As she returned to the table with her third plate, piled just as high as the first and second, and a beam of pure happiness on her face, Josh was once again struck by how much Samantha could put away, as if it were she who was bottomless rather than the buffet. Always one to want his money’s worth, Josh went for a second plate but took only about half as much as on his first visit. Of course at Samantha’s age and up to his early twenties he could easily have kept up with her and still had room for ice-cream but those days were long passed.

“Just make sure you don’t explode!” he chuckled as his daughter happily tucked in to the sausages, bacon, waffles, assorted potato products and eggs cooked a variety of different ways on her plate. “Wouldn’t want poor Jessica to have to scrape you off the walls of the booth and where am I gonna find another turkey this close to Christmas?”

“I promise!” Samantha giggled. “I’m just practising being stuffed! Did Mummy show you the videos she found that show how to empty out a girl without making big cuts in the belly?”

“Yeah she did,” Josh nodded, “but I’m still not entirely sure how it works. I mean,” he sipped his coffee, “I get the basics of how its done but those videos made it look way too easy.”

“Maybe you can ask the butcher about it this afternoon?” Samantha suggested. “Didn’t he say they sell oven-ready girl-turkeys as well as cuts? I bet they know how to do it!”

“Good idea!” Josh agreed, watching Samantha attack her plate again and feeling the inner warmth that comes from watching someone, especially someone you love, enjoying themself. Once she finally declared her bulging tummy to be full, Josh gave his payment card to the waitress, jokingly apologising for Samantha putting them out of business, to which his daughter stuck out her tongue playfully, to settle the bill then they collected their coats and headed out into the busy streets once more.

It was now just after ten in the morning and the regular shoppers had joined the early birds, meaning that the pavements were so packed there were occasional traffic jams and Samantha made sure to hold onto Josh’s hand very tightly to make sure they did not get separated. Thankfully, inside the shops, despite how busy they were, things felt a little calmer and they were able to move around relatively freely. First port of call was the huge and prestigious multi-floor toy store that had been open since Victorian times.

“We should get a present for Amelia!” Samantha suggested as they made their way up the escalator from the ground floor which was mostly soft toys, board-games and activity-based toys that enthusiastic employees at various stands and tables around the sales floor were demonstrating to enraptured families to the floor that housed every kind of doll, from simple Barbie-style fashion dolls and basic plastic baby dolls all the way up to hand-crafted porcelain collectables that cost as much as a decent second-hand car! “Since she’ll be with us on Christmas morning! And Rob and Amanda too!”

“I know Mummy does have a few bits for them already,” Josh replied carefully, “but yes, it would be nice to give them something special. What do you think they’d like?”

“Did you see those fancy dolls in the shop at Sidney’s?” Samantha reminded him. “I wonder if they have… Yes!” At the top of the escalator, she saw a display that was exactly what she was looking for. Among the displays of Barbie dolls, Baby Born and cabinets of collectables was a display about three feet wide with the Sidney’s logo emblazoned across the top, twinkling lights around the edge of the swirly gold letters making it really stand out, and a slightly larger than life fibreglass statue of Sidney in her famous saluting pose stood beside it.

“No, I’m not buying that!” Josh teased as Samantha ran up to the statue and urged him to take her picture next to to it. “We’d never get it on the bus, for one thing!”

“I know, silly!” she stuck her tongue out at him again. “I’m talking about the dolls! Aren’t they pretty?” She slipper her hand into his again as they turned to look at the dolls on the shelves which were familiar to Josh from the Sidney’s gift shop. There seemed to be four basic types, then a number of variations within each.

First there were the play-sets, each of which included two action figures – an adult cook of some kind and a Sidney that could be “cooked” via different methods depending on the diorama she came with – there was a butcher shop set with a traditional-looking butcher figure where the Sidney figure’s joins were all magnetic allowing it to be pulled apart and the pieces hung from hooks from the ceiling and displayed in the counter cabinet, an outdoor camping set with a young woman in hiking gear and a Sidney that could be put on a spit to roast over a brick-walled charcoal pit and one that looked like a restaurant kitchen with a a man in chef’s whites and a Sidney that could be posed either like a turkey or a piggy to go in the oven. Beside these was a larger set that featured two cooks, a man and a woman, in the Sidney’s black kitchen uniform and one woman in the pink uniform of a server along with three girl figures – an athletic-looking black girl, a chubby red-head and of course Sidney herself, all three of which, the box advertised, could be cooked by any of the three methods the set, which was modelled on the Sidney’s public cooking area, allowed for.

Above these were simple Sidney’s fashion dolls, naked apart from their boots and hats of course as well as being anatomically correct but otherwise a fairly typical Barbie-esque doll with threaded hair and limited articulation, the only variation between each doll being the colour of the hat and boots she wore. In larger boxes on the same shelf were dolls that seemed aimed at younger girls, about fifteen inches tall and in a more cartoonish style that portrayed Sidney around six years old. These too had “real”, brushable hair and limited articulation but, as an added gimmick, came with a felt hat and boots that the owner could wear while playing with her doll, as illustrated by the picture on the back of the box which showed a young girl laying on her tummy, naked aside from the accessories that came with the doll.

“The play-sets are cool,” Samantha observed, “but these are a bit babyish! What about these?” The dolls on the next shelf were labelled as limited editions and, instead of technically depicting Sidney herself, portrayed Barbie’s little sister Stacie dressed as Sidney, just as Barbie and Ken were often sold as special editions in which they were dressed as Star Trek characters or Morticia and Gomez Addams. These special editions had more articulation than a typical Barbie or Stacie doll and, in a break from the much joked about tradition, were anatomically correct, something Sidney herself had insisted upon when making the deal and, to date, the only ones of their kind to be so!

“Well if we’re going fancy…” Josh took a doll down from the top shelf and passed it to Samantha to look at before picking up another to study himself. Like the Stacie dolls, these were packaged in hard plastic cases that could be used to display them if purchased by a collector. Slightly nervously, Josh checked out the price sticker on the bottom and found that, while a lot for a toy, it was not actually as much as he had been expecting.

The doll did look incredibly lifelike, as if Sidney herself had been shrunk down to a little over twelve inches high. The box explained that it had a fully articulated skeleton under the realistic silicone skin and was fully poseable. Like the other Sidney dolls, these deluxe versions were available with hat and boots in different colours. On a peg strip beside the main display were little accessory packs of hats and boots in all available colours, in the same style as those of the deluxe dolls, and advertising that they were compatible with other fashion dolls of equivalent size.

“It’s so hard to decide!” Samantha felt torn. “These are so pretty, but the play-set with all three looks more fun to play with!”

“Well Amelia and Amanda might both be getting a bit old for actually playing with toys soon,” he reminded her gently, “if they’re not already. But these collectable dolls make lovely display pieces! Which ones do you think they’d like?” He didn’t bring up the fact that Amelia only had a few more months of life ahead of her. Samantha wanted to give her friend a special gift and he was more than happy to facilitate this.

“Well Amanda does collect Barbies!” Samantha remembered. “Her Grandma used to buy her special ones each year and she has kept them all really carefully so maybe we could get her the Stacie? It would fit with the rest of her collection!”

“Good idea!” Josh agreed, “Pink hat?” These only came in pink or white variations and he knew enough about Sidney to know that the pink was her more typical and widely-recognised look. Samantha nodded happily. “And one of these for Amelia?” he turned the collector doll around in his hands. “What colour should we go for?”

“Is there one with a red set?” Samantha asked. “Make it a bit Christmassy?” Josh put back the two they had been looking at and carefully checked through the others on the shelf, finding one like Samantha had asked for close to the back.

“There we go!” he grinned. “Maybe we should find a basket or a trolley or something?” Josh turned away for a second to look to see if there were any convenient stacks of baskets near by and, when he turned back, he thought for a second that Samantha had disappeared, only to spot her a moment later kneeling down to take a better look at the Sidney’s triple cooking play-set.

“This does look so cool!” she sighed wistfully before suddenly brightening. “You know who would absolutely love this?” She grinned up at him. “Caroline and Ella! Ella was so into it when we went for our dinner and I bet they’d have fun playing with it together! Can we get it for them, Daddy?” She made puppy-dog eyes at him. “Please?”

“Go on then!” he chuckled, shaking his head in amusement at what a pushover he was. “But we really don’t want to be carrying all of this! I wonder if we could… Oh, excuse me!” He flagged down a passing staff member, a pretty blonde women in her early twenties. “Is there somewhere we can get a trolley or something? These are kinda bulky.”

“Oh that’s no problem at all!” the woman smiled kindly. “If you like, I can have them taken down to Customer Service on the ground floor and you can go pay for them there when you’re ready?”

“Oh, that would be great!” Josh smiled gratefully. “It’s these two,” he handed her the dolls, “and one of the big play-sets, please.” The woman held the dolls in one arm and called over her radio for someone to come and collect the play-set. She then took their surname and promised that the toys would be waiting for them downstairs when they were ready.

“We need to be careful now.” Josh reminded Samantha after thanking the woman again. “We’ve got to carry all of this on the bus!” He glanced at the time. There was still a fair while to go before they were due at the butcher’s. “Maybe once I’ve paid they’ll let us leave the toys here to collect later?” he suggested out loud but Samantha was already heading off to explore further, with the rest of the doll floor and the three floors above still to see!

To be continued...