Page 26 of Second Song

That’s not me.

He starts to say more, but I lurch to my feet, spotting another accident about to happen, only it isn’t a lamb too close to an edge this time. It’s a little girl toddling towards water.

Her father holds up a hand before I can grab her. “Jamila’s okay,” he promises. “Watch.”

I sit again and do that, uneasy until I see what he’s already noticed. There aren’t any gaps in the little bridge she heads for. She toddles safely across it, her footsteps thumping against wood. Then she toddles back over, stamping harder. It’s another beat I can’t help but follow, tapping it out louder with my borrowed pen on the bench. She wheels around, interested, and we have a little dance party—a game of lead and follow—right when I should be selling myself rather than admitting what pops out while my hands and brain are busy.

“I still can’t sing. I mean, I can do it enough to help kids stay in tune, but that’s why I left my last teacher-training placement. I couldn’t perform in assessments.” This comes out so weakly. “Getting that spot was pretty much the only time my stepdad’s ever been happy with me. Can’t say I’m looking forward to telling him I walked out.”

I still haven’t answered a message I knew would be from him last night. It can stay unanswered.

Luke changes the subject, or that’s what I think he does when he gestures at the bridge and mentions his son’s own performance issue. “Hadi can’t do what Jamila is doing right now. Show him a bridge and his response is fear. He freezes.”

I nod. I saw it happen and recognised his silent panic, didn’t I? Now I sit in sunshine but I rub my arms, listening to the reason for it.

“Apart from Jamila, Hadi’s entire family was wiped out when a bridge was shelled near Aleppo. He watched that bridge blow up and take his mother and father with it. His older siblings and the rest of his family, all gone in split seconds with no warning. Jamila’s the only other survivor, and she’s too young to really remember.”

He touches his temple.

“It will all still be up here. Because that’s what trauma does. It sticks, sometimes in a closed compartment. Sometimes in compartments that leak poison across a lifetime, saying you’re not safe. Being one of her adoptive parents means I need to bear that in mind in the future. Hadi was a few years older. He can verbalise parts of what he witnessed. The quicker we give him the language and skills to help him work through it, the faster he’ll be able to manage life without staying frozen.”

That makes me freezing in front of a row judges or in university assessments seem pathetic until he continues.

“Hadi’s trauma response is entirely natural. It’s designed to keep him alive and kicking. That’s what any trauma response does. They all flood our endocrine systems with fight-or-flight juice. Or freeze-and-fawn juice.”

“Fawn?”

“People-pleasing. Doing whatever it takes to avoid conflict.” He taps what rests on his own lap—a workbook, I think, which is confirmed when he flips a few pages. “Here’s another classic response.”

Freezing.

He gives more detail. “Ever wonder why people stay in terrible situations?” He watches his daughter while saying, “Helping children break out of those frozen holding patterns is a large part of our work at Glynn Harber.”

There’s no reason for ice to spread inside me, but I freeze in bright spring sunshine when this little girl’s thumping footsteps are a sudden reminder of the door of a recording studio thudding closed with me trapped inside.

Luke Lawson can’t notice my reaction. He flips more pages. “Leaving children to fawn, freeze, fight, or flee after adverse childhood experiences can limit their life chances. It’s that simple and that complex.” He tilts that workbook my way, showing me another heading.

“Trauma-informed training?”

He nods. “It’s vital to our practice. Not all of our children need it, but some of them have been through ordeals to reach us.” He repeats what the padre told me. “We have to meet them exactly where they are to walk them through each reoccurrence. Being that person for them takes understanding because they’ll test us. These aren’t snowflakes. They’re survivors with rock-hard defences. Defences it takes real experience to chip through.”

Experience?

I’ve hardly any.

My heart falls until he adds, “Like yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yes.” Luke Lawson can’t have read the headmaster handbook. He doesn’t know that his stern mask slips each time he mentions his children. “Hadi is old enough to remember being bereaved with zero warning and then displaced. He was sent to live with virtual strangers, surrounded by a different language than the one that used to spell safety and comfort to him. What would you call that, Rowan?”

There’s something in my throat.

I can’t say the word traumatic around it, not when I could also say familiar.

I make myself verbalise this. “No one blew up a bridge in front of me.” He shouldn’t compare us, not when I still have a stepparent, even if I don’t really know or understand him. “My mother’s husband made sure I had a place at one of the best schools in the country. That’s hardly the same as me surviving warfare, is it?”

“Her husband? Not someone you consider a father?”

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