The email said to arrive at 9:15 for a 9:30 start. It is 9:40 and we are waiting for the trainer to find the right cable.
There are eighteen of us, round five tables, in a hotel function room with a carpet that was chosen to hide things. Each table has a bowl of mints, a jug of water and a pad of sticky notes. I have already taken four mints. I have been doing this long enough to know they will be gone by eleven.
The icebreaker
We are to tell the person next to us our name, our team, and one thing nobody would guess about us.
The person next to me is a man from the fostering team with a very neat beard. He says he once came fourth in a regional heat for ballroom dancing. I believe him completely. He sits like somebody who can waltz.
I say that I can recite the shipping forecast areas in order. It is true and it has never once been useful. He asks me to do it. I get as far as Dogger and the trainer claps her hands.
The slides
There are sixty-four. We know, because the number is in the corner, and at slide nine somebody at the back works out the time for each and passes it forward on a sticky note.
The trainer is good, as it happens. She did the job for fifteen years before she did this, and you can tell, because every so often she stops reading the slide and says, “What this looks like in a kitchen is,” and the room wakes up. Then she remembers the slides and goes back to them, and we go back to the mints.
The role play
After lunch. It is always after lunch.
I am to be the social worker and the man with the beard is to be a father who does not want me in the house. He is given a card with his feelings on it.
He reads the card. He puts it face down on the table. Then he looks at me, and his face changes, and he says, very quietly, “You’ve got five minutes and you’re not sitting down.”
He is frighteningly good. I forget that we are in a hotel. I say the things I would say, and the ones I say well I have said before, and the ones I say badly I have also said before. When the trainer calls time I find I have stood up, and do not remember doing it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve had it said to me a fair bit.”
“You should be on the stage.”
“Fourth,” he says. “Regional heat.”
The form
At ten to four we are given the evaluation form. What will you do differently as a result of today?
People write fast, with their coats on.
I look at the question for a while. I could put something from slide thirty. What I write is that I will take longer on the doorstep, before I ask to come in, because a man with a beard showed me what it is like on the other side of that door. It was not on the slides and nobody had planned it.
Under Any other comments I put: more mints.
This is a scene, and it is made up, like the book. Nobody in it is a real person.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: First day back