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Bubble Man by Jonathan Taylor
When Cassy’s father fails to connect with his daughter — and misses out on  an evening in the Bitter End — a stranger’s self-mocking charm brings seething resentment. 
[Illustration by Lewis Marsden]

THE square is full of bubbles. Bubbles everywhere. His daughter is dancing among them, as are twenty or so other children.

The children swarm round the man making the bubbles, who’s using a bent coat-hanger on a stick as a wand. He dips the wand into a bucket of suds, then waves it in an arc over their heads, conjuring a bubble-cosmos that swirls, spirals around them. They scatter outwards, the toddlers trying to catch the bubbles, the older children trying to pop them. Some bubbles sail far above their heads, over the shops and town hall, but most are gleefully exterminated.

Then the children are sucked inwards again, round the bubble man, mesmerised as he dips the coat hanger in the bucket, and waves it over their heads. Again they scatter, dance, giggle — kids and bubbles, all mixed up.

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