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need spirit, though – we’ll need to be a little more careful when we get around to opening them.’
    ‘Gus painted me,’ Milandra said. ‘I’m a little white girl now.’
    ‘I’m a little white girl too,’ Gus chirped.
    ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’ If this was the worst thing we had to cope with that day, we’d have got off lightly.

8
    Thankfully, it was.
    By the time the bus was pulling up outside, the walls were completely covered with new paint, ready for us to adorn them with murals. Milandra’s and Gus’s clothes had been washed and dried, and though some of the paint remained in their hair, they were none the worse for it. The rest of the children had been, if not pleasant, then at least not wilfully obstructive. Mitzi had punched Gilbert in the gut; Jeffrey had wet himself; Ross had attempted to use one of his crutches as a pole vault in an attempt to leap over Arga, who was kneeling on the floor, and crashed into her.
    But all of those altercations were minor. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they were nothing I wouldn’t have expected in a standard crèche or junior class. I wondered if perhaps this was going to be an easy assignment after all.
    Experience (and common sense) had made me aware that children do not exist in isolation: every behavioural problem stems from some issue within a family unit or a trauma that had happened far away from the childcare centre. I wanted to look at the children’s homes and meet some of the parents. That evening I decided to do the home-time run.
    The bus driver, a huge bear of a man named Arnold, seemed to view the children with a mixture of amusement and mild tolerance. Janet and Bea, two housewives, were employed to travel with them. They supplemented their income by doing short runs to and from a number of centres and schools about the county. If they were surprised by my decision to come along for the ride, they didn’t show it.
    The trip took a little over an hour. Gilbert lived in what could only be described as a mansion. A Rolls-Royce was parked out front beside a Mercedes, which was apparently the family runabout. A young man, whom Arnold informed me was a servant, let the child in. He shut the door without looking at us.
    Rufus’s house had boarded-up windows and a front garden overgrown with weeds. When the bus stopped outside the gate, a woman who looked as if she had stepped from the pages of a John Steinbeck novel came to the door. I asked Arnold to hang on for a minute, and jumped down after the red-haired tearaway. ‘Mrs Ward? I’d just like a quick word.’
    The woman froze as if I’d threatened to slap her. ‘What?’
    Rufus had stopped at the door and was gazing at me, wide eyed.
    ‘My name is Shane. I’m going to be working with Rufus for a while at Little Scamps. I just wanted to introduce myself.’
    ‘He in trouble agin?’ the woman asked, apparently not having heard a word I had spoken.
    I laughed. ‘No, he’s not in trouble at all. I’m just doing a quick visit to all the children’s homes to introduce myself. I was wondering if perhaps some of the parents might like to get more involved in the crèche. We could use a little help from time to time.’
    ‘I’ll tell him to behave better, okay?’
    She seemed paralysed with fear. It was as if I was speaking a foreign language to her.
    ‘I’ll leave you to your work,’ I said. I had had my hand stuck out to shake hers, but she never acknowledged it. I got back on the bus.
    ‘Nice chat?’ Arnold asked me drolly.
    ‘If I weren’t such an optimist, I’d reckon she thought I was going to murder her,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
    ‘Had a hard life, that one,’ Arnold said. ‘Husband drinks and knocks her about. Kids all wild as mountain goats. Never had more than a couple of pennies to rub together.’ He tutted. ‘She was a real beauty when she was a girl.’
    ‘Looks sixty now,’ I observed.
    ‘I’d say she’s