Page 34 of Kiln Me Softly

Since Juniper still felt awful about the pit-firing disaster, she snuck into the cooling room and stole Tilly’s cracked pottery during her free period that Friday. Tilly had another job interview at a vintage clothes shop she was desperate to get, so Juniper knew she wouldn’t be caught.

By her, at least. She’d only just gotten comfortable on her usual stool in the workshop when Chris sauntered through the door whistling a tune that could have been ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ or ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba. Or neither.

He stopped short at the sight of Juniper and her glue, quick to cover his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Is it safe in here, or are you still contagious?’

‘If I say I’m still ill, will you leave me alone?

’ She was still distracted by all things funding, made worse by the fact that she’d been too sick to work her last two shifts.

Finally, the cold was shifting, but it had wiped her out good and proper.

Enough that she’d fallen asleep at Aiden’s again last night after cleaning Cerberus and making sure he was fed.

She wasn’t sure she could trust him to remember, but the hamster had seemed happy enough.

Perhaps it would be just another thing she was wrong about when it came to him.

‘You’re meaner than usual,’ Chris pointed out, approaching her desk with narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Well, lucky for you, you may not have to put up with me much longer.’ The words slipped from her before she could stop them, just like the super glue from the nozzle, which she was currently using to fix Tilly’s plates.

Above the thick frame of his glasses, his bushy brows pinched. ‘You’re not dropping out.’ He said it like it was a fact; like Juniper couldn’t possibly.

She supposed there was no harm in telling him. Perhaps he’d surprise her the way Aiden had and at least offer some advice. Maybe he knew about different, cheaper courses she could take next year, or better yet, perhaps he could have a word with the finance team.

Or maybe he would dance up and down with glee at the prospect of her leaving, and that would at least make it easier to say goodbye.

‘I might not have a choice. They’ve frozen my bursary, and without it, I can’t afford to stay for the final term. I’ve been taking as many extra work shifts as I can, but waitressing isn’t exactly going to cover my tuition.’

‘I heard about that. It was a shitty move to pull, even if the college is having money problems.’ He shook his head, surprising her with his sour words. ‘What? I do have some human empathy. Not a lot, but some.’

Maybe they were more alike than Juniper had realised, with their bluntness and dry sense of humour.

Juniper shuddered to think it, but the feeling of missing something she hadn’t yet lost left her gut sinking.

This course was hard, and she wasn’t sure she was cut out for it, but she’d wanted to try.

She’d wanted to prove to her mum, to anyone who had ever mocked her or belittled her, that she was capable of the same achievements people like Aiden and Tom were.

That people without money behind them could do the things they loved, too.

Now, it felt like her best days at RACA were already over, and all of them had involved Aiden and their project. Even at the exhibit, she hadn’t been able to completely enjoy herself, and Mum hadn’t cared about the brilliant grade she’d strived to achieve, just for her.

A small voice in her head wondered what the point was. Should she just cut her losses?

‘Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.’ She shrugged and went back to gluing, finding herself quite enjoying it. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle, quieting her brain the way sculpting once had.

‘I’m not sure I believe that. You may have cocked up the pit-firing, but you impressed me last term. And I don’t say that lightly.’

She froze in surprise. She must have been pitiable if even Christopher was being nice to her.

‘Besides.’ He ran a finger over the broken pieces of her teapot, which would be much harder to fix.

Much of it was in shards already, curved spout the only recognisable thing about it.

‘The patterns on these are gorgeous. Your combustibles may have been a little too combustible, but both you and Tilly clearly thought about what effects you wanted to make here.’

‘Not really. I just stole leftovers from the café I work in,’ she admitted. He was right, though: the clay was iridescent as a rainbow in some places, and the coffee had left streaks of rustic browns and sunshine yellows.

‘Oh, well then, I take it back. Leave this college immediately.’ He smirked, and she couldn’t help but do the same.

And then he snapped up quickly enough to make her jump, marching over to his desk drawer.

He collected something from it, then returned, slipping a pamphlet across Juniper’s workstation.

‘I don’t usually show this to first years, and the deadline isn’t so far off, but this may be the only solution I can think of. ’

‘What is it?’ Juniper picked up the pamphlet, which was titled The National Ceramics Contest and showed a picture of a gorgeous hourglass-shaped vase, where layering techniques had been used to scrape out different colours beneath the dark top surface.

In rich midnight-blue, aquas, and pinks, it reminded her of a new galaxy leaking out of a black hole.

‘It’s been going for years. If I hadn’t have won back in the day, I wouldn’t be here now, either.’

That gave her pause. She’d assumed Chris wasn’t too different to the majority of his students, with his posh accent and commanding confidence.

‘The cash prize is twelve thousand. More, I believe, than a year’s tuition. It also puts you on the map. My work ended up getting me a residency in Tuscany.’

Her mouth dropped open. That was a lot of money.

It would certainly get her through the year, and imagining her work recognised by people up and down the country was a dream.

Still, she flicked through the pages and knew there was no chance of her winning.

Past participants had gone on to create homeware lines in major stores like Harrods, not to mention many had become award-winning artists with hundreds of credentials to their names.

These pieces weren’t ambitious : they were perfect, enough to make anybody want them in their house.

Not like those creatures of hers, the ones Tom and Amir had laughed at.

‘This is great, but I’m not sure I have any spare time to enter a competition I won’t win.’

‘Your optimism is so inspiring,’ Chris deadpanned.

‘I can’t tell you what to do, Juniper, and I won’t.

You need to want this yourself. But I wouldn’t show this to you if I didn’t suspect you were capable.

Your ideas are original, and you sculpt more confidently than most first years I’ve taught.

There’s plenty of room for improvement, but that’s what this competition is for.

’ He jabbed his finger on the pamphlet. ‘It’s for people who want to be ceramicists.

People who are driven to put their work out there even when it’s terrifying.

And those who do get rewarded. The only question is, are you one of those people?

I thought you were when I met you. In fact, it’s why I encouraged the dean to offer you that grant, and why I protested against them freezing student funding. ’

Juniper was stunned. Chris had been the one to get her a place here?

She’d assumed it was just somebody looking to fill their quota of northern women for the sake of statistics, just to make sure the university wasn’t perceived as sexist or elitist. Then, she’d gotten here and discovered people like Tom, wealthy Londoners, were the minority. Was that his doing, too?

‘The fact that you’re gluing these pieces together when most people would have chucked them in the bin a long time ago tells me you have it in you.’ He pushed up off the desk, looking at her over his glasses. ‘And, to be completely honest, I’m not sure what you have to lose. But it’s your choice.’

‘What are the requirements?’ she asked quietly.

He looked pleased as he flicked to one of the back pages of the pamphlet, where it listed the requirements as a cohesive collection of functional homeware pottery of between four to six pieces.

Making five pieces with Aiden had taken her an entire term, and the deadline for this was marked at the beginning of March, less than two months from now.

‘Easy peasy lemon squeezy,’ Chris said.

‘No, Christopher. Difficult difficult lemon difficult.’ She took a deep breath and massaged her temples before finally coming to a decision. ‘But I will try. I have to try.’

He was right, after all. What did she have to lose?

‘Ta-dah!’ Juniper was there to display the sort-of-fixed plates as soon as Tilly arrived after lunch that afternoon. Those words from the other day still weighed on Juniper: ‘You’re going through a lot. I just wish… Never mind.’

Juniper knew what Tilly wished. That Juniper wasn’t so clumsy and impulsive. But if she had to be those things, she at least wanted to make it right, and Tilly’s face lit up like another dab of glue to smooth the cracks between them, too.

‘You didn’t!’

‘Be careful with them because they’re still wet. I got my thumb stuck to it for a while earlier.’ She rubbed the part where her skin still stung from finally tearing it free.

Meanwhile, Aiden walked past them and snorted, though he looked impressed by her work. ‘Juni and superglue. What a terrifying idea.’

‘Well, hello, lover boy. I heard that you are now the proud father of a displaced wee hamster.’ Tilly beamed, pinching Aiden’s cheeks in a way that did, unfortunately, make him look very cute. But Juniper was more disgusted at the nickname, and the implication that she was now co-parenting.