin came in the night and did a poo in your bat suit?”
    Batman nodded, solemnly. I noticed he had kept his bat mask on but taken off his bat suit. He stood naked except for the mask and cape. He held up the bat suit for me to inspect. A lump of something fell from it and thumped on the carpet. The smell was indescribable. I sat up in bed and saw a trail of lumps leading across the carpet from the bedroom door. Somewhere inside me the girl who had done science A levels noted, with empirical fascination, that faeces had also found their way into locations which included—but were not limited to—Batman’s hands, the door-frame, the bedroom wall, my alarm clock radio and, of course, the bat suit. My son’s shit was everywhere. There was shit on his hands. Shit on his face. Even on the black and yellow bat symbol of his bat suit there was shit. I tried, but I couldn’t make myself believe that these were Puffin droppings. This was bat shit.
    Distantly, I remembered something I’d read on the parenting page.
    “It’s all right, Batman. Mummy’s not cross.”
    “Mummy clean the poo up.”
    “Um. Er. Jesus.”
    Gravely, Batman shook his head.
    “No, not Jesus. Mummy .”
    Resentfulness was starting to overcome the embarrassment and guilt. I looked across to where Andrew lay with his eyes tight closed and his hands twisted at the exquisite awfulness of his clinical depression, our unhappy sex interrupted, and this very thick stink of shit.
    “Batman, why don’t you ask Daddy to clean you up?”
    My son looked across at his father for a long time, then turned back to me. Patiently, as if explaining something to an imbecile, he shook his little head again.
    “But why not?” (I was pleading now.) “Why not ask Daddy?”
    Batman looked solemn. “Daddy is fighting baddies,” he said. The grammar was irreproachable. I looked across at his father with him, and I sighed. “Yes,” I said, “I suppose you’re right.”
    Five days later, on the last