She's fey.

This was my criticism.

I didn't know if I meant it or not. The girl (and she was a girl, though she'd dressed like a woman, she was a girl, with her face and her motions and her optimistic nature) had been like a fairy, or a ghost, wafting into the office like some mythical character. The tykes would rip her to shreds, I was sure. Or she would cry at the sight of them, at their plaintive lives. I wondered what sort of a trio we had made, sitting and waiting for her. The three Norns? The Fates? There was no distaff, no spindle- one of the malevolent Sleeping Beauty fairies? We made an odd set, I knew. Variants on the middle aged. There was small, spiky Anna, who pursed her mouth and was overly concerned with health and safety. She had never changed the bright pink lipstick she wore, for decades, if not earlier. A nod to the time she'd been happiest, trying to recapture her youth. Then there was Julie, who was as round, maybe rounder than she was tall, and as so many women are, always trying to diet, unsuccessfully. The two of them were small women. I made the conscious decision to sit furthest away from the candidates, so as not to alarm them with my size. I knew that I was an affront, close up. Julie was doing her level best to assume her twinkly, non-judgemental stance, and Anna was going through the interview as was her habit with everything; methodical, no-nonsense.

I reverted to type as well, and sat quietly at the back, the centre of the triptych. None of the candidates were especially impressive. A fluttery woman was first, with bleached floaty hair, then two others not particularly worth remembering, then this girl, looking almost gothic in black with red hair that she'd pinned up in an attempt to appear adult, but wisps escaped. The effect was seductive, but there was no need for seduction before the panel. Venturing into the lair of the fates. She seemed at ease, and responded well to the questions. She was not half as cloying as the others, with their feminine scents and new styles. They were trying to be girls, and she was doing her level best to be a woman. It was working. I could see Julie and Anna enjoying this one. She was probably the best looking of the three; they were no doubt drafting up prospectuses, or plotting friendship making rituals with her. I would stoop to no such flattery. "But she's got a degree", Anna commented. "And she dresses so well", said Julie. "She's got a lovely face, but that won't do her any favours", I said. They looked at me. Anna, no doubt thinking herself beautiful, looked slighted. Julie astonished. She said, "we can't hold her face against her". What she meant was, I have made the concession, and I am as ugly as you are. The assumption grated with me, the reproach beaming from her curranty eyes, hidden in a dough face. "She's very young. No experience". "You're outvoted", Anne trilled.

When she began, she seemed more girlish than ever and this vexed me. I had enough children to care for and I didn't need another teen into the mix. I needed a proper member of my team. After a few false starts, she seemed to be able to mix with the group. She'd been too academic to begin with, too interested and too interesting. I'd heard her talk of scientific advances, and try to plug knowledge out of people. That didn't work with many, so instead she began listening and watching, and then joining her in. She seemed fractious. She didn't know where she stood with the children, and they could smell that and didn't let her forget it. She was more one of them, low down in the social strata, than one of us when she taught. An academic scholar, who happened to come well-packaged. I laughed to myself, to see her trotting about between sessions, looking more like a student than an employee. To her credit, she did not indulge in calorie chats with most of the staff, and bonded with them on her own terms rather than theirs.