Chapter 2
Much as Gemma loved to chat first thing to the parents and reassure them – especially today, the start of a new term – she also loved it when they went, leaving her and Bella and Jean in charge of twenty small people.
Some, like Billy, charged around with big broad grins, making buzzing sounds more appropriate to the aviary at the local zoo where Molly’s mother worked, while others zoomed into their favourite areas.
There was something for everyone. The toy garage which Toby loved; the sandpit tray (Alex’s); the computer with the CBeebies site (Sienna’s, who always asked ‘why?’ when told anything); the dressing-up corner (Clemmie’s); the messy corner with bowls of spaghetti and jelly so children could experiment with texture (Billy’s); the Wendy house (Darren’s); and the red, knee-high tables where they cut up playdough with play scissors (everyone’s).
This was ‘free play time’. Gemma had helped Miriam organise this for the past three years since coming to work at Puddleducks, but now she was on her own! The realisation both excited and daunted her. Ever since she could remember she had wanted to work with small people, partly because her own grandmother had run a nursery, coincidentally not far from here.
‘You’re a natural with children,’ her grandmother used to say, which was why Gemma had insisted to her father, a university lecturer, that she didn’t want to follow in his footsteps even though her grades were so good. What she really wanted to do was take an Early Years degree course so she could work at a playgroup or, as so many were called now, a pre-school.
‘It’s more structured than you think,’ she had tried to tell her father over the years. And it was. Puddleducks had to follow quite a tight curriculum that helped children learn through play.
Right now, in fact, it was time to practise their numbers. She nodded at Bella, who had rather worryingly confessed last term that she was thinking of going into PR, and also at Jean, whose own children had grown up and moved away. Jean found that working here helped to ease that awful empty-nest feeling. ‘OK, everyone. I want you all to sit down in a nice tidy circle. It’s time for our bed game! Who wants to show our new Puddleducks how it works?’
Billy’s hand shot up towards the ceiling. ‘Me, me,’ he demanded urgently, as though straining to go to the loo.
Billy! They all agreed that one day, this one (who was much bigger than the others for his age, with hair that seemed to grow in a zigzag fringe and always needed cutting) would go far. Whether that would be up or down was anyone’s guess.
‘All right, Billy. Can you fetch the Puddleducks blanket and lie down.’ She looked around the circle of children. ‘Clemmie, I can see you are listening nicely. Would you like to lie down next to Billy?’
Not needing another invitation, Clemmie tottered over in high heels, wearing the princess costume that she always nabbed from the dressing-up box every morning. Thank goodness for DFTB, otherwise known as Dad From The Beeb, who was constantly topping the box up with costumes like cast-off Teletubby outfits.
‘We need three more helpers,’ sniffed Bella, checking her nails as she spoke. ‘Danny, can you lie on the other side of Billy?’
No problems with that one, thought Gemma as she watched the new boy run over and dive under the blanket, giggling. What lovely long blond eyelashes!
Two more and they were ready. ‘There were five in the bed,’ they all sang. ‘Then they all turned over and one fell out. That’s right, Danny, you fall out. Not so hard or you’ll hurt yourself. Now everyone, how many are left in the bed? Yes! Four. How many fell out? Yes. One. So what does four and one make? That’s right. Five.’
By the end, Gemma’s throat felt a bit sore, but the children loved it and it was a good way of helping them to get the hang of mentally adding and subtracting through play.
‘Awful news about Brian, isn’t it?’ said Jean quietly as she helped Gemma get the mid-morning elevenses ready while Bella was in charge of the story-reading circle.
Had she missed something? Brian was the kindly if somewhat absent-minded head of Reception year at Corrybank Primary, round the corner, otherwise known as Big School. Many Puddleduck children went on to the main school, which was why there were so many joint activities such as assemblies, after-school club and, of course, the traditional nativity play just before Christmas. Brian and Miriam had been the lynchpins for this.
As Jean gave her the news about poor old Brian, who lived in her road (‘that’s how I found out, you see’), Gemma’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Apparently someone called Joanna Balls is taking over,’ continued Jean importantly. ‘You can imagine how difficult it must have been to get someone at short notice. Comes from an inner-city London school, or so I’ve been told. She’ll find Corrytown a bit different, won’t she?’
Gemma, still too upset to talk, nodded. How grateful she was to be living in this smallish, pretty market town just an hour from London, with its coffee shops and canal and church halls with so many courses that you could spend every evening doing tai chi or yoga or whatever you wanted.
She was lucky too to have her flat at the top of Joyce’s house just a ten-minute drive away, even though her landlady was constantly asking why a nice girl like her hadn’t found the right man yet. How do you know I haven’t? Gemma wanted to reply, but instead she just made noises about still being young at not-even-thirty-yet.
But the best thing about being at Puddleducks, far from the family home in Devon, not to mention Cambridge, where she had done her degree and met Kitty, was that no one knew her. Not the real her, anyway.
‘Surprised no one’s informed you, given that you’re the acting pre-school leader now,’ added Jean critically. ‘Mind you, it only happened last Tuesday.’
Gemma tried to get her thoughts straight. ‘I was in Greece until yesterday with my friend Kitty. And when I got back my laptop was playing up again, so I haven’t checked my emails. No, Molly, it’s not time for outdoor play yet so just sit nicely. You need the toilet again?’
Molly nodded solemnly. ‘My mum says I’m consonated.’
Thank God for children! They made you smile even when you weren’t feeling like it. By the time she and Molly came back (having needed that spare pair of pants after all), the others were already sitting up at their red tables and chairs for their mid-morning slice of toast and plastic mug of apple or orange juice, depending on tastes and allergies.
‘Mrs Merryfield, Mrs Merryfield, can I have a cappuccino instead like Lars does at breakfast?’
Johnnie’s Scandinavian male au pair was the subject of much nudging amongst the younger mothers. Clearly his tastes had rubbed off.
‘No, Johnnie,’ said Gemma kindly but firmly. ‘I keep telling you, sweetheart. It’s not on the menu, I’m afraid. Finished, everyone? OK. Let’s line up by your pegs, everyone, and put on our coats.’
Danny was really settling in, she noticed, as she watched him head for his peg with the picture of a dog and the word ‘ Dog ’ written underneath it. That had been one of her ideas: to put the picture of an object that began with the child’s name, and then the word itself.
Lily, however, was being very quiet, hanging back and clinging to the soft pink woollen comfort blanket which she’d brought in and had shoved up inside her jumper.
‘That looks like a kangaroo pouch,’ said Gemma lightly, kneeling down next to her. ‘Do you know what that is? Look, there’s a picture of a kangaroo on the wall. It’s got a pocket in the front of its tummy to carry its babies in.’
Lily stared at her with those china-blue eyes, almost as though she didn’t understand what she was saying.
‘Tell you what. Why don’t you go outside with Clemmie? She can be your buddy. Clemmie! Hold Lily’s hand, can you?’
Clemmie shook her head fiercely, clinging on to the princess tiara as though Lily might try to nab it. ‘How about you, Danny, then? You’re new like Lily. You can explore together.’
Danny made a buzzing noise like a bee and flew towards them, arms outspread on either side until he stopped right in front of Lily. ‘Hold hands,’ he demanded in an East Coast twang that Gemma suspected came straight from his mother, and together they walked out into the playground where Jean was helping children on to trikes and Bella was organising a game of hopscotch.
Gemma watched Lily look trustingly up at Danny and wondered if, one day, she might have one like that. Would she, mused Gemma, slipping into her favourite delicious daydream, have a daughter who looked like her? It wasn’t that she was particularly proud of her own blonde hair or her nose which turned up a bit too much at the end, or even her eyes, which a Certain Person, back in her Cambridge days, had described as one of her best features. No. It was because it would be so nice, one day, to hear someone say, ‘You must be mother and daughter.’ As she’d told Kitty enough times, she simply couldn’t imagine life without children of her own.
It was nearly picking-up time now for the morning session. Together with Jean and Bella, she helped round up the children, making sure they all had their snack boxes to go home with as well as two lots of gloves and their coats and the right shoes. Amazing how many went home with another’s left shoe by mistake! Last term they’d had two Puddleducks who kept swapping their underpants, which resulted in a few M&S/Primark mix-ups.
‘You nip out before the afternoon session,’ urged Jean, seeing her glance at her watch. ‘I know you’ve got things to do in town. I can clear up here.’
Nosing her grandmother’s old green Morris Minor out of the playgroup car park with its large blue and white duck sign, Gemma joined the lunchtime queue down the road towards the town centre.
Now, as she edged towards the roundabout, she saw Alex and his mum in one of her long, flowing cheesecloth skirts walking past, waving excitedly with their matching red hair and freckles. HM, Miriam called her. Not Her Majesty as the rather upmarket Bella had assumed, but Hippy Mum.
The traffic was stationary so, very quickly, Gemma waved back. Children found it so exciting to meet teachers out of school! It was as though they assumed staff were locked away in the supplies cupboard along with all the materials.
Spotting a parking space, Gemma made a mental note to grab something from the supermarket so she could get free parking and then …
An ominous crunch sent shudders down her spine. Shaking, Gemma glanced into her mirror but couldn’t see anything. Yet she had definitely hit something. Feeling sick, she opened the side door. Please don’t let it be a child. Or a dog. Or a … motorbike? And not just any motorbike. A big red and black steaming piece of metal with souped-up handlebars and a seat that should have been high up off the ground but was now lying on its side.
‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’ A tall well-built man – with a hint of dark stubble on his chin, dressed from head to toe in black leather, glared at her. Under his arm he carried a red helmet with a large black stripe running through it. He would have been good-looking, Gemma thought, if he hadn’t been scowling so ferociously.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Gemma stared down at the bike, still unable to believe what had happened. Thank goodness Morris the Minor wasn’t damaged. ‘I just didn’t see it.’
‘How could you have missed it? It was right behind you. Didn’t you look in your mirror?’
‘Yes of course I did, but your bike isn’t the same height as a car, is it?’
‘That’s because it’s a bike and not a car,’ he growled.
‘If it’s broken, I’ll pay for it,’ she ventured.
He was already on his knees, having a good look and running his fingers over the bodywork and the winged back as though the motorbike was a person. ‘You’re lucky.’ He spoke over his shoulder without looking at her. ‘She seems to be all right.’
She ? OK, so she called Granny’s car ‘Morris’, but it somehow seemed a bit odd for a man who must be, what, in his mid-thirties, to refer to his bike as a ‘she’. ‘Sure?’ Gemma glanced nervously at her watch. She had about a nanosecond to go before her appointment. ‘Because if you don’t want me to pay for anything, I need to go.’
The back of his head nodded curtly. I’ll take that as a yes, thought Gemma as she sprinted along the side of the supermarket and into a dark brown building on the high street.
By the time she came out, Gemma felt both scared and excited. Soon after Christmas, they had confirmed. It would all be sorted by then.
Meanwhile, no one else, she told herself, while automatically checking her precious silver chain to make sure it was still round her neck, must know about this, apart of course, from Kitty. To her family, the rest of the world and in particular to Puddleducks Playgroup, Gemma had to make sure that she was known as Miss Merryfield, the dependable, warm, uncomplicated pre-school acting head.