This opened up a heated debate, ignited by Radia, on how you shouldn’t forgive anyone who picked on you or pushed you over, and the whole thing descended into a lot of noise and disagreement, until Laura Crocombe was forced to break off from talking with her friend and intervene.
The children, chastened by the shame of their headteacher telling them off outside of school – and when she was wearing her out-of-school clothes like she was a real person – brought a new type of focus, and they sat with fingers on their lips for as long as they remembered to and everyone was suggesting ‘good friendship vocabulary’ at Austen’s urging.
‘Caring?’ the oldest of the bunch said.
‘Telling jokes,’ said the eldest Crocombe boy.
‘Invites to birthday parties,’ another suggested, and so on, until Austen’s paper was covered in ink.
‘Let’s use some of these good friendship words to craft our own poems, okay?’
‘Like, how?’ said the littlest Burntisland.
‘Well, like this one.’ Austen pulled a notebook from her pocket. ‘This is one of my own poems and it’s going to be printed in a magazine next month!’
This prompted a lot of impressed oohing and a smattering of applause from the kids and Radia loudly announcing, ‘She wrote it formyAuntie Patti, you know?’
‘Okay, thank you, Rads. Anyway, it goes like this.’ Austen cleared her throat and leaned closer to her attentive audience.
‘Before you, I didn’t know the sky was blue.
Before me, you told me, you’d been lonely.
Before us, there was a long waiting.
Now there is summer in winter and only the briefest, passing,scudding clouds.
Lonely no longer.
Forever after, us
Beneath a blue sky.’
Austen closed the book with a smile and looked around the group. Annie clapped, but the children didn’t move.
‘Scudding?’ asked the smallest Crocombe.
‘Here we go,’ said Radia, doing a dramatic eye roll. ‘You’ve set him off again.’
‘Scud, scud, scudding,’ the boy went.
‘Very good, Charlie, well done! Take that energy and write your very own poem. You’ve got five minutes, starting…’ Austen looked at her bare wrist. ‘Now!’
The swiffing sounds of felt pens moving over paper overtook everything. All their little heads were bent over, tongues jutting from the corners of mouths in concentration.
‘You too, Ms Luna,’ said Austen.
‘Oh! Right, of course.’ Annie, who’d been enjoying the sweet ease of the afternoon and the familiar feeling of being surrounded by young people again, jolted her eyes to her blank pad. ‘Write something about friendship, yeah? Sure, okay.’
Radia shushed her.
There was only one thing Annie could think of writing. It welled up in her and before she’d even got the first line down her eyes were wet with tears and she’d forgotten where she was entirely.
Cassidy, I miss you.
Why aren’t we talking?
I know I was rough on you, telling you how I felt about Dave, and when you’d just broken up and all, but I never imagined you’d be getting back with him. But we don’t have to talk about Dave because no matter what, I’ll always like you and approve of you.
