One minute I’m Christmas shopping, the next I feel like Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption

It’s never easy to know what to do with kids when the weather is bad that doesn’t cost tons of money – especially in the run-up to Christmas. But then I have the brainwave idea and decide to take them on a day trip to Harrods – it’s local and it’s free. We can’t get in to see Santa in the Harrods’ Swarovski Grotto: it’s by invitation only to super-rich customers, who spend an arm and leg there. But I can take them to the kids’ toy department and see all the Christmas lights.

We get out of the vintage gold lifts on the fourth-floor kids department and, quite by chance, stumble into some free Christmas activities among the aisles in children’s fashion. In-between rails of expensive designer clothes, I glimpse face painting, a woman creating balloon animals, and a table where you can make your own Lego Christmas tree.

Before I know it, Lola and Liberty are getting their Polaroid photos taken to put into a frame that they can design themselves, with tons of stickers. I have hit the jackpot on this particular outing and there is hardly anybody else here yet. Inevitably, there are a few posh kids: girls in traditional floral dresses with their hair in ribbons, and little boys wearing tweed jackets. They look like they are ready for employment. Unsurprisingly, we aren’t quite so party-ready, especially as I’m covered in mud, having just taken Muggles for a walk in the rain, and Liberty has dried carrot all over her. I gave her a pouch of puree in the pram.

Another mum nearby, stick thin and polished to perfection, is looking for something. “It was just here,” she is saying. “It’s so strange. It has just gone.” She keeps looking at me – but talking to the shop assistants. I ask her what she’s lost? “It’s my iPhone,” she says. “I just put it by your hand on this table and it has vanished? Have you accidently picked it up?”

I check. I only have my own iPhone in my bag and help her look around the floor. Then she says: “Well, whoever has taken it will be on the cameras. There’s CCTV all over the place. But I just want it back. I don’t care about getting anybody into trouble.”

Hang on a minute. What is going on here? Is she is trying to read me to see if I’m anxious? Yes, she actually thinks I have stolen her iPhone. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? This is my basic right as a human being. Is she trying to deny me my civil rights?

I’m beginning to feel like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. Am I also going to be wrongly arrested for a crime I didn’t commit? I tell her to check her pram again – I check mine just to be sure it hasn’t fallen in by mistake – but all she can say is how desperate she is for the person to return it. Next she borrows someone’s phone and is asking to be put through to security so they can check the CCTV footage as her iPhone had been pinched.

I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable and after the kids finish their picture frames, we move to the table where Lola wants to get her face painted. I’m finally relaxing when the woman walks over to me and starts calling her own mobile number on the shop assistant’s phone. But it doesn’t ring. Good, I think, because it feels as if I am the number one suspect. I want to confront her but I try to detach myself. It really isn’t my problem.

After 30 minutes, we move to another part of the store where a woman is making animal balloons. “I want a giraffe!” shouts Lola. The woman makes her one and then, as she is making Liberty a lion, because Liberty is going through a phase where all she does is roar, the woman with the missing phone sidles up beside me like a spectre, still looking upset.

She still can’t understand where the phone has gone. She’d put it on the table for just a minute while her daughter had her photo taken. I’m now losing patience: I’ve had enough of this woman and her stupid iPhone. I’m dying to say “Why don’t you just go and buy another one?” But I don’t. I hold back. “Look, I don’t know where your phone is. Have you checked the tray underneath your pram?”

She bends down, looking hopeless and muttering that she has turned everything upside down, when suddenly she pulls out the iPhone. Her face is a picture of shock. “Oh my god, it was just down the side of the pram. It was on silent so I didn’t hear it.”

I am speechless and would have appreciated an apology to be honest but I walk off thinking, what a relief! Her two perfect children run behind her and she sashays off with her perfect ponytail and manicured nails. We go to the toy department and after five minutes of Lola wanting everything, I decide enough is enough with Harrods. She is running from one toy to another asking: “Can I have this, can I have that?” It’s a nightmare. At least when she sees ads on TV and asks if she can have every toy she sees, I say of course, and that is the end if it. Here she is grabbing toys and dragging them to the pay point.

As I get Lola out of toy kingdom, screaming and shouting. I bump into iPhone woman in the corridor. “Don’t forget to ask Harrods to cancel trawling through all their CCTV,” I say to her. She gives me a dirty look but I know she knows that I know...