Lessons from the Heart Read Free Page A

because I haven’t said a single word yet, not even Thank you when Mr Jackson asked me to come in and sit down, because why would you when you never asked to be here in the first place.
    â€˜You must have guessed,’ he says, ‘what this is about.’
    I look at him.
    â€˜Various statements have been made to me alleging misconduct between a teacher and a student on the school trip to Alice Springs. You must have heard such rumours.’
    â€˜Some,’ I admit. ‘But that doesn’t mean –’
    â€˜Of course it doesn’t. That’s what we’re here to try to establish. Now you’re Miss Darling’s closest friend, you were sharing a tent with her throughout the trip. If anyone knows of any possible misconduct involving Miss Darling, then it would be you. Am I right?’
    â€˜I suppose so, Mr Jackson,’ I say. Because he is right. And suddenly all the neat plans I’d run through in my head to prepare for this seem silly and irrelevant, and I realize all I’ve been thinking about is saving Toni from getting into trouble and there’s a lot more than that involved. I almost wish now I had asked Mum to come with me. But I still won’t do anything that hurts Toni.
    â€˜So,’ Mr Jackson says, ‘just take your time and tell us – in your own words – what happened.’
    And I’m so worried and panicky by this stage, I just stall for time.
    â€˜Well, we got to Alice Springs and that –’
    â€˜And what, Miss Vassilopoulos? Please try to be more explicit.’ Which is the one thing I’m trying not to be. Though I can , if I want to be. In debating, where I’m the school captain, I can talk for ten minutes and never say a single um or and that because you lose points every time you do. So when Mr Jackson starts raving about relevance and being explicit and not saying and that and that, and says:
    â€˜Take us back to the beginning and tell us what happened from the time the bus left the School to the time you got back.’
    I say: ‘Do you mean what happened, Mr Jackson – because that’d be everything – or what happened that was of relevance to the issue under discussion?’
    And I can see Mr Jackson’s getting distracted and angry and forgetting the point of the whole meeting, and Mr Mumble-Mumble is smiling but pretending not to.
    â€˜You can safely leave it to us to decide what’s relevant and what’s not, Miss Vassilopoulos,’ Mr Jackson says. ‘All you need to do is present an account of what took place on the bus trip. Not every single event, of course, but the major events.’
    â€˜Well,’ I say, ‘the first place we stopped was Cowra, and they have this huge Japanese garden that used to be a prisoner of war and internment camp for Japanese during the Second World War. And it’s not just gardens and bamboo and tea houses and water features, they have this museum as well with Japanese dolls and pottery and costumes and calligraphy …’
    Mr Jackson had his own pen up ready to write when I started speaking, but now he’s put it down on the desk again and is turning it round and round under his white fingers. And somehow you get the feeling that what he’d really like to do is throw it.
    But he doesn’t because just then Mr Mumble-Mumble says very quietly:
    â€˜Laura, I wonder if you realize how serious this is?’
    And I look at him properly for the first time and even though he’s old and bald and a bit fat and has glasses and looks like everyone’s Dad on our street, I realize that behind all that he’s actually a person. And could even be nice.
    â€˜This thing’s gone too far to make a game of it.’
    â€˜It might even,’ Mr Jackson butts in, ‘become a police matter.’
    â€˜Police?’ I say. ‘But what’s it got to do with the police, Mr Jackson? No one was really