Chapter 27

ROWAN

That falling sensation lingers in a good way—in the best way—and the week is over before I know it.

At least I don't have to dread it suddenly being Friday, even if Liam isn't here to start the half-term break with me. I focus on us having seven more days in the same location when he's back tomorrow. And if he needs to call in reinforcements to get all his work done?

I'll face whatever happens.

Besides, saying words like scared and coward aloud has unlatched something inside me. I've spent the last two evenings rewriting what I started in a sculpture garden. Not on that long roll of paper. This time I've followed Luke's original order to get it out however works best for me.

Write a letter, he'd said. Or a song. Barring one hazy section, I've made decent progress, and that progress gives me real hope of meeting Luke's decision deadline. It also inspires my last session with the children.

We work together for hours, almost up to home time, and this final performance draws attention to our outdoor classroom. Even Luke leans out of his window in a way that Liam would glare at if he saw me do it, only Luke isn't playing a stupid game. He's leaning out to hear his son sing.

Perhaps he understands each word of Arabic that Hadi melds with English. I hurry to ask when he comes downstairs to join us, and who would have guessed that I'd ever run towards a headmaster? It's enough of a head trip that I let this slip. "You know headteachers are meant to be stern, right?"

"Why? Mine wasn't." He gestures at a building I first saw as imposing, as challenging, like every task I've been set here. So far, each one has come with a soft landing, like Luke's gaze, which returns to his son, who sings while marching along his plank bridge as if it doesn't scare him. "Where did his lyrics come from?"

"Hadi's? Mostly from his friends."

Now I wonder if my idea for this session was a good one. Charles had thought so. I still can't help second-guessing. "I asked them all to draw self-portraits. They took turns to lie down on big sheets of paper and then drew around each other."

"Collaborative and creative. Solomon will be impressed when he gets back." His next glance lands on the car park like he'd summon a missing minibus holding his art master if he could. He settles for whipping out his phone, capturing some of his son's performance the same way Teo did by videoing my picnic-bench drum solo. "Nathan will love this."

"He'll be back tomorrow?" Part of me is happy for Luke. I focus on that, not the part of me that knows I won't be needed long term once he's back in this classroom, working alongside Charles.

"Hopefully." He presses Send. "It's been a long six weeks." Luke sighs as if he wishes tomorrow would come sooner, but he also clasps my shoulder. "You've been such a help to us." He pauses. I know what he waits for, and maybe he can tell that I'm closer, if not quite there yet. He doesn't push for my trauma-training decision. "So, what's the musical connection to the self-portraits?"

"Friendship."

Teo's been an almost six-week-long example of this process. I can't help tracing the outline of my phone in my pocket, aware that it holds yet another message from a school that has all the tech he could ever wish for, but where I found none of the friendships that have made a real difference for him lately.

He isn't the same kid as when I got here. I'm not the same person either, like Liam suggested, and here's another example—I explain a project I've planned from start to finish without caring who watched me. "I asked all the children to visit each other's portrait and add a word or two of their own. Something they thought about each other."

"Oh?" Luke sucks his teeth. "You didn't think that was risky?"

That could sound like judgement. Now I stand by my decisions. "Because they might hear something negative about themselves? We role-played that before we got started." Those emotion cards keep coming in useful. "I showed them what being mean to someone looks like." Fuck knows there are enough images of me modelling that on social media. Search the right hashtag and it's right there on the face of a miserable stranger, a kid out of their depth and cornered. That means I can say this with conviction. "And I showed them what feeling hurt looked like." I can still feel Maisie's tight, fierce cuddle as soon as she saw my old wariness and worry.

Maybe it shows again now. Luke is reassuring. "That will have been so good for them. Well done. And then what?"

"And then we role-played helping each other get over tough times."

"Why?" Luke asks quietly.

Music used to be my self-regulation. No wonder I couldn't deal with life when I lost it. Knowing that now makes answering Luke so easy. "Because life isn't all sunshine, is it? Sometimes there's thunder." Or lightning. "It's going to rain." I nod at a line of watering cans I've watched transform learning. "You can't change that, only how you cope with a soaking."

"Resilience," Luke murmurs. "And how does that link?"

"To music?" This would have choked me once. Now it's the easiest question yet to answer. "Because I've failed at that in public, right?"

Luke doesn't nod in agreement. I do it for him, because all I ever wanted to escape were feelings I couldn't handle, and here's Hadi facing way bigger ones than me. Who would have guessed that freedom would sound like his song or like Teo's drumming? Not me, but I glance at a glitter-sprinkled teacher who taught me this lesson. "Sometimes you need other people's perspectives to see yourself. People who care. Who don't have reason to keep you in line or scare you."

I'm never going to forget Luke Lawson if I have to leave here.

He's the only person who ever asked me this question.

"You were scared?"

I nod, and it's fucking wild how I can do that now and still sound steady. "That's why I planned this. So the kids got a chance to know what their friends see in them." I grab the closest portrait.

"Maisie," Luke murmurs, which isn't a surprising guess given that this painting is a bright orange muddle dotted with what Glynn Harber's youngest students had to say about her.

Luke reads some of those words aloud. "Funny."

She is that.

"Friendly."

I've seen that so often.

Now Luke swallows the same way that I did when I transcribed a final sentence, so I know what blocks his throat before he reads it.

"Maisie keeps falling over."

I worry that I've fucked up then and dart a quick and probably panicked look at Charles. He gives another of his many thumbs-ups of this final session, and Luke continues reading aloud, so maybe I haven't messed up. "We'll always help her get up." He meets my eyes then, back to his usual laser focus. "Do you know what the Arabic parts of Hadi's song mean?"

"No." This is all I can tell him for sure. "I asked them all to add something about themselves once they read what their friends had to say. Because songs only ever have real meaning when there's part of you in them." This is why I'm gutted that I never got a chance to sing my own composition in front of millions. Fuck the prize money. Someone I loved still lived as long as I sang those lyrics.

No wonder losing my voice slayed me.

I grab his son's self-portrait. "I'm guessing that Hadi's song is about being brave." That's what so many of the children said about him. "And that he's a good friend." Trust Maisie to notice that Hadi is always there when she needs a shoulder.

"Who suggested this one?" Luke touches a word I'd written faintly for Hadi to trace over.

"Strong? That was me." I meet eyes that gleam as Luke blinks. "Because he is, isn't he? The way he keeps going? How he won't let his past stop him?"

And this is what I keep circling back to.

"He isn't on that plank today because we told him he had to sing there. He's choosing to face what scares him. Gotta be pretty strong to do that." It's exactly what that workbook suggested would happen with repeat exposure, but witnessing that progress happen? I'll never forget that either.

Luke nods, his eyes still gleaming. He attempts to speak, but can't, and I know that feeling, so I keep going for him.

"It's hard for him. But it won't get easier if he avoids it." I know that's what I'm doing by backing away from training that could keep me here for longer.

I know it.

I still can't help swerving away from that subject by asking a different question. "Which words did he add to his song?"

"The Arabic ones?" Luke clears his throat. "He's naming everyone in his family. His parents. All of his siblings. Every auntie on that bridge. Each uncle. He's telling them that he's being a good big brother to Jamila. For all of them. And"—he clears his throat again—"that he's happy." Clearing his throat again doesn't make this next any less strangled. "PTSD doesn't have to be forever. Even complex PTSD like his. I know that, like I know recovery has to be slow—it's a delicate balance because too many reminders all at once could set him back." He repeats my own thoughts about a journey taken over so much more than a plank bridge. "But actually getting to see him healing?" He's so, so hoarse. "Thank you."

Hadi sees his dad then. His song stops, but he doesn't hop off the bridge to join him. He runs its full length, taking a leap of faith that someone will be at the far end to catch him.

I want to do the same the moment the bell rings for home time—want to throw myself at Liam all over again, only not for him to save me, because I got to catch him too, didn't I?

Yes, we both fell when that old bridge creaked and splintered, but it was me who shored him when he lost his footing in the water, and I'd never felt stronger.

For now, I clear up art supplies and gather up homemade shakers that have filled this final week with music. I also check my phone to read messages that have arrived while I've been working.

Liam: Almost done. Back tomorrow.

Wings flutter inside me, rising at that prospect. They sink at what comes next.

Liam: Probably won't need to call the team in. I'll handle the bridge rebuild myself.

Is that change of mind because of what I told him? Maybe not. Wings flutter again.

Liam: But if they did come, I know they'd love you.

Liam: Like me x

Who knows how long I cradle my phone. All I know is that I've had the best day ever at work and Liam loves me. That feels like a prize worth winning.

The children get ready to leave for their half-term break as I tidy away percussion instruments we've made together. Dried peas rattle as they chatter. Then horns sound, a sudden cacophony that lures me away from my clean-up operation, and I walk through a now empty classroom.

The outdoor space is also deserted. Even the sandpit is abandoned, and I see why—a school minibus is back a day earlier than expected.

It's surrounded by students welcoming friends and returning teachers, and I open the gate to join them. Then I hesitate, wondering where I'll fit into this reunion.

These teachers shouldering rucksacks and looking tired and rumpled are permanent team members. I'm temporary. I hang back as students who went to France are swarmed by friends who stayed in Cornwall. One returning student stands on the minibus steps, scanning the crowd, his hair a blue-black reminder of Liam, only his eyes are darker. They're just as piercing as he searches faces, skimming mine and then moving on, still searching before his gaze jerks back.

This double take is almost comical, and I'm not sure how to respond to it.

I smile.

He doesn't.

He only stares, then he shakes his head as if to clear it and keeps scanning the crowd.

"Cameron! Cam!"

I don't need to look back at the main school entrance to know who just shouted—Teo runs past, and that boy on the minibus steps launches himself just like Hadi did at his father, and like I did in the woods at Liam. Only Cameron is almost as big as Teo, who crumples.

They go down laughing.

That's another Liam reminder. From Teo, the sound is magic. So is seeing him sling an easy arm around this stranger's shoulders once they're both back on their feet, drawing him away from a crowd that includes Hadi high up on Luke's shoulders. He shouts too, only he yells, "Daddy," and wriggles down to run to who I guess is Luke's husband.

Their reunion slams me straight in the chest. Not because I won't be needed for long now that Nathan's back. This slam is because I witness how a father and son should be, only I can't feel bad that I've never had anything like it, not when Hadi's sandwiched with the kind of love I want for every kid here. It's beautiful, and I can't blame this case of blurred vision on my dirty glasses, but I still take them off and wipe their lenses to give myself a moment.

Maybe that's a mistake.

Putting them back on only means I get a clear view of dark eyes that don't belong to Hadi or to Teo. They belong to the best friend he's missed. A gifted artist, I remember. One with almost perfect visual recall. With sight that misses nothing. There's no avoiding that his eyes widen right in front of me again, and now that I've had so much practice, of course I can read what they show.

Fuck.

He knows me.