“So. Five day glasses. And in five days’ time…” He picked up the first glass, the yellow one, and dramatically – a bit overdramatically, Barry thought – turned it upside down so that the sand started to fall and said, “…you, Barry, will be ten!”
“Yes,” said TSE One. “Hardly any time to make sure he doesn’t end up…” She trailed off.
“You know…” said TSE Two, also trailing off.
The Head did a small, quick and supposedly-but-actually-not-very-secretive headshake at them. Barry knew this was body language for “Shhh, don’t tell him about that”.
“Hold on!” said Barry. “What happens to me if I don’t find…” He could hardly believe he was saying it. “…um, parents… by my tenth birthday?”
“As you can see, Barry,” said the Head, ignoring the question again, “the sand in the 24-Hourglass trickles down very slowly. It will take, in fact, exactly…”
“Twenty-four hours?” said Barry.
“Yes,” said the Head, looking a little put out, since – Barry now realised – he had only been pausing for effect, and had wanted to say that himself.
“So! Secretaries!” said the Head, moving on. “What would you suggest? In terms of parent-finding?”
They frowned. One turned to the other and started whispering furiously, while the other nodded furiously, and went “hm”, “yes”, “right”. Furiously. Then they turned back to Barry and the Head.
“We think, sir, that, given the… you know… circumstances…” said TSE One.
“Yes, the…” said TSE Two, glancing significantly at the row of Dayglasses, “circumstances…”
“…the best thing might be our One-a-Day Parent Package Offer, which we could run for five days,” said TSE One.
“We don’t, as you know, sir, normally offer that for five days running, but in the circumstances…” said TSE Two.
“Can you please stop saying circumstances in that… that… whispery, looking-around-as-you-say-it way!” said Barry, breaking the rule of a lifetime – well, of the last month – by addressing The Sisterly Entity directly. Although he’d already started to think of them as The Secretary Entity.
“Interesting,” said the Head. “I like it.”
Barry looked at him. It was as if he hadn’t spoken at all. He took a deep breath and decided, for the moment, to forget about his circumstances. “This… package,” he said resignedly. “How does it work?”
“We’ll match you with five different sets of parents,” said Secretary One.
“And you can then try them out. A daily trial. Each set of parents for a day,” said Secretary Two.
“And then…” said the Head, “you can tell us which set you like best. And Bob’s your uncle! Or rather your parents! Sorry, I shouldn’t have said Bob’s your uncle; that’s confusing. Unless one of those parents did indeed have a brother called Bob, in which case Bob would indeed… be your uncle.”
“Right…” said Barry, confused.
“Also,” said Secretary One, “if you let us know of anything you might want to do with each set of parents… go to the zoo, visit a theme park, a trip to the cinema… we can take a note of that now and let them know in advance!”
This, Barry had to admit, was starting to sound interesting.
The Head took out, from under his desk, a gold laptop. “So…” he said. “Let’s begin by having a quick look at the profiles…”
He opened the lid, pressed a button and then turned the laptop round so Barry could see the screen. On it, a series of pages, a little like Facebook ones, were flicking past in a slide show.
“These are the Parent Profiles,” said the Head. “Every prospective parent has to create one of these and send it in…”
Barry could see, as the pages went by, photographs of grown-ups smiling, mostly posing outside their houses. Some of them stood in front of trampolines, or swimming pools, or big collections of toys. Others in front of tables laden with delicious-looking food.
“Each one includes a short filmed message too…”
The Head clicked on a box on one of the pages. A couple in their front garden suddenly started moving. “Hello, I’m Sheila,” said the woman.
“And I’m Michael!” said the man, who was holding a guitar. “And this is our song about us!”
“And hopefully…” said the woman, pointing at camera, “you…”
Strum strum strum went Michael’s guitar. “We are the Radcliffes,” they sang cheerfully. “And we never have any bad tiffs! We like to go to parks and zoos. And our house…” At this point, they turned and gestured towards their front door. “…has seven loos!”
The Head clicked pause. “I don’t like them much,” said Barry.
“No,” said the Head, doing, by his standards, quite a small eyebrow-raise. “They seem a bit weird. But you get the general idea.”
The slide show carried on, each new page showing a new set of parents with their photos. Then a page came up on which the photo of the parents was really blurry. Barry couldn’t make out what these two looked like at all, although there was something familiar about them. But he didn’t have much time to think about it as the Head turned the laptop away from him.
“So,” said the Head. “That’s just a few of the couples on our books. There’s many more…”
“And,” said Secretary One, “as we said, if you let us know what you might want to do with each set of parents, we can inform them of your preferences.”
“Oh… right,” said Barry. This being a question that he didn’t quite know the answer to, he dug his hands in the pockets of his onesie. And felt, in the left-hand one, a piece of crumpled paper.
He took it out and unfolded it. It was the list of things that he blamed his parents for.
For a second, just seeing this familiar object made him feel homesick. But he put that feeling out of his mind quickly and looked at the list. It had suddenly become really useful.
The last item, Number 10 – the one about his parents never making his birthday any good – gave him an idea. “Well, it’s my birthday in five days’ time,” he said. “I was going to have a party. Maybe… maybe each set of parents could organise a… party?”
The Secretary Entity looked at each other, then at the Head.
“You want to have… five parties?” he said.
Barry nodded. The Head thought for a second, then shrugged and nodded back at The Secretary Entity. On their pads the Secretary Entity started writing down a word. It seemed to be the same word, beginning with G. Barry frowned. G, he saw, R, E, E, D and what looked like the start of a Y, when the Head spoke again.
“So, Barry. Perhaps if you could tell us what kind of parents you’d like to have…? Then we can begin.”
The Secretary Entity turned a leaf together and looked up at Barry expectantly.
“Uh…?” said Barry.
“Shoot,” said the Head.
“Shoot what?” said Barry.
“Say what sort of parents you’d like. In an ideal world. Which this is.”