Now he thinks I’m some random TV presenter who’s carried a torch for a celebrity tennis star and probably has posters of him on her wall.
“It’s all dead; why’s it so hard to pull off the wall?” Rhian snaps my attention back. “Like they’re glued to each other or something.”
“That’s ivy for you. It has a very sophisticated gripping system.” I show her where the roots have attached to other branches and to the cracks in the wall. “Once we’ve cut enough, you’ll need to scrape this off.”
Ricky, bless him, keeps clearing the rubbish so we can move around.
“I really want to be a teacher,” Rhian continues, picking back up her previous conversation. “But to get accepted into college, you need good GCSEs and my school…” She hesitates, then continues, pretending nonchalance. “They’re only nice to their pet students. Try being the only biracial girl in the whole school.”
“School can be like a war zone. Here, grab this.” I hold out a thick bundle of branches so I can get under them and cut the base. “I was never one of the popular girls. Many kids made fun of me because of dirt under my nails or on the knees of my trousers from gardening. They used to call me Titch.”
“What’s a Titch?”
“Short for Alan Titchmarsh,” I explain. “He used to present a gardening show on the BBC long ago.”
“Was he sexy?”
I laugh. “No. At least not to schoolgirls.”
“Stupid. Our maths teacher”—her voice takes on a confiding note as if she’s already decided to trust me—“was a hundred percent in love with one girl, always giving her attention. And if you dared to ask a question he just mocked you.”
She pulls hard on the branches so when my secateurs finally cut through just above the ground, the entire section comes off.
“Anyway,” she says with vehemence. “I’ll show them!”
“My sister told me that the best way to ‘show them’, was to work hard and get better at whatever I wanted to become. So if you want to be a teacher, hold on to your dream and don’t think about what others say.”
“Like you showed them. Because look at you now. You’re gorgeous and you’re famous – on TV and everything. I bet those girls who called you Titch are secretly all following you on Instagram and pretending they were your friends at school.”
“Thank you.” It’s touching how quick she is to defend me. “I’m not really on Instagram.”Please God, I hope I never make it on social media.
“I want to work with small children and special needs.” Rhian emerges from under the canopy of some green-and-brown leaves and sits back on her heels. “Like Rhys – he goes to this incredible school for deaf children.”
“Rhys?”
“You’re new. Sorry. Forgot. You don’t know anyone here. He’s Evan’s nephew. A super-intelligent boy; he can read very fast. And then there’s Henrietta who is very shy and sometimesgets the selective mutism? Haneen lets me help her with homework. And you know what? When I’m a teacher, I’m going to be a million times better than Llancaradoc High School. Evan says if I show myself to be reliable and hardworking, he’ll sponsor me to go to Aberystwyth University and get a PGCE.”
“So why are you helping me cut ivy?” Surely it doesn’t have much relevance to a special needs teacher.
“Everything counts. The professor says no work is wasted if it’s useful to someone. And he’s teaching us.”
“The professor?”
See, this is my skill as a TV presenter: to ask the right question to draw someone out and keep them talking. The professor, one of the Kendric House partners, didn’t strike me as an obvious teacher for troubled teens.
“The professor makes learning fun. He says if we work hard, we can pass two GCSEs this summer and do the rest next year,” Rhian tells me with genuine excitement. “And the old people help too. Have you met the Squad?”
It’s starting to dawn on me that Kendric House is indeed a community in many ways.
“The Squad look like totallygerris, I mean proper-old. But they…” She pauses, trying to find a way to explain.
Rhian has an unusual slang. I can’t tell if it’s Welsh or just teen-speak. I don’t want to make her feel judged, so I just listen and move down a few steps to start on more ivy. We’ve managed to clear a section of wall about two yards long.
“You some days think”—she starts—“like some people show theirselves not how they really are on the inside. Know what I mean?”
“Just like you and Ricky are much nicer than your schoolteachers thought?” I suggest.
She brightens. “Exactly. When Leonie asked us to help out serving the Squad tea and fruit and collecting laundry, I hated that. I mean, they’re eighty years old or something. But this old lady, Shirley, she used to be an opera singer and keeps telling me I should stand better. ‘Don’t slouch’, every time she sees me. ‘Your posture is your best friend; respect your back and it will respect you.’ She also says I need to speak better or people will judge me by my colour because my mum was black. She says my voice is letting me down. What do you think?”
