Lessons from the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

could help me.’
    â€˜And where is this journal? Now, I mean. What’s happened to it?’
    â€˜Miss Temple’s got it. She told me to mark the bits I wanted to use for assessment, and she wouldn’t read anything else. Because there’s a lot of other stuff mixed up with it. Private thoughts, and things. So I use a highlighter to show the bits I want assessed.’
    â€˜And you trust Miss Temple,’ Mr Murchison says, ‘not to even look at the rest?’
    â€˜Oh, yes. She promised she wouldn’t.’
    â€˜Has it occurred to you,’ Mr Jackson says then, ‘that your journal could be of use to us?’
    â€˜To you, Mr Jackson?’
    â€˜To this inquiry.’
    â€˜But you said it wasn’t an inquiry.’
    â€˜I said it wasn’t a formal inquiry.’
    â€˜I don’t see what my journal’s got to do with anything.’
    â€˜Well, it might. If, for example, there was any material in there about this present issue.’
    â€˜About Toni and Mr Prescott?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜But Miss Temple promised it was private. That nobody else could read it.’
    â€˜But she’s reading it.’
    â€˜Yes, but I trust her.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜Laura,’ Mr Murchison says then in his quiet voice. ‘I’m still wondering about this business of the allocation of students to the different buses. Now I understand about you and Miss Temple, but what about the other students? Who decided where they should go?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Mr Murchison.’
    â€˜What about Toni? Didn’t she discuss it with you?’
    â€˜Sort of. You see, it was Miss Temple and Mr Prescott who supported her coming in the first place, when some of the other teachers didn’t. But since I was already with Miss Temple and you could only have one girl to each bus –’
    â€˜It seemed natural for her?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜What about the other girl? There must have been a third?’
    â€˜Jenny Freeborn. She was with Miss Plummer and Mr Tremblings.’
    â€˜So who decided which of them went where? Toni and Jenny, I mean.’
    â€˜I don’t know, Mr Murchison.’
    â€˜Was it Mr Prescott?’
    â€˜Well, as I said, he and Miss Temple had supported Toni, and they’d told the other teachers they’d …’
    â€˜Keep an eye on her?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜And since you were with Miss Temple, because of your assignment, that left Mr Prescott.’
    â€˜Yes, but –’
    â€˜But what?’
    â€˜Well, she could still have gone with Miss Plummer and Mr Tremblings.’
    â€˜Would she have wanted to?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜Did she express any preference?’
    â€˜She would have preferred –’
    â€˜Mr Prescott?’
    â€˜I suppose.’

5
    We’re not even out of the Sydney traffic when I see this boy in the centre of the bus start convulsing. He keeps dipping and jerking his head like he’s an electronic duck with a malfunctioning chip, or something. And I know about fits because I did this first-aid course in Year 10, and the crucial thing is making sure their tongue’s clear so they don’t bite it off or swallow it, and getting them in a position so they don’t choke on their own vomit, and that.
    It’s only by chance but I’m actually looking at this boy when it starts, and I’m already thinking what a klunkhead he looks, even though he’s probably only twelve or thirteen, but he’s the biggest kid on the bus and has a square head and a flat dish of a face that looks like a rice pudding with tiny dark raisins for eyes and looks even uglier with his baseball cap worn backwards. It’s amazing, you see the fattest, ugliest kids all the time and their mothers seem to have no idea, and even if you told them, they’d probably just go, ‘Ugly? My kid? Have you ever looked in the