Spotting a figure on the path at last, she straightened her hair and glanced up at the clock. She rarely forgave poor punctuality, but she was making an exception for this much-delayed appointment, and craned eagerly round the smeary glass panel to admire an expensively cut suit in fur-collared tweed, racily matched with geek glasses, air-brushed matte make-up, a spectacular trout pout, and the defiant jewellery punkery of the modern aristo.

Beaming, she buzzed the visitor through the door, greeting her with a vigorous hand shake. Oh bother, she’d forgotten the woman’s name and her notes were in her office. ‘Welcome! I’m Mrs Bullock. No time to lose, let’s sign the book and go straight round, shall we?’

She peered beadily over the tweed shoulder as the visitor wrote her name in a small, neat hand, but without her glasses it was impossible to decipher.

‘We’ll do a quick tour first!’ She ushered her through the inner security door. ‘Let me take you straight to the newly refurbished IT suite. Feel free to ask questions as we go.’ A soliloquist of guided tours, she then kept up a non-stop patter which brokered no interruptions, spoken in her best matriarchal stage voice, warm and anecdotal with just a smattering of hard-sell statistics, fingers trailing along the more impressive equipment bought by the PTA, from sensory wall to digital boards.

Auriol’s well-rehearsed, whistle-stop route around the school was faster than ever by necessity. Not only was she conducting a job interview imminently – the wretched Governors insisted that her ‘it’s-all-in-my-head’ approach to admin needed outside help – but there were very few windows of opportunity in which the school’s four classrooms were anything less than chaotic bedlam. By luck, today’s delayed circuit timed out between the messy miscreants from Reception starting art and the Year Five thugs heading outside for sport, its finale coinciding with Class Two’s music lesson in which Barnaby Nairsmith – who had been hothoused through his trumpet grades by ambitious parents – was treating them all to his Grade Three pieces.

Her visitor looked impressed, even though Harry Unwin, sporting noise-cancelling earphones, wouldn’t stop banging the cymbals in close proximity.

‘He’s on the spectrum,’ Auriol explained in hushed tones, sweeping her hurriedly away before Harry could start on the bongos. ‘We love our special children here. Now tell me all about your son!’ She ushered her into her office and then did a U-turn as she heard the door buzzer going. ‘Sorry – there’s nobody in the front office, so I’ll have to go down let them in. Job interviewee. A friendly little school like this is nothing without its multi-tasking Head!’

As soon as Auriol saw the woman waiting behind the sliding glass screen, she knew she wouldn’t be offering her the position of office administrator. Thin and scruffy with dreadful dreadlocky red hair, she’d made no great effort. She looked half-asleep. She was totally the wrong type, but one must go through due procedure.

‘Take a seat,’ she ordered snippily, cranking open an inch-wide gap. ‘I’m just meeting a prospective parent. I’ll be with you shortly.’ She snapped it shut again, almost taking the woman’s freckled nose off.