Chapter 10

10

RAE

One day, I’ll learn to stop causing my own problems. This camping trip is a good example of what Sol used to call me getting in my own way. I can almost hear him reminding me that if I’d asked more questions or listened harder, I’d already know Luke takes these kids camping for days, not for a single night like I expected. That’s longer than I have to spare while my new deadline clock is ticking, and I still don’t know exactly where to start this second try at scoring a book deal.

What I need is a launching point of inspiration. A spark. A single image that makes readers want to turn to the next page.

I’m no closer to deciding on what needs to be a banger of an opener by the time the sun sets, so I fish out my phone and send an SOS to my mentor.

Rae: How did you decide on your first image? Your opener?

Then I rush to catch up with Luke, and I get a glimpse of why he makes this hike a first experience for his new students. “It’s a chance for the old hands to step up,” he says, and that’s what I watch happen while Luke gives me a potted history of this cohort of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old kids. I learn more about their backgrounds and crises that would have put them into prison if they’d been adults, and I blurt a question that Luke frowns at.

“For supplying drugs?”

“Not this time.” That frown deepens. “But you know how pervasive they are. Each student that we can help see they have different options makes a difference. Watch Teo,” Luke suggests. “He’s a good example of what a year or so of having more options can lead to.”

“Like?”

“Like him choosing to stay with us for an extra year. Not because he needs to retake exams. He already scored a place on a college course. He’s pressed pause on following that path.” He eyes me. “That’s brave, right? Deciding to change direction?” He eyes Teo next, watching him move from new student to student, checking in with them, and this quiet progress? That steadying hand Teo lands on new kids’ shoulders? It’s a Hayden reminder.

Teo could be re-enacting that night when we all worked together. The only difference is that he starts a game of footy the moment those tents are pitched, which Luke comments on.

“If anyone touched Teo’s football when he first got here, he’d fight them. But there’s no fun playing alone, is there? He still fought off friendship. Kept running away and refused to trust us. All he had head space for was?—”

“Surviving?”

“I was going to say worrying about his family, but yes. That too.”

I look away then, Mia instantly on my mind, and Luke’s tone gentles.

“Get to know him, and he’ll probably tell you why. That isn’t my story to share, but I can share this: Asking anyone to trust again after being let down is a tall order. A huge ask. So, Teo wanting to stay here for longer? That trust is a gift.” He eyes me again. “Like you trusting that Glynn Harber would be a good place to stay longer, Rae. You pressing pause here too means a lot.”

He joins the kids before I can say that my situation is different. I haven’t pressed pause for me. I’ve scrambled for extra time, that’s all. What I really need is more of that inspiration that only Hayden can translate for me.

Liar , I hear at the base of a tor, although I’m pretty sure that whisper is internal, not an echo. So is this one. You could easily find another way to translate that diary. You just want to see more of him.

I march away from that truth and follow this band of kids who are blank-faced until we reach the top of a high tor together where, like them, I’m blown away by the view.

The sea and sky are endless up here, fields clinging to the distant coastline in a patchwork of harvest yellows. A tractor armed with a forklift works in one of them, collecting huge, round bales of straw, and tidying them into a neat line.

I use my phone to zoom in on that tractor’s driver.

Is that him?

I snap a photo and send it with a text asking for confirmation. Then I slide my phone away and listen while the lowering sun paints the faces of these students in similar gold shades as the fields.

Luke asks them, “Could you even imagine this view from down there?” I wish I had Sol’s talent with oils or watercolours. I’d paint these kids all standing on top of crags as hard as their eyes were when I first met them in London, only I’d have to sprinkle them with this evening’s bright new wonder. Wonder that they work hard to hide like...

Hayden.

I’ve seen him do the same, haven’t I? Watched him work hard to hide his own reactions, like after getting praised, which I saw happen plenty at that wedding table. I notice similar reticence from these kids, but I guess Luke’s an old hand at staving off withdrawal. He crouches by a pile of stones at the highest point of this rocky outcrop and addresses it head on.

“You can see yourself from a new perspective, as well, if you give yourselves permission to start over. Mr. Raeburn will even help you to draw brand-new futures. Yours can be as bright as this evening is. All you have to do is let yourselves have it, but I know some of you want to walk away from this second chance. To run from it.” He nods towards Teo, who nods right back at him. “Or to pick a fight to avoid dealing with why you feel like you don’t deserve it.” Noah mirrors his next nod, his hair as fiery as his flush. “All those reactions do is weigh you down.” He picks up a rock. “The minute you drop them, you will feel lighter. Until then…” He taps his temple. “This is where that weight stays.” He pats his chest next. “And right here.”

I picture the book that changed my life then, see a small boy holding back a boulder, and I’ve already imagined Hayden as Atlas, haven’t I? Now I picture him in a different stance, shoving against one of those huge bales of straw, and I sketch that quickly on my phone while standing behind these listening students.

He comes to life in a few lines, and it’s so easy to draw his arms braced but shaking like his hands did after using his chainsaw. Even easier to be tempted to sketch a second person beside him, sharing that load with him, but I stop there and slide my stylus away as Luke continues.

“Pick one thing you’re sick of carrying. Work with us, and you’ll be able to leave it behind when your time at Glynn Harber is over.” He hefts a final rock. “Like mistrust,” he says, his gaze fixed on Teo again. “Or pain,” he adds while Noah rubs his own chest, which feels like an interesting untold story, only Luke reclaims my skittering attention. “Or guilt, which can be the heaviest weight of all to carry.”

He’s speaking to the students.

His gaze lands on me, and I need both hands to clasp the rock he hands me.

“Some of you carry guilt for other people.”

I’m on the top of a Cornish tor. I don’t know why I see that TV missing from my childhood home again. Or that empty fridge in our kitchen. The long shadows cast outside our front door by dealers don’t belong here where everything is so golden. Only the stone in my hand is real. So is the grit digging into my palms as I replay what it took to make a nightmare end for me and Mia.

End it?

You made it worse.

Fuck me, this stone is suddenly way too heavy.

Luke must be close enough to see that. He murmurs, “You can let it go,” but this talk is for students, not for would-be illustrators who can’t let wishful thinking distract them, no matter how appealing Luke makes dropping this weight sound by saying, “Imagine what you could carry once you have both hands free. What you’d have the headspace for and more room for right here.” He taps his chest again. “Room for new friendships. For aspirations and achievement. If you want, you can close your eyes right now and picture those in your futures.”

I visualise my book right next to my mentor’s on the shelves.

That has got to be my goal, yet the grit on my palms pricks like burrs did once, and I hear this so clearly that Luke must be right beside me. “You’re allowed to want good things for yourself. You’re allowed to take this time to figure out what those good things might be. You can open your eyes and see it.”

I do, and then I have to blink.

That tractor in a distant field has been busy. Those bales don’t make a neat line now. They make a smiley face instead, and my surprised grin must paint its own picture.

Luke’s hand lands on my shoulder. “You’re allowed to want good things and let yourself have them.”

That’s his refrain to the students for the next three days and nights—nights that I spend texting Hayden about everything and nothing. He doesn’t seem to mind. If he’s busy, he sends an emoji version of the smiley face he made with a forklift in that field.

For me.

He also sends photos of that woodland clearing. I wake to find he’s already been busy, squeezing in new additions between his harvest duties. He’s been busy too with that chainsaw; stacks of logs have been sliced into thin discs, and I ask why.

Hayden: Charles says they’re good for tons of learning.

He sends a photo of a toddler mid-jump between two of those discs. I roll over in my sleeping bag, studying that energy, that blur of motion, and something else in the background.

Rae: Who’s sitting on your throne?

Hayden: Charles. Think he’s regretting a few of his life choices.

His next photo shows why: Charles has borrowed Hayden’s ear defenders and holds twin babies, their little mouths wide open.

Hayden: Can you hear them screaming?

He follows that with another question.

Hayden: Can I see you?

He doesn’t need to ask me twice. I take a sleepy and bare-chested selfie, and send it to him within seconds.

Hayden: I meant when you get back, but thanks.

He sends a selfie of his own then, and there’s sawdust in his beard. His eyes are tired and heavy. They also stare straight into my soul.

I see them even after my phone dies, no charge left as Luke and his kids camp and hike and draw different futures for seventy-two hours, and I’m not sure when I stop panicking about that clock ticking and start hearing you’re allowed to want good things instead, but that selfie is what I picture each time Luke says it.

He reminds me of that mantra on our last hike, which brings us to the far side of rugged moorland. We’re followed by students who laugh while tramping behind us, their banter a world away from their first sullen silence. They’ve also made progress with starting to sketch their journeys, and Luke mentions a Polish one when we finish our last tor climb of this three-day bonding session.

He shields his eyes to guard them from afternoon sunlight before pointing.

“There.”

“There what?” I shield my own eyes, gaze skipping from the moor to some bordering woodland. “What am I looking for?”

“One of the old Polish resettlement camps. I knew it was around here somewhere.” He points out what my gaze must have skimmed past, and I’m instantly back in an encampment, only what Luke shows me doesn’t involve tents. These skeletons of abandoned structures must have once served the same purpose, although it’s hard to believe that they could ever have provided shelter. They look closer to broken ribcages than homes for allied veterans and their families.

All that remains of those homes is strangled by dark-green ivy and snarled by brambles. Even the entrance to the camp is hidden now that nature has taken over. Luke takes a photo and promises to send it to me.

I need to draw this—have to capture what used to house war heroes if only to show it to someone who shares a Polish connection.

It’s so easy to picture Hayden again then. Not with sawdust in his beard. Or burrs. I do imagine his chainsaw and that wicked-sharp blade he used to slice through willow, and I can imagine him clearing a path for a little Polish boy holding an old-style leather football.

He’d do that in a heartbeat, wouldn’t he? Cut him a path. Mow him a pitch. Stand in a goal and coach him.

It’s a perfect opening for my story, one melding the past with the present.

I can’t wait to share it with him.

I do have to wait until I can charge my phone in the minibus on the way back, but a notification on my phone screen stops me from texting. Instead, I read a reply to an SOS sent when my mind swirled at the start of a three-day mental reset I didn’t know I needed.

I needn’t have bothered to send it.

My mentor has only answered with what some time and space let me find out for myself.

I knew I’d found the right starting image when I couldn’t wait to share it with someone special.