Neill’s phone was ringing, vibrating the wood of his bedside table like a wasp trapped in a cow’s mouth, till his arm lunged out and clattered it to the floor.
‘Fuck, fuck! What the fuck does he want at this time.’
Natalia opened one eye to see him shuffling out of the bedroom door, cock raised from his pants like a fishing rod as he answered:
‘Steve. You’re in A&E? Christ—’
6am. About an hour ago, unbeknownst to snoring Neill she’d performed a repeat of yesterday, slipping him in her mouth again until upon his stirring, she’d laid back down and found her grin drooping into a snore as deep as his.
Neill came back in. Now the only thing stuck up was his hair.
‘Goodness,’ in deep morning man drawl, ‘Dinkey’s sick and so is Williams. Coleman’s still away, and I have to get in pronto to open the school. Come on, Mowgli, up, up—’
Rubbing her eyes, she crawled along the bed in her knickers, till he reached and slapped her bottom with the paddle side of a hairbrush and she squealed flat into a heap.
‘I thought for a moment spanking you in the mornings might be an idea, but—’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming…’
‘Maybe later darling. Bathroom.’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4du2qa4Ghm
*
Neill was standing in a wine-red shirt and pinstripe cedar brown jacket suit, pouring a coffee, whilst Natalia sat tying back her hair, wishing she’d had time to wash it.
‘I have both the cleaner and chimney sweep coming today. They’ll be done and dusted by the time you get back.’
Natalia gazed with a mouthful of Cheerios as he unlocked the top hatch of the kitchen door and lit up a fag.
‘That stable door gets smoked through more than the chimney,’ she remarked. ‘Was it the main attraction of buying this cottage?’
‘Certainly helps me discreetly suck this little morning glory.’
A disproportionate note of laughter made him turn.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Her spoon tinkled from bowl to mouth for a minute then paused.
‘By the way, Neill, some boy came to the bus stop yesterday after you’d gone. Is it really safe to drop me from your car in case anyone sees?’
‘Hm. I can drop you just before the bend then,’ he tapped his cigarette and nodded. ‘So better eat up.’
‘But he was walking from that way. Not sure where exactly. Kind of just appeared.’
‘We’ll be able to see if anyone is walking down as we drive. Worst case, I’ll drive you to the next stop.’
‘No way. Yesterday there were at least five people at that one. Standing there all looking like—’
‘Natalia. At this rate I’ll be taking you all the way to the school. Stop rabbiting on, stick that spoon in your mouth and then your toothbrush.’
‘Oh, like last night when you silenced me to sleep?’
‘You kept talking about Cowpat,’ he puffed. ‘So I thumb-gagged you. You’ll be getting used to worse if you want to be my girlfriend. Shame,’ as he shut up the top hatch, ‘all I’ve had today was a mourning borey from Newcastle’s most vapid incel and his fanciful chest tremors.’
He necked the last of his coffee like a tequila shot.
‘Hm, no,’ she pouted. ‘You had a pretty good one.’
‘You were asleep,’ he frowned as he stepped over.
‘Or,’ as she wiped her grinning mouth of milk, arising, ‘maybe you just had a wet dream again?’
He pushed her shoulder back down into the seat.
‘It was you wasn’t it?’
A giggle froze on her face. ‘Hmm? What do you mean… sir?’
‘You’re about as good at hiding something as I am at eating more than a spoonful of that diabetic maize you chow down every morning. And I think I know what else you’ve been chowing down on. Open your mouth.’
She laughed and wriggled sideways as he gripped her chin and shook her till her jaw lapsed.
‘Put your tongue out. All the way out—’
Smacking the last bits of cereal she put out her tongue. He rubbed the back of two fingers over it.
‘Keep that right there, just like that—’
His hands went to undo his belt - as she couldn’t help but smile her tongue back inside - till his one hand gripped her cheeks again and shook it back out. He tugged down his pants hem and rummaged out his soft cock, which she can see is swelling, perhaps about five throbs in, then taking both his palms to each of her cheeks, he pulled her forward and stuffed it in her mouth.
Her eyes went up at him with a muffled moan, pulled up against the golden tuft of his low belly hair, listening to the whistle of her nose breaths as his hands clamped her ears, and the newness of this force makes her little velvety, vague uriney friend somehow ruder than ever, an accosting intruder she salivates numbly on for a second as he robs the throbs from her, busting her little affair with Mr Twitch.
‘Oh, yes, that was you. Suck then, just like you did when I was asleep. Today and yesterday? Twice?’
Two nods gave his cocktail sausage a double chafe of her palette.
‘And why did you stop? Were you playing a game?’
‘Mmmmh.’ Her sucking lips curled in mirth.
‘Funny, because it’s a game I rather like to play too. It’s called how I’d teach my girlfriend how to shut up and suck. Want to see if you’re any good?’
He pulled out completely and let go of her head as she wobbled forward.
‘We start by you saying the following: ‘I will speak when Neill wants me to speak, and suck when he wants me to suck.’’
Her mouth wavered. She knew he wasn’t going to let this pass without her participation, even if they ended up late to school, and half to try help prevent them being too late, with bemusement she began:
‘I… will speak when Neill wants me to speak, a—’
His hand yanked back his foreskin prematurely, to the raw stretched underside of his helmet that he drove her head straight back onto like a beer pump, her mouth with no choice but to open wider to receive his growing shaft, whipping along the throb in her body like a startled horse by the jockey of her pulsing heart, her tongue not so much licking as being held down like a log on a burst waterbed.
‘Very good. But we’ve got time to make sure.’
He pulled out again, as she stares at it glistening, holding itself now handsfree to the ceiling.
‘Well?’
‘I… will speak when Neill wants me to speak, and—’
His belly button becomes her third eye again, this time, his stake thrusts past her palette and she retches, loud but muffled as he holds her firm on it, and she feels a wave of embarrassment for this, but he unapologetically grips her hair from her scalp and keeps pushing through another retch as if oblivious, or even satisfied by more of this on-the-job training. Glancing up mid-rhythm, there is the same expression on his face as when he changed the batteries in the remote - a furrowed, quotidian concentration, not anger she hopes - and now, thrusting so quickly, that despite its sensational thickness and engorging taste she finds thrilling, she wants him to slow down… too big and too quick she thinks, as her eyes watered, and as her hands fidget impotently at the vice he had going at her face, he shakes them back down like sparrow’s feet.
She wrenched her head sideways to try pause or stall him.
‘Nei— Wai-mmmmff—’
He held her head back centre.
‘Suck. Suck like there’s no tomorrow.’
His hand went to her throat and pressed at the front and it takes her a moment to realise he is trying to stop her gag reflex. And it seemed to work. Clever dick. Back and forth, back and forth, she cups her lips and beds her tongue to deliver what she learns is the pleasure his penis seeks from her mouth; warm, wet, toothless drill-hole for a pogo stick to reach its full thwack and explode, whilst something corresponding ballooned and swirled in her cervix at his brutish frogmarch to the end. Like one large finger she sucks in mechanical waves at once unnerved and soothed by it, till he looks up at the clock - as though finally remembering they’re in a rush - he permits his own to follow through.
‘Listen. In a minute I’m going to come—’
‘Mmmmph—’
‘…And the best way so you don’t gag and spill it on my trousers or on your skirt, will be to shoot it right down your throat,’ he said as calmly as when he looked up her bus timetable. ‘Remember what I said about sitting on top of Joan and coming right down her throat so quick she didn’t have time to gag?’
‘Erhhhmm-yeh—’ A tiny nod as much as a head staked to the throat could give.
‘We’ll do it slowly,’ he stroked the back of her head like an exquisitely beautiful urinal he wanted to placate but thoroughly release every drop of fluid inside of, then fiddling at her throat again and pressing with long manly murmurings, that made her moan softly in this moment of being glued to the cock hole of this man she’d admired for so long, about to impregnate her food pipe - what! - the bolt of an uncertain cough arises on the thought, so she blocks the thought - almost hums to herself - till he bursts an exhale of hot liquid down her throat, as sudden and swift as accidentally swallowing chewing gum, and finally he withdraws, releases her like a science experiment from a probe.
She is pulling her sleeve to her mouth not entirely sure what to think of what just happened. A violation, like the time she’d gone to tidy away some things in her mum’s garage and her mouth walked straight into a spider’s web strewn over the door. But exhilaration, by the privilege that his intimate fluid had passed so discreetly deep into her like a nod from one sentinel to another.
He tossed her a square of kitchen roll. ‘No time to brush your teeth. I’ve done it for you. Let’s go.’
Batting away the remembrance of him saying ‘you beautiful, beautiful girl’ the first time she wanked in his office, she wonders was she supposed to say that to him? You beautiful, beautiful… face fucker?
‘Fags?’ She croaks instead, spying them on the counter.
‘Oh heavens yes.’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhhxJdiIbC9
*
‘Are you alright?’
His voice was a bit like Joan’s. Lancashire. Surely can't be his son, didn’t look posh enough.
Standing there at the bus stop she nodded briefly at the bronze boy-man from yesterday. Was she alright? Yes, so why did her face look hang-dog enough to invite query? Was it because Neill practically raped her mouth this morning? The dubious feeling that she’d enjoyed it? The fact he’d mentioned Joan during it? Guilt she’d gagged several times on his game of knobgag? At least a vagina couldn’t gag. They could only sting or throb.
‘Would you like a Smint?’
She shook her head. Her teeth still tasted of Neill’s foreskin and she’d just fingered a stub of hair off her tongue, but she wasn’t deigning to a stranger’s mints, even if she was clearing her throat every ten seconds for what was probably another pube at her tonsils.
‘Do you live round here?’
Her eyes flickered reluctantly back to him.
‘You see,’ he added, ‘I’m from Manchester Uni. I also run a business. I’m staying with my aunt just over there—’
He pointed over the field to a house tucked behind some hedgerows. So that’s where he came from. From across the field like a human scarecrow. Runs a business? What is he, a pimp?
She wondered what her safest response was.
‘Yes. I live. Here.’
‘Right,’ he smiled.
She must sound like a foreigner. That’s an idea - pretend she’s foreign. Steer away from Russian though.
‘Sor-ry,’ she drew out her vowels. ‘I’m… Spaneesh.’
His eyes lit up.
‘¡Ah, te ves española, con tu cabello oscuro y tus ojos! ¿De qué parte de España eres?’
Oh, fuck.
She nodded again vaguely and turned to stare at the bend in the road where the bus was now coming.
As the doors flapped open, he flashed a brown wrist to beckon her on first. Oh bugger off, chivalrous Spanish show-off Sminty scarecrow.
Going straight to the back seat she put on her earphones. She is under my thumb, Mick Jagger sang, it’s alright, it’s alright, he keeps rabbiting on, like he needs a cock shoved in his own mouth, lulling her into a trance as the bus engine retched and groaned, watching a woman waiting to alight with her red coat swishing back and forth like Neill’s shirt flaps in her face.
Form was quiet; covered by Noble. No Ryan today, no Luke, no Laura. Was everyone’s chest fancifully trembling?
At break, down through the staircase windows she saw Neill talking to students in the playground. Mug of something in one hand, blowing smoke centimetres from their faces - did he really raise the school’s rating doing that? Or maybe he’s just started doing that, now it’s in the bag. Now he’s pointing explaining something, laughing, cocking his head modestly, and talking endearingly to a shorter girl of the pack as he steps back to include her in the conversation. No Shepherd’s Pie and crumble for them though; no cunt-mushed bananas or deep throated breakfast. And as they all turn away, the transactional pleasantries are done, his neutral face in the moment of severance denotes no impression left that is worthy of more than a detached squint. No grasped wrists, no rain dance between nipples, no early morning worm for the bird, overriding alky mothers and laws of the land to degrade and conquer; deliver a kitty from ‘BC’ life into… AD? After Dick? A Dream? All Discreetly without detection from the outside world at all?
‘Ah, Natalia!’
She turned. ‘Hi, Mrs Clayton.’
‘I just want to apologise for my abruptness yesterday. I’ve heard you really haven’t been well. Do you think you need extra support with coursework?’
‘No, I’m fine now.’
A red flash strode in behind her.
‘Ah, Susan!’
‘I was just chatting with Natalia, checking she’s on top of everything…’
‘Oh! She soon will be’ - his words landed on top of Natalia’s head as stared down at his shiny round toe caps - ‘although usually things have to get on top of you first before you get there!’
‘Oh, don’t I know it,’ Clayton sighed. ‘Well I wanted a quick chat with you about the assessments. Unless you’re helping Jenny cover French, as you’re fluent?’
‘Can’t Noble parle en francais?’
‘He can’t speak a blimmin’ word of it.’
‘Won’t matter, as neither do the pupils,’ he chuckled. ‘Let’s go!’
They wandered off like assessments were the most riveting thing in the world, whilst Natalia went on to English where Jenny Francis arrived skidding on her high heels.
‘Settle down! Things are in chaos trying to find cover for French and English—’
Natalia felt her phone buzz. She peered into her skirt hem to see an email saying she had a message reply on LinkedIn.
‘…Let’s not create more chaos, folks! Natalia, James - books open please! Heads down and work!’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4lJrKaQQiu
*
By the end of English, Miss Francis - who’d been ping-ponging her head from board to textbook whilst berating someone every sixty seconds, was hurrying out to ‘grab old Ignoble’ for Natalia’s next lesson, French, where the first five minutes involved a pen-throwing war between Stacey and four boys who seemed hell bent on making the noise of twenty farm animals. But it gave Natalia the opportunity to finally pull out her phone.
A rising in her throat, she opened up LinkedIn.
‘Dear Natalia,
Sorry, I’m afraid I am not who you are looking for. I have lived in St Petersburg all my life. Good luck finding your dad.’
- Anton Tretchikov
She stuffed it away, just as Miss Francis burst in to quieten the room, and then out again, to ‘find out where Noble is because I’m having a blooming mental breakdown as it is.’
A moment later the door swung open to a flash of brown and red, and a familiar bark:
‘Alright, alright! Asseyez-vous! Un peu de silence!’
The class went on noisily.
‘Oh, you don’t speak French. SHUT UP!’
The class went dead with a couple of laughs.
‘Pick up those pens, Stacey—’
‘Yes, sir.’
His hand raised to the boys.
‘Taisez-vous au fond! That means, shut up in the back!… La maîtresse,’ Neill resumed a smoother tone, ‘est absente jusqu’à... qui diable sait. That means, your teacher Mrs Williams is away until - who the hell knows!’
The class tittered, as Natalia watched with baited breath. Already this was entertaining even if it was a five-minute fill-in.
‘Alors! Aujourd’hui,’ he continued, ‘je suis ton professeur!’
Natalia instantly smiled.
‘Can anyone translate that?’
The class was silent. His eyes fell on Natalia.
‘Mademoiselle Molova?’
‘It means you’re doing the class today, Neill.’
‘Correcte!’ he enthused. ‘Quelqu’une parle français, Dieu merci!’ (Someone speaks French, thank God!)
Oh Neill, stick your cock back down my throat.
He pulled down the chalk board with a dramatic rattle as the room comically gasped. No one ever used the chalk board.
‘Où est la craie?’ He snapped his fingers looking for the chalk, located it in a drawer, then shifted his eyes around the class, landing again on Natalia.
She knew that plotting face.
‘Adam! Constantly chit-chatting. Vilain garçon! Swap places with Natalia. You sit where her clever bottom was and you’ll perhaps learn something.’
Giggles arose, as Adam and Natalia exchanged places; she raising a confused eyebrow at Neill, who was frowning over some sheets on the desk.
‘Silence!’ he boomed in French accent like a movie villain. ‘In this lesson we’re going to be doing something different,’ as he pushed aside the sheets, raised his arm up the board and chalked vigorously:
‘Le corps.’
‘When’s the last time you did body parts, Samantha?’ He rapped his chalk twice next to the words.
Suddenly Natalia was glad to be at the back.
‘Not for a while, sir,’ Sam answered.
‘Bien! We’ll do it today. But before we begin, I’d like to teach you all the right way to address the teacher in French. ‘Une maîtresse,’ he began busily chalking in his flamboyant curly writing, ‘is literally ‘mistress,’ and ‘un maître’ means ‘master,’ for a man. Je suis ton maître… Natalia!’
Natalia’s eyes widened as he went on, eyes on her:
‘How would a pupil address the teacher in the classroom?’
‘Isn’t it…’ Natalia raised her voice in answer, I mean, est-ce… Madame ou Monsieur?’
‘Correcte! Merci. In this lesson: no Neill, no sir! What do we say?’
‘Monsieur,’ came the chorus of a few.
‘Oui. Alors! Avoid the schoolboy error. Please make sure you say muh-syur. No ‘n’ sound. Commençons! Let’s begin—’
He chalked at lightning speed:
La tête. Le…
The chalk broke.
‘Merde!’ he growled.
Natalia stifled a laugh.
He fished another stick from the drawer and continued:
Le cou. La poitrine. Le pied. Le visage. Le doigt. Les yeux / l’oeil.
He tapped the top word.
‘La tête! Adam?’
Adam hesitated. Neill was already flaring his nostrils.
‘Head, sir.’
‘Bravo, Adam! …Natalia! Le cou.’ His eyes fell to her neck.
‘Cul?’ she smirked - the word for bottom.
‘Le cou, vilaine fille.’
She smiled. ‘The neck… monsieur.’
‘Correcte! Bien,’ as he flew down to the next, and the next line, calling them out and picking on a pupil to answer.
Then he came back to Natalia.
‘Natalia. Le doigt.’
‘Finger.’
‘Bien! Alors—’ He began writing on a new line. ‘Another for you, young lady—’
Thumb.
He turned, looking as haughty as when he picked up the armful of shopping in Haworth. She now knew thoroughly why he’d placed her at the back.
‘You don’t remember it?’
‘Non, pardon,’ she blinked.
‘Ouh, là là! Pouce,’ as he chalked it. ‘Say it.’
‘Pouce.’
‘And how would we say, two thumbs?’
Her face not resisting a smile now: ‘Deux pouces. ‘S’ on the end.’
‘Correcte!’ as he wrote it. ‘Thumbs up!’
Was she really surprised though?
‘Thumbs up in French would translate as pouces vers le haut,’ he added, ‘but they don’t say it in French. They would just say très bien, which is very good. The same thing, Natalia, n’est ce pas?’
‘Oui, monsieur, deux pouces sont très bien.’
‘Mmm.’
Oh, how far was he going to go. Thank god Ryan wasn’t here today. And yet to everyone here, all was genially banal as usual in the classroom.
He licked his lip as he took his chalk back to the board. ‘If we want to make sentences with these words, Stacey, what verbs might we need?’
‘Er’ - came Stacey’s cogs turning - ‘verbs. Like, I have?’
‘Yes yes, the verb to have. What is it?’
‘J’ai… I have. Tu as… you have.’
‘Name of the verb, Stacey.’
After a moment’s hesitation: ‘Avoir.’
‘Enfin! Avoir, correcte!’ He chalked and underlined it with a dramatic shake of his jacket sleeve, then continued writing:
‘I have blue eyes. J’ai les yeux bleus! She has brown eyes. Elle a les yeux bruns!’
Natalia chewed her lip.
‘I have blonde hair. J’ai les cheveux blonds! She has long, lovely brown hair. Elle a de longs et beaux cheveux bruns!’
He turned from the board as Natalia blinked away.
‘Right, Anthony! …It is Anthony isn’t it? He squinted at the boy near the front.
Natalia stifled a laugh.
‘Make a sentence about your body part please.’
‘Er…’
Neill frowned at his watch.
Natalia’s head bowed into her hands to hide her growing grin. He was so comical, yet esoterically so - his jokes went over the heads of the entire class, as if she was a lone audience watching braindead androids, slumped grey-jumpered bodies propped up to appear alive, only speaking when prodded with an ‘Alors!’ from Neill.
‘J’ai les yeux… verts,’ said Anthony finally, leafing through a page on his desk.
‘Excellent, et ultra rapide!’ mocked Neill. ‘Now write it!’ He handed him the chalk.
He was set on getting pupils up on their feet then. Definitely something was coming her way.
Anthony finally penned the word, to Neill’s resounding caw.
‘Bien! Asseyez-vous, Anthony. Right. Gorge! Joue! Cheveux—’ he chalked up. ‘Poignet! Cuisse! Cheville! Côte! Ventre! Peau! You have two minutes to translate them all.’
Natalia knew half of them, but checked the dictionary for the rest:
Throat. Cheek. Hair. Wrist. Thigh. Ankle. Rib. Stomach. Skin.
‘Natalia! Come and write the answers on the board please.’
Natalia got up, willing her face not to blaze red. Walking up to Neill, she prised the chalk from a tiny friction in his fingers; his pokerface expertly intact, whilst hers, facing the other way from the class, battled to suppress a smirk as she finished the list.
‘Très bien!’ he enthused. ‘Les connaissiez-vous tous?’ (Did you know them all?)
‘Surtout.’ (Mostly.)
He raised an eyebrow and muttered: ‘Well clever clogs, you can add some more then.’
‘Combien?’ She smiled. (How many?)
He drew a breath. ‘Autant que vous le souhaitez?’
She didn’t quite understand, but took by his shrug to mean however many, and began chalking adjacent to his:
Barbe. Poing. Muscle. Moustache…
She turned midway to glance at him.
Dent. Os. Machoire. Sang.
‘Bien…’ he began, but she raised the chalk.
‘Attendez,’ she raised her finger. ‘Et aussi—’
He blinked in surprise as she added a last word in slow deliberation, with a signing-off underline:
Nerf.
Her words translated to:
Beard. Fist. Muscle. Moustache. Tooth. Bone. Jaw. Blood.
…Nerve.
She smiled, tucked the chalk back into his palm and patted his knuckles, to a few watching giggles.
‘Asseyez-vous,’ he glared. ‘Five minutes for you all to translate these please! And then we’re going to do random vocabulary.’
Neill sat down jotting something at his desk, catching Natalia’s eye in an unspoken scheming as she flicked through a dictionary, and whilst his eyes were averted, she pulled up Google Translate on her phone inside her skirt thighs.
Game on, face fucker.
Neill called up Sam to translate Natalia’s words on the board. The class didn’t seem to bat an eyelid at the lists - probably assuming it was absolutely intentional and normal for Neill and Natalia to have accrued two loosely, respectively masculine and feminine flavoured strings of body parts.
‘Done, sir. I mean, monsieur,’ Sam handed back the chalk to Neill who was still bent-headed at his desk.
‘Muhsyurr,’ he corrected, arising without looking at her. ‘Oui, well done,’ he muttered as he took a wipe to the board. ‘I’ll assume you’re all done with this! Otherwise, vous êtes trop lent!’ - he enunciated - ‘et tu devrais abandonner maintenant!’
He turned to the class. ‘Does anyone know what that means?’
Silence.
Natalia raised her hand. ‘Otherwise you are too slow and… should stop, now?’
‘Not stop—’
‘Give up. Give up now.’
He shook his head softly at Natalia. ‘Je vais continuer,’ as he turned back to the board, his top teeth all bared, and Natalia could do nothing but rub her hand over her face, wondering what was coming next.
‘How do we say good?’
‘Bien,’ said one pupil - as Neill scrawled it.
‘Bad?’
Silence.
‘Mauvais,’ he wrote. ‘With an E on the end for feminine!’ He underlined it, turned and sniffed at Natalia.
‘Naughty?’
Silence.
‘Vilain! With an E on the end for feminine,’ which he again underlined, as Natalia stared.
‘A banana. Natalia?’
Oh dear.
‘Banane. Une banane.’
‘Oui. And how would we say two bananas?’
‘Deux bananes, monsieur.’
‘S’il vous plaît, if we’re being polite—’
‘Bien sûr. Deux bananes sont délicieuses.’ (Of course. Two bananas are delicious.)
Adam turned to gawp with the classic Thornwood look of disproval at anyone above a certain IQ level, which Natalia realised she cared little for these days, feeding only off the flash in Neill’s eyes like two lighthouses on a blue sea.
‘Mouth. James?’
‘Bouche.’
‘What about her mouth, James?’
‘Errr…son bouche?’
‘Sa! Sa bouche! My hand - Jennifer?’
‘Main… ma main.’
‘Ma main indeed. His finger? Louise?’
Natalia watched in helpless bemusement.
‘Errr…. Doigt? He, is…er…’
‘Plus rapide!’
Louise was lost.
Natalia, checking her translator, piped up:
‘Son doigt devrait être plus rapide.’
No-one knew or would really care for its translation: His finger should be faster.
Neill glanced up in surprise. ‘Thank you Natalia,’ as he jotted: ‘Son doigt. The pen - Dean?’
‘Le stylo.’
‘Bien! And cat?’
‘Le chat.’
‘Pet?’
‘Er…’
‘Un animal de compagnie,’ came back Natalia.
Neill’s gaze latched back on her. ‘Vous pensez que vous êtes très intelligent, hmm?’ (You think you’re very intelligent?)
She smiled.
Eyes on her, he raised his chalk. ‘What about, I have a cat?’
‘J’ai un chat,’ she replied.
He wrote it and turned back to her. ‘I have a nice cat?’
‘J’ai un beau chat.’
‘I have a nice, pretty, well-trained cat?’
She willed her face to stay straight. ‘J’ai un beau, joli…?’ she shrugged, unable to check her phone as he was looking right at her.
‘Bien dressé; well-trained. My cat likes to sit in my lap?’
‘Mon chat aime… siéger? Dans…?’
‘Mon chat aime s’asseoir sur mes genoux,’ he rattled off.
‘Ahh. Oui, j’aime m’asseoir sur tes genoux.’
There was a flicker in his face upon her tweaking it to ‘yes, I like to sit in your lap.’
He paused. ‘Breakfast.’
‘Petit déjeuner!’ Anthony called.
‘Sausages.’
‘Saucisson!’
‘Cereal.’
‘Er, dunno sir…’
‘Inutile!’ he growled. ‘Rachel?’
‘Céréales?’
‘Sausages are better than cereal?’
Silence, with a few giggles - whilst Natalia was attempting to hide her restless face.
‘Natalia!’ Neill rapped on the board and made a few pupils jump. ‘Méchante fille! Qu’est-ce qui est drôle?’
She picked up the words naughty and funny, and guessed what he was saying.
‘Je suis désolée, monsieur.’ (I am sorry sir.)
‘Faites-vous attention?’ (Are you paying attention?)
‘Oui, bien sûr. J‘aime ta leçon.’ (Of course. I like your lesson). ‘Les saucisses sont meilleures que les céréales,’ she added.
‘Correcte.’ Neill turned back to the board, but Natalia continued, with the help of a little list she’d discreetly compiled from her phone:
‘Puis-je parler plus…’ (Can I say more…)
He turned back to her, lips parted, as she fired off in fast enunciation:
‘Votre bite dans ma bouche est bonne, mais je la veux entre mes jambes, dans ma chatte, s’il vous plaît monsieur.’
Your cock in my mouth is good, but I want it between my legs, in my pussy, please sir.
His mouth fell open as her heart banged in her chest. If their jests up to this point were like farting in church, this was taking a shit together on the altar in front of the entire congregation.
Neill’s tongue moved slowly inside his cheek as he looked round at the class.
‘Can anyone translate Natalia?’
There was a murmur and a scoff as if to say, of course not.
‘Too fast!’ laughed Adam.
Neill stared straight at Natalia and shrugged.
’Toute la salle ne comprend pas. N’est-ce pas drôle?’
(Nobody in the room understands. Isn’t that funny?)
‘Très drôle. Mais, Dieu merci.’
(Very funny. But, thank God.)
‘Ok, more sentences!’ he barked back into action. ‘Only twenty minutes left. How would you say, I like that?’
He didn’t wait for a response.
‘J’aime ça. I like that very much? J’aime beaucoup cela. I think so too? Je le pense aussi—’
Natalia laid her head sideways in her hands, a smitten glaze fixed on her face as she watched him rattle off words, growing more and more entranced by his show as he suddenly pointed:
‘How do you say, this morning? Stacey?’
‘Ce matin—’
‘How do you say, I’m sorry. Anthony?’
‘Je suis… désolé.’
‘But I’m not sorry?’
‘Mais… je ne suis pas désolé.’
‘Because? …Adam?’ He rapped his chalk. ‘Vite, imbécile!’
‘Parce que—’
‘This is mine. Sam?’
Silence.
‘C’est à moi! …This belongs to me? Ceci m’appartient—’ He was scrawling fast and illegibly now. ‘I am very kind? Stacey?’
‘Je suis… très…’
‘Gentil. Je suis très gentil. You are beautiful?’
A couple of pupils tittered. Neill’s eyes raised to Natalia as she stared back, growing pink.
‘Tu es belle. Très belle,’ he said with eyes fixed on her. ‘Tu sais déjà que je pense que tu es la plus belle fille du monde, parce que c’est un fait—’
What was that? She knows already, the truth that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world…? She blinked rapidly, his eyes are still locked on her, he is not writing, and now in a moment she’d never forget, he raps:
‘And how would you say I love you, Natalia?’
It bit her like a mosquito on the nose. The other pupils, mounting chit-chat every millisecond she stared back, as though everything in the classroom today was lightly edifying amusement; the chemistry between the man at the front and the girl at the back was as undetectable as a mosquito itself, scurrying across the ceiling, flying over their heads, back and forth, latching, sucking and exchanging blood between them, unbeknownst to anyone else.
A couple of pupils were turning in bemusement at the question. Brain to mouth. She’d better form her gape into words, quick:
‘Je t’aime… Neill.’
His hands fidgeted, chalk raising to the board - wavering and dropping again.
‘Ok I think that’s enough.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘I’d like you to copy all these down if you haven’t already, and then…’
‘Neill! Sir… I mean, er, monsieur—’
His eyes lifted to Natalia. ‘Oui…?’
‘Puis-je aller… toilettes…’ Her mind went blank. She gave up and shook her head. ‘Er, can I go to the toilet.’
Her face was filling with a curious sensation, like it was draining, not filling with blood; it was her eyes that felt hot, like a waterfall was about to fall through them… she felt like she might collapse to the floor.
‘Yes, yes…’ he motioned his hand, as she jerked back her chair; his furrowed brow tracing her steps to the door as she swung it open even wider than he had.
The class resumed in chit-chat.
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ62D4Did1RG
*
A dam had burst inside her and all she wanted to do was hide herself inside the waterworks, where the flush in the cubicle from the next girl would drown out her own pouring.
The girl was stepping out; the outer door squealing open when Neill’s voice could be heard.
‘Ah, Helen - is Natalia Molova in there?’
‘Dunno who that is. There’s just someone sobbing.’
Now came an impatient throat-clear, the shiny shoes under the cubicle door and a loud rap.
‘Natalia, are you in there?’
‘Y-yes…’
‘Open up quickly darling for heaven’s sake, before someone sees I’m in the girls’ toilets. I haven’t got time to scrawl a gender neutral sign—’
She unslid the bolt as he pushed his body inside, his crotch in her face again as he looked down at her sitting on the lid.
‘Well are you on the toilet?’
‘I just, erm, I don’t feel well.’
She stood up, face in his paisley tie as he clamped and stroked her temples.
‘Talk to me. Is my French that good?’
‘I just… I, I feel like I’m melting. Melting into slush, a pool of—’
He pulled up her contorting face and planted his lips straight on hers, tongue-kissing her deep and passionately as now her dam re-opens and her tears fall - stream down her face - as he moves his mouth now to catch them, as though eating them, erasing them, both his thumbs stroking and sliding in them.
‘Oh dear, now I’m making you gush both ends.’
She frowned to spy a tear pricking in his too.
‘You’re crying?’ she croaked. ‘Is my French that bad?’
He smiled back faintly, just as they heard the door open and someone come in.
Natalia looked scared as Neill’s thumbs stroked her lips. ‘Shush’ - he mimed, holding a steady gaze with her, as her heart banged with fear on top of everything. What if the girl looked underneath? What would happen then?
Soon there was a flush, followed by the squeal of the door.
‘Didn’t even wash her hands,’ he whispered. ‘Dirty cunt.’
She smiled faintly.
He dropped his hands. ‘Sweetheart we have to go back to the classroom. There’s ten minutes left—’
‘I can’t go back. I’m a mess…’
He stroked and tucked back her unkempt hair that had fallen out of its ponytail around her shoulders.
‘Do you want to go home?’
‘Home to mum, no way…’
‘To my cottage, silly.’
‘Oh. The cleaner though…’
‘Crumbs, yes. And the chimney sweep.’ He patted her. ‘I can take you home later? I have to do a few urgent things first. Dinkey’s laid up working from home so I’ll stick everything else onto him. Go rest up in the sick room till I get you.’
‘I’d rather sit here on the bog than in the sick room.’
‘Forget the bog or the sick room. Take my key and go to my sick room,’ he jangled the set from his pocket. ‘Don’t let anyone see you. Lock the door and wait for me.’
Her eyes brightened. ‘What are we going to do there?’
‘Cheer you up, my little slush puppy!’ He pinched and shook her face.
‘My coat and things are still in the classroom…’
‘I’ll fetch them. Just help me get out of these toilets without being clocked.’
She drew back the bolt, slipped to the door and waggled her arm.
‘Coast is clear.’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC5AD5j7RlA
*
She spun back and forth in his chair, imagining barking orders, telling people to bloody this, bloody that, bugger off! Chin raised, she drew up papers from his desk. School Board, Ofsted reviews, Ministry of Education; lists of classes in his lovely handwriting, as she idly flicked around pens, paperclips and post-it notes.
Nudging against his mouse by accident, his emails came up. She laughed at a cluster of unread emails from Joan Grace Rawley. Then her eye caught ‘R Robinson’ on a read email with the title:
‘Been trying to get hold of you’
She clicked on it.
‘Have you blocked my number? Won’t ring, texts not delivering? You’re not serious about her. A box of Cheerios and a trip to London doesn’t absolve you. That place you stayed in!! - Sent from my iPhone’
She hurriedly clicked away from the email when came one single knock at the door - a pause, then three knocks - the code they’d arranged - put the screen back to sleep, and went to unlock.
Neill pushed his way in with her bag and coat under his arm and his own jacket draped over them; a one-pint bottle of M&S milk in the other hand. He put them all down as she relocked the door and went back to sit.
‘So how are we feeling? Let’s boil up the kettle. Out of my chair, cheeky—’
‘But something has snapped,’ she keeled forward over his desk with a long low moan. ‘And I can barely stand up straight…’
‘That is a very good way, if not the way, for you to sit in my office,’ as he sat down behind with a long breath, taking hold of her thighs and feeling up her bottom. ‘But here, come onto me—’
He plopped her back into his lap, as his hands ran over her body, the warm grasp of Him, chased after by the world! Headmistresses, teachers, pupils…. and ex-wives? The message she’d just seen was strange and she wanted to ask him about it, but not admit she’d read his emails.
‘That’s better, hm?’ His mouth nuzzled her ear.
‘Mmmm. How long can I stay here?’
‘For a while? Would you like that?’
‘Yes, yes yes yes…’
The kettle flicked off. Couching her under one arm, with a series of jiggles from the other, he poured and slid over two steaming mugs.
‘No sugar left I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll have it like you have it.’
He brushed aside her hair and planted his lips on her temple. ‘So you know how this works, don’t you? If anyone knocks, or calls, you keep super dooper quiet and do as I say. Let’s check outside—’
Four eyes of their conjoined heads lit up with the computer screen as he flicked on the video image of the corridor.
‘All clear for now,’ as he reached to pour milk into their teas.
‘Neeeill…’
‘Yee-ehs…’
‘Do either of your wives… Oh! Someone’s—’
What looked like a harried Miss Francis appeared on the screen, rapping on the door.
‘Neill, Neill! Are you there?’
His arm round her waist tightened like a seatbelt as a fairy-sized man whisper travelled down her ear canal: ‘she’ll go away. Don’t make a sound…’
Hand stroking her hip, lips circling her earlobe; the rise of his breath co-mingling and regulating with hers, her tension melted upon his continuing whispered lullaby. ‘Just keep quiet baby, right there…’ His thumb comes up to stroke her mouth, as she invited it in, pulled and licked it, to its approving waggle and purr of: ‘Aww, you know so well,’ just as Miss Francis strode away.
They both drew a breath.
‘So what were you saying,’ as he flicked up a document onscreen. ‘Pass my tea please.’
‘I just wanted to ask,’ as she held his mug up to his lips, ‘do… either of your wives know about me? I mean, ex-wives…’
‘Thank you darling,’ as he sipped and she put it down again. ‘No, of course not. Well, funny, one rang me up the other week.’ He squinted at his document and spoke between clicks. ‘Had some old French Revolution literature of mine pulled out of her storage. I told her to fling it. Asked me if I’m seeing anyone these days and I said what do you think. Blocked her after that, can’t have bygone harpies ringing my mobile at ungodly hours to boot.’
‘Ohh.’
‘So tell me,’ he squeezed her ribs again, wobbling a splash from her tea as she was taking it to her lips. ‘What happened in the French lesson?’
‘Something… came over me.’ She put down her mug, wondering whether to mention the love part.
‘It seemed to be right after I told you I love you.’
That same feeling came rippling in her body, which he seemed to detect as two seatbelts now swam over her torso.
‘Mmm? What is it? I meant what I said,’ he mouthed in her hair, ‘but you know it, mon petite fille, already, n’est ce pas?’ His lips nibbling the top of her ear, her eyes flickered to feel tears swell again.
She made a long sigh and stretched forward to hide an almighty sniffle coming, as well as her hair she felt must look unacceptably lank by this point in the day’s drama, landing it into a dark mop on his desk as she wriggled her bottom into his hands.
‘Can I cry from both ends at your desk and then you can declare me ready to sail?’
He tugged at her tights. ‘Pull these off. Completely off. Let me have a good look at you.’
‘Lick at you?’
‘Maybe. Getting close to lunch.’ He clunked back his chair. ‘Let’s get you all cosy so I can work on this and work on you.’
With a tug and a fling, tights and knickers off, they mutually arranged her bare bottom and legs to a small chorus of her coy laughs; laying her coat underneath her to cushion from the hard desk, her hair of a different - and she felt, preferable - lubrication, now exposed to him along the edge of the table as though it had sprouted from the table top.
With a sigh he ran his fingertips over her buttocks and vulva like piano keys, she wriggling to settle in with a smiling, excited, dozing face at the other end, as he began to play softly, probing, and she felt a curtain inside herself come down… so intimately ‘seen’ by him, splayed under the lights of his office, where one half of her could be a medical specimen, her top half as cosy as a snuggle in a movie theatre.
There was a knock and grunt of a boy at the door.
‘Mr Neill?’
Natalia tensed and face shot up.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ Neill’s hand squeezed her bottom. ‘Head back down.’
She laid back down and closed her eyes as the boy retreated, and the Head casually, softly, half-concentratedly, whilst sipping his tea, looking at his computer screen and leafing through papers, continued to inspect and fiddle with her wet cunt as if it were a fidget spinner on his desk.
‘Are you ok? Comfortable? Enjoying your little massage?’
‘Mmmm, oh yes sir.’
‘Unless the fire alarm goes off then you stay right there and right on my hand. Like a little bird, hmm? Don’t fly off. You just lay there and leave this - and this - to me.’
She lay sprawled like a car-hit bird, she thought with a smirk, as his fingers moved in the manner of a post-mortem prodding and the dying bird croaked:
‘That spot. Oh, right there…’
‘Here?’
‘Left more. I mean… right,’ she giggled.
‘Here? This spot?’
She rummaged her hand down next to his. ‘Right there. It feels… I dunno, like a funny spot…’
‘I’m hardly a doctor. But call me Freud I guess. Move your hand—’
He ran his finger where hers had been, back and forth just inside her vagina.
‘Mm, it just feels like part of your flesh,’ as he kept rubbing it softly in a tone of paternal examination, that stripped for a moment of any erotic intent, felt to her even more erotic.
‘You’ve had fingers, bananas, pens. It’s shifting, introducing its womanliness to you. How does it feel? Does it hurt?’
‘No, er, a bit like it’s itching. Nice when you rub it like that.’
‘Well, the diagnosis is obvious. You’re itching to be fucked.’
His phone rang.
Keeping his hand where it was, he picked up the phone in the other.
‘Ah, Steve! How are we feeling? All is fine, Jenny and I had it covered. Oh, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone!’
His finger intermittently caressed inside her as he spoke, so outrageously, yet so casually, so free of any pressure to perform or even pressure on herself to orgasm; it made it more tantalisingly orgasmic, even when the topic moved to Williams.
‘I think she finds some of my jokes near the knuckle! But she’s always looking to point the finger at someone…’
Natalia sighed and smiled, that yes, of course, Neill was amusing both her and himself now. His conversation continued with stops and starts, grunts and laughs, reverberating in her pelvis transmitted via his hand, till she felt she was inside the telephone wires with the waves of his voice itself.
He put back the receiver.
‘Dial this number please, secrete-teary.’
She raised her head.
‘Ready? 9 for external. Then 0113…’ his fingers softly dialled inside her as she tapped the numbers.
‘Thank you. Hello! May I speak to Chris please, it’s Neill, the Head at Thornwood…’
She flinched now at him inserting something long and thin - a pen or pencil - murmuring: ‘One for fun. Two for a toy… Chris, my man! I got the forms through, I’ve passed them to my Deputy and he’ll get it all sorted…’
He squeezed and rubbed her buttocks as if to relax her, as another pen or two was inserted.
‘Three sends it trippy,’ his vocal underbelly continued. ‘Fourth if she’s coy—’
Now there was a knock on the door. A boy appeared onscreen as Neill pressed secrecy on the phone set.
‘Not now! Busy! Scram!’ his holler transmitted through the pens. ‘Five to eight, she’s taking it great…’
She relented, as he went on, as she could only assume there was now the same number of pens, till he sighed:
‘Nine, ten, lost count of the pens… that twelve times inserted, I’m ready for men. Well, look at that. You’ve come a long way since your first time in this office with me. Can you imagine yourself back then, creaming over my desk whilst someone knocks seven feet away?’
‘What, a putrid pube schoolgirl from whom risk reeks like her unwashed tights? You’ve come a long way too…’
‘Oh, writ large.’ He seized hold of the pens and pulsed what now felt like a plastic porcupine bristling at her bladder.
‘Ohh… I need a wee so bad.’
She gasped as he pulled them out with a clatter to the desk, and she felt something cold in their place.
‘Go in here.’
She looked down to see the rim of a glass Pago juice bottle waiting.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Do you still ask that? This wide rim is perfect.’
She let out the first spurt - ‘woah, woah,’ he chuckled as he adjusted the placement, then ‘go on, go on…’ as she let the stream tinkle out; then she heard something vibrate, and her stream stalled again.
‘Keep weeing. And read this—’
He placed his phone in front of her. It was a text message from Joan.
‘I have to go away this weekend hunni, so I won’t be there. :( Have fun without me!’
‘I’ll have fun without her alright. Delete her.’
Natalia giggled softly as she pressed the rubbish bin icon; he took away the bottle and she felt a soft tissue replace it.
‘She is as good as dumped. I’m not going to fuck her, I’m not going to see her, I’m not even going to talk to the woman - till I write her one single, solitary dump text after the weekend golf. That’s all the codger-shagging schmoozer deserves. Now block her.’
Something hard and fleshy was parked right at her labia.
‘Ohh, does that mean… you’re single, Richard Neill?’
‘Ohh! It does—’ He leaned and held his watch in front of her as the fleshy head pushed forward with him. ‘Do you want to watch for how many seconds?’
‘Ohh, shit, Neill…’
Her breath met the rhythm of his now pulsing cock, folding and unfolding her labia lips.
‘Do you know why she’s dumped? Because I don’t love her but someone else…’
‘Oh my gohhd…’
‘And I want to know if you think she’ll be my girlfriend?’
Her hoff of breath steamed his desk surface like a window in winter.
‘Is that a yes?’ Bigger push.
‘Ohmyyyy,’ she giggled. ‘But wait, wait, sir—’
‘God, this girlfriend calls me sir, what in Priapus’s wet dreams is this—’
‘I thought you… don’t fuck 16-year olds?’
‘Oh this one. Just this one—’ He was pushing, gently but determinedly into the hole where only fingers and bananas and pens had been admitted, and to Natalia it was that warm, thick and wiry member she had met in so many ways except the main way, the anti-hero of sordid anecdotes she’d masturbated over for months, now squeezing within walls prickling with unfamiliarity but throbbing with thrill for a longed for guest, and as Neill held it there, she was silent mostly in intrigue at the semaphore of manly breaths conveying his intense satisfaction.
‘Oh fuck, I’ve never felt anything like it…’
Pride fizzled up her spine.
‘It’s all the way up inside you. I’m not going to move it.’
She could feel it throb, which marked out the perimeter of where it sat, surprisingly numbly, as though she couldn’t inscribe its exact position inside her, but there was something thrilling in her thighs, in her stomach, as though it were a trophy, that made her head softly spin, as wafts of the obscene irreverence of what they were doing wafted from her brain, over her body.
In this serene, static snapshot of sex - amidst a day otherwise as busy as Clapham Junction - his phone rang yet again.
‘Well they say there’s plenty more fish in the sea. And this one’s staying right on this hook. Don’t move, new girlfriend! …Yes, Becky? It’s who? Oh!—’
A sudden tension made Natalia crane her head.
‘Hold on one moment.’
‘Neill…’
He flew out a hand to mute the phone.
‘Neill… ditch whoever it is…’
‘I can’t. I need to take it or Tits’ll transfer it to Dink. It’s your mother—’
‘What?!’ She wriggled. ‘Shall I get up?’
‘No, no - no need. But don’t move a muscle. Christ, your cunt is like a fist around my cock. If you all but once wriggle that bottom I might damn well make you a teenage pregnancy statistic faster than it took me to make you my girlfriend.’
‘Er—’
‘Although it’s only that I’ve got your dunderhead mum in my ear to balance things out else I’d have gunged your Fallopian tubes already.’
‘Wha—’
‘Shush. Trust me. Hello, Mrs Molova—’
Natalia kept schtum lest he shoved a Pritt Stick in her mouth again.
She can hear her mum. Coarse, but far away: ‘Ello is that the Ed? I’m Mary Molova… ringing about me daughter…’ as though she was disappearing down the shaft of his cock itself, up the dark bolt of her cunt as Neill’s smooth tone took its place:
‘Yes, yes - the Head, Richard Neill here…’
She felt both his hands grasp her hips - the phone must be held in the crook of his shoulder, keeping her penetrated as he continued:
‘Natalia Molova is at school today, yee-es… If I check now - she has been every day. No, no, report cards are not our protocol anymore… Now let’s see. Two days off last week when she bumped her knee in Yoga, it’s here recorded?…She’s what, staying away from home at the moment?’
‘Staying with a lass, she sez’ - ‘Mek sure, yer know…’ a small garbled Mary rejoined.
‘Check she’s not gallivanting with Tom, Dick and whom? …Harry?! Goodness, I don’t know if we have all those in the school! I know Dick’s been out of vogue since the 1980s. Oh, the proverbial expression, I see what you mean! Well there are several Sarahs at Thornwood, I’d have to check. If you recall I spoke with you a while back about Natalia’s welfare at home… yes, yes… I did see her today, she looked all well and good… I’m afraid I can’t share parents’ numbers due to confidentiality. I’ll find the parent in question and I’ll confirm with you, ok?’
He finally put down the receiver.
‘Good Lord. With most females on my knob I’d be as flaccid as a punctured airbed after that earful of oik. But with you, you - God, if we want to be proverbial, you’re as tight as Dick’s hatband. I’m bursting to go more than you were—’
She gasped as he withdrew, seized her neck, and emitted long, low groans behind her as he placed back the urine bottle now dancing with spindles of white.
She slumped back into his chair in a daze.
He stood by the bin wiping himself with a series of tissues, as she wondered at what had just happened.
‘Wow,’ she murmured, watching as the afternoon light hit the patterned glass of the bottle. ‘It’s like a fairy glow jar. Apple juice, too…’
‘I’ll put it straight into the staff room fridge,’ he nodded, ‘and whoever normally steals my wares will get a nice surprise to find themselves off sick too.’
She squealed in laughter as she reached for her tights he was handing to her.
‘So did my mum sound… convinced?’ as she drew up her knees and poked a foot through.
‘Well and truly. What’s your last lesson?’
‘What day is it again? Wednesday. Talk about hump day!’
‘Humpday, Dump-day. We could make you a rhyme,’ as he tucked his shirt back in. ‘Humpday Dumpday, sat on the… Head.’
‘There was a girl who was…’
‘Blushing bright red?’
‘And all the… school’s lushes, and all the school’s men—’
‘Can’t put her virginity back there again.’
She smirked as she pulled out her hairbrush. ‘God, I’m not a virgin anymore?’
‘Debatable.’
The bell went.
‘It’s Art for me now. But I’m starving, I’ve missed lunch…’
‘This time you’re not the Art student. Go straight home girlfriend, so I can fuck you properly.’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrh88m5hH9A
*
In all but two days, the route back to Fairy Cottage felt almost familiar, as she pondered the man who owned it. Over double her age, beautifully, deliciously violating every code of how she was supposed to be treated, and so much more excitingly, exuberantly - fortuitously! - a treatment she got from him than any other boring, detached, cold, distant teacher or Head, who would never dare cross those thick-misted boundaries between a pupil and a teacher. This one dared! Dared to probe her on every level, dared to be awful and wonderful!
She thought back to the email she’d seen earlier that must be from Rose. Neill had sounded honest when she asked him, and what he said about being blocked matched the email. But did he really tell her he’d put up a new girlfriend in a five star hotel and bought her Cheerios? It didn’t make sense. Had Rose been to his cottage, even though he claims no other woman has been there? If he was lying about that, was his profession of love today bullshit too? Then there’s those cufflinks, ‘ugliest he’d ever seen,’ that he’d kept in his drawer.
Walking up the gravel path, it wasn’t until she was inside the gate that she noticed a white van parked a few yards up - Sutton’s Sweeps - and coming from the front door was a short stumpy man in a hat with florid cheeks rather like a gnome, eyes fixed on her.
Fuck. He should have been gone by now.
‘Ahh! Embers all good!’ he beamed.
She nodded at the long pole he was collapsing in his hands. ‘Oh, yes. Thanks.’
‘Good, good!’ He grinned at her from head to foot. ‘Guess you won’t be worried St Nicholas will get stuck in there no more, eh?’ he chirped in what she now could tell was a Cockney accent.
‘Um, no.’ She smiled politely. ‘Sorry, are you not finished, I can come back…’
‘No, no! All yours. You and dad - or Mr Neill, rather - enjoy. Door’s open, here’s the key if you want to pop it back, treacle!’
Cottage all fragrant with lemon and mint; gleaming kitchen tops, hot dryer and dishwasher on the go. She slipped into Lotus Pose on the rug before the clean tidy fireplace, taking deep long breaths. Was the sweep being sarcastic? Was this cottage life worth the adrenalin ride of worry?
Shower time to wash her hair at last. Two good long blasts of deodorant. Hairdryer till her hair was fluffy to stop her shivering from nerves. Red dress! She’d put that on to surprise him. But she found it crumpled and stinky at the bottom of her holdall. She threw it in the laundry basket and put on her grey dress instead.
Neill called.
‘Natalia, are you at home?’
‘Yes? Are you on your way?’
‘Is, er… everything ok? I just heard from the chimney sweep. Says he bumped into you? He was supposed to be here at midday!’
‘Yeah, sorry, I didn’t see his van till I was at the door.’
‘Did he… say anything?’
‘He just said the fire’s done. Well, the embers are good, or something…’
‘Embers?’
‘Yeah. Embers as in, the fire embers.’
‘Ye-es. Right. And… anything else?’
‘Then something about Santa Claus. Well, St Nicholas. God, Neill! You don’t think he saw something on the fire, did you? My knickers, being knickerless! Or that seedy note you made me write?’
‘No, no, I checked it was all gone. So that was all? He went on his way?’
She just sighed.
‘What, what?’
‘Nothing, nothing - he just looked at me funny. I just hope he doesn’t recognise me or something.’
‘Oh! Well, I’m sure he doesn’t. He lives down in Sheffield and everyone in Gipton’s got gas fires anyway. Funny though, I’ve only just realised I’ve met him a long time ago. Only took hearing his voicemail message seven times for me to clock on.
‘Southern accent. London?’
‘Yes. Says he moved North three months back. Anyway, chimney’s all done for a good six months so we won’t need to call the old bastard back anytime soon.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m on my way home. Just need to sort protection—’
‘Oh, yeah,’ thankful she didn’t have to raise the topic of condoms.
‘So Natalia, as you’re my girl now - can you pour me a whisky? Have it ready. On ice. Do you know where—’
‘Yes yes, I know where it is.’
‘Good girl!’
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfTCk7ixGnn
*
She grabbed the whisky, banged an ice tray over it and set it on the table. She tidied the couch pillows in case he might want to fuck or even spank her on there. Oh dear! She’ll drink a glass of water too. She started throbbing as she did. Oh, god. There’s the sound of the key in the door. He’s home… he’s home! She stood frozen on the spot by the sink like on Monday. Should she smash a mug now and get it over with?
A flash of blonde hair and red shirt collars and unblinking eyes swept toward her as she began:
‘Hel—’
He grabbed and arrested her face with his; full-on, smothering - her ankle banging against the washing machine, his hands gripping and sliding up and down her petite frame - coming back to her jaw and squeezing her throat till she was choke-panting in his face.
‘-Lo,’ she finished.
His face, trained closed on hers; intent, piping hot, like some Lothario waited to pounce again.
‘W-would you like your whisky?’ She blinked, and now as if leading a non-verbal, wild animal, backwards into the lounge: ‘Come on,’ in almost a whisper - motioning at the glass - as he takes a sip, puts it down and seizes her again, as she gasps to his hand back on her throat, the other shifting up her dress skirts then fiddling at his fly as she pants at what is unravelling like a movie sex scene for real now as he mutters:
‘God, how good to not have to stop—’
Backstepped into the kitchen, pushed over the cold kitchen table, her dress was thrust to her chest and his hot tongue is straight up her pussy, her knees hitched to the ceiling as her feet knock the dangling light, her body riveted with five emotions at once - then she’s thinking bugger, her bladder is twinging - just as there was a loud knock at the front door, and her bowels go too.
He dropped her legs like he’d been shot in the back.
‘Oh, for fahhck’s sake! The world is conspiring against us!’
She swung upright as he hopped on one foot trying to get a leg back into his trousers - as the knock came again and he stumbled against the bin.
‘Why are you so scared?’ she whispered.
‘I’m not,’ as he stood up straight again. ‘Why are you whispering?’
‘They’re knocking loud. You don’t think it’s the…?’
‘What?’
‘Police?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he frowned. ‘Stand up, stand up. Wait by the kettle—’
She bounded up, knickers around one ankle whilst he went to the door.
From Neill’s peremptory tone of voice a moment later, she can tell that whoever is at the door is most decidedly not coming back again.
‘Goodness,’ as he plodded back in. ‘No faster way to lose an erection than to look into the face of a Jehovah’s Witness.’
‘That’s all who it was?’
‘Didn’t even know they roamed these parts. Asked me if I’ve found God. I said yes, thy King Dom was about to come. But if you trespass against my doorstep again, it will be God finding you on his.’
He took a sip of his whisky, then handed her the glass.
‘Er, bit strong for me—’
‘Chill it in the freezer for me for later. Jesus, after everything today that shot my nerves. I need strength. I need food…’
He opened the fridge. ‘Let’s do this properly, let’s have a romantic dinner first, hm?’
He pulled out a packet of sausages and scissored it open.
‘Bangers and mash on the day I’m losing my virginity?What’s for dessert, cherry tarts?’
‘No, I lost them. …Fuck! We have no potatoes. We’ll have to have rice. …Fuck, there’s no rice! Only this old box of risotto rice,’ as he tugged it out from the back of the cupboard. ‘Still in date. Sausage risotto it is!’
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*
For thirty minutes they stood chopping, stirring and laughing every other second. ‘Garlic! Onion next— Thank you darling. Throw in the mushrooms, super. Pass that scotch - we’ll add a splash - perfect!’
They finally sat down with mounds of sausage-tossed risotto as he gave her a long gaze through the steam.
‘You look lovely by the way. Ravishing. Dress you wore at Oulton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, very apt. Because today you’ve had a French teacher, German doctor and Italian risotto but tonight you’re getting the full English.’
‘I also pretended to a stranger this morning that I’m Spanish,’ she added, blowing a forkful.
‘Good heavens, we’ve done more for the school’s multiculturalism than Neary did!’
They both cawed in laughter.
‘Where’s my wine?’ she frowned. ‘I want to get wined, dined and undermined?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry honey,’ as he stood up. ‘How neglectful of me not to have the girl I’m about to fuck against the law, also underage drinking three years early,’ as he parked a glass next to her.
‘Technically it’s legal. I’m sixteen, the alcohol is with a meal, with an adult, and I’m not buying it.’
‘I’m not buying it either. Everything we do is illegal.’ He poured a couple of inches. ‘Three thimbles should be enough,’ as he sat back down, ‘I’d rather you remember what I’m going to do to you. Especially after what you said about us having done nothing at all, which I couldn’t believe. After I was laying there at night feeling pangs of guilt over what I’d done to you—’
‘Pangs of guilt! You don’t know guilt if it came and completely sucked off your Richmond Sausage!’
‘Excuse me! I am The Man Of Feeling…’
‘Man of Feeling Up! Or does that mean you’re going to make love, not war, like the riot you subjected me to in here this morning?’
‘You mean shag you like a pansy would?’
‘Just go slow, you know…’
He frowned. ‘I haven’t made love slowly for a long time. Probably ever. But I’ll go slow for you…’ His face took on a mock fervour as he raised his wine glass. ‘I’ll work on you like a scholar eking out a Masters dissertation. Meticulous, anal… oops, not anal. Natalia! Your hymen will be right next to the School Board and Ministry of Education as my special project.’
‘What… take my virginity in increments?’
‘Why not? I’ve already started. Oh for you, Natalia, I’ll fuck you freeze-frame by freeze-frame all night.’
He stood up, downed the last mouthful of wine and strode over to kneel and light the kindling.
‘Look at that roar! Do you want to get fucked by the fire?’
‘Not in bed? Virginia wanted to get deflowered at the same time.’
‘You’re right. Two virgins at once, god it’s like Rita, Sue and Bob too!’
‘Don’t you mean Tom, Dick and Harry?’ She laughed as they sat down on the couch.
‘Afraid you’re not lucky enough to have three men. Rita, Sue & Bob Too is a film.’ He turned on the player. ‘A pair of fifteen-year old schoolgirls from Bradford get shagged one after the other by a married man. 1987. Goodness, I remember watching it when I was eight, wondering what was between a girl’s legs to make a man want two at once.’
He flicked it on. A scene of a shabby working class Northern household came onscreen, with heavy Yorkshire accents. They watched, as Neill lit up a cigarette, tittering for half an hour until a scene began of sleazy-eyed Bob, leering into the back seat of his car at the two grinning ‘schoolgirls’ played by thirty-something women.
‘Do you girls know what an erection is?’
‘An e-what-shun?!’ they shriek.
‘Dya know what an ‘ard on is?’
‘Yeah!’ they exclaim in unison.
‘First ya need an ‘ard on. Then ya take a rubber john-neh—’
Bob pulls one from a packet. Sue stretches it provocatively between her fingers:
‘What ‘appens if it tears?’
‘No good then. Sperm can gerrout and fertilise t’egg.’
‘We an’t got eggs inside us,’ Rita scoffs. ‘We’re not ducks yer know!’
Natalia squealed in laughter, weighing down in a piggyback over Neill’s neck as she plucked and puffed his cigarette.26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU4o5S4Oud8
‘This is almost the level of IQ in Thornwood Biology lessons!’
‘And these voices are the same screws in my ears. Come on, let’s screw you instead—’
He stubbed out, chucked his phone from his pocket - ‘screw that, too’ - and rose up with Natalia on his back as he grabbed his whisky and jogged them upstairs.
‘We’re already the beast with two backs!’ she rippled with laughter as the bedroom door got shoved with an almighty crack of his foot and they tumbled onto the mattress in a swastika of limbs.
‘Oh you’re getting Willy Shakes-Spear alright…’
‘Be careful! I like that dress!’ - which he had promptly yanked off and billowed across the room; as he took off his own top, drew her delicate ribcage into his warm downy chest, and their naked bodies were together, and their lips met, all softness and flesh and the simplicity of this, that had somehow yet evaded them, feels so easy, so lovely… and then he turned her the other way, so his hands could cup each breast, smooshing kisses all over her to make her writhe wildly, squealing ‘that tickles! Neill, Mr Neill…’ she giggled now, feeling the poking of his raised head behind her buttocks:
‘Do we want to start in this position? Don’t all the virgins do missionary?’
‘No time for religious crusades, besides, this is how I’ve dreamt of having you thirty times over.’
‘Remember to go slow. You have to go slow…’
‘Oh, like I said,’ as he pulled up her chin and kissed down her shoulder, wrapping his ankles around hers as she shuddered in bliss, ‘we’ve got all night, haven’t we? We’ve got all the nights. You’re just like the risotto, that can’t be rushed, but stirred slowly, with a good strong spoon’ - as she burst into giggles.
‘Wait wait! The er, you know… the protection…’
‘I have it.’
Her palm felt down on a decidedly naked shaft. ‘Where?’
‘Right here,’ came the clink of ice.
‘Whisky?’
‘Slows everything down, ju-sst as my girl wanted.’
‘Are we not using a… yer know, rubber john-neh, so sperm can’t gerrout and fertilise t’egg?’
‘No need. I won’t be anywhere near coming inside you.’
‘What about ST—’
‘Shush, I’m as clean as a whistle,’ his hand pulling up her thigh.
‘After stockroom stockings lady?’
‘Fresher than that banana was…’
‘Slow, slow,’ she panted in tipsy giggles as he held onto and into her, ‘you promised, you… cock—’ her hand pushed back against his hips, which was swiftly removed and put to her chest, as he pushed himself up tighter with liquor-scented breath:
‘I’ve got the world’s biggest erection, inside the world’s tightest cunt—’
‘I can’t help being poor.’
‘…And if one is the latter in this position, I wouldn’t choose to be cheeky right now.’
‘Oh sorry sir,’ she giggled, ‘I should be polite. What I really meant is, I agree you’re the world’s biggest cock…’
‘I’ll take that as being factual, not impertinent,’ he purred.
‘…As unfortunately, I haven’t had any others to compare it to.’
‘The only thing that matters is that this one is rammed far enough to almost meet where it was this morning, and you, wriggling your heels against my shins like some puny line-crosser held up an alley wall by the town gangster, can do absolutely nothing about it.’
‘God how romantic you are.’
‘With you like nobody. Already this is longer than I go for with most women.’ They were both set off into giggles and writhing breaths of thrill, him murmuring: ‘Oh you can wriggle as much as you want now. Now you’re right up on there and not going anywhere…’
He thrust his hips as she gasped a little, at the newness of the sensation of his head reaching her cervix, and then he swigged more whisky, and the fumes of it feel somehow intoxicating to her, impertinent, that she can’t help but feel aroused by it - connecting this moment to Truth or Dare night, to his post-phone grumps, as though his array of moods were pushing inside her - gently rolling back and forth, collecting up her moving limbs and squeezing her again and again, in a prolonged cocoon of flesh, as he smouldered into her ear:
‘I live for those sounds, the little gasps you make. Can you do that one again?’
He rolled more onto her, pushing her face into the pillow, nudging with increasing friction, her breaths accelerating with a strange mix of nervousness, pleasure, newness of sensation like something was stuck where it shouldn’t be, topped with utter happiness that she was being invaded and claimed by the man she liked most in the whole world, and this moment she’d long anticipated - whatever it felt like - was here.
‘Oh, Neill…’
‘Oh, God,’ he moaned, face buried into her neck, ‘it’s like entering heaven… like being reborn, like squeezing again through the birth canal… I feel dizzy now, oh God forgive me, and oh shit, my cock’s going all weird again—’
She felt him withdraw and fiddle behind her, as she craned her neck round.
‘Think I’m in serious danger of coming too quick. I need more whisky—’
‘I think we need a condom?’
‘If I put a condom on I will ride you ragged. You won’t be able to walk for a week. Besides I don’t have any.’
She craned her neck further to see him downing the whole whisky.
‘Seriously?’
In a flash he turned, gripped her hips and re-inserted himself back in, faster, as she moaned louder.
‘Re-lax, I won’t do it,’ he whispered melodiously. ‘I’ll shoot it in the right direction…’ as she moaned with onerous ‘Ohhs!’ sparks of thrill shooting like rockets in her belly even as her vagina wavered, then relaxed, then wavered. And now he is whispering in her ear about how beautiful she is, how precious, how delicious; she is surfing eyes-closed through the foam of his flattery, and she wonders, how incredible and sweet this moment is, and despite how far from a clitoral orgasm the vaginal thrusting felt - how different - as though he were reaching inside her right past it, she puts her own hand to it and rubs it, to feel it half swallowed up like a shelf off cliff into an unknown sea. But how smug and complacent she feels against the world right now; the essence of Neill filling her inside out.
‘Do you… are you… gonna come?’
‘Maybe… maybe in a bit…’
His soft thrusting melted into a spooning, deep breaths into soft snoring, naughty words into nuzzling, till Zs fell over them like a blanket, her ankles entwined in his shins, her face on his wrist, his in her hair; both their mouths hanging open as dead as the night, and now finally just as undisturbed.
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