Chapter 19

19

HAYDEN

I don’t even make it to the end of the school day before hunting for Rae.

Not because I want to distract him. It sounds as though I’ve done enough of that already. But distraction is what has stuck in my mind and is my motivator for stopping first at my ex-housemate’s classroom.

Rowan joins me at the fence there. “Hey. You okay?” His forehead furrows, and those deep lines look out of place on his sweet face, which is a sign of my own distraction—it takes me way too long to realise he is mimicking my own expression.

I lighten up in a hurry. “Yeah. Yes, I’m okay.”

“Well,” Rowan says primly. “I know Luke wants to recruit a new drama teacher, but I’m not sure acting is your forte.” He leans over the fence and whispers, “Try harder, Hayden.”

I straighten up and do that. “I am okay.”

That’s a lie. The fact is, I can’t stop thinking about how Rae described himself to me.

As a disaster.

It clings like those burrs once did.

“Actually, no. I actually wanted to ask you a quick question about...” I cast an eye over the children scattered in this outdoor classroom, exchanging smiles and waves with several while searching for the one who keeps coming to mind since Rae left the stables to go meet his students.

Asa.

He isn’t with Maisie, who is busy in the sandpit. He isn’t with Hadi either, who walks a balance beam with barely a wobble.

The child who reminds me so much of Rae is engrossed in something. So much so that he hasn’t noticed my arrival.

“Listen, Rowan.” It’s my turn to whisper. “Can I ask you something about him?”

“About Asa?” Rowan glances his way, that frown melting away when his gaze swings back to me. “Of course you can. It will make a change from him talking my ear off all about you.”

“Me?”

Rowan nods. “Because you’re his favourite teacher.”

“I’m not?—”

Rowan rolls his eyes. “A real teacher? Try telling him that. In fact, come in, and I’ll show you why he thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

He heads for the gate at the end of the fence and holds it open for me.

“Look,” my softly-spoken ex-housemate orders much more forcefully than usual. “Tell me you didn’t teach him how to do this.” He points out the log disc that Asa hammered his name into. It has pride of place on a table with other oddments. “This is their achievement table. Where they put the work they’re most proud of. The work they value the most. Do you know who never puts anything on here?” He goes ahead and tells me what I can already guess. “Asa. Not until today. Who do you think that is down to?”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Rowan marches over to a drying rack before I can explain that anyone could show a kid how to use a hammer safely. All it takes is patience and some small adjustments to stop them from hitting their fingers. Like using a pair of long-nose pliers to hold the nails in place the way Dad first taught me. I follow him to say that, only Rowan holds up a sheet of paper daubed with still-wet paint. “He wouldn’t have done this without you.”

The painting is a mess of random splodges until I focus. “Ah.”

“Ah,” Rowan agrees. “That’s his name in paint dots, over and over. So many times it’s hard to read it, but he knew exactly what he was doing, Hayden. He couldn’t stop making his mark once he got back from your morning session. He hasn’t stopped since.” Rowan isn’t done yet either. He points at Asa, who is still too engrossed to notice us both watching. “Now look really closely.”

I do, and it takes a moment before what Asa is busy doing registers with me. Then it becomes harder for me to see for a whole new reason. For a third time today, I have to blink away a sudden blurring, and this comes out thickly. “He’s writing.”

He is.

That’s Asa’s name on the sheet of paper in front of him.

Not in dots.

He’s joined them.

He’s done that on the chalkboard too, his name there in a rainbow array. Rowan turns me to face another corner of his outdoor classroom where Asa’s name is also scrawled in crayon. That’s where Rowan says, “Charles told me that children making their mark is vital for them right here.” He doesn’t touch his temple like I more than half expect. He touches his chest in the same spot mine has been aching for the last few hours. “He said that if I could only do one thing with his children while he was busy with his babies, it was to help them make their mark in any way that mattered to them. In song. In story. Inside the classroom, or outdoors. Communication is everything. Without it, they’re stuck. Asa was, even though he always looks so busy. Now he can’t stop making his mark because he’s joined dots up here.”

He does tap his temple now, in a reminder of Rae back at the stables. Rowan is also flushed as pink as he was, if for a different reason. He’s passionate about Asa’s progress. “He refused to try to write at his last school. Now he’s asking everyone how to spell their names. How to spell anything at all. He can’t stop now he’s found enough focus to make a hand and brain connection.”

That leads me back to why I stopped here in the first place.

“Listen, Rowan. You mentioned focus. Do you think that’s because he might have?—”

“ADHD?” Rowan makes a weighing gesture with both hands and names what Rae described while in bed beside me, and what my subsequent Googling suggests could be a textbook example of it going undiagnosed in adults. Rowan discusses a much younger candidate. “Asa might have ADHD. He might not. He could just be a very busy boy. It’s too early to slap on any kind of lifelong label.”

He echoes what my Googling also told me.

“Do that too early and negative opinions can become the only mark that lingers.” He’s serious about this. “Plenty of people put any kind of neurological difference down to not trying hard enough to fit in. To be normal.” He straightens his shoulders. “Asa doesn’t need to hear that, or see himself as having a problem. Later, if he is assessed and does score highly, there are other strings he can add to his bow.”

“Like medication?” That was what Google listed, linking me to story after story of people who found it turned a key in a lock for them after years of struggle.

Rowan is less certain. “Maybe, but like I said, it’s early days. The assessment ball is already rolling in the background, but up until a formal diagnosis, the whole team will keep teaching him the way he can learn the best, right? Set him up to feel capable, like you have. We’ll watch for chances to extend his skills when he’s ready for more challenge. That’s teaching, Hayden. Watching and adapting and extending, like you’ve been doing.”

He includes me as part of that teaching team.

So does Asa, who spots me, and yeah, I still need to catch up with Rae before he leaves, but Asa runs over and looks up to me. His little face is smudged with paint and success as he asks, “How do you spell Novac?”

I tell him.

He scurries away before running back to me. “Want to watch me write it?”

I need to hurry to find Rae, not only to say another goodbye while I still can, but to tell him what could possibly help him.

For now, I tell Asa something else I’ve found out.

About me.

I take the hand he offers and promise, “I wouldn’t miss that for the whole world, mate,” and I mean it.

By the time I finally escape Rowan’s classroom, it’s even closer to the end of the school day.

The last bell will ring soon, signalling the start of a weeklong break. The kids who don’t board here full time will stream out and Rae will leave with them. Only he won’t come back, and he’s told me enough times about where he’s needed. Seeing that little life vest made his driver so real to me.

I still want to find him, and I even take a few steps, which is as tough as wading through hip-high water. But that’s what Rae did, isn’t it? Waded through waves to give that life vest to a child he told me should have been airlifted out of Kabul. He waded uphill for me too, through a torrent to grab my hand so we could face a wild ride together.

I want that again now.

Now?

He already knows I live season to season. Wanting more doesn’t fit my future. I still can’t make myself stop wading, only Rae isn’t inside the art block with his students when I go inside to find him. I’m alone inside a studio where huge windows show acres and acres of trees hiding where Rae could be.

“Shit.”

“Looking for someone?”

I turn around to see Sol wipe paint from his hands. He doesn’t wipe away his smile, although it’s gentle. It’s also a reminder of Mitch smiling across a scrapbook full of photos that broke me, and suddenly I’m exhausted, wiped out, like I was by the sex that put me back together.

I’m also swamped with want, like when a little boy asked me to stay a little longer.

I want Rae to stay too.

I can’t wade through that or hold it back. I can’t hold this back either.

“I’m not ready for him to go yet.”

Sol doesn’t make a joke by asking who. Instead, he steers me to a corner of the studio I didn’t notice. No one would, not when sheets hang from the ceiling, walling it off from view. “This is where he’s been working for the last few days. Calls it his last-chance cave. I used to have to make him one before every deadline at college.” He gestures at windows, which are also covered, and tells me what I know already. “Because the slightest thing distracts him, but look.”

This workbench is littered with evidence that Rae has been plenty busy.

“And this isn’t even half of what he’s churned out in the last forty-eight hours like someone lit a fire under his arse.” Sol flicks through sketches, sounding thoughtful. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he changed his mind about meds.”

That feels like confirmation.

He holds out an example. “Because this work?” Sol touches an image of Neptune rising out of stormy water, a child in a slashed life vest safe on his hip, only this giant is me with barnacles in my beard instead of burrs or straw or sawdust.

“And this?”

Ivy trails across the next picture Sol shows me. It knots around giant goalposts. I stand between them, that ivy tangling my ankles as if it will trip me, and isn’t that a perfect representation of how my last chance ended?

But I didn’t fall completely, did I?

I fell onto my feet here, and he sees that.

It also takes me time to see that Rae has drawn a row of sunflowers, and a little boy in old-fashioned clothing who beckons me from a gap in a hedge, complete with a speech bubble.

Let’s see where the river takes us .

I’m still taking in that detail as Sol says, “If this is his worst work, he’ll smash his meeting. Any charity would want to endorse him.”

“This is his worst work?”

“Compared to what he’s taken with him?” Sol nods.

Shit, shit, shit. “He’s gone already?” We already agreed forever wasn’t what either of us saw in our futures. Now all I want is a little more time.

“No,” Sol says. “I mean the best images are in his portfolio. So is the journey he’s drawn with his students. He’ll have both with him.” Sol grabs my arm, steering me to the doorway. “If you hurry, you can catch him. He said he needed space to unroll it all the way out, so he’s taken them to?—”

The clearing.

I must say that aloud. Sol nods. “Go and tell him what you just told me. Be quick though. He can’t miss this train.” His gentle gaze meets mine. “But also don’t make the same mistake I did.”

“Which was?”

“Thinking that distance had to be a relationship problem.” He lets go of my arm, this time to touch a different artwork. The man it features is golden and laughing, his arm slung around Sol’s shoulders. “I lost years to thinking that. I needn’t have. Not saying it’s easy, but my partner travelling so often just makes us both work harder at staying connected.”

He searches my face. Fuck knows what he sees there to make this offer.

“The first few days apart are always the worst. If you need company this weekend, my door is always open.”

“Thanks. I’ll probably be working or…” I’m still not sure about this. “I might visit the fam.”

“So you’ll be busy? Good. Just remember, miles don’t have to matter,” Sol promises. “Not if someone is really worth the effort.” Fuck his gaze being gentle. Now it turns steely. “Is Rae worth it to you?”

I nod.

That steeliness is a sudden bright flash. He grins. “Then what are you still doing here?”

I don’t answer.

I’m already running for the clearing.

No brambles snag me on my way to find Rae. Every pathway is clear. So is the light. It’s as bright as the paper on which these kids must have just finished drawing their journeys. They spread like sunbeams from Rae in the middle of the clearing.

He doesn’t see me at the edge of this corona. None of them do.

They’re engrossed in listening, and I see why as he unfurls more of his own story. They can all see what he’s shared with me since the end of the summer in snippets of conversation. Now it’s autumn, and he sets out a timeline threading all of those snippets together, which he verbalises with the crackling energy he brings to everything that matters to him.

“So, now I’ve taken you through my whole journey once, I want to recap with the crucial parts that had the most impact. How I went from here to here,” he says while using a stick to trace a line drawn between housing estate tower blocks and a smaller building. He’s drawn a cartoon explosion. “Boom! Taken into care at seven.” He moves along the paper. “Boom! Taken into care again at eight. Boom, shoplifting for our supper sent me back to the same place at nine with Mia, and again at ten, eleven, and twelve. We talked about life explosions, didn’t we?” The kids nod, and he continues. “About having your world blow up over and over, yeah?”

The students nod again.

Rae is emphatic about this. “Then what else do you remember?”

Teo speaks up. “You said going into care was the best thing to happen to you.”

Because someone read him a bedtime story promising he’d get through it.

Rae nods. “Here’s what symbolises the time before that for me—what made the biggest mark on me.”

A pin could drop, it’s so quiet.

If birds sing, I don’t hear them. I don’t even breathe. I can’t. Not after he uses a Sharpie to join dots with everyone watching.

A needle emerges.

So do pills.

A spoon and shining silver foil do too, but I can’t look away from what he drew first, and I’m back at the academy, taking what made playing through my pain possible.

“Addiction blew up my whole world for real. Boom,” Rae says. He also scribbles over a sketch of a girl and boy holding hands. “It left a stain I can’t ever erase and meant I couldn’t trust the one person who was meant to love me.”

I must let out a sound or lurch forward. I don’t know which. I only know that when he sees me at the very margin of this circle, sunlight strikes his face, and there’s no hiding his smile.

Or that he means this.

“Because the words I love you from an addict ain’t worth shit. There’s no future in it.”

He adds this so, so softly.

“These days, I’m pretty sure I’d know the real deal if I heard it.”

He addresses the students next, and this comes out with a harder edge. “But a little kid can’t know the difference between real care and what an addict promises, can they? Real care would have meant seeing where I struggled at school, and helping. Would have meant fighting for me, for real, instead of lying when social workers came knocking. That was the drugs talking, but when kids get lied to enough times, they’ll believe they get exactly what they’re worth. Believe they did something bad to deserve where they end up. Assume maybe they’re the reason for the habit. What’s that called?”

Noah spits, “Shame and self-blame.”

“And what do those do?”

“Stop you from talking when really you should.” Noah’s hair flames. So does his face. “I could have told Marc what was happening at home.”

“Shame and self-blame,” Rae repeats. “But you didn’t because…”

“I didn’t want to get Mum and Dad into trouble.”

Rae almost sighs this. “Me neither, mate. Me neither.” He draws in a deep breath. “And I would have kept blaming myself and maybe ended up here—” He strides over to Teo’s journey, that stick stabbing at an image I can’t see.

Teo joins those dots for me. “Locked up, like I would have been if Mr. Lawson hadn’t promised I had a place here, even after I kept running away.”

Teo is a big lad with a deep voice. It’s easy to think he’s a man already.

He’s never sounded younger.

“That’s why I’ve drawn him with a cape here.”

Rae swishes an invisible cape of his own, his eyes meeting with mine and laughing while an old shame chokes me. “Nothing wrong with needing a hero,” he says, still smiling at me. “Or a giant. It will only make it easier for you to be one. You picked a great role model.” He heads back to his own roll of paper. “If I hadn’t had a hero or role model of my own to lean on, I could have ended up in prison, or I could have ended up sinking as low as Mum did as an addict.”

And there’s a punch straight to the centre of my chest.

I’m winded as he continues with what sounds like a description of a nightmare.

“With weed at first. Then with a little bit of brown when weed wouldn’t take the edge off, and so what if heroin cost more and meant selling whatever wasn’t nailed down? There was always ket, and if it left her too zoned out to be a parent, a few bumps of speed would always…”

He stops there, his head hanging before he meets my eyes again. This time it’s only fleeting. He might as well have held up a mirror to a confession I once made to Kirsty about a failed test that meant I’d fucked the future for her and the girls. He sounds just as shame-filled. “A bump of coke or speed would get her motor running. Why wouldn’t she send her son out to score it for her?”

A penny drops then for me.

He isn’t ashamed of himself. He’s ashamed of her.

For her.

My soul shrivels.

Rae says, “If I hadn’t drawn a picture of those white lines, and if a teacher hadn’t noticed, I could have ended up?—”

Noah speaks up. “Having to mule?” He translates for the others. “Run drug deliveries. Little kids do that all the time where I’m from.” He rubs his chest like it hurts, only his gaze is fixed on what he’s drawn during these sessions with Rae. I can’t see, but I guess it must be a knife when his voice sharpens. “Or they get made into a lesson.”

Rae nods. “No good choices when it comes to rival gangs, right?”

“My brother got me out,” Noah says. “That’s why I drew Marc on my journey.”

“Another hero.” Rae clasps Noah’s shoulder before turning back to the end of his roll of paper. He says, “Remember I told you where I found my first one after addiction wrecked my family?” This smile is so, so sweet. “And things got better for me.”

The rest of what he says might as well be static.

Usually, he’s the one who can’t focus.

Now, it’s me.

I know he talks and then points at an image of a book with a starry cover. He also points at boats on choppy waters, and I tune back into him saying, “None of us can change where we’ve sailed from. My first hero stopped me from sinking. Taught me to never give up on people while their journey isn’t over. My second hero confirmed it. Now I’m making a career out of doing the same. You can too. That’s pretty cool, right? Worth sticking it out here at Glynn Harber just in case you can make a difference to someone else’s journey one day?”

The kids nod.

He does too before saying, “Show me how your stories pan out one day, yeah? Track me down. I want to hear where your journeys take you. And if you ever need help drawing yours, I got you.”

I guess that’s the end of his session because he untacks that roll of paper and slides it away in his portfolio.

I’m aware that the kids roll up their journeys as well. I hear plenty of them saying thanks , and good luck in London , and smash it, sir, before we’re alone together in the clearing.

Rae slings his portfolio over his shoulder before joining me at the tree line. Fallen leaves are thicker here but haven’t dried yet. They’re as soft underfoot as him saying, “I thought we already said goodbye.”

I nod.

He does too. Then he snorts. “Great minds think alike. I was gonna come and find you before?—”

A horn beeps in the distance.

Rae glances in that direction. “Shit. That’s my ride.”

I nod again, still silent because everything I came here to say has dried in my mouth.

Rae wets his lips. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I don’t need to shut myself away in the studio my agent offered. I could meet the head of this charity and then come straight back on the last train tonight.”

“No.”

He doesn’t listen. Or maybe he didn’t hear my croak over the sound of a zipper opening. “Because I think I’ve already got all the images I need. Look.”

He digs in a portfolio that might be filled with more of what Sol already showed me. I back off before he can show me more versions of my own face in pencil. Or in ink as permanent as I wish we could be if I hadn’t heard him say, there’s no future in it.

I’ve been slide-tackled plenty. Was trained to defend myself against it by running forward. To attack.

Today, all I can do is retreat.

Willow fronds part around me.

Rae follows me through that curtain. It closes behind him, and every single time we’ve been here before, we’ve kissed where no one else could see us. Now, I keep backing away, putting distance between us.

“Wait,” he blurts. “I’ll show you. I’ve already got the whole story, Hayden. Been drawing and drawing without realising I already had everything I needed.”

“You don’t have time to show me.” I swallow thickly, still backing away, and almost stumbling, which is wild after all that academy training about how to stay upright even with my hands tied behind me. I’m so off-balance this stutters from me. “N-not if you want to make your train.”

He keeps coming.

I keep retreating.

The other side of that willow curtain divides us again.

He shoves his way through it, moving faster.

“Maybe I want to be free this weekend. For you . For the girls’ birthday?”

The internet told me that impulsiveness is another key ADHD indicator. One which could jeopardise the only chance he has for the same brighter future he just promised all those students.

“You have to stay in London and keep drawing.” A horn beeping again forces me to hurry. “Because you haven’t drawn the whole story.”

“I have.”

I can’t back up any further. We’ve reached the river. Behind me, it forks in two directions.

“You can’t have, Rae.”

I meet his eyes and see the moment our journeys divide the same way as the water.

“Not unless you’ve already drawn me as an addict.”