✅ Over Protected

45. Sarah Treats the Babies

"Yes Mummy!" I cheered, and then she was gone.

"What do you want to do now?" Sarah asked, and my eyes went wide as I started thinking about all the options; all the fun things that we could do now that Mummy wasn't watching us, even if my head was just a little bit too fuzzy to think of any of them right now.

"Watch telly?" Lyra suggested.

"Can we play with dolls?" Penny asked, at almost the same time so I couldn't tell who said their idea first. Both ideas sounded great to me, and I didn't know which I would prefer.

"How about both?" Sarah said. And while we were still trying to guess what she meant, she lifted out a couple of newer dolls that I'd seen but not actually played with much. They were special, Mummy had said, and I should save them for when I had friends round to play with. The cartoon that she was putting on TV was Teddy Lupin, about a magic Canadian teddy bear travelling all over Europe and sneaking into rich people's art galleries to make them better people. I'd kind of heard of it before; it was a remake of a show that had been popular long before I was born. I remembered somebody had shown me one of the ads for the old dolls, where the fanciest one had a tape player in so that if you pressed play when the TV told you to, he would talk along with the stuff on the screen. These new ones were much fancier, and used some kind of science I didn't really understand to make them talk. And when I didn't need to try and understand, I knew it would seem like the dolls were really alive.

Lyra giggled the first time the doll I was holding replied to what the little girl on the TV screen was asking. Maybe she hadn't seen the ads, so she didn't know what was going to happen; or maybe she was just so giggly and excitable that even the littlest things seemed wonderful to her. But as we watched, I knew that this was going to be an extra special game. The dolls asked us questions, and played along with the robbery happening on the screen as they tried to redeem Baron Dunkelschwarz. The dolls asked us questions as well, like asking how many fingers they were holding up, and they praised us for being super smart if we got the right answer. After a little while, we were all just as excited as Lyra. It was amazing how good this show was, and how much fun it was playing along with the dolls. Penny laughed sometimes, in between the special bits. And I could guess that she could see how it worked; how the show would have worked just as well without our "help". But I was feeling extra fuzzy after wetting my diaper, so to me it was just incredible, and it felt like the people on the TV really were talking back to us and our little dolls.

I did start to get my big girl thoughts back after a little while. One of the first things I noticed was that Penny probably knew a whole lot more than I did already. And the next thing was that after lifting the special dolls out, Sarah had gone out into the hallway and I didn't think she'd come back to check on us yet. Maybe she should have checked on us, because I knew it wasn't so normal to leave three babies on their own. But we were having fun, so I didn't think it mattered too much.

"Yeah, don't worry," I heard her voice faintly from the hallway, and strained to hear what she was saying over the faint music that accompanied Teddy climbing through an air vent into the museum. "They're like babies now, they won't remember. And Mum's going to be out for hours, it's like we've got the house to ourselves."

I wondered who she was talking to. It must be somebody on the phone, because I hadn't heard the door open. But maybe I'd just missed it; it wouldn't be that hard to get distracted by the TV and not hear things happening in the real world when my baby brain was completely turned on. Still, I wondered what my sister was up to, even if I couldn't make a guess at that point. And then Teddy set off an alarm. The little Teddy in my hands called out "Oh no!" and asked us all to put our hands over our eyes so that the guards wouldn't see him, and I played along immediately. I dropped my hands again when I heard Teddy – the one on the screen this time – say that he'd gotten past the guards, and by then any thought of asking what Sarah had been doing had vanished from my mind. It was so exciting watching a phantom thief in action, and it was even more fun when our very own Teddy and Delilah were telling us how to play along. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I might have known that it was all just a show; but I was so excited to play that I didn't think about anything else at all.

"Behind the cushion!" Lyra yelled, standing up and pointing at the screen. We were looking for the magic key now, and we'd all seen it, but Lyra was the first person to say anything. We shouted along with her, calling out in the hope that the detectives on the TV would see it. And then the Delilah doll told Lyra what a clever girl she was, and asked if she wanted to be a detective when she grew up. The whole experience was so much fun, and I knew that I didn't even need to think about anything else. The whole evening was going to be wonderful; with all my friends, and new dolls, and maybe my big sister too. We were having so much fun that whatever happened, it was sure to be amazing, and I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen.

And when I heard the door open, I didn't even remember my earlier guesses about who was going to be here. That was grown-up stuff, and I didn't need to think about anything but Teddy Lupin and his quest to steal back the Portrait of Lady Voleuse.