The Home Corner by Ruth Thomas

anyone a Barbie doll. He’d always looked to me like somebody who wouldn’t tolerate cheap tat, just as he barely liked to acknowledge the existence of nineteen-year-old classroom assistants, or the need for sympathy when his wee girl fell and grazed her knees. And why would you want a doll, anyway , I felt like saying to Emily, with hair that pulled out from the top of her head? A Barbie doll is as plastic as the box she’s packed in .
    ‘So,’ Mrs Baxter said, breaking our reverie like a minister coming to the end of silent prayer; and Talking Ted was passed on. He stopped briefly at a boy called Jamie , who informed the class that his mother had just had a baby weighing 10lbs 8oz – ‘Goodness gracious me!’ Mrs Baxter said – and at Zoe Jacobs, who was going to Florida on a plane on Thursday. And then the bear reached Mrs Baxter.
    ‘So, now I’ve got Talking Ted,’ she said in her big, educational way, ‘ I’m going to remind everyone about an exciting event that is happening tomorrow. Now,’ she continued, peering down at the children, ‘can anyone tell me what that is?’
    The children looked at her. There was no response. Then Solly Calman put his hand up.
    ‘Yes, Solly?’
    ‘A wizard’s coming, with a rabbit.’
    ‘Haa,’ said Mrs Baxter, deflated. Already, it seemed, her Monday was not quite panning out. Nobody was meant to be getting Barbie dolls out of their trays or talking about wizards and rabbits. I hardly knew about the wizard myself: I hadn’t been paying much attention when Mrs Crieff had told the staff her plans for the week. All I knew was that he was part of some end-of-term celebration – some jamboree she’d decided to have.
    ‘Well, you’re quite right, Solly,’ Mrs Baxter said now, ‘because, yes, we are going to be having a wizard here this week, on Thursday. A magician, in fact. He’s coming to our end-of-term party, isn’t he? Which is very . . .’ she added flatly, ‘exciting. Because the wiz— the magician is going to be very special, isn’t he? But’, she continued, raising her voice above the renewing volume, ‘I actually wanted to tell you about something else, this Circle Time. What have we got happening before thewizard?’
    She was virtually shouting now. The children stopped talking and regarded her. Positioned directly behind Mrs Baxter’s head was a poster depicting a happy worm in an apple, exhorting children to Eat Fruit . Outside the window a mean-eyed herring gull hovered and squawked in the purest summer sky. I could have been living in London now , I thought, glancing up at the gull . I could have been living a completely different life . And I tried not to mind that I was, instead, sitting in a Portakabin in my home town, surrounded by five-year-olds.
    ‘I’m not going to ask people who click their fingers at me,’ Mrs Baxter cautioned, ‘or anyone who is not . . .’
    And then Emily, still holding the Barbie doll, put her hand up. Emily was as sharp as a tack.
    ‘I know what we’re doing, Mrs Baxter: we’re going to the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre,’ she said in a quick little voice.
    ‘Yes, Emily, that’s right,’ Mrs Baxter replied, relieved. ‘You can put your hand down now. Because we are indeed, children, going to the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre.’
    Yesss , some of the boys hissed, as if somebody had just scored a goal in football. Though I suspected they might not actually know what the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre was; that they might have confused it with Waterworld at the far end of Great Junction Street – a very different kind of place, involving flumes and a wave machine.
    ‘Settle down,’ Mrs Baxter called. ‘Now, the reason I’m telling you about the trip is so you can remind your mums and dads to make you a packed lunch tomorrow.’
    ‘Yes,’ I confirmed to the children sitting near me, and they all looked up at me again in surprise.
    ‘Are you going to bring a packed lunch, Miss