Throughout the tour Jo was doing what every other parent was doing. Mentally painting her child into each classroom, into each corridor. In the toilets Walmsley discussed the importance of hygiene, but Jo was too busy seeing Seren standing at those Lilliput taps. Were they too high? They looked it. She imagined Seren washing her tiny hands after the plastic frog on the wall had vomited handwash onto them. In the classrooms she’d see Seren sitting at a desk, scrawling a picture of Mummy or Peppa Pig, or more often than not, their little rabbit Six. She hoped the kids got plenty of chances to draw here.
Now and again she’d see the other parents catching each other’s eye to share a very particular blow of breath. The sort of gear change sound that signalled to them all that the first stage of their kid’s life was truly swinging shut. For ever.
The melancholy was multilayered too. Because Jo had no other kids. Doctors said she couldn’t have any more, since Seren’s arrival nearly killed her. So every time Walmsley opened her mouth and pointed to some wallchart, it gave Jo that prickly panic she sometimes got at night. When she wondered what the hell she was going to do with her life once the State took over the childcare. Merry Poppins Cleaning full time, with her back? She’d rather adopt a Brazilian street child.
Could she do that, actually?
It was in the playground that Jo stopped seeing Seren.
Instead, Jo saw her five-year-old self trying to hopscotch across the exact same cement that stood here today. Stumbling like an idiot, because all the Finch family members were about as coordinated as a kite in a tornado. She remembered other kids laughing at her. Calling her ‘lanky legs’ … oh, to be called ‘lanky’ again when these days she was more globe shaped. But then one clear image came, chiselled into her memory. It swam to the surface and made things so much better.
Of her and the three girls she miraculously fell in with, six months into this primary school. Girls she still hung out with, even today. The gang. Her gang. The best set of friends you could possibly get. Right now she pictured them all, walking the playground of her memory. Her now boss, Kassy West. Steph Ellis, who was a supply teacher at this school, nowadays. How crazy was that? Steph teaching music in classes she learnt to play the recorder in. Steph was a cool woman. Jo loved Steph a lot. And then there was good old Rachel Wasson who nobody ever saw any more since she moved away, but who she thought of often.
She pictured herself and those girls, back as kids in uniform here. Strutting, even at six and seven. Owning it, like they would own it all the way through their teens. Flipping a finger at the chumps on the side saying, ha! We’re kind of a big thing.
Then walking alongside them, she suddenly saw little Holly Wasson. Flickering in the background like a projected image from a faulty bulb.
She felt suddenly cold. Had the sensation of small blunt fingers touching the small of her back and reaching up. She blinked the image away.
Lee caught her staring. ‘Jo?’
‘Do you think Seren will make friends?’
‘She’ll have to, won’t she?’
Wrong answer. She glared at him.
He coughed. ‘I mean, of course she’ll make friends. You did, didn’t you?’
‘Best ones ever.’ She noticed the parents had started heading to the music block. ‘Steph’s working today. She says her kids are going to play us some Halloween songs on the kazoo.’
He gave an exaggerated gasp, ‘You know, I have always dreamt I’d hear that in my life. Come on.’
She smiled as he laced his hands into hers. Then they hurried across the playground, laughing.
They were the last ones into the music block.
It was a decent size. Probably three times bigger than the other classrooms. Yamaha keyboards sat in a row by the wall. A huge blue Ikea crate was filled with tambourines, shakers, and that odd, hollow, cylinder thing you scraped with a stick that nobody ever sees again once they hit secondary school. The room was filled with rows of wooden benches in front of a small, temporary stage. A set of curtains was currently closed, splashed with glitter stars and sequins. A murmur came from behind them, which sounded like excited children. One of the parents budged up to let Jo and Lee squeeze on the end.
‘Fab school, isn’t it?’ a mother said. She smelt very rich.
Jo nodded, but she didn’t smile. Because she had just noticed that something was wrong.
Lauren, the teaching assistant, was struggling with a cupboard door, while Mrs Walmsley hurried around the class, looking like she’d lost something, or rather lost someone.
‘Where’s Steph?’ Lee leaned into Jo. ‘Thought you said she was the MC for this?’
Jo looked around, fingers tapping. ‘She’s supposed to be.’
Just then, she noticed Walmsley’s face shift. She’d stopped looking for Steph and was now looking puzzled at the wall behind them. Jo twisted to see what the big deal was. It was a wall filled with a kids picture display. Creatures that had featured in classical music, it seemed. ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’, ‘Peter and the Wolf’, that sort of stuff. Only they were all upside down. Every one of them. Even the banner above them had been flipped. Jo turned her head on its side to read it.
Music of the Animals.
She ran her eyes across the manic hand-drawn streaks of foxes, cows, goats then she saw a scrawl of an angry black crayon animal.
A hare.
She stiffened and looked away. Thought of Holly again.
Relax. Breathe.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lee’s voice.
‘Nothing,’ she shook her head and turned back. ‘Nervous about Seren.’
Walmsley was back now, pulling at the cupboard door and shaking her head. Then she whispered into Lauren’s ear, who nodded and hurried out of the classroom.
‘Alright, folks. There’ll be just
