Free Lessons from the Heart by John Clanchy

and it’s gold and I know it’s Mr Prescott. And then, where I’ve been watching them move across the horizon, they stop and for a moment vanish completely, and a moment later reappear as two thin black lines, and I know they’ve turned and are walking towards me, and suddenly it’s me who feels sick, and ashamed, as if I’m spying on them when I wasn’t at all, I was just worried about Toni and not thinking and still only half awake, and the last thing I want to do is meet them now, like this, and the shock of this must have woken me completely at last because when I turn and run away from them I do so bent double because I know that otherwise – with the light now at their backs – their eyes will be so much better and in a minute or two the crack will have widened to a split and the sun will leap and I’ll be caught right in the line of fire.
    Back in the tent, I’m pretending to sleep when Toni returns. She’s careful getting in – and that could be just not to wake me – but the zipper on the tent flap sticks, and I hear her say ‘Shit!’ softly and tug at the zip till it comes free with a loud Zrrrrp, and she freezes. I can wake then, and I say sleepily:
    â€˜Toni?’
    â€˜Sorry, Lolly.’
    â€˜Did you get up?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she says, crawling in to her mat. ‘It’s still dark,’ she whispers. ‘There’s only a skerrick of light.’
    â€˜Couldn’t you sleep?’
    â€˜It wasn’t that.’
    â€˜Did you have to go to the loo?’
    I don’t know why I’m asking her this, when I know the answer already. I’m not trying to trap her or anything. I’m trying to find out, I suppose, how much she trusts me, because I realize there are things we don’t tell each other now where we used to tell each other everything. And I can’t really blame her – though I’d like to – because it was me being with Philip and not telling her things about us that started it. But now I need her, and I would have told her last night about Philip and me breaking up, because I was feeling so bad, but she was just going on about being vivid and that, and then she fell asleep. As if she didn’t care. But that’s stupid, I worked out, because she didn’t know, and so how could she care, and so I thought I’d tell her today. Till this.
    â€˜No,’ she says. ‘Though I did go once I got up.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜But you know what, Lolly?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I did it on the grass.’
    â€˜You idiot.’
    â€˜It felt so … I don’t know,’ she says. ‘And everything was so still, and smelt so fresh.’
    â€˜ Before , maybe,’ I say, and we both start laughing then and have to bury our faces in our sleeping bags so we don’t wake any of the kids in the tents around us. We’re still snuffling and snorting minutes later, and for me it’s relief as much as anything, and I wonder if it is for Toni too – and if she’s going to tell me anything more. Minutes pass, and she doesn’t say anything, just lies on her sleeping bag and I can see the outline of her face now, her profile, as she lies looking up at the roof of the tent. And I find her face restful, and I could look at it forever – I know it so well – the roundness of her throat, her jaw – a bit heavy – her strong chin, her lips, her nose which is straight, her brows and her forehead, the spikiness of her hair – till it’s brushed and the fringe combed down – and I realize how much I love her. Next to my mother she’s the most important person in my life, even ahead of Katie, who I love too and she’s cute and everything but I don’t share things with her in the same way even though she’s my sister. Or strictly my half-sister, but I never think of her as half anything but as my sister, the same now