Chapter 21

ROWAN

I'm supervising prep until six, and it's amazing what a difference three weeks make. I kill time until seven by prowling a school I know inside out now that I've covered homework sessions in so many of its classrooms. That means I also know which windows overlook the car park—Liam's van isn't down there yet. Dom's is. He waves up at me along with Maisie.

I don't go out to join them just yet. I can't while someone's drumming.

Teo's in the same place as usual, only he's shut the door instead of propping it open, and his drumming is angry.

I let myself in. "You coming to take a look at the time capsule?"

"Nah." Teo is stone-faced this evening. "Too busy, innit." He clutches his drumsticks to his chest as if I'll steal them from him. I don't want them. I want to tempt him out of a room I also used to hide in.

"There's some music inside it."

"Yeah?" He's interested then, alert in the same way his artist friend captured. Then his eyes narrow, and he's back to the cagey of my first week here. "What kind?"

That caginess doesn't faze me. Neither does his stone face. The more times I see it, the more I remember Mum paying no attention to her sink-school kids' attitudes, letting music be a bridge between her and them. I do the same now. "No idea." I shrug, leaving—or almost—but not before making a casual suggestion. "We could take a look, see if there's anything worth playing together."

His next "Nah" is quieter. So is him saying, "I heard you drumming though, sir. With the little ones. Sounded good."

"Sounded like chaos, you mean." I can't keep in a grin. "Think I'll still be hearing it in my sleep." That's a reminder of the other person I'm missing. I take another step out, wanting to see if Liam's here yet. "But listen, there's a hot dog supper after the talk. Come for that, at least."

He doesn't say "Nah" this time. Teo just rests the tips of his sticks on a cymbal, and I've drowned out enough unwanted conversations in the past to know what to expect next. He'll drown me out like I used to anyone who tried to interrupt my own lonely practice sessions. That worked, but it also left me…

Isolated.

That's what I can't help seeing in Teo. Maybe that's why a question pops out. "Would you come along if your friend were here? The one in France? You could always tell him about it, you know, in case he's missing—" I stop myself from saying you, substituting the word school instead. "Might help keep him in the loop until he's back in?—"

"Another eight days?" Teo sighs. Then he does drum, furious and fast, his complexion darkening. I can't say if that's due to exertion or because he blushes. I'm not about to pry, not when someone rings a handbell outside, signalling that the historian is getting started.

I head for the library, making my way through boarding students who crowd the barriers outside it, and that's where I find Liam.

He's back in that trench he dug out, the same one he made sure I couldn't fall into. Now his hard hat contrasts with smarter clothing than his usual dusty T-shirt, but I showered after work and hesitated over choosing what to wear tonight as well, didn't I?

It isn't quite a date I've dressed for. If anything, it's a team-building evening—all of Dominic Dymond's crew watch, nodding along with Liam's description of how he uncovered buried treasure. I crowd close along with them and the students to hear it.

Liam's got such a great voice. It's rough but it rings out.

"I was taking this extra slow and steady. Maybe slower than needed for a civilian project, but old habits die hard."

"Why?" one of the students asks. "Aren't demolitions meant to be quick?"

"The end result is, but the planning before getting started?" Liam shakes his head at the same time as Dom. Liam can't notice that the head of this project thinks he's on the right lines, not while he's thigh-deep in an old foundation and focussed on a student. "You never want to hurry where IEDs might be involved."

"IEDs, sir? You mean explosives?" Another student leans over the barrier as if expecting to see a cartoon bundle of TNT complete with a fuse that fizzles.

"Yep. In my old line of work, rushing could lead to real disaster."

My stomach clenches at what could be a general statement. It's personal. I know that after what Liam mentioned in a garden built by other soldiers who got to come home. A garden built by Ed Britten. I wonder if he felt as guilty for surviving as Liam. Because that's how this sounds to me. Guilty.

"Hurrying costs lives." He rubs at his ear in an absent gesture as telling to me as Teo clutching his drumsticks to his chest. "There's precious little chance of explosives here." Dom nods along with that statement. "Going slow is still worth it because being careful at this stage makes for a better rebuild later. By whoever gets to finish this job, I mean. Once my part of the project is finished."

Dom stops nodding. Liam doesn't see that either. He keeps going.

"That's why I've preserved as much of the original stone as I can and chipped off the old mortar from the rubble of your old stables. That way, the new library will blend in even though it will be much bigger." He faces Maisie's daddy. "If that's what you want? I can go faster if you don't need me to be this careful."

"Nope. We're still just about on schedule. And we're on the same page about preservation. Take as long as you need."

Liam sees me then, and it doesn't matter that a whole school listens. This sounds personal. "Good. I'm in no hurry to leave."

Tonight's guest echoes those no-hurry be-careful sentiments, urging everyone to be as careful as Liam is with artefacts he displays on a long line of tables, and it's no surprise that this visiting historian uses Liam as a good example. I've seen how he holds fragile things already, although nothing in this time capsule bleats or wriggles. It's full of schoolbooks and artworks, and with a collection of what look like scrolls from ancient Egypt rather than from the 1940s.

The historian is careful too with the sheet music Liam first showed me. It's annotated by hand and is missing a title. Perhaps he also notices me lean in closer. "You can read this?"

"I… Yes." As pieces go, it isn't exactly challenging. It's a simple tune that I remember helped me to master finger placement. "It isn't complicated."

Charles is quick to tell him why. "Devesh, this is Rowan. Remember I told you that he can play everything he touches?"

"I can't play everything. I just…" I grind to a halt, aware that all eyes are on me.

"You just what?" Liam asks.

I focus on him, and answering is easy. "I had endless access." It's a reminder of what Charles said earlier this week, only Mum didn't soak me with watering cans or rain showers. She soaked every single day in sound and rhythm. "No instruments were off-limits." Now I can see she did it all on purpose, putting away anything too precious and leaving out anything robust so she could constantly say yes, like Charles does in his classroom.

I have to pause and swallow because this isn't the first time I've faced reminders. It happens here so often that I feel closer now than ever to someone I've kept a tight lid on missing. Someone I'd buried. Now like an unearthed time capsule, I keep finding long-lost treasure right here in Cornwall. Maybe that's why this comes out more tightly than usual.

"That's why…" I can't revisit my lowest times where I made decisions I still don't recognise as my own. I can't get lost in that confusion right now. Not with schoolkids listening or beside someone who's been through so much worse and survived it. I clear my throat and manage to rasp, "Let's just say these last few weeks have been a second chance to play in ways I didn't expect."

The historian finds more sheets of music. He comes back to spread them out in front of me. "How about this? Could you play it?"

"Yes. It's for beginners."

"Ah." The historian has found an explanation in one of those scrolls tied with ribbon. "Glynn Harber wasn't a new school when this was buried. Apparently, burying time capsules was already a tradition." He finds Liam in the crowd. "You might need to keep your eyes peeled for more of them." He unrolls yellowing paper to show a journey. "These children were evacuees. They all drew where they came from." He unravels another. "I can't read this one."

One of Luke's guests can. "That's Polish." He translates a journey that brought a child from Poland to Glynn Harber's shelter. About nights full of fire and bombing, his hopes and fears for his fighter-pilot father, his uncles, his big brothers, his dark worries for them. All while my gaze locks with Luke's across the table because here's a version of exactly what he asked me to write out but I still haven't managed.

The school is so often noisy. Tonight, even Teo must have stopped his drumming. A pin dropping right now would clang like a falling anvil while students, teachers, and workmen collectively pause until Luke's guest says, "He says he loves it here. Loved it. He hopes that whoever finds this does too."

Luke's voice doesn't ring out but I think we all must hear it. "What else did he write, Hayden?"

"Oh, that he's been teaching some of the really little evacuees how to play recorders. That they put their favourite pieces into the capsule, and they all hope that whoever finds it gets to play them." He slides another piece of sheet music over. "Think you could play this on a recorder like they did?"

Charles snorts. "On a recorder? Rowan could play it on a hosepipe."

Liam's eyebrows rise. "Hosepipe?"

"I told you he can play anything," Charles insists. "He did it earlier after filling the watering cans for me. It was brilliant. My little ones cracked up." Charles presses his lips together but not tightly enough to keep this in, and I'm glad the students have followed the historian to the far end of these tables so they aren't close enough to hear him. "Pretty sure Rowan will give anything a good blow at least once." He quickly tags on, "To see if he can get a tune out of it," but it's too late.

Here comes one of the out-of-control laughs I haven't been able to keep in lately, but Liam huffs out something similar so it's worth everyone looking at me, even if my skin does prickle. In the past, my reply would have prickled as well—would have shot out with a spray of Teo's staccato bullets. Charles makes it hard to be defensive. Besides, he isn't finished.

"It was brilliant. And hysterical," he tells a smiling Dom. "Your Maisie nearly wet her knickers, she couldn't stop giggling. What tune were you playing?" Charles drifts closer to take a look at the music, almost as gentle with these old sheets of paper as Liam's thumb is brushing the small of my back, a touch that means I don't want to escape this spotlight even now that the students have drifted back, all waiting for my answer.

Liam's thumb moves in a back-and-forth sweep just as steady as him, and I find one. "Just something I wrote a while back." And that I haven't played or sung until last Friday when a tor amplified it. Now I hear it everywhere I go, night or day, conscious or unconscious, and I can't believe I almost forgot it.

Charles hasn't. "You played it on those jam jars as well. The ones you partially filled with water? It sounded very pretty. Almost as good as whenever you play that whistle you keep in your pocket." His eyes widen. "Oh, have you got it? You could play this music right now."

He backtracks just as quickly, maybe remembering that public performance and I don't mix these days, unless it's with little children.

Or with Liam.

His thumb stills, hand edging to my hip as if he feels what always happens when I'm under pressure. Liam pulls me a fraction closer, my hip against his, and I can drag a breath to answer, although Charles speaks first.

"Or not. No worries." His quick grimace comes with him mouthing a silent sorry. "Teo's musical, isn't he? Maybe he could play it for us?" He nods across the table, and I'm pleased to see that Teo's joined us, even if he hangs back. Those drumsticks clutched to his chest scream an equally silent, fuck no.

That means I have to step up and shield him.

Charles mouths another apology. He doesn't need to. I'm not in front of white-bright footlights this evening. I'm in a courtyard surrounded by people who are interested, that's all, not judging, so I do as he asks and play this long-buried music on my whistle. It's absolutely worth being under the spotlight when Liam's real laugh rings out.

"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep? Really?"

Someone else calls out that the first hot dogs are almost ready, and students cheer. The crowd clears, everyone heading for the playground at the front of the building, but Liam stays where he is, right beside me. "Of course it had to be about a sheep," he mutters. "You're a bloody magnet for them."

He's a magnet for me.

I've already thought that. It's almost a wrench when he peels away to retie construction tape and move a barrier back in front of his exposed foundation. Everyone else moves in the opposite direction, leaving for the start of the social side of this evening, apart from Luke and the historian. They carefully pack away Liam's finds while deep in conversation that I don't want to interrupt, but I have to ask, "Luke? Am I…"

I hold out my phone. I'm timetabled on duty, only nothing is as usual, is it? And Liam's here, which means I can't keep my next question bottled. "Do you still need me?"

Luke studies my face.

His gaze holds for a long and searching moment before shifting to where Liam hefts more of those heavy barriers back into position. Because he's wired for safety, isn't he? Maybe Luke is too—he asks a quiet and careful question. "Do you want to be off duty? Because if you don't, I can always find a reason to say you're busy. But if you'd rather be free?—"

"Yes." I'm not sure I've ever nodded faster. I do it again. "Yes. I want to be free. If… if that's okay with you?"

It must be. Luke looks so much younger when he smiles. "You better scoot then, Mr. Popular. Quick, before Hadi comes looking for you."

"For me?"

Here's more of the softening I'm still not used to. "Rowan, there's a very good reason why he drummed for you today. Why all of them played for you." Luke glances up as if he sees his study window at the front of this building instead of the science labs above us. "I've watched you working with them all week long, and seen how Charles has stepped back. Hadi wants to trust you, has already started to. Your time is your own, but I know he'd love you to share some supper with us before his bedtime. Both of you?"

I nod. I also back off when maybe I should acknowledge what sounds like praise, but there's no speaking around the lump made by what he just shared, no emotion to describe the smile Liam must notice when I join him. I don't know why he says, "Fuck me, you're a health hazard," when I'm nowhere near the edge of the foundation he hefts a last barrier in front of. He also takes off his hard hat and plops it on my head.

It's left a mark across his forehead, but I've just been marked by what Luke shared, so that makes us even.

We are even.

I like that so much that the lump in my throat shifts enough to let me say, "I'm free now. Come back to my rooms?"

"Yeah?"

We're alone. Everyone else is gone, only the sound of laughter and distant chatting drifting between us, and I don't even try to resist attraction that never lets up between us.

Perhaps that old horseshoe over my stable door is also magnetic. I know I touch it for luck after letting him in, but at least I'm not so far gone that I forget what the last person who lived here told me.

I follow Liam inside, close the door, and make sure to lock it.