hair that I find myself insanely jealous of. I’m almost as jealous of her knowledge of CO2 levels, if I’m being brutally honest.
I decide I might as well plough on with some of the more broad, open questions, given that I took ages deciding on what they should be – as, if I don’t, this session will be coming to a very abrupt end. I have nothing else prepared.
They all know about plastic pollution. There’s a visceral anger in some of their eyes about that one.
And the anger is replaced by sadness when I mention what’s happening to animals across the planet. There’s a palpable sense among these kids that something is being lost. Something very important.
One girl called Summer – who recently immigrated to the UK from Sydney – spends a good five minutes telling me all about how her family watched their next-door neighbour’s house burn down in a bushfire, and how she and her mum raised four hundred and twenty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents to help take care of the poor burned koalas.
Summer’s look of devastation when she talks about all of this cuts me to the quick.
One after another, each of my carefully constructed questions is responded to with more knowledge and insight than I was ever prepared for. I expected to come here to talk to a bunch of switched-off preteens who just want to be on their smartphones – and instead I’m having to handle a classroom of mini experts.
It only takes half an hour to rattle through everything I’ve prepared, such is the volume of knowledge they all have. I’ve woefully underestimated their understanding of climate change, and it fucking shows.
Bloody hell.
There’s every possibility that, on some aspects of the subject, they know more than I do.
I didn’t have a clue that butterflies had virtually disappeared across the whole of California – but Eric does.
Eric is an eleven-year-old boy who is called Eric in this day and age. This is probably all I need to tell you about him.
And Shelly knows that a third of the Amazon rainforest will be gone in the next couple of decades. She tells me this with wide eyes and a horrified expression.
Every one of them knows who Greta Thunberg is, in the same way I knew who Posh Spice was at their age.
It’s remarkable.
‘Er . . . okay. That’s . . . all the questions I . . . I have,’ I again fumble, looking at the clock with some dismay. I promised Sean I’d keep them occupied for the whole lesson, and here I am done with thirty minutes to spare.
In desperation, I look over at my brother, who has been watching all of this silently but with a permanently unsurprised expression on his face.
Not for the first time in my life – and it definitely won’t be the last – I am looking to Sean to jump in and save my bacon.
He sees my hopeless look and immediately steps forward. ‘Guys, why don’t you all spend a few minutes thinking about what you’ve been talking about, and maybe come up with some questions you would like to ask Ellie?’
What?
That’s not how this works!
I ask the questions. They answer. That’s the way market research goes! Not the other way around!
But Sean has bought me a break in proceedings. I have to be grateful to him for that.
As his class drops into the silence of thought about what they might want to ask (oh God) my brother comes to stand next to me, as Nadia does the same.
‘They’re a bloody clever bunch!’ she says, with some surprise.
‘Yes, they are,’ Sean agrees, smiling.
‘Well done, bruv,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve done a great job of teaching them about the environment.’ I scowl a little. ‘You could have warned me though. I could have prepared my questions better.’
Sean looks baffled. ‘What? You think this was me?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? I don’t have time to teach them about climate change . . . not beyond whatever basic stuff we might stumble over in the curriculum, anyway. I certainly can’t get into the kinds of in-depth stuff they’ve been talking to you about.’
‘Then how do they know all of it?’
Sean fishes into his pocket . . . and pulls out his smartphone. He waves it at me. ‘They’re not stupid, Ellie. They can see what’s going on around them, and they can find out about it for themselves whenever they want to. All I can really do is make sure