You’re also encouraged to bring any questions or difficulties you might have directly to the classroom teacher, rather than airing them in class. Kindy kids are so easily distracted—it’s always better to keep interruptions to a minimum!

Thanks again for your assistance. Working together, we’ll have Aaron reading in no time.

Best wishes

Robyn Ayres

I knew Joyce wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t care. The main thing was to get her off my back.

Joyce showed up at school the next morning with Pat Haas. I hadn’t seen Pat before, though I’d talked to her on the phone. Small and solid, with a smooth, round face, she had undersized features and mousey hair pulled back in a bun. Everything about her was bland, from her discreet ear studs to her low-heeled shoes.

She looked completely harmless, but she wasn’t. I could tell that from the way she just stood there, mute and disengaged, while waves of grievance rolled off her like Chanel No.5.

Everyone tried to placate her. Even Joyce. Even the kids. ‘Do you want to read a different book?’ Amber asked in a worried tone, after failing to mollify Pat with Edwina the Emu. Poor Amber had been assigned to her because I’d decided I could risk it. Kids like Caleb couldn’t have coped with Pat or Joyce or even Kate, who kept surreptitiously wiping things before she touched them.

Luckily, Dixie was also there. She didn’t seem fazed by Caleb’s low humming or Aaron’s stubborn silence. Instead she jollied them along, doing exactly what she was meant to do. She didn’t need watching and neither did Kate. Even Pat was fine because she’d snagged the easiest kids.

It was Joyce who gave me trouble.

She kept whispering to the other women and creeping over to ask me for a word. The first time she approached me, I stepped aside and listened to her complain about Kayla, who was kicking chair legs. (‘That little missy needs a smack.’) The second time, when I told her she should speak to me after class, she came right out and said, ‘You need to remind these children it’s rude to talk while someone else is talking.’

Then Caleb had a panic attack. I put him in the time-out tent, where I started showing him how to slow his breathing by blowing bubbles. I’d already spoken to Howard about a learning-and-support assessment for Caleb, because we needed funding for a teacher’s aide; it wasn’t easy, coping by myself, and the last thing I needed was Joyce undermining me in front of the class. But that’s exactly what she did, while I was down on all fours with my head in the tent.