Chapter 4

4

RAE

Everyone has a weakness. Mine isn’t limited to distraction. I’m also the worst at speaking without thinking. I do that after peering around the front door of the school while waiting for Sol to return with a key.

“Are kids really coming back from their summer break on Monday? To what?” I ask a nosy blackbird perched on scaffolding. “Complete chaos?” I wish I could haul that back when I realise I’m not alone like I thought. The headteacher must have followed us from the chapel, where we left a much happier couple making arrangements for their wedding party.

The glass in the school door reflects an unhappy expression, and I hate that I’m the dick who carved those forehead furrows, only he doesn’t give me a chance to backtrack or to say sorry.

“It does look that way, doesn’t it, Lewis?” He opens the door for me like he isn’t offended. “Excuse all the dust and packing boxes. As you can see, we’re a very late work in progress.”

“Uh, thanks, Mr. Lawson. And yes. I can see that. But it’s actually Rae.”

“Rae?” Those frown lines deepen. They fade just as quickly. “Ah. From your surname?”

“Yes.” Here’s another of my specialties: My mouth disengages from my brain all too often, going off in tangents, but people expect quirkiness from artists, don’t they? That’s my only excuse for opening my gob and letting this spill. “Although my little sister should get the real credit. She always said I was a ray of fuc?—”

I snap my mouth closed before swearing, because yeah, I’m extra scattered when adrenaline takes the wheel and steers, like it has since I got a not yet instead of a firm yes at my meeting this morning, but it’s no excuse for being a dickhead. “Sorry. Honestly, a few packing boxes? That’s nothing. I’ve spent the last six months in real chaos.” I try to redeem my first impression by nudging one of those boxes with my knee. “Can I help?”

That almost earns me a smile. It also earns me an armful of books, and maybe following him down a corridor while holding bestselling titles by real illustrators is some kind of punishment for me calling his school a mess, but it’s also a reminder of how much I need to be here, so I shoulder my portfolio, hold that stack of books even tighter, and hurry after him to make a better first impression.

“Sol says you’re doing great things here.” I cite someone else with school connections. “And Reece Trelawney had a lot of positive things to say about Glynn Harber when I met him.”

Luke Lawson isn’t distracted by my mention of a counsellor from a neighbouring children’s project. Mine is all about art, and I’m a one-man band. Reece is all about play and he has a big team, including some of this school’s teachers. In fact, I’m almost certain I met this headmaster’s partner.

What was his name?

“Nathan!” I virtually shout. “Nathan said you had big plans to expand the school. To offer more free places to kids in trouble.”

He stops, his head tilting like that blackbird perched on the scaffolding, and it isn’t often that I’m studied like this. It’s usually me who does all the watching before setting pencil to paper. This role reversal is disconcerting. So is his request.

“Tell me about your chaos, Rae.”

Fuck my life. He isn’t going to let me insulting his school drop, is he?

Today really is going to shit.

First, I get a verbal revise-and-resubmit instead of the offer of representation that I’d banked on, then I turn up here with virtually no warning only to find Sol leaving. Now I’m blowing my chance to regroup before heading back to my own version of a front line, because how the fuck else can I describe where I’ve just come from?

This pops out.

“You ever see the movie Dunkirk ?”

He nods, and I bet he’s picturing landing craft and tanks. Explosions and soldiers from the 1940s.

“My art project is based at one of the beaches in the movie. The kids come from nearby migrant camps.” Those are a whole other kind of war zone. I can hear that this sounds hollow. “Whatever happens on Monday, I’m heading back to draw their stories.”

I’m suddenly worn out.

He must see that—his clipped tone turns gentle. “Let me show you why I ask about chaos, Rae.”

He leads me to a notice board holding photos of students on top of a rocky high point. They all hold up rocks as if they’re lifting trophies, their smiles brilliant.

“Many of our boarding students come from chaotic backgrounds.” He points at a tall, black kid. “Like Teo. He narrowly avoided a spell in a youth offender institution before he came here. He doesn’t trust easily, and now that his best friend is leaving for uni, he’s back to feeling unsettled.” He moves on to point out a redhead. “Same goes for Noah. He’s unsettled because his chaos comes from a brush with gang violence. Friendships feel dangerous to him. That’s why I brought them back to school early to keep them busy and help them both feel needed, but we’re about to have an influx of students from similar difficult backgrounds. What will help them all to bond is something Sol told me you excelled at.”

“Me?”

“You.” He nods. “At friendship-making.”

That’s a kind way of describing my chaotic art sessions, but man, I need this weekend to regroup so badly that I roll with it.

“Y-yes?”

He has to hear my hesitation. Here he goes again, tilting his head, and yeah, I’d definitely draw him as a beady-eyed blackbird with a speech bubble saying, “It certainly looked like your skill set in these photos.” He opens the door to the only dust-free space I’ve seen so far.

This library must be a new addition. It’s bright and modern even if the bookshelves are mostly empty. The noticeboards lining the walls aren’t. They’re full, covered in?—

“That’s me.”

The blown-up photo I head for shows a familiar beach. It also shows me, oblivious to a camera that caught a sandy moment where kids stopped being strangers and became friends with each other.

“Yes,” Luke Lawson murmurs. He takes the stack of books I’ve carried and sets them on a shelf. “I thought it was you, only minus…” He touches his chin.

My own hand rises to a beard I’m not sure yet if I’m keeping. “This must have been taken when I first got there. Soon found out there wasn’t a whole lot of fresh water to waste on shaving.”

He nods. “Nathan said the same when he was there. This is you too?” He points to another shot.

If I’m in this photo, I don’t notice. I’m too busy soaking up familiar little faces as he asks, “This was your friendship-making art project?”

“ Is still my project. I haven’t finished helping them map each other’s journeys yet.”

“You help map their journeys. Why?”

The short answer is so that someone else on the planet would know they existed, but I give him a friendship-related answer. “They don’t all share a language. Drawing their old homes, their toys, the things they left behind shows what they have in common.”

“Then you turned them into heroes,” Luke Lawson says, touching the edge of a cape crayoned on paper.

“That was easy.” I search another photo, and point. “Take her. Leena’s dad was a translator in Kabul. When the British army pulled out, his family were on the list to be airlifted.” How the fuck they made it to France after that plane took off without them would make a blockbuster movie. “So many of them have similar stories.” And this is where my publishing pitch went south.

I replay what that agent told me.

Pick a single soul for readers to root for. To hope for. To learn to love and want the best for. Then put a unique spin on their journey.

Choosing a single hero is my problem.

How the fuck do I only pick one?

Perhaps he sees that worry flicker. His murmur takes a moment to register. “Show me, Rae?”

I unzip my portfolio for the second time today and flip open my sketchbook to show a stern-faced headmaster what I shared with the agent who told me to tighten my focus.

Luke Lawson has a different perspective. “The children got to see these drawings of themselves through your eyes?”

I nod.

“What a gift for them.” He traces a finger below a sketch of a winding road dotted with landmarks, and he touches the edge of a cape worn by the child flying high above them. “This is their life path? The key moments they remember? What about yours?”

“Mine?”

“Your key moments, Rae. Your motivation for being with them.”

I didn’t expect this question. No one’s ever asked me. It surprises me into saying, “Kids shouldn’t grow up like we did.”

“We, Rae?” he asks slow and careful, and fuck him being a blackbird. I’m observed now by a fierce eagle. Or a wise owl. He misses nothing, all while touching one of those landmarks I helped a lost child draw to remember where they came from. Maybe that’s why I answer.

“I mean me and Mia.”

He doesn’t rush to fill the extended pause that draws out next, which is clever. It’s also a familiar tactic, and I’m suddenly homesick. Not for where I grew up, like so many kids have shown me. I’m homesick for a place most people would think was hell on earth, because Luke Lawson reminds me of Reece, who didn’t even work on the same project as me, and yet found the time to pause on a French beach until I got busy talking.

“We ended up in a home. A kids’ home. In care.”

“In care?” Luke murmurs. “Me too. I always think that’s where my real life started.”

That honesty opens floodgates. I tell him what I haven’t even shared with Reece—about waking up to an empty fridge and the TV missing. To my game system gone, and the same for my sister’s. “All sold for some more fucking gear.” He doesn’t flinch at me cursing, and that helps me to add more. This part is always the hardest. “For our mum.”

He only says, “That must have been rough.”

I nod. It was. I also realise he’s pushing a pencil towards me, and man, I’m tempted to pick it up and draw, only I wouldn’t sketch a living room minus its telly and Sky box. I’d crosshatch the long shadows cast by dealers or spill ink the same shade as shame when there was nothing to eat in my lunchbox. I didn’t care about that for me. I hated having to tell a teacher so that someone would make sure Mia wasn’t hungry.

“Where I come from, gear is everywhere.” I couldn’t change any of that, so I shake my head. “I’d rather focus on their journey.” I touch the outline of foreign landmarks in my sketchbook. “Where they’ve been and what they think their future will be full of.”

I repeat what a worker at a children’s home said after reading a bedtime story I felt I was far too old for at seven and only listened to because my sister wouldn’t let go of me.

That story is why I’m here now. Every time I read it, I hear it in that care worker’s singsong Barbados accent, and I tell Luke all about the book that made a difference for me. That isn’t what I intended to do here today, but some people are born to listen, and others? Well, if they’re anything like me, they’ll be chatty fuckers who don’t have an off-switch.

“There can still be happy endings for kids like us. I mean, like me and my sister.” Luke nods like I included him in that category, and yeah, I can roll with that too. “There’s power in believing in those, right?” Luke nods again, so I keep going. “My mentor wrote and illustrated that bedtime story. If you haven’t got any titles by him in your library, you need them. All of them. Or your students do, at least, if they’ve been where we have.”

I don’t know why I thought Luke Lawson was intimidating. He’s interested, that’s all. So interested that he picks up a pen and asks for the author’s name.

I can do even better. I dig into my portfolio case to pull out my signed copy of the first journey that inspired me—a book I’ve shared with so many kids who can’t see past today or believe in tomorrow. “Here. See what you think for yourself. It changed my life.”

“Because?”

I shrug. “Because it showed another kid surviving life with… Life after…”

My struggle seems to help him come to a decision. “Glynn Harber has a long tradition of students drawing tough journeys.” He opens a desk drawer and removes fragile paper. This scroll is yellowed at the edges. So is the first picture I see as it unrolls across the desk.

Fire.

Luke explains. “This was found in a time capsule buried in the school foundation. It was drawn by a child whose family came from Poland after the Second World War. Their home was bombed. Obliterated. Nothing left of where they came from, the forest his father used to manage before the war burnt to ash. Those must have been little Olek’s bedtime stories for him to draw what his parents remembered so clearly.”

Next comes a sketch of a camp like I just left. Rows of tents go on forever. He tells me this camp was more local. “It’s hard to believe now that Polish families lived in encampments right here in Cornwall for years after fighting ended.”

“They were prisoners of war?” That doesn’t seem right. “Wait. I thought?—”

“That Britain went to war for Poland? Yes. Like Poland would have gone to war for us. That’s what treaties are for. Agreements to support each other. To treat each other’s people as equal citizens. To offer refuge and a peaceful future.”

That’s another reminder of a little girl whose parents were promised the same. Now Luke pulls evidence of an older journey than hers from that desk drawer.

This faded book is a diary with Olek W. written on its cover. “Our old student wrote in here about his father being in a Polish fighter pilot regiment that joined with our Royal Air Force. About how the encampments here were full of the families of other Polish pilots who defended Britain. I keep meaning to ask Hayden if any were his relatives.”

“Hayden?”

“Yes. Hayden Novac.” He lifts his head, turning to the window for a second while I picture burrs in a beard and a slow-to-spread smile. “He’s almost finished taming our school grounds.” Luke touches some childish handwriting in that old diary. “I hope he has time to translate the rest of this writing before he leaves us. The part about this student’s goals.”

That’s apt—the next drawing is of an old-style football, the stitching visible through brown leather as clear now as when a Polish boy drew it. “Hang on.” I look up from a footballing aspiration shared by plenty of the migrant kids I’ve worked with. “The Second World War? That’s what, eighty years ago?”

“Almost. This student was born after the war ended.” He meets my eye. “Listen, I know you want to rush back to France, and I know we’re in a mess here, but if you had the time to help our new sixth-form students draw their own journeys like this, to make friends while working through where they’ve come from and where they’re going, you’d be very welcome to stay for longer.”

“Thanks, Mr. Lawson, but?—”

“Luke, please. And there’s no need to answer right away. Just think about it, Rae. No pressure.” He pauses before confessing, “My own children had similar journeys. You mentioned meeting Nathan? He found them during a humanitarian mission, so I know what your line of work takes out of a person. Nathan has more to give when he has fuel in his tank. When he’s well rested. You could give yourself a little grace right here to do the same if you wanted.”

Reece Trelawney told me the same before I headed for my meeting. Said I shouldn’t hurry back if I didn’t want to burn out. That if I worked with him on his Safe Harbour project, he’d insist I take a real break. Now the library door opens, and someone else who wants me to stay for longer says, “There you are.” Sol holds out a key. “Ready?”

Luke slides that yellowing scroll away but holds onto the diary while walking us to the front door of this building, where he repeats what is spelled out in floor tile mosaic under my feet.

“Welcome to Glynn Harber, Rae. For a weekend, for a week, or for longer.” He smiles, and wow, that makes a world of difference. “To be honest, I’m hoping for at least a week, especially as you’re a friendship-making expert. Our students need those skills more than anything else we can teach them. There’s proof of how vital that is in here.” He hands me that old diary. “You don’t need to be able to read Polish to see the impact of the friendships Olek made during his first year here. He drew them for us. That’s what I want for our new cohort.”

He points at the minibus in the car park. “Sol will be up and down to London over the next few weeks to bring our new sixth-form students here in small groups. I’ll take them camping right away. That’s where the real bonding happens before they get swamped by a brand-new school.” That smile melts all his sternness. “If you still need somewhere to decompress after your meeting, come with us. See the start of their new journeys. Be part of them with us.”

We leave him on that doorstep, and Sol leads me around the building to an old stable block.

“It’s a bit cramped and the light won’t be brilliant, but let’s spread out your work while no one else is inside so I can take a good look.”

I have a better idea. “Or you could leave it to me and go spend the weekend with your man.” Because that’s the other reason Sol is leaving. “Where is he flying in from?”

“From New York.” Sol’s smile is helpless. “We’ll get Cameron settled into his halls and then have our first time alone together since I don’t know when.”

I take the door key from him. “So you better make the most of it. I’ll take it from here.”

“But we were going to break down your project into smaller tasks.”

“No, you were, Sol.” He always tried to save me from myself at college, which was pointless. He’s a grafter—a sure and steady worker—while I’m wired for frenzied, last-minute surges. But we still both crossed the finish line, didn’t we? “I’ll figure out how to fix my pitch. The answer will come to me, no worries. Go bang your man’s brains out. I’ve got this.”

“You sure?” He sets down my bags, already drifting back towards the car park.

“One hundred percent.” A new idea has already started to percolate. I just need to give it space to bubble to the surface, hopefully before Monday. That’s a whole weekend away. Days and days. Right now that feels like forever. “I’ll be fine.”

He backs off while calling out, “You’re forgetting that I know what your version of fine means, Rae.” Here’s proof of how well he knows me. “The F stands for fucking up your timing. The I is for ignoring your deadlines until it’s almost too late. The N ? I bet that still stands for no time left on the clock, and the E ?—”

He stops dead.

We both know what the E used to stand for at college. Ecstasy fuelled plenty of creativity for the artists we shared studio space with. He knows why I’d never touch it—or speed, which might actually have helped my focus—but there was no way I’d risk triggering what can run in families. I still won’t.

Sol looks sick for almost bringing up the subject. I let him off the hook, I hope, by joking. “The E stands for me drowning myself in energy drinks, yeah?”

His smile re-emerges. “Then you’ll blast out something perfect.”

I’ll need to, given what’s riding on this. My project is self-funded, and I’ve run out of money long before I’ve run out of kids going through much worse than I did.

That thought does sober me in a hurry.

Sol’s smile slips. He also retraces his steps, and this is where anyone who thinks he’s as wide-eyed and wary as Bambi can’t truly know him. He doesn’t shy away from asking this tough question.

“How is the fam? Sorry, I should have asked already.” He meets my eyes, his own so expressive that I wish to fuck he had time to sit for me. I’d draw a whole world of caring in each iris, a supportive galaxy of stars in each of his inky pupils if a clock wasn’t ticking for him.

Time isn’t on my side today, nor is avoiding his question, so I answer quickly. “Mia’s good.” I heft my portfolio like a shield against more probing. “I’ve got everything I need in here. Pens, pencils, sketchbooks. Go, Sol.”

He backs away again, if slowly. “Smash it on Monday, Rae.”

“I will.”

I’d better.

He jogs away, and I turn the key in a door underneath a lucky horseshoe. It opens to prove Sol right about this living space being cosy. He was wrong though about no one else being here.

Someone wet and almost naked leaves a bathroom. Steam billows, but I still recognise him. Hayden is a foggy vision that I itch to put on paper, and his hands must still tremble because his towel slips as he tries to cinch it.

And as for me?

If I’m gonna do him justice, I’ll need a bigger sketchbook.