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easing down, but as I started to leave I saw Sandra crying. The man looked a bit guilty and tried to apologise to her, but she was too upset to respond.
    The boy had been playing behind the climbing frame, in the corner by the Wendy house, Sandra told me later. He was burrowing down into the balls till he was totally covered, the way some children like to. Sandra kept an eye on the boy but she could see the balls bouncing as he moved, so she knew he was okay. Until he came lurching up, screaming.
    The store is full of children. The little ones, the toddlers, spend their time in the main crèche. The older ones, eight or nine or ten, they normally walk around the store with their parents, choosing their own bedclothes or curtains, or a little desk with drawers or whatever. But if they’re in between, they come back for the ball room.
    They’re so funny, moving over the climbing frame, concentrating hard. Laughing all the time. They make each other cry, of course, but usually they stop in seconds. It always gets me how they do that: bawling, then suddenly getting distracted and running off happily.
    Sometimes they play in groups, but it seems like there’s always one who’s alone. Quite content, pouring balls onto balls, dropping them through the holes of the climbing frame, dipping into them like a duck. Happy but playing alone.
    Sandra left. It was nearly two weeks after that argument, but she was still upset. I couldn’t believe it. I started talking to her about it, and I could see her fill up again. I was trying to say that the man had been out of line, that it wasn’t her fault, but she wouldn’t listen.
    â€œIt wasn’t him,” she said. “You don’t understand. I can’t be
in
there anymore.”
    I felt sorry for her, but she was overreacting. It was out of all proportion. She told me that since the day that little boy got upset, she couldn’t relax in the ball room at all. She kept trying to watch all the children at once, all the time. She became obsessed with double-checking the numbers.
    â€œIt always seems like there’s too many,” she said. “I count them and there’s six, and I count them again and there’s six, but it always seems there’s too many.”
    Maybe she could have asked to stay on and only done duty in the main crèche, managing name tags, checking the kids in and out, changing the tapes in the video, but she didn’t even want to do that. The children loved that ball room. They went on and on about it, she said. They would never have stopped badgering her to be let in.
    They’re little kids, and sometimes they have accidents. When that happens, someone has to shovel all the balls aside to clean the floor, then dunk the balls themselves in water with a bit of bleach.
    This was a bad time for that. Almost every day, some kid or other seemed to pee themselves. We kept having to empty the room to sort out little puddles.
    â€œI had every bloody one of them over playing with me, every second, just so we’d have no problems,” one of the nursery workers told me. “Then after they left . . . you could smell it. Right by the bloody Wendy house, where I’d have sworn none of the little buggers had got to.”
    His name was Matthew. He left a month after Sandra. I was amazed. I mean, you can see how much they love the children, people like them. Even having to wipe up dribble and sick and all that. Seeing them go was proof of what a tough job it was. Matthew looked really sick by the time he quit, really grey.
    I asked him what was up, but he couldn’t tell me. I’m not sure he even knew.
    You have to watch those kids all the time. I couldn’t do that job. Couldn’t take the stress. The children are so unruly, and so tiny. I’d be terrified all the time, of losing them, of hurting them.
    There was a bad mood to the place after that. We’d lost two people. The main store turns