“Er, thanks? What kind of club is it? Do we get badges? Or stickers? My mum used to give me a sticker when I went to every lesson for a week.” He pauses. “I… didn’t get that many of them. But they were cool – she bought loads of packs from Poundland and she’d let me pick.”
“You got a sticker for going to school?” Priya looks at Lila.
“Everyone is different, honey.”
“My mum would buy us an ice cream if we got all As on our report cards,” I say, a flash of a memory taking me back to hot summers sitting in the park, my hands sticky with ice cream, nibbling on a flake next to Sophie and thinking life couldn’t get better than this.
“If you got all As? Mate. No wonder you’re messed up.”
“Ewan!” Lila chides.
“What? Talk about impossible standards!”
“I get all As,” Priya chimes in.
“That’s because you’re my prodigal wunderkind. My special girl. But a lot of people don’t love school the way you do, or they learn in different ways, or they’re interested in different things. It doesn’t mean they’re not smart, it means that the education system doesn’t cater to them the way they need.” Lila ruffles her hat. “And what about you, Angus? What awful system of bribery did your parents have for you?”
Angus frowns. “No bribery. We didn’t always have time for school because we’d be helping on the farm. And Da didn’t care much about our grades, long as the teachers weren’t calling him in to talk about us.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
He shrugs. “Is what it is.” Then his face softens into a smile. “Ah, but once a month Da would take us on a trip. He’d pack us all cheese sandwiches and we’d pile into the van and he’d drive us into the hills – wouldn’t tell us where we were going, so it was always a surprise – and then we’d spend the day together, bagging a new munro.”
“A munro?” I ask.
Angus laughs. “It’s what we call a mountain.”
“Wait a second. This?” Ewan swings his crutch at the surrounding scenery. “This is your idea of fun as a child?”
“This? No. Obviously not. Where’s the challenge in this?” Angus turns and points at the nearest peak. “Now that. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’ll stick with my stickers, thanks,” Ewan says.
“Yeah, my ice cream is looking pretty good right now,” I agree.
“Mum lets me have a lemonade as a treat once a month,” Priya joins in. “Otherwise she says sugar gives me the zoomies, and if I had it all the time, I’d be far too much.”
“Give her a soda and she’ll be haring up that mountain after you, Angus,” Lila laughs.
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“I’d like to climb a mountain,” Priya says thoughtfully. “Is it harder than this?”
“Some. It’s a bit like what we did yesterday, remember? Only you have to do it for longer, and sometimes you have to get down on all fours and scramble up the rocks. And it can be a bit frightening when you’re up high.”
“Sounds hard.”
Angus shrugs again. “Yeah, it’s hard.” He catches my eye. “But sometimes it’s worth pushing through hard things – otherwise you don’t get the view.”
Priya sighs. “It is very pretty at the top.” Then she nods, cap bouncing over her eyes. “Okay. I’ll come.”
“You’ll… come?”
“The next time you go up a mountain. I’m going to come.”
Lila chuckles. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a shadow, Angus. Good luck!”
“I’m never bloody going hiking alone again, am I?” Angus grumbles. He looks up at the rising sun. “Day’s wasting. Are we going or what?”
