Free Lessons from the Heart by John Clanchy Page A

with Thomas, my brother – though I’ll be a hundred and four by the time he grows up. But, as well as loving Toni, I feel a bit ashamed, too, at how much I didn’t share with her about me and Philip, but how can you, and I wonder if it’s always like this when you’re so close until boys, or men, come in between.
    â€˜I suppose we’ll have to get up soon,’ I say. But I don’t move because I’m still waiting to see if she’s going to tell me anything. ‘That’s if we want to get in the showers first, before all the brats.’
    â€˜I suppose we’ll have to help the little buggers get their breakfast as well,’ she says, and then she is silent. ‘You know, Lolly,’ she says at last, ‘it would be wonderful out here if it was just you and me. It’s so peaceful.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I say. But I wonder can she mean it, and I feel so lonely not knowing this that I can’t stop myself.
    â€˜Toni?’
    â€˜Hmm?’
    â€˜Where did you go?’
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜After you peed on the grass. Did you come back then?’
    â€˜No,’ she says, and my heart lifts when I hear it. ‘I went for a walk.’
    â€˜A walk? What, in the dark?’
    â€˜What did you expect – the sun was going to come up just because I wanted to go for a walk?’
    â€˜But where did you go?’ I say, when I’m actually dying to ask did anyone go with you.
    â€˜Just round the oval, down by the rugby field.’
    â€˜But you should have woken me up. It could be dangerous. By yourself.’
    â€˜I know. All those wild Cobar men hiding in their caves, just watching and waiting for me to come out of my tent.’
    â€˜Stupid,’ I say, but we both snort, and I know now she’s not going to tell me.
    â€˜Laura? Is something wrong?’
    â€˜No,’ I say. Because I can hardly say I’m feeling miserable because she won’t tell me something I know already but shouldn’t.
    â€˜Well, come on then.’ She’s full of some crazy energy all of a sudden and leaps on my sleeping bag and unzips it, and starts dragging on my arm. ‘Get up. Before all the hot water’s gone.’
    â€˜All right, all right.’ I struggle free of my bag.
    â€˜Jesus,’ Toni says then.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜You didn’t go to bed in that? You must be boiling.’
    We both look at the tracksuit that I didn’t have time to take off.
    â€˜I got cold during the night,’ is all I can think to say. While Toni goes on looking.
    We walk to the showers together, but not talking now, and the sun is just up and lighting the yellow gravel path between us.
    â€˜Wouldn’t you like to sit up front for a while?’ Miss Temple says when we’re finally ready to leave Cobar and head for Broken Hill.
    The rest of us have been on the bus and waiting for about twelve hours by now, but teachers always take longer because they need time to fuss and look as if they’re in charge and count four times and still get it wrong, where anyone could see just from looking that – apart from the seat next to me – all the others are full. And the two other buses can’t move without us, because it’s our turn to lead.
    And you can just tell the drivers know all this, because they’re not in their seats either, but are standing in a group smoking and stretching and looking at their watches and shaking their heads and shrugging. And you can see what each gesture means in words, like when they shake their heads they’re saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, most of them have university degrees and they still haven’t got enough fingers and toes between them to get twenty-eight kids on a bus.’ And stretching means ‘Well, it’s not my funeral if we don’t get away on time – I’m driving the bus, I’m not packing it – and if we’re late