Belief

At the end I signed it, 'a mum of three'. This was to make what I was writing about seem even easier to the readers, even though it was already very easy. I believe it was inspired by the woman I saw sleeping on the bus yesterday. Her ease of posture made me think mothering must be easy (although there were no children near her). Her body made me think that she could have had perhaps three children. She slept deeply in her pyjamas, on the bus, bookended by people in suits. Her mouth was open slightly and I could see her teeth were sparse, askew gravestones wedged loosely in desecrated gums. Her age was somewhere between 16 and 29.

Probably jealousy made me choose her as the symbol I would use to give my advice more punch. I wrote a long, friendly and approachable piece which was partly a made-up review and rundown of local, child-friendly coffee shops, along with advice on how to make your own filter coffee without the filters (or a cafetiere, or indeed any specialist equipment. All you need is a large, empty bottle of fizzy pop*). And, at the end, I claimed myself as 'a mum of three'. It worked. It completed the article. It lent weight to the author's experience. It sounded good. I wondered if I was troubled because it was a lie, because I felt bad about the inherent sexism or the stereotype. Then I remembered I was jealous – imagine I had the freedom to sleep on a bus in my pyjamas!

I stopped caring. I submitted the piece, which was for a large and nationally very famous online community for mothers, and mulled over what else I should do. I could work with numbers or with words. Numbers meant counting up what reviews I'd done, checking I'd been paid for all of my reviews, counting up how many reviews I had left to do for various websites, word-counting pieces which were unfinished, estimating how much money I would make in the coming months. If I worked with words, I would be doing more reviews for products, hotels, bars. I basically make things up for a living.

I decided to audit, instead. Auditing is straightforward. I didn't begin auditing until last year, when I read a story about a family who had used a review to find a hotel to use in the Dominican Republic. Why they felt they should simply turn up at the door and expect hospitality, I don't know. Any sane traveller would have booked ahead. This family chose instead to follow the opening hours listed on the review on the website, which did not mention that the hotel was closed to new residents on a Sunday. I have no idea what happened to the family after that. I imagine them looking lost and afraid in the back of an unmarked taxi, lost and afraid and on their way to Haiti.

I chose five reviews at random. The first was a restaurant. I telephoned.

“Good morning! You're through to the IMA café, how can I help?”

“Can I confirm that you're open on a Sunday?”

“Yes we are.”

“Are you open from 11 'til 3, and then again from 5 until midnight?”

“Yes, we are.”

“And you have a vegan menu?”

“Yes, we do.” A note of uncertainty crept into her voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Pre-theatre?”

“Yes, from 5 'til 7pm.”

Oh. I'd had from 5 'til 7.30. I made a note. I thanked her and hung up the phone. I emailed to check the next two I had on my list, which were both hotels, and I wasn't sure of the international times. The next, a fish restaurant, I telephoned. A recorded message told me they were now closed on a Sunday and a Monday. I took a note to remind myself to change my reviews. The last I had on my list was a cinema. I squinted at the name, which I didn't recognise, before realising it was only a few miles away.

It was a grand old Art Deco building which was placed incongruously among banks, bars and newsagents. The tickets were still printed on cardboard versions of raffle tickets; to my eye, trained to look past copy and advertising and buzzwords to try to get to the actual information buried beneath, I found these tickets (with nothing but ADMIT ONE, a screen number and a time) disarming and slightly giddying.

I hadn't meant to buy a ticket for a film. I was jolted into it when I found out I had been claiming this cinema was about ten years younger than it actually was. I also realised that I could mention the sunburst interior ceiling, made of glass and inlaid wood, pale blue and yellow shades, a celebration of 30's optimism, the Machine Age. The brightly dressed young man who sold me the ticket was more up-to-date than the building was. He was not designed to impress and hardly looked at me, although some pleasant words fell out of his mouth and he responded comprehensively to my questions. I needed time to think about what I wanted to know, so I pretended to look at a programme, and I found myself buying a ticket for a children's film, which was about a goldfish that wanted to be human.

During this exchange, which was more sullen than our polite dialogue could convey, I learned that I'd made a few other errors in my review of this cinema. A bad day so far; 100% incorrect. I thought of the family holiday, ruined by a single review. Sometimes I picture that family tied up somewhere in a cave in Haiti.

I hadn't been to the cinema in above a dozen years. I felt a surprising and brief flash of professional shame for all the reviews of cinemas I'd written since then.

Despite the years I'd been absent, I followed convention and bought something so I wouldn't need to sit in a cinema empty-handed. The concession stand was occupied by two women who wore matching hats and pinafores with stripes. Neither of them looked in my direction but were instead concentrating on five children, who seemed to be standing in a line doing nothing at all. Then a woman emerged from the bathroom bearing a large baby; she herded the children into a rough group and she took them all into the cinema with a minimum of fuss. She bought nothing at all from the concession stand.

I stood until one of the girls noticed me. I was just a man, maybe an old man to her. She wouldn't have been able to see anything below my shoulders. And I'm not particularly tall. She would have seen my sensible scarf and my hatless head and my glasses gaze. And that was probably enough. I ordered a coffee and tried not to want the girls' attention or the solid, concerned stare they used when they looked at those strangely still and well-behaved children.

I went in after them and made a mental note to sit very far away, towards the back (the irony of trying to look innocent while sitting at the back of an empty cinema showing a children's film was obvious). I tried to think about the last time I was in a cinema. I had a feeling it was for something challenging and difficult, like short films without a plot. It was probably Penny who took me. When I saw her, she liked to make me think or at least look as though I was feigning thought. I remembered that this year, she had posted me a birthday card from her new rural home. I think it's somewhere in Devon.

From where I chose to sit, the cinema seats spilled towards the screen and then stopped abruptly. I could see the children towards the front of the screen and off to my right-hand side. I was centre-back. There was nobody else. With the mother in the aisle seat and the children to the right of her, their silhouette looked like a dark Nessie surfacing for air at night-time.

The trailers, nuggets of bluster and excitement and crashing noises and music, passed without event. The black screen told us the U rating and the name of the director. My coffee was already finished.

As soon as the black screen disappeared, there was a sudden crunch; the children were ferociously opening whichever treats they'd been given. I still couldn't work it out. Six incredibly well-behaved and controllable kids? One woman? One of them was a baby? She didn't look very demolished. She did not seem the type to sleep on the bus in her pyjamas. My brow furrowed; I could feel the skin fold up on my forehead in puzzlement. Then the film began.

It was an explosion of colour and movement. The voices were schmaltz. The dialogue was ridiculous. The voice actors were incredibly famous. But I was on the side of the goldfish, the same way I was with the mermaid. We are all good guys. The goldfish becomes a girl and gets her man. I suppose they couldn't tell what really happened to her, not with all these bright messages and happy thoughts.

All through the film, which was actually excellent but contained no explosions or fart jokes, the children sat and watched silently. Their head-shapes remained still and they remained in their places, a five-headed monster sitting neatly by itself, waiting for instruction. Mum moved, occasionally, to distribute treats and tissues.

And I wondered if she had ever read what I'd written for other mums by myself, a bespectacled man, 'a mum of three'. Or the travelling sleeping mum of perhaps none. And the woman near me in the dark, the possible-maybe mum of six. And all of us, not talking, but reading or writing or sleeping through things we don't know and don't understand and have never even lived.

I let the lady herd her charges out of the cinema. I stood to follow and on her back I saw the name of the childcare service she worked for, printed in white on a grey t-shirt, before she covered it up with a hooded top.

I felt a brief moment of gladness, for all of us, that we are so good at suspending our disbelief. If people were to start talking to each other, I'd be out of work.

* To make a coffee filter, take a large, empty plastic bottle with the lid still on. Puncture a small hole in the lid of the bottle – use an awl if you have one. Bashing through a carpet tack or even a corkscrew will also work. The hole must be small – large enough for a drip, not a stream. Cut the bottle in half, about two-thirds of the way up. Turn over the top section so the lid with the piercing is inside the larger part of the bottle. The bottle should balance evenly. Pour boiling water on the coffee grounds; you'll see coffee begin to drip through the tiny hole you made.