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“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 flinchat 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 ontheirjourney.” I touch the outline of foreign landmarks in my sketchbook. “Wherethey’vebeen 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.
