Chapter 11

ROWAN

I do come back to Cornwall much sooner than September. It only takes a week to pack up my room and put my uni course on hold. I also reply to a text message before leaving.

Rowan: Sorry I haven't got back to you.

Here's what I've been putting off saying to my stepdad.

Rowan: Thanks for letting me know the production company have been in contact.

There's no fucking way I want a single thing to do with them. I'm annoyed they won't take my silence as a final answer, but pushy wankers pretty much describes them.

Rowan: Sorry they contacted you. Ignore them. I am.

That gets two blue ticks but no reply, which is fine by me. I don't want one, not while my phone is also full of messages from my new headmaster.

Being wanted is weird. Exciting and new.

No.

Not new. That isn't the right way to describe what travels with me back to Cornwall. I'm an adult, not a kid, but I might as well be sitting next to Mum on the way to a music festival. Her excitement used to fizz and, like her, I'm another shaken bottle now that my car is loaded with my belongings.

This excitement is a good reminder. Worry is less welcome. It hitches a ride with me regardless because Luke's start-early offer comes with catches.

The first was to call him Luke instead of Mr. Lawson. I still squirm at the second condition he set even before I left that garden. Writing out my life path on that pad of paper wasn't easy, not when there were sections I couldn't find words for. Gaps I couldn't make myself fill. Page after page that I finally tore out and folded into my pocket before returning that pad and pen.

The only reason I squirm now is that I'll have to do it again before starting that trauma training, which means making a fuller version and being prepared to talk it through with that counsellor if I want to join his trainee cohort. That's a firm rule—I have to ask for the training; Luke won't enforce it, he just won't keep me if I don't volunteer for it.

His third catch is also cast-iron.

I'm not allowed to teach alone. He said this is a low-pressure short-term trial as much for me as for him. He needs an extra adult to bridge a gap between his absent teachers and the ones left carrying their load until the half-term break at the end of May. They're stretched too thin, he said. For the next six weeks, I can help by taking over some supervision duties at evenings and weekends, and by helping in a classroom with an experienced teacher.

That part isn't daunting. To be honest, not being in charge is a relief.

And if I can make progress with that life-path task? He says there's potential for me to stay for longer. If I can finish what I started and agree to trauma training, he'd find work for me right up until the summer break starts in July. That would give me so much more experience before coming back for teacher training at the end of the summer, but for now, these next six weeks are all he'll promise.

I'll worry about the future later.

For now, a more imminent worry comes from spotting surfers catching white-tipped waves alongside the coast road.

Are any of them Liam?

I don't think they can be. He mentioned other jobs and contracts taking him up-country. My rearview mirror still reflects the same expression a shiny brass plate did so often at school. Waiting for the red light above the headmaster's study to turn green used to make me anxious. Today, a couple more unanswered questions lead to the same prickle.

I told Liam I'd be back in September, didn't I?

Would letting him know I'm back early mean he'd want to see me again?

It's a pointless question. I don't have his number, and if he has social media, it's as well hidden as mine. Plus, a week away has made me wonder if our night together was only hot enough to blister because we'd dodged death with each other—a twin reaction to surviving disaster. Everything felt so heightened, like nothing else I can remember.

Amazing.

While I'm on this questioning train, I ask myself another.

But does adrenaline really explain all that sharing?

I can still feel his fingertip on my belly, still hear his gruff murmurs about his life, his injury, medical discharge, and his lost friendships, all while Liam's finger kept sketching. That kind of post-sex sharing is all so far out of my wheelhouse that I don't have an answer. All I can do is make myself focus on the only second chance for me still in Cornwall. It's waiting for me at Glynn Harber.

So is Charles.

He waves as soon as my car crunches across the driveway gravel, and yet his smile is another reminder of a surprisingly wide one Liam showed me, and it's gutting to guess that I'll never see it again.

Who knows what that does to my face. Charles peers through the driver's side window. "Oh, no." His sparkling, sunshine smile dims. "Luke already told you?"

"Told me what?"

That he's changed his mind about me, of course.

Worse than that.

He's seen that photo.

Now my rearview mirror reflects more than wariness or worry. I'm as gutted now as after seeing that image for a first time myself, when all I could say to the lawyer my stepdad consulted about court injunctions was, "I don't know," and, "I can't remember."

Charles must read that expression. He hurries around the car and slips into the passenger seat just like last time, and like a week ago, he sets my mind at rest. "Did Luke already tell you that I'm going to have you in my classroom until Nathan is back at half-term? That's who I usually work with, but if five weeks together is bad news, I don't have to be your mentor. You can help in other classrooms."

Just like that, I feel better.

"No, no. That's good news. It's great!" I must smile because he does too and he's so openly happy about the prospect that, in a third reminder of Liam, I share more detail with him. "I can't believe this is happening, that's all. You know, after the last time I thought I'd struck gold only for it to turn into?—"

"Shit?" he suggests. "With the whole world watching?"

I nod.

He does too. "I can't tell you how many jobs I had before I got this one. How many times they went to shit as well. Honestly, if I can make a go of it here with my godawful track record, so can you." For a first time, I see a hint of what my mirror showed me. He's suddenly just as uncertain. "I've never been a mentor before." He crosses his heart. "I promise I'll do everything I can to help you dodge my pitfalls."

I don't intend to spill my guts then, but here I go and all because someone I barely know wants to try hard for me.

"I don't want you to get the blame if I mess this up." I've been there before and trust me, I can just about live with my own mistakes, but make mistakes that affect other people? That's what I wrote down last week in a garden while blackbirds sang a second, third, and fourth song—that I'd been out of my depth and drowning, but I'd never stopped being sorry.

Now Charles sits beside me, laying out all the ways this chance is different, and I so want to believe him.

"Luke and I have drawn up a plan for you." He grins. "I hope you like glue and glitter. You'll have plenty of time to get to know the school inside out. Get used to our ways and our children by covering the playground duties and the evening prep sessions. Of course, you must know all about prep sessions if you've already got boarding school experience like Luke told me. Where did you go?"

I tell him, and he sucks his teeth. "I know it. Always top of the exam charts? It's an Oxbridge feeder, right? High pressure and uber strict on behaviour?"

I nod. It was all of that and more.

"Well, Glynn Harber is about as far from that kind of hothouse as you can get." He squints. "And yet you didn't bring any of that with you to my classroom. Not even a scrap, but you managed the children beautifully. Where did you learn to do that?"

"With my Mum. I saw her teach a lot of music lessons in different places. And I learned with my little cousins. I don't think all Catholic families have big families these days, but there were a lot of them. Crowd control was half the battle." I draw in a steadying breath and gesture at the building visible through my windscreen. I don't know why this comes out so faintly. "I'm really here?"

"You really are," Charles promises firmly. "Because what did I tell you to hold on to?" That card printed with hope is tucked inside my phone case. I show him, and he grins. "Perfect! Now let me show you where you'll be staying. Don't park. We'll drive round."

He guides me to the rear of the school. I pull up in a courtyard where he says, "Welcome to the stables. Hugo and I used to share them." He gets out and grabs my bags while I gather my instrument cases. "It was a very lucky place for my love life." He touches a horseshoe nailed above the doorway. "Maybe you'll get as lucky here as I did."

I don't know what he sees next, but I guess he's been paired with me because he misses nothing. He also makes leaps I don't know how to react to, and here's a perfect example. "Oh! You already have someone special."

That isn't a question. It isn't my reality either, and yet I don't shake my head right away and he tilts his own while squinting again.

"Or there's someone you'd like to be special? Just make sure to always lock this door if you have company." He waggles his eyebrows. "Luke has a built-in nookie sensor. He must do, the number of times he's caught me with my pants down." He abruptly sets down my bags, no longer joking. "Oh, God. My big mouth. Sorry, I wasn't thinking." Because of course plenty of people have caught the same view of me with my pants nowhere in sight. "I was kidding." He quickly adds, "But I did mean what I said about easing you in here. You really will have plenty of time off for the first few weeks between helping me and your supervision duties." He's more explicit. "Plenty of time to get away if you have a special girl waiting at home." Now he's breezy. "Or a special person. Just be aware, there can't be any overnight stays for anyone without full clearance."

I repeat what I told myself on the way here, nudging my glasses up my nose like that will make this even clearer. "I don't have time." I get honest, aiming for just as breezy as him. "Not for a boyfriend." I've got just over five weeks before Luke wants a final decision about that trauma training. "I need to stay focussed."

"Well, no one will distract you here. You'll have the place all to yourself." Charles unlatches the door and carries my bags into a cosy interior, its ceilings crisscrossed with old beams. It's rustic and a little dusty. "No one else will need a bed here until the summer break, when some more of our new starters arrive for pre-teacher training with Reece."

That's the counsellor Luke mentioned. The one I need to share with if I want to stay here.

What if I still can't do it?

There are initials carved into thick beams holding up this old, converted stable, and that's what I want as well—to leave my mark somewhere, only for good reasons for once.

I want that so much, it must show.

Charles sets down the bags to clasp my shoulder. "Or maybe you should move into the Rectory with us instead of being all alone here. There's plenty of room as long as you don't mind noisy babies. My Adam is an actual monster." He seems pretty happy about that. "Think about it while I show you the rest of the school. We can have a good mooch in all of the classrooms now that they're empty for the weekend."

He does that as soon as I've looked around my living quarters, although his first stop isn't far from my new front door under its lucky horseshoe. Another horseshoe hangs above a door further along the long run of stable buildings, although this end is shrouded with scaffolding.

Charles takes the path beside it. "Make the most of the peace and quiet. After the library rebuild, this part of the stables is next on Luke's conversion hit list."

"What will it be converted into?"

"More accommodation for teachers and support staff. We're expanding." He pulls back some construction netting to show me where a hole gapes along the roofline. "A storm made that. Now the whole gable is crumbling, so it had to be bumped up the list." He frowns. "Maybe it really would be better to have you with us at the Rectory. This courtyard will be heaving with builders making noise soon."

Someone else makes noise once Charles shows me into the main school building. It leads us to the music rooms I've visited already, where Charles winces and drumming fires like bullets through a propped-open doorway.

It cuts off abruptly when that older student I last saw building bridges in a sandpit spies us. He shoves off a pair of headphones while clutching drumsticks as if we're about to steal them, and Charles winces again. "No need to stop, Teo. I'm only showing Mr. Byrn around. I'll just"—Charles kicks away the wedge holding the door open—"let you practise in peace. That sounded very… enthusiastic!"

I stop the door from closing. "But it could sound better."

Here I go, making another shit first impression—this student's features harden. Or they do until I make a suggestion. "How about giving whipping strokes a go?"

Now he looks blank.

"I could show you?"

His body language screams no, silently yelling shut up, which is apt given that's the title of the song a rapper hisses through his headphones.

I try a different angle. "Or did you want something even more staccato? More attacking?" Because that's what I'd heard out in the hallway—someone fighting, only with drumsticks instead of their fists, and I remember that reaction to feeling helpless. I don't know Teo's reason, but I definitely heard him tiring, his beats lagging.

"This is what I do when I want to keep up that kind of tempo for longer." I hold out a hand and, for a strained and stretched-thin moment, I don't think he'll surrender his sticks to me.

He does, if slowly, and I stand closer, demonstrating differences that make him sit up straighter. I don't go all out—this doesn't feel like the moment—but I end with a funky little half-time shuffle, and he smiles for a first time. I hand the sticks back as the song starts over through his headphones, faint but still aggressive, still telling me to shut up.

I don't.

"Whipping strokes are easier on my wrists. Might be easier on yours too so you can play for longer."

Teo's eyes narrow again when I suggest that he move from his stool. "Why?"

"Because you're way too tall for this setup." That's even more obvious when he stands, and I have to look up higher than I did with Liam. "How tall are you?"

"Almost six-four." His accent is a reminder of a boy I last saw clutching a lamb as closely as Teo now holds his drumsticks.

"Huh. Like Stormzy." I name the rapper who still spits bullets through his headphones and who Teo's take-no-shit frown reminds me of so closely. He must take it as a compliment. His dark glare lightens.

"Got another inch to go yet before I'm as tall as him." He grumbles that, but he stands straighter.

I make one last adjustment to his piecemeal setup. "Now let's hear what happens when you've got room to really let rip. Start over for me?"

He does, and he also opens up about what else he does in here in a practice room that's seen better days. He points a stick at an iPad. "I've been trying to record this solo all morning. Got the guitar part down, and keyboard. Drums?" He shakes his head. "Be easier with an electric kit and a loop pedal." He turns the iPad to show me the app he's running.

"GarageBand?"

He nods, almost defensive again as if expecting judgement, his shoulders tense and rising until I say, "That's what I started recording with too."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. You can do a lot with it." Here's a truth I never thought I'd see as lucky. "My last school had a professional studio setup." Now I look around a room that has nothing like it. "What other sound equipment is here?" There's no sign of any mics, only tangled cables. No monitors or midis. Not a single amp or equaliser, a lack that Teo's headshake mirrors, prompting an easy offer. "I'll bring my laptop over sometime if you want. I've got software with a few extra features." At least that's something, even it isn't all the state-of-the-art equipment I all but ran away from.

We talk some more, speaking the same musical language before I remember Charles is waiting. Then we head upstairs together.

"Music was our key to Teo," Charles tells me once we resume our tour of the building. "None of us realised until someone drew what Teo usually keeps so well hidden. And once we saw that drawing, none of us could ignore it." He stops in a hallway next to one of those old diamond-paned windows. We're also beside a framed artwork, and here's Teo again, only whoever sketched him wearing headphones and hunched over an electric guitar didn't just capture his concentration. They also highlighted what Charles names for me.

"Look at that dedication. That determination. Before seeing this, all I ever saw was Teo not wanting to be here. He kept trying to run back to London until this helped all of us to see him more clearly." He touches the glass over a calm and focussed version of someone prickly. "A gifted student drew what none of us had noticed, and Luke brought it to the team to come up with ideas to give Teo more chances to feel like this."

"Ideas like?"

"Like giving him his own key to that practice room." That's a blast from my own past. I still have the key to the studio suite at my last school, although I'll never use it. Here's another. "And Luke gave him permission to use it every time he felt like running. Just like that, Teo turned a corner." Charles touches the artist's signature with the tip of a finger. "Cameron saw what made him tick. Someone else listened and then brought it to the rest of us. None of us can do this without each other. It's a real team effort, and it's…."

"It's what?"

His voice drops as we head for a staircase. "Has Luke talked to you about us all being trauma-informed yet?"

"He mentioned it." I shrug, still uncomfortable with comparisons between someone with real trauma and someone like me, who caused all of their own trouble.

"Teo's a good example," Charles tells me. "He came to us angry for a very good reason, only all of his anger didn't have anywhere to go. I don't understand the appeal of grime or rap, but that kind of music is absolutely an outlet for him. I know Luke would tell you this if he were here." Charles fixes me with a look a thousand miles from his previous sparkling. "Teo wasn't only on track for expulsion from his last school. He was on track for prison. Was furious about something that happened in his family, and so isolated. Now he's opening beautifully. Like an oyster, you know? They're only ever rough on their outside. Inside? There's more than one pearl at Teo's centre."

"More than music?"

"You've seen him with my little ones? He's so, so gentle with them. They're another outlet for him, which is why he gets sent to my classroom so often."

"Sent?"

"That's what the team decided. If he's struggling with whatever is still stuck in here"—Charles touches his temple—"all of his teachers know to tell him that I need an extra pair of hands for a few minutes. Play always works wonders for getting Teo unstuck here." He touches his chest in another Luke reminder. "He gets to be useful, gets to be thanked, and gets to go back to his lessons much more open to learning." He fixes me with an open look of his own. "Today is the fastest I've ever seen him volunteer information to one of the team."

I have to look away from what sounds like me already belonging. Anyone else might know how to respond—how to accept a compliment instead of being speechless. This time, my voice is stolen by a different story unfolding outside this window.

Luke is in the car park, only he isn't there alone.

He stands beside a truck, speaking with a builder who holds a hard hat.

Charles joins me. "That's Dominic Dymond. He manages all of our renovation projects. You'll meet his little girl on Monday. Maisie's a hoot, and her daddy is as hot as sin, but don't go getting any older-man ideas about him. He's happily loved-up with our school bursar. Have you met Austin yet? Looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth but he'll happily have your bollocks for his breakfast if he catches you eyeing up his hubby."

Hot as sin or not, Dominic Dymond isn't who I look at.

My gaze locks elsewhere, zooming in as if through the scope on a rifle.

Another man in a hard hat heads towards the library with a sledgehammer, and I know Charles is still talking—I know he is—but it's all I can do not to fling this window wide open and risk a repeat of almost falling by leaning out to keep that other man in sight.

I tune into Charles just as he says, "Let's swing by my classroom. I'll find the children's learning journey scrapbooks so you can read them over before Monday. After that, what would you like to see next?"

I blurt, "The library," even though I've seen that space once already and there's a whole school left to explore, but that's where I need to be now.

I need to, and so what if my vision isn't twenty-twenty?

That workman looked a lot like Liam.