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compositions.
    He sits down at his desk and takes out the next one. My Journey, by Jack Broad.
My journey was in a dream in my dream I had to go a long way on a path only the path was thin I had to walk very carfully soon I saw I was walking on the top of a wall there was a drop on both sides I was afraid I must walk on because it was my journey there were walls everywhere I didn’t know where to walk the drop frihgtened me it was so far down there were clouds there after a while I didn’t mind any more I liked walking on walls and below only clouds I thought if I fell off the wall the clouds would be soft but I didn’t fall
    The boys and girls drift into the classroom in twos and threes. Alan Strachan looks up and crooks a finger at Jack Broad. The boy approaches.
    ‘Jack. Your composition. It’s about a dream.’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    ‘Haven’t I told you before that there is nothing in the world more boring than telling other people your dreams?’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    ‘A psychoanalyst will listen to your dreams. But you have to pay him a great deal more than you pay me.’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    ‘How many full stops have you used in this composition, Jack?’
    He holds the sheet of paper before the boy. The boy squints at it and seems to be counting in his head.
    ‘None sir.’
    ‘Is it all one sentence?’
    ‘No sir.’
    ‘No sir.’ Alan Strachan sighs, takes out his red marking pen, and writes on the bottom of the page, You can do better than this. He gives the composition back to the boy. The bell rings for the new period.
    ‘Alice. How do you start a new sentence?’
    ‘Capital letter sir.’
    ‘So why haven’t you done it?’
    ‘Don’t know sir.’
    ‘Do any of you hear a single thing I say to you? Am I talking to myself here?’
    They stare back at him, mute but unthreatened. They have no respect, he knows it well enough. His job is to get them into the expensive schools that will equip them for a life of privilege, that’s what their parents are paying for. He’s only another kind of servant, like the nanny and the gardener.
    Why must it be so hard? Why so lonely and so hard?
    Life must go on
Reluctantly

10
    The way he looked at me, thinks Marion Temple-Morris, easing her car round the tricky corner by the Trevor Arms. The way his eyes look and then look away, he wants to look but he daren’t look, it’s so sweet. But what can I do? David would get into one of his rages. He’d say it was all my fault, he’d say I’d led him on. Then it would be, ‘You do it to yourself, Marion. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself, Marion.’ But I’ve done nothing to encourage him. These things just happen sometimes. No more than a crush, of course, he’s still almost a boy, but he’s lonely, anyone can see that. Curious the way he was coming in as I was coming out. You’d almost think he’d been waiting for me. Not that he’s anything but the perfect gentleman, which if I’m being honest is more than I can say about David.
    In the Tesco car park there’s a space free in the row nearest the river, and not far at all from the store. Marion takes this as a good omen. Sometimes you have to walk miles bumping your trolley over uneven tarmac, dodging the incoming cars. Everyone lives in the hope of a newly vacated space near the set-down. Of course it’s silly to think this way but she does have a belief, call it a feeling, that there are good days and bad days. On the good days it’s as if the world is on your side. As for the bad days, well, we all know about them. We’ve heard quite enough about them, thank you very much, as David used to say.
    She picks out one of the shallow trolleys. The deep ones are hard to unload, you have to bend right over to reach the bottom, and whoever needs that amount of shopping? Just an organic chicken breast, some broccoli perhaps, a bottle of Cinzano. A vermouth at the end of the day does no harm, though strictly speaking alcohol is not on the agenda. One must