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He follows that with another question.
Hayden:Can I see you?
He doesn’t need to ask me twice. I take a sleepy and bare-chested selfie, and send it to him within seconds.
Hayden:I meant when you get back, but thanks.
He sends a selfie of his own then, and there’s sawdust in his beard. His eyes are tired and heavy. They also stare straight into my soul.
I see them even after my phone dies, no charge left as Luke and his kids camp and hike and draw different futuresfor seventy-two hours, and I’m not sure when I stop panicking about that clock ticking and start hearingyou’re allowed to want good thingsinstead, but that selfie is what I picture each time Luke says it.
He reminds me of that mantra on our last hike, which brings us to the far side of rugged moorland. We’re followed by students who laugh while tramping behind us, their banter a world away from their first sullen silence. They’ve also made progress with starting to sketch their journeys, and Luke mentions a Polish one when we finish our last tor climb of this three-day bonding session.
He shields his eyes to guard them from afternoon sunlight before pointing.
“There.”
“There what?” I shield my own eyes, gaze skipping from the moor to some bordering woodland. “What am I looking for?”
“One of the old Polish resettlement camps. I knew it was around here somewhere.” He points out what my gaze must have skimmed past, and I’m instantly back in an encampment, only what Luke shows me doesn’t involve tents. These skeletons of abandoned structures must have once served the same purpose, although it’s hard to believe that they could ever have provided shelter. They look closer to broken ribcages than homes for allied veterans and their families.
All that remains of those homes is strangled by dark-green ivy and snarled by brambles. Even the entrance to the camp is hidden now that nature has taken over. Luke takes a photo and promises to send it to me.
I need to draw this—have to capture what used to house war heroes if only to show it to someone who shares a Polish connection.
It’s so easy to picture Hayden again then. Not with sawdust in his beard. Or burrs. I do imagine his chainsaw and thatwicked-sharp blade he used to slice through willow, and I can imagine him clearing a path for a little Polish boy holding an old-style leather football.
He’d do that in a heartbeat, wouldn’t he? Cut him a path. Mow him a pitch. Stand in a goal and coach him.
It’s a perfect opening for my story, one melding the past with the present.
I can’t wait to share it with him.
I do have to wait until I can charge my phone in the minibus on the way back, but a notification on my phone screen stops me from texting. Instead, I read a reply to an SOS sent when my mind swirled at the start of a three-day mental reset I didn’t know I needed.
I needn’t have bothered to send it.
My mentor has only answered with what some time and space let me find out for myself.
I knew I’d found the right starting image when I couldn’t wait to share it with someone special.
11
RAE
That’s who I track down the minute we get back to Glynn Harber, and if Luke comments about me taking off running, I don’t hear him. I’m already halfway across the car park where I pass a Land Rover suggesting that Hayden is here instead of on a tractor somewhere.
No wonder he looked tired, because here’s what else I witnessed on those tors I climbed with students every evening: Work never seems to stop in the farms bordering the moorland. Even after the sun lowered, headlights lit fields, and now that it’s almost evening, I more than half expected Hayden to already be working in one.
If that’s his plan for today, I want to see him before he leaves, and I’m the perfect person for this mission, a guided missile locked and loaded on my target. I even engage what Sol used to call my deadline tunnel vision, and today there’s an element of truth to that descriptor. I do enter a tunnel, only this one is leafy and leads from the car park to the woods, where I can see that Hayden has worked his arse off.
I pass brand-new benches built from logs and positioned for quiet moments. Handrails are also dotted wherever the ground is uneven, carved as if they grew here. There isn’t anywhere left on the way to the clearing that someone shaky can’t access, and shaking is the first thing I notice when I find him.
He’s silhouetted, his back to me, and I have a clear view of where his hammer fits on his tool belt. That loop on his hip isn’t out of reach. It’s right there, but I guess he’s been really busy with his chainsaw to fumble that simple manoeuvre.
I’m not the only person to notice. Charles takes the hammer from him, which proves that if you want something done, you should always ask a busy person. He slides that hammer into its spot just fine, even with two babies clutched to his chest. Then he passes one to Hayden, and all but shouts, “Got her?” over the sound of wailing.
I see Hayden nod.
