Part One Chapter 1

Molly rearranges desks in the empty classroom. First day of the new term. First day with a new class. Outside the gloom lifts: the winter sun has broken through low cloud. 

As she shifts desks, an internal gloom begins to lift too, a remnant of a recurring nightmare. In last night’s version, Molly is standing in front of a high school English class, holding in her cupped hands a beating heart which is black. She is offering it to her students, but they have their backs to her. She tries shouting, then cajoling, then threatening, but the students are apparently unaware of her desperation and instead wander listlessly around the classroom or loll about on desks chatting with each other. Some begin to throw paper missiles. A scuffle breaks out and she senses there will be a riot or a walk out. She tries thrusting the beating heart into the faces of some of the students. ‘Look,’ she pleads, ‘look at what I’ve brought for you.’ But the students don’t care. 

The residue of panicked helplessness from the dream has not entirely evaporated, but the shifting of the furniture is helping. This classroom is a world of solid objects. The students, she knows from her three years at this school, her second job as an English teacher, are, at the very least, compliant. She’ll be doing her best to turn compliance into some kind of deeper engagement. It’s worked before. 

The dream has been especially unsettling because Molly thought she was looking forward to this beginning. She likes beginnings. The clean slate stage. The pre-disillusion stage, before the faculty-imposed assessments tell too many students, yet again, that they’re on the wrong end of the bell curve. Before the smothering outcomes do too much damage. 

The students are gathering outside. The room is ready.

Molly opens the classroom door and Year 10 English begins to shuffle in. 

‘Nice hair,’ she says to one. 

‘Thanks Miss. Nice brooch.’

Molly smiles. She’s wearing her grandmother’s red ruby brooch for the first time in years.

‘I know you,’ she says to the next girl. ‘You work at the local supermarket.’ 

Everyone gets a smile or a comment. A room of solid objects begins to morph for Molly into an animated space of possibility.

One boy refuses to make eye contact. ‘Hello,’ she says, and, though he mumbles something, he doesn’t break stride and heads instead for the back of the room. Trouble, Molly wonders? She doubts it; he has such a gentle face. His name, she learns later, is Zeph. Someone to draw out if she can.

Year 10 English. In her first years she found Year 10 intimidating. The boys especially had shed both their pre-pubescent bubble and their early adolescent uncertainty. There were awkward moments, with Year 10 boys, when one moment they seemed to want to flirt with her and the next to demonstrate their disengaged worldliness. Yes, it had been intimidating at first, but she’d soon seen their bravado as attempts to disguise an uncertainty about their place in an English classroom dominated by the more articulate and confident girls. Now she refuses to be drawn in by the boys and usually they come around. She likes teaching Year 10.

The class settles and waits for her to begin. She sees in front of her – is she just imagining it? – fresh expectant faces. On the spur of the moment, she abandons her carefully prepared opening.

‘Last night I had a nightmare, one that I’ve had many times,’ she says. ‘In my nightmare, I’m trying to teach a class and no-one is listening, no-one is interested. I try to engage my students, but nothing works. I feel hopeless and helpless.’

She pauses. There’s a shifting of bodies in seats. Glances are exchanged between some of the girls. This could take her anywhere. 

‘In my dream,’ she continues, ‘I feel hopeless and helpless, and yet here I am, standing in front of you, and I have your complete attention. You’re all listening to me. I feel confident and optimistic; the very opposite of the feelings in my dream.’

She pauses again. They’re with her. So far. 

‘Dreams,’ she says. ‘We all have them. Dreams and nightmares. What are they? Where do they come from? Any thoughts?’

Molly is relieved when a hand goes up at the front of the class.

‘Yes.’

‘There was this TV show …’ a girl begins.

‘You are …?’

‘Lizzy,’ says the girl. ‘On this TV show they were saying that dreams predict the future.’

‘Your dream didn’t … my name’s Danny … Your dream didn’t predict the future. We’re not rioting.’

‘Not yet,’ says a boy up the back. Is he Asian? The class clown perhaps? It sounds good natured though. Some of the students are smiling. Winter sunshine fills the room. Molly notices Lizzy’s newly washed hair. Only Zeph, his head on his desk at the back, seems elsewhere.

‘Maybe,’ says Lizzy, ‘the dream comes from a memory? Have you had classes like in your dream, where it’s all out of control?’

‘I have, when I started as a teacher,’ says Molly. ‘But not for a long time. Why, I wonder, do I have this dream now?’

‘Why is there a why?’ says the boy up the back. His tone has changed. There’s an edge to it now. A challenge.

‘You are?’

‘Tran,’ he says. ‘Why does there always have to be a why?’

‘I think dreams have …’ begins a girl at the front. 

‘You are?’ asks Molly.

‘Harriet, sorry… I think dreams have meanings. Or there’s a reason why we dream certain things. I don’t think they’re just random.’

‘Say some more Harriet,’ says Molly. ‘Why don’t you think they’re just random?’

‘I don’t know really,’ says Harriet. ‘It’s just a feeling thing I guess. I can’t really explain it.’

Two girls sitting behind Harriet nudge each other. One scowls, the other raises an eyebrow. Molly notices a flush on Harriet’s cheeks. 

‘Why are we talking about dreams?’ says Tran. ‘What’s that got to do with English?’

The lesson is on a knife’s edge, Molly realises. It’s kind of exciting. 

‘Thanks Tran. What’s it got to do with English? Or with what we’re going to be doing together this semester?’ Molly picks up a remote and turns it on. A green light flashes on the ceiling-mounted data projector as it warms itself up. A white rectangle appears on the whiteboard at the front of the class, and then a face, the face of a worried boy with a snout, elven ears and hedgehog spikes. 

‘What are you seeing?’ she asks the class. ‘What’s in the image?’

‘A hedgehog,’ says one student.

‘A hedgehog with a human face,’ says another. More hands go up. Zeph, she notices, is the only student not looking.

‘It’s a human, not a hedgehog,’ says a third student. ‘Look at its hands and fingernails. And its arms. It’s a human with a hedgehog cloak.’

‘I’ve seen that story!’ says Harriet, a little flushed still. ‘It’s from a story called Hans My Hedgehog. From Jim Henson’s Storyteller series. I loved that story.’

‘Can you remember what happens in the story Harriet?’ 

‘Something about him being rejected by his parents cos they think he’s ugly, but he turns out to be a prince under some kind of a spell?’

‘Boring,’ says one of the boys.

‘Cliche,’ says Tran.

‘It’s not boring,’ says Harriet. Her blood is up, or so it seems to Molly. ‘I remember I wanted to watch it over and over again when I was little. I really loved it.’ The girls behind her shift again in their seats.

‘Do you know why you loved it Harriet?’

‘Does there have to be a why?’ It’s Tran again. There’s an irritated, impatient note in his voice.

‘You’re right Tran. Maybe it’s wrong to go down the path of trying to nail the meaning. There is a meaning – the little Harriet wouldn’t have wanted to watch the story over and over again if it wasn’t in some way meaningful. Stories like this grab us, even if we can’t explain why. They seem to mean something, but the meaning isn’t always clear. Maybe the meaning is beyond words, or beyond our capacity to understand. Maybe it’s too deep, to do with the mystery of things.’

Molly senses she’s found the right words so far. The mystery of things. The students – or enough of them – have allowed themselves to be intrigued by this talk of the mystery of things. Tran looks skeptical, Zeph untouched and the girls behind Harriet keep swapping glances. But the rest seem interested. So far, so good.

‘Dreams,’ she continues. ‘We started all this by talking about dreams. Dreams are part of this mystery of things. So are stories like Hans My Hedgehog. Folktales. We are drawn to them for mysterious reasons. All peoples, at all times, from the earliest cave dwellers to people today, tell these kinds of stories. This is our topic for the first part of the semester: folktales. We’ll talk about your favourites, and I’ll bring in some of mine. And Tran, we’ll probably never work out why these stories matter, or what they mean. But maybe we’ll have some ideas. Maybe we’ll have some good conversations. Maybe you’ll discover some new stories that touch you, or disturb you. The unit will end with a creative exercise which I’ll describe later, and maybe that will be fun too. I think it will be. I’m really looking forward to this. I hope you are too.’

Molly looks around the room. The lesson has hit the spot. With most of them anyway. If she were a cat she’d be purring.

‘Write,’ she says suddenly. She has picked up paper and is now flinging sheets at bemused students. ‘On these sheets. I want you to write.’

‘What about?’ asks Lizzy.

‘I don’t care. Anything. I’m not going to collect it or mark it or ask you to read it out loud. It’s private. Write anything. Write about our lesson so far. Write about what you had for breakfast. Write a love letter to your beloved. I don’t care. I just want you to write. For ten minutes. Are you ready? Starting the timer now … Go!’

The students, puzzled but for the moment compliant, begin to write. Or most of them do. 

It’s a beginning. A good-enough beginning. Something has been stirred into life, or so Molly allows herself to think as she walks between the desks, encouraging the few who are still not writing.

But now that she is no longer performing, Molly is aware of the beginnings of a headache.

She’s strange, this new English teacher, Ms McInness. Strange but good I think.

I used to like English. I loved reading and writing in primary school. But not so much in high school. And especially not last semester. I hated English. Or at least I hated our English teacher, creepy Rodney Jensen. He sucked. Cold blue eyes that looked right through you, cruel sneery mouth. Sneer is such a good word. It describes exactly that horrible set of his fat lips, that icy baring of his slightly crooked teeth. And his breath, with that stale smell of whiskey or something. Oh, I could write a top horror story with him as the monster without a soul, torturing his victims before he put them slowly to death, enjoying every sadistic moment. Do I exaggerate? Well, I’m a writer aren’t I? Or will be! :-) 

English got me down last semester. I don’t mind so much about the other subjects, but I want to really care about English. I wasn’t looking forward to school at end of the holidays. I was feeling a bit glum, I guess. And edgy, though I’m not sure what that’s about.

Well, this new teacher isn’t like any other teacher I’ve ever had. 

She talked today about dreams and stories. I really liked it. She talked about the mystery of things. When she was talking, I got goosebumps. Literally. On my arm. It went all tingly. Some of the other kids, some of the girls, think I’m weird that I get off on this kind of stuff. But I do. I just do.

Anyway, this Ms McInness was talking about dreams and stories, then then suddenly, sort of out of the blue, she said ‘Write.’

I thought she meant ‘Right!’, like trying to get our attention. But she had our attention already. There she was, red frizzy hair and jangly earrings, and her green eyes like little flames dancing in a fire, dressed like a rainbow with yellow wool stockings, red miniskirt, and a red brooch on her sky blue blouse. Of course she had our attention! 

‘Write!’ she said again, but this time making scribbling moves in the air. ‘On paper. Write. For ten minutes. Just write.’

What about, we wanted to know. She didn’t care. She just wanted us to write.

There was a scramble, which kind of surprised me I guess, cos our classes don’t usually jump when a teacher says jump. 

I grabbed my pen and started to think about possibilities. I wanted her to like me, to see that I was a good writer, that I could be a top Year 10 student. It’s weird.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t think Harriet. Just write.’ 

So I wrote.

Odd beginning. In English now, first day of semester. We have to write. I don’t know what to write about. It probably doesn’t matter, cos the teacher isn’t going to look. So she says. So I just have to write for 10 minutes. ‘Keep the pen moving,’ she’s just said. ‘Keep writing for the whole ten minutes.’ She’s got a nice voice. I think she might be Irish, though it’s not a strong accent. I like her clothes. And her earrings. And her energy. I like the way she seems confident, the way she’s taken charge already. There are some kids in this class who will mess around if given half a chance, but they seem affected (or infected?) by her confidence. Everyone is writing. It’s quiet … no, silent. I love it when everyone is writing in a silent room. It’s a good silence. Everyone writing about something different. ‘Seven minutes to go’, she says. I wonder what everyone’s writing about? I wonder if the others trust that she won’t look? Is anyone writing anything risky? Private? I wonder if Lara and Katie are writing about me. Oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to look in on all the private thoughts of the kids in the room! Well, no, on second thoughts, I don’t think I’d want to know. There’s an olive skinned boy sitting down the back. He was in my English class last semester but I never heard him speak and still don’t know his name. He was sitting alone when I walked in this morning, looking really uncomfortable. He’s not writing now, despite the teacher going up to his table a couple of times. Just doodling or drawing or something, judging by the way his hand is moving. He looks scared, like a stray kitten or something. His face is all creased … no, a face can’t be creased. But his expression is all somehow closed in on itself. No, that’s not right either. Oh, I wish I could write better! Sometimes when I write, the words just come and I love that feeling. I love it when sometimes I read over something I’ve written and it feels true, or good, like I’ve found just the right words, or I’ve ordered them in just the right way so that there’s a kind of a flow in what I’ve written. Like music. I love that. But often I just feel wooden, like now a bit, trying to describe that new boy’s face. I want to write better. It seems that this Ms McInness is someone who’s interested in writing. I hope so. ‘Two minutes to go,’ she says. Shit. I’ve only just warmed up. I wonder if she’s a good writer, or whether she’s one of those teachers who talks a lot about reading and writing but never seems to write anything herself except school reports. Or read anything but kids’ essays. There was an English teacher when I was in Year 7 who had written a book. Some adolescent fiction. I remember wishing I’d been in her class. She was a real writer. ‘Thirty seconds to go.’ God I’ve written a lot! But it’s drivel. I thought I didn’t have anything to …

That’s when she’s stopped us.

‘What was that experience like?’ she then asked.

‘Weird,’ said someone. 

‘I didn’t know what to write, so I just wrote nonsense,’ said another. 

‘But you wrote,’ said Ms McInness. ‘That’s the main thing. You used the time to write. You’re going to write a lot in my English class.’

After school I went down to the shops and bought this blank journal. If she’s serious, and if we’re really going to write a lot, and if she can help me with my writing, I’m going to use this journal as a record. Who knows. Maybe, when I’m rich and famous, I’ll be able to auction the journal for megabucks. 

Yeah right.

The first day of term is done. Molly is in her favourite chair in her favourite room, in front of the fire. She unpins the red ruby brooch, places it carefully on the small table at her elbow, next to her glass of wine, and watches the fire’s flickering. It seems that the headache has gone. It has been with her all day, ever since she noticed it during that Year 10 lesson, but now she is feeling better.

She’s glad it’s dark. Once she’d got the fire going and the chill had gone, she’d turned off the little lamps in each of the four corners of her snug room. Normally she loves having the lamps on, each illuminating with its soft light its own little patch: the crowded brick-and-plank bookshelves, the Victorian mirror which had been a gift from Sylvia before the split, the few prints she’s owned since university days. 

But tonight she likes it dark. Tonight she wants to sit quietly and let her thoughts drift. She is stroking one of the cats. Another is brushing against her legs. Again she watches the way the ruby is catching the firelight. It’s beautiful, she thinks. Beguiling.

She’d woken up this morning feeling jangled by the nightmare. Was that when the headache began? Perhaps. It was while the Year 10 students were writing that she’d noticed it. From then on she’d felt odd, on edge. The school bell had jarred. 

And the students during her afternoon classes had been irritating. She’d found herself snapping. She’d used her tongue archly. Can a tongue be used archly, she wonders? Probably not. Eyebrows arch, tongues lash. She hadn’t lashed, or at least she didn’t think she had. Perhaps her eyebrows had arched once or twice. And her tone had been sharper than usual.

The fire glows. A log flares, then settles. She sees, as she often did as a child, a fairy world in the flames. She sees, too, the way the flickering light makes her ruby brooch seem alive. Her grandmother’s ruby brooch. The brooch that had been hidden away until this morning underneath tissues in that little box.

Granny Metcalfe. A shrunken, shrewd riddle of an old woman in Molly’s memory, who’d died before Molly’s seventh birthday but whose lined face and merry eyes she remembers so vividly. Granny Metcalfe, so full of strange sayings that she didn’t understand then and doesn’t understand still, but seem full of meaning nonetheless. ‘What isn’t here is everywhere,’ Molly remembers her saying. ‘What truly sees cannot be seen.’

‘Time for a story,’ the old woman would say, and she’d tell Molly the one about Jorinda and Joringle, or about the boy who knew no fear, or about Hans-my-hedgehog. Stories that hinted at something beyond the words. 

She misses Granny Metcalfe. Would she have approved of Molly being an English teacher? Probably.

A cat is purring on her lap. The wine is warm. The room is dark and cosy. And Molly realises she is hungry.

In the kitchen, Molly fries a small onion and half a thinly sliced potato. The smell of fried onion adds to the house’s cosy warmth. She whisks some eggs, adds parsley, salt and pepper, then slides the mixture into the pan. There’s something pleasing and congruent (with the day’s teaching perhaps) with the way the runny mixture begins to set. She nudges its edges towards the centre with a wooden spoon until it’s evenly cooked, then folds the omelette onto her plate. Molly refills her wineglass, and returns to the chair by the fire.

She’s been reading Moby Dick and the book sits on her lap as she eats. There are passages she reads aloud just to hear the rhythms, the language. Some of its more meandering passages are irritating, but she loves the sounds of the words all the same. There is a sentence that she’s been hearing in her head all evening. Warmed by the food and the second glass of wine, she speaks it aloud to the cats:

In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? 

The cats seem unimpressed.

Then she picks up the brooch. Granny Metcalfe. Such a great name. Like a character from a folk tale. 

There are moments in life when it feels as though everything has settled into its proper place. 

Max has been walking. Walking for an hour, perhaps more, on this cold Melbourne morning. It is still dark, though there’s a tiny yellow dab above the houses on the eastern horizon. 

Walking and mulling, as he often does at this time. The suburb still asleep. Birds beginning to stir – a solitary magpie’s warble from a frosty limb, a parrot’s screech as it flies overhead. A distant car setting out for the city, but as yet no rumble of train or clatter of tram. Just his footsteps on the pavement. For an hour or more. Just Max and his footsteps and his mulling mind.

He’s been thinking about Harriet.

She seems happier. She’s got a new English teacher and though yesterday was the first day of the new term and she’s only had this new teacher for one lesson, Harriet seems happier. She came home yesterday with a bounce in her step. She chatted about school. She hasn’t done that in ages. 

They talked about the world again, as he cooked, and she still thinks it’s stuffed. But she seemed less bleak about it, more agitated and energetic. She talked about displaced refugees on the move, random acts of civil violence, unusual weather patterns. But she wanted to talk about them, not just spit out her despair. Max described his alarm that there seemed abroad a growing impatience with goodness, justice, beauty and truth, as if there’s not time in the pace of modern living for such dated concepts. And Harriet listened. 

‘People seem to be asleep,’ she had said last night, as she’s been saying for some time now. She wondered how they might be woken up. Could it be through writing? Max told her about Kafka suggesting that a book should be the axe for the frozen sea within. She liked that.

It had been such a good chat, so long in coming.

How deeply he wanted to protect his precious Harriet from the pain of the world. Again, he thought of his house as a cocoon. Or a haven. It had given him such disproportionate pleasure, even before he retired from his university job in the Education Faculty, to attempt an Eden. Drawing the curtains at sunset and turning on the lamps. Getting the slow combustion fire going. Cooking good food. Setting the table. Making a snug world. It upset him when Harriet’s mood and his were ill-matched. It worried him that Harriet had been subdued for so long.

But she seemed better yesterday. The term was only a day old, but something seemed to have shifted. It was good to glimpse a little of the more energetic Harriet.

Max keeps walking.

Last night, after dinner, he and Harriet had watched the first episode of a popular TV fantasy series. The cinematography was glorious, but Max had found the plot distressing. It was set in a dystopian world where kings and princes pursue power for its own sake, where women are bartered and raped. There is a young prince. He is brave. He feels for life’s victims. There is goodness in him. But in the final scene of the first episode the prince, this mythic symbol of possibility and potential, is murdered. Max had found it shocking. 

Harriet had asked him what he thought. ‘I hated it,’ he had said, but couldn’t explain why. Now he realises that the episode felt like some canker from the outer world seeping into and sullying his haven. 

Max walks on. It is cold and foggy. Sounds echo in the empty streets. 

It is light now. He enters an underpass beneath a highway. The walls are strewn with graffiti, most of it ugly and tasteless. But it must mean something, he thinks, an outlet for some rage or frustrated energy or something. 

Then he notices, low down, a different kind of image. It’s like a fragment from a children’s picture book, painted not with spray paint in gaudy in-your-face colours and wild strokes, but with a fine brush. Utterly out of place in this urine-smelling underpass. It’s an image of a wide-eyed child figure with striped beanie and matching jumper, standing in the rain by a bare tree. It’s beautiful, Max thinks, delicate and strange and utterly out of place. He notices a signature, a tag he thinks it’s called. A small Z. Whoever did it must have laid down on the cold concrete, at night probably, in order to paint this little delicate lonely figure full of wonder. 

Suddenly, from out of the fog, another lone early morning walker approaches, a man with a dark coat pulled up over his head to protect him from a light drizzle that has begun to fall. Like a spirit from some shrouded underworld. Shoulders hunched. Max, embarrassed at being seen studying graffiti, stands up and murmurs what he hopes is a cheery enough ‘morning’, but the other walker keeps his cloaked head hidden and walks on.

Time to return home. Harriet will still be in bed, but will stir soon after he gets back. He will make coffee for himself, and perhaps porridge for Harriet.

 He wonders how he’ll manage when Harriet moves out. He’ll miss her.

The teacher, Miss Mac something-or-other is talking. She’s been talking for a long time. She’s talked a lot during the whole of this first week. Today she keeps glancing his way, which is strange. Words fill the space. Boring words. He shuts them out. They become white noise.

Zeph looks back down at his drawing. He’s started to draw the eyes he saw that night at the warehouse.

There’s been nothing on the TV news about a dead body in an abandoned warehouse. It’s been over a month. He must have imagined it. The mind plays tricks.

There was no body. He’d just imagined it. Probably. 

The wall on the second floor of the abandoned warehouse is still blank. He noticed it again this morning on his way to school. He wants to make another attempt soon. Tonight even. Tonight he’ll have another go. The paints are in a bag under his bed. 

An image has been forming in his mind, an image based on the two staring eyes, and now, as the teacher’s voice drones on, he starts a rough sketch. Not too much detail. Just rough ideas. 

The two staring eyes. 

Sometimes, when he draws or paints, it’s automatic. His mind wanders. He thinks of other things. The father he never knew. His dead mother. How much he hates school.

Sometimes, though, the image he’s creating gets hold of him. Draws him in. It’s sort of like he’s living in the world he’s creating. It’s happening now. He is being pulled into the dark world of the two eyes. 

But there’s something not quite right about his sketch. He begins again. This time he draws a skull. A skull with a snake emerging from one of its empty eye sockets. 

Time and space dissolve. He’s immersed in the world of his drawing. So different from the emotionless dead world of school. Or of his uncle’s flat.

A pellet shatters his reverie. His cheek is stinging. It’s not the first time this year. The best response is to pretend it hasn’t happened. But then a second pellet, loosely scrunched, flops onto his drawing.

Zeph looks up. Two boys across the aisle mouth silent obscenities and give him the finger. The teacher hasn’t noticed, or the rest of the class. 

Zeph feels no emotion. This outer world is dead to him. He’s been called names before. He goes back to his drawing. 

The bell rings.

He lets the rest of the class file out. Then he picks up his drawings and walks towards the door. 

‘Zeph.’ It’s the teacher. ‘Can I have a word?’ 

It’s not a question. Why does she say it as if it was a question? He stops by the door but doesn’t turn round. He looks down at his shoes.

‘Are you OK?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. Of course he’s OK. Does he look sick or something?

‘It’s just that you don’t seem all that involved.’

He shrugs. He doesn’t like this conversation.

‘You’re not enjoying this new unit?’

Zeph shrugs again. 

‘I thought the story might be one that you’d like.’

What story, he wonders. Has she been telling a story? Was there a story he was meant to read for homework? ‘What do you mean?’

‘It being about the part of the world you came from.’

Zeph frowns. He has no idea what she’s talking about, or where she thinks he came from.

‘I noticed you were drawing while I was telling the story. Were you drawing things from the story?’

‘Not exactly.’

There’s a silence. The teacher seems to be unsure how to proceed, but she won’t let him go.

‘Do you like English Zeph?

‘Not really.’

‘Stories?’

‘Not much.’

‘But you like drawing.’

‘It’s alright.’

‘Would you show me what you’ve been drawing?’

‘It’s sort of private.’

Another silence. Zeph continues to avoid eye contact.

‘I had you in mind when I chose this story.’

This is getting weird. And uncomfortable. It’s better when he’s not noticed. 

‘I thought you might relate to it, it being from your part of the world.’

Does she mean Syria, where apparently his dad came from? She surely doesn’t mean country Victoria, up near Echuca, where his mum was born. This conversation is going round in circles.

‘Can I go now?’

‘Will you do me a favour Zeph?’

‘What’s that.’

‘In our next lesson, there’ll be time when everyone is going to write some thoughts about the story. Would you write something?’

‘I hate writing.’

‘Even if you didn’t have to show it to me?’

‘What would be the point?’

‘I’d just like to find a way to get you more involved. Maybe together we could find a way where English wasn’t such a pain for you.’

Zeph shrugs again. He notices mud on one of his shoes. Or is it dried dog shit? There’s often dog shit around the apartment block. He hopes it isn’t dog shit.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘All right,’ he says. But he’s thinking Just let me go, will you! 

‘All right then Zeph. That’s great. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Zeph leaves. The corridors are empty. Those boys are not waiting for him. He hurries home.