Death, diet coke and Jennifer Aniston

"Mum, it says 14-plus and we're twelve and you let me watch Frasier and Friends and Seinfeld and even Michael McIntyre so if you come with us too it'll be OK."

I was cornered. Sapphire has a way of chatting with her best mate Nafeesa via skype and they make plans that are foolproof. The venue's decided, the activity, the time, the pick-up and drop-off points are very well thought out and neither Nafeesa 's mum or I can claim that it doesn't fit in with our plans because the sneaky little gumnuts have already factored that into their equation.

“Alright then. Where am I supposed to be and at what time for the two of you?”

They wanted to see ‘Horrible Bosses’ featuring Jennifer Aniston in the ensemble cast. “It looks like a rom-com,” Sapphire assured me.

Considering that rom-com is usually her stock-in-trade and that I haven’t paid attention to what’s been playing in Swiss cinemas here for the past four months, it seemed like a reasonable assumption.

Nafeesa looked slightly puzzled when I crammed in three cans of Coke Zero and a trio of home-brand Snickers bars into my handbag. “We Locketts don’t pay quadruple price for our movie munchies.” (Sapphire’s already twigged that she’s one of the poor kids at her school, especially when a classmate apologised for not submitting their homework because he was busy helping his parents look at and buy a chalet. Their third).

Thirty minutes in and it was clear that ‘Horrible Bosses’ was a hybrid of The Hangover and American Pie and both girls were squirming in their seats. It was sadly becoming my understanding that ‘Fourteen plus’ in Geneva was upper level 18+ R in Australia.

I can handle the odd swear word but peppering each sentence with a sour sprinkling of MoFos and Constables was making things unnecessary ugly and sucking any semblance of wit or humour out of the experience. Seeing Ms Aniston proudly brandish some rather pornographic photos of her raping a knocked-out dental hygienist had me covering my eyes with my fingers and sliding down into the three day old pile of popcorn at my feet until I realised that I was the parent.

Me. Was it time to form a cat’s bum mouth of disapproval and pull the plug? Were the girls old enough for this nasty smut? Was I a thousand years old and the sole source of cultural ignorance and embarrassment? Was I selfish in wanting my baby girl to stay innocent a bit longer and not be bludgeoned with obscenities, even though most of the words would have been in common usage at her school? Diet coke spilled out of the can and dribbled down my leg in despair.

I felt a tiny tap on my knee. “Mum, if you want us to leave now, we can, you know,” Sapphire mouthed at me in the dark, her face illuminated by the so-called hilarious Serial Killer outside the bar scene.

“Yep. Let’s go. Nafeesa? Nafeesa sweetie, this just isn’t appropriate for you guys, so we have to leave.”

Sapphire put up a mildly believable act of being disappointed to save face in front of her friend who said, “If I was at home, at least my Mum could fast forward some of it.”

They walked back to our house together as I hung back to phone Nafeesa’s mother to explain. “That’s fine, I’ll come by and pick her up now if you like because my meeting has just finished.”

Yasmin’s car had pulled up in front of our building as we were nearing the side gate.

Ka-thonk! A cat had run out of our garden and was hit by a car. My eyes were on the writhing animal and not the license plate of the driver who clearly felt the impact but not the need to stop and care just a little.

The girls stopped in their tracks, horrified. The cat’s front legs were still moving in a slow pedalling motion as it lay dying on its side. “Is it still alive?”

Nope.

Nafeesa covered her face and walked, crablike to her mother’s car. “She’s got her pet cat at home, Mum,” Sapphire reminded me. Ah yes, Valencia, which ironically means strong and healthy. Lost nearly all feeling in her back legs due to being squashed in the driveway and wore tiny nappies for three months during her recovery. A little sweetie though.

Snapping out of my reverie I realised that it was the first time that I’d ever seen anything larger than a fish die before. The cat was a fetching mixture of ginger, grey and white and I’d seen it many times in our gardens sunning itself by the lavender or cooling off in the undergrowth. Blood was seeping from the ears and its mouth was mangled. Poor little thing.

Yasmin called over to me and I leaned into the window of her car to explain my decision to leave the movie. “Seeing Colin Farrell’s face mashed up against a window in a drug-fuelled orgy might have been a bit over the top, let alone Jennifer Aniston insisting that she needed a good hard Eff from her blackmailed assistant...”

A young man pulled into the kerb on his scooter, fished a newspaper out of his backpack and very gently scooped the cat off the road.

Turning my back on Yasmin, I rushed over. “Oh I’m so sorry – is this your cat?”

“No. I work at the embassy over there,” he waved in the general direction, “but I saw what happened and I can’t leave it there on the road to be hit again and again.”

Nafeesa overheard this and buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.

I walked back in what I hoped was a confident swagger and patted the car door, trying to be cheerful. “Ah well, we’ll try for a better night out next time.”

Much later Sapphire sighed as we stood together in the lift, tired from asking people entering and leaving our building if they were missing a cat. “So that I didn’t have to keep blaming you all the time for being such an old fuddy duddy and making us leave the cinema, as we were walking home I tried to change the subject.”

“That seems like a good idea----“

“Yeah well I stuffed it up because I asked her what I should get Dad for his birthday and then she got all quiet and sad before my brain worked out that her father died of cancer three years ago.”

“Ah. It happens sometimes. Remember when I said to Jacqui that only Sad old Slappers wear anklets and then looked down to see that she had one on?”

She smiled and bent slightly downwards to lean into my chest. My arm automatically wrapped around her. Only three inches to go and we’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder.

The doors creaked open at the eighth floor. “I blame Jennifer Aniston for ALL of this. Let’s watch some Wallace and Gromit to cleanse our eyes and give Milly a cuddle. Maybe your father too, if he plays his cards right.”

Geneva is the world's centre for uber-quality watch making, clock design and fine-tuned precision. I wonder if I can ask them to slow down time just a little bit.