The Parent Agency. David Baddiel

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      “Do you really not know how it works here?” said the Head.

      Barry shook his head.

      “Oh, I see. Sometimes that happens with strays. Memory loss, etc.”

      “No, I haven’t lost my memory. I come from another place – a place that you’re in.”

      “I am?”

      “Yes. Where you’re just my friend at school. You don’t work in an office or anything. And grown-ups have children, and they live with them. They don’t… do whatever it is they were doing when…” Barry struggled to remember their numbers. “…PCs 890 and 891 found me.”

      “Well, never mind,” said the Head, in a way that suggested that Barry was, of course, deluded, but there was no point in trying to tell him that. It reminded Barry of how his dad was sometimes with his grandpa, who had an old person’s disease which meant he couldn’t remember anything. “The way things are in this place, which is the real place everybody lives in, is that grown-ups don’t…” – and here he did an inverted commas mime – “…‘have’ children, whatever that means. Here, children choose their parents.”

      “Choose…?”

      “Yes, of course. A childhood is far too important to just randomly let grown-ups…” – he did the mime again – “…‘have’ children. No. What we do here is work with children who have yet to choose their parents, like yourself – you’re nine, yes?”

      Barry bristled at this. “Nearly ten. In five days.”

      The Head’s eyebrow went up. It actually went up even further than it usually did, the top disappearing somewhere under his hairline. “Oh my God!” he said, instantly hitting a button on the machine in front of him, and bending his face down to the microphone. “Secretaries! We have a Code Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue and Red!!”

      Barry sat up in his chair. He’d begun, while listening to the Head, to like the sound of this world. But he didn’t like the sound of that. And he liked even less the sight, coming through the door of the office, of The Sisterly Entity.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Barry was about to refuse to even look at TSE, and certainly not listen to them, but it very quickly became clear that, in this world, even The Sisterly Entity were not quite the same as they were in his world.

      To begin with, like everyone who worked at the Parent Agency, they were wearing onesies, which they would never have done at home. Plus their hair had gone weird: it had been combed up, a bit like their granny’s hair used to be in black-and-white photos. And, crucially, they were looking at him – Barry – not like they were about to make fun of him, or tell on him to Mum or Dad, but as if he was really, really important.

      One reason Barry felt this was because it was actually quite hard for them to look at him. They had come in sideways, carrying a large silver tray, but were still turning their heads as far as they could towards him, and smiling politely. On the tray were five very large egg timers. They were made of glass and each one was a different colour: yellow, orange, green, blue and red. The Sisterly Entity set the tray down on the Head’s desk, between him and Barry, and went to sit on two chairs at the side of the room.