Chalk Dust & Broomsticks, Chapter 12

The children of Primrose Primary Sch are enjoying a cooking lesson until disaster strikes.

Chapter 13 - The Cooking Corner

Barry Thompson was a Nursery child with special educational needs who came from an underprivileged home. He was devoted to his teacher, Miss Pink, and obsessed with fire engines.

The Nursery Unit was well-resourced, but Althea had other plans. She was intent on moving Mary Pink to Year 3 (Robins) and putting Mrs. Cracker in charge of the babes, a move clearly designed to make both women fail. Mary felt victimized; Mrs. Cracker felt compromised. Everyone else on the staff kept quiet, seeing the injustice but too scared to speak up. No one, that is, except for Shirley.

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A Recipe for Chaos

One November day, a parent volunteer, Mrs. Brown, was in the cooking corner with a group of children, making fairy cakes. This was a weekly, much-loved occurrence, the laminated recipe sheets pinned safely on the wall, behind the small oven.

Shirley had also been cooking in her cosy cottage. The ingredients for her spells were, by nature, a bit more adventurous. Lining them up on a stout wooden table in her kitchen, she took a handful of matches and snapped them, dropping them into her cauldron, along with a good handful of garlic granules and a very large handful of cayenne pepper. The pepper made her sneeze, which she knew would increase the spell's potency. Lastly, she added a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, and a cup of moon shadow.

The cauldron pot was set onto glowing embers and Shirley stood back, hazel wand outstretched, her brown eyes flashing. Sparks ignited in the cauldron, and the whole room was filled with a purple smoke that smelled exciting and promised enormous trouble. "This will be a good spell," she said.

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The Fire Drill

Gerald was fed up. His house beside the school was overrun with visiting relatives. Seeking peace, he had wandered over to the boiler house to check temperatures and visit his secret stash of whisky. Some hours later, he was in no fit state to deal with the fire alarm that Althea had set off as part of the health and safety procedures. He simply ignored it.

The whole school heard the fire alarm and swiftly evacuated. Teachers led the children to their designated positions on the playground.

"Here she comes," said Dora as Althea marched across the playground toward Mrs. Cracker's class.

"That line's not very straight!" Althea complained, her priorities still firmly on rigid order. "Come now children, line up properly behind Mrs. Cracker and then we can all go back inside out of this wind."

She glanced over at the boiler house door, suddenly remembering the ghostly apparition she'd seen at the Halloween Party.

"Althea!" called Dora urgently. "I can smell smoke in the wind!"

Althea looked up, finally focusing. A thickening plume of smoke was snaking its way into the sky from the lower corridor, right where the cooking corner was located. In her haste to get the little chefs outside, Mrs. Brown had forgotten to turn off the oven. The fairy cakes had burnt to a cinder, igniting the cooker itself, the aprons, and the recipe sheets nearby. Fanned by the wind through the open window, the fire was taking hold.

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The Missing Letter

Miss Pink ran back into the Nursery Unit and immediately dialled 999 to alert the emergency services.

Within a few moments, a magnificent red fire engine came tearing down the road to Primrose Primary. Barry Thompson, the nursery child who loved fire engines, jumped up and down in ecstasy. "Fire engine!" he shouted. "Look, a real fire engine!"

While Miss Pink was still on the phone, she noticed that the drawer to her desk stood open. She was certain it had been shut when she last looked. She checked it, and to her amazement, the letter was gone.

The letter that belonged to Althea. The letter signed "Alex" that detailed future plans for Primrose Primary. It was gone.

Someone had taken it, but who?