The village school had been on the brink of closure when she’d taken over the headship four years earlier, and whilst it still struggled with numbers – draughty Victorian classrooms in an Internet dead-zone were no rival to the high-tech, architect-designed Cotswold learning hubs in Broadbourne and Chipping Hampton – Maggers now boasted old-fashioned boaters-and-slates discipline and modern wrap-around care. Being just inside the catchment for Warwickshire’s best grammar schools meant it was ripe territory for those who wanted a Cotswold postcode whilst still looking to save money by getting their little Edies and Axls through the Eleven Plus. Under her leadership, ‘Maggers’ offered extra tuition from the get-go, plus breakfast clubs and high tea for the convenience of busy commuter parents, lots of externally sourced educational after-school clubs that parents paid through the nose for, and ever-more lavish play facilities funded by a PTA with more high flyers sitting on it than Alan Sugar’s boardroom. Its divorce lawyer Chair was a volunteer-enlisting legend, on occasion also discreetly steering new parents in the school’s direction. And today, Mrs Beadle might just have landed Auriol with a very fine feather for Maggers’ cap.

Annual budget stripped bare, Auriol had, by necessity, become adept at enticing parents with deep pockets, the redistribution of wealth starting at her school gates. Old money always attracted new in Auriol’s experience, and where a hand-stitched country boot led, the well-heeled followed. She glanced out of the glass door again, eyeing the lane for movement. Where was the blasted woman? Among social influencers, blue blood was gold dust.

A devotee of the Observer’s glossy style magazines, Auriol had a sharp eye for trends, her latest mission to recreate Soho Farmhouse’s Teeny Camp and Barn to satisfy the influx of hipster parents emigrating from London. And whilst she couldn’t deny that almost a quarter of her register shared the surname Turner, she liked to think her little school was gaining a name for being select, cosmopolitan and just a little bit boho. On its register were the children of an artist, the head of a charity and an actress who had appeared in The Archers; one of the parent governors had written speeches for Blair, another was in a same-sex relationship with the Birmingham Symph’s lead cellist, and of course Mrs Beadle, the PTA’s Lord Kitchener, had personally overseen three celebrity divorces and lifted the Bardswold MP’s super-injunction. Auriol’s roll-call even had a glamorously high ethnicity thanks to the two large families who now ran the old coaching inns on the Fosse Way as Indian and Thai restaurants. As credentials went, socially diverse Compton Magna was up there with champagne-socialist Islington. Only with more Turners and less funding. Attracting liberal-thinking, philanthropic parents was a priority, especially if they had enough land for a forest school.

As such, it had been a thrilling start to spring term to receive a call from a bass-voiced, noble-sounding mother who said she was considering Maggers for her son on the advice of Helen Beadle. Auriol’s spies – AKA dinner lady Mrs Rogers and cleaner Janine – told her the family was village royalty, which meant that this mummy was either a leftie, broke or that the son had special needs – quite possibly all three – causes which Auriol joyfully championed for her inclusive little learning ark.