Every few seconds she would catch a whiff and think, was Sam's breath more like the drains in Borough, or the mussels stall?
Natalia smooshed her hand to her nostrils as Sam continued:
‘I mean, you’re dead clever. You’ll easily get top grades in everything. But my mum’s gonna kill me, I know, if I don’t get at least Cs.’
‘Get your head down and draw that isosceles triangle then,’ came the nasal response.
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Just then the door burst open and all heads raised.
There was Neill, rocket-propelling to Mr Noble’s desk.
‘Keep working, everyone!’ implored Noble, leaning an ear to Neill who was leaning over him, eyes brimming with something to tell.
Natalia held her gaze on him, whose eyes were roaming the desks and now met with Natalia’s for a hard three seconds of eye contact; her breath caught on pause as she smiled faintly and let her eyes fall again. Good god, did she really think she would have the confidence to hunt down and kiss that man? Did that man, in royal blue suit pressed smoother than her phone screen to the underside of her thigh, really take her to London?
Natalia watched as he mouthed the words that had Noble almost spluttering in response.
‘Ofsted inspection! Tomorrow!’
Noble nodded at the document Neill now handed to him, before disappearing from the room as fast as he’d come in.
The school inspectors are coming! It will be a week of busy Mondays! But she knew the school had an abysmal grading. He must be going round telling everybody. So maybe she could help? Was this an excuse to send him a message?
Her thigh vibrated before the lesson was even out.
‘Please come to my office straight after Maths!’
A huge smile spread over her face just as Noble frowned over.
‘That’s not what I think it is, Natalia?’
‘No, no, sir.’
Heart racing on the bell, Natalia dodged through a bottleneck of gossiping boys on the staircase.
‘Ofsted are coming! The big scary inspectors! Dinkey’s pooing his pants!’
At Neill’s door, she could hear voices inside. She knocked hesitatingly.
‘Come in!’ Neill cried.
She opened to see Mrs Coleman and Miss Patrick standing either side of Neill, who was standing fiddling with his tie as he coughed:
‘Ok, I’m going out now ladies, I need to lock up my office,’ widening his eyes at Natalia to stay where she was. Neill followed out the two teachers as they brushed past Natalia, then promptly slipped back in, shut and locked the door, and pocketed the keys as Natalia’s eyes followed them sceptically.
‘Prisoner again, am I?’
He took her arm and led her towards the window.
‘I need to talk with you before people come knocking. All hell has broken loose since Ofsted sent their announcement this morning—’
‘You’re not going to smoke your usual fag out of the window, sir?’ She saw it was hoisted wide open.
‘Christ no, I’ve got to try fumigate this place by tomorrow,’ he groaned, using a credit card to scrape a saucer thick with fag ash into the bin.
‘They’re coming for one day?’
She tried not to laugh as she watched him toss the whole saucer.
‘Two,’ he frowned. ‘And this school—’
‘Needs Improvement,’ said Natalia.
‘And I want to get it—’
‘Good,’ she rejoined. ‘And you’d like me to help?’
He stepped up to her earnestly. ‘Yes. I need them to come and find a school full of you.’
She blinked up his chest.
His phone started ringing. ‘Oh, fuck,’ as he leaned to snap it up. ‘Yep, yep. Ok, yep.’
He slammed back the receiver and stood back up, breathing down at her.
She smiled faintly. ‘You sounded like Dinkey.’
‘It was Dinkey. And sadly I have to go see the Wonky Wank, right now. Oh god, I need a fag. But I need to talk to you. Can you meet me in ten minutes down the road in my car?’
‘What! During lesson?’
‘Ok, ok, lunchtime then. Where I met you for contraband.’
She stared and chewed her lip. ‘What about the risks, you know, you talked about…’
‘Oh, fuck all that! The only risk I know is this school getting branded with a shitstick on my watch. I need your ideas, your insights, your smart Alec little mind, to help me on this one!’
She found her face cradled in two lightly sweaty palms.
‘Natalia,’ his blue eyes pierced into hers, as her lips dropped apart. ‘Engage that beautiful brain of yours. Spend the next lesson researching Ofsted and ideas on your phone. Don’t let a teacher see this time, for God’s sake. Worst case, claim you’re sick and go into the sick room and do it there. Not that obviously, you sick girl…’
Her eyes fell downwards. Oh, good god. The number of orgasms she had thinking of this man, and right now she couldn’t look past his chin.
‘Big Boobs will let you,’ his thumbs stroked Natalia’s cheeks now, her legs going like jelly. ‘She’s lovely. Just don’t look at her chest, you might be a bird, but even birds will squawk when they spot those Great Tits—’
‘It’s ok, I’ll do it in lesson,’ she said as his hands dropped from her face. ‘I mean, I’ll come—’
He smiled.
‘I mean, I’ll meet you at 1.’
‘I know what you meant?’ he blinked.
‘Shut up.’
They moved toward the door and he unlocked it.
‘Ok clear!’
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Her mind was whirling. Meet Neill in his car at lunch. Was this a good idea? Oh, it was a great idea.
She ran round the corner headlong right into Mrs Williams.
‘Good heav—!’
‘Oh, sorry Miss!’
‘Natalia! Shouldn’t you be in lesson?’
‘I just… had to see Neill,’ she said, turning to see his office was too short a distance away to deny.
‘Oh! Mrs Coleman said he had to rush out. Is everything ok?’
‘Yeah! Well, there was a matter I had to see him urgently about—’
‘Oh?’ Williams stood as if waiting to hear it. So much for rushing to lesson, fat cunt.
Natalia thought fast. ‘Well, Ofsted are coming, aren’t they. And they see things like bullying, teasing. The boys in my class have been teasing me quite a bit lately.’
‘And Neill’s what, arranging to expel them by hometime?’
‘No! He just wanted to keep tabs on them, I guess…’
‘Hm.’
‘I’m, er… going out with Ryan, Miss,’ Natalia added. ‘They tease us… and about his sick mum, which really isn’t very nice.’
‘No,’ Williams frowned. ‘I hear she has advanced cancer. In her forties, goodness.’
‘Please don’t… say anything to the boys about it. You know what it’s like for pupils getting shamed for grassing. Neill said just to keep out of their way for now.’
Williams nodded. ‘I understand.’
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*
‘This is sacrilege. But needs must.’
At 1.15, Neill and Natalia were parked up at Temple Newsam, sitting in his passenger seats eating a McDonalds Drive-Thru.
‘What is? Sitting with a schoolgirl here on Savile’s back row?’
‘Now then, now then,’ he screwed up his burger wrapper and held out the fries to her, ‘I may have only been here four months, but tell me what to do to make this school better by tomorrow.’
She pondered as she bit into her burger.
‘Put hazelnuts into Mrs William’s supplements so she gets hospitalised for allergic shock and can’t come in for two days?’
He gulped his Pepsi. ‘God you’re good.’
She paused. ‘Well, I don’t think—’
‘What supplements does she take?’
‘Garlic capsules at the end of every day from her handbag, but—’
‘Bloody hell. Garlic would mask it well.’
‘You sound like a witch from Macbeth. Surely Mrs Williams wants a good Ofsted result for the school she’s worked thirty years in?’
‘She’d sooner see the school closed down on my account just to get her kicks,’ as he threw four fries into his mouth. ‘She’d go to the grave holding a grudge.’
‘But we might risk killing her?’
‘Always a bonus.’
‘Hmm. Which other teachers are you worried about?’
‘Miss Doris. She’ll put the inspectors into a coma as soon as she opens her lips.’
‘That could be handy.’
‘Slip her a hash cookie to liven her up?’
‘Poisoning two teachers and knocking out the inspectors. Good start.’
They scrunched up their rubbish.
‘Stuff it down the door and roll down that window so we can smoke. Will you want your own or to share mine?’
‘I’ll have my own.’ She fancied impressing him with her new dragging skills honed with Ryan.
‘Probably for the best. You always make my fags soggy.’
He held out his lighter to hers, as she pulled up her knees by one window, he sitting by the other window; one thick blue knee crocked up into the middle, next to which he propped a doubled-up fries box as an ashtray.
They took their first puffs eyeing each other.
‘So I am a fine fellow smoker?’ she smiled.
‘Oh, you’re my little addict now.’
‘How was your weekend?’
‘Good, good. Had a nice Sunday roast.’
‘With Joan?’
‘Of Joan.’
‘Oh, nice,’ she blinked, puffing. ‘It’s… it’s all going well?
‘She didn’t swallow,’ he sighed, puffing his smoke up to the sky as though he were talking about the weather. ‘But she will next time, because I’ll hold it in there. She might gag and struggle a bit but it won’t be any worse than I had to suffer when I spent half the night next to a Lavender Air Wick diffuser that I eventually realised she’d plugged into the wall down my side of her bed. Tossed it out of the window when she was brushing her teeth and almost knocked out her cat.’
‘Oh, Neill… I don’t know what to say,’ Natalia giggled.
‘And your weekend?’
‘I went to the cinema with Ryan. And I smoked the weed with him.’
‘Oh? Where did you go?’ He leaned to tap his fag ash.
‘The Vue, it’s at The Light, in town…’
‘No, after that, to smoke,’ he frowned.
‘Well, we just had it in town. And… I kissed him,’ she smiled.
‘Oh?’ he squinted at her as he dragged. ‘And who taught you that?’
‘The best.’
‘Correct answer. How long for?’
She shrugged. ‘A minute.’
‘And then what?’
‘Well, we went home…’
‘What? To whose home?’
‘Our mums’,’ she said cynically.
‘Hmm,’ he eyed her from behind a cloud of smoke.
‘So many questions. My turn,’ she exhaled, pulling up and scrolling her phone, fag in one hand, feeling rather grown up. ‘So I’ve been doing research, like you wanted m—’
‘Fag ash, Natalia.’
‘Oh.’ She leant forward to tap it off. ‘So. This online guide to Ofsted asks: ‘How do you make sure that teaching meets the needs of all students?’’
‘Define, define, well-educated infant,’ he circled his fag in the air.
‘Well for example, ‘are children with learning disabilities are enabled to excel’’?
‘Ah yes. Miss Francis has been pestering me since September to action a one-on-one bongo session for a Downs kid in Year 7. I’ll make sure he gets that with a spotlight on him at the music club on Wednesday, right in front of Lady Inspector’s bonce.’
‘You’re so considerate, Mr Neill.’
‘Thank you darling.’
‘Next. ‘Does the staff ensure that students eat high quality, nutritious foods?’ Well, you changed the caterer in time…’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘You were right on time changing PE to twice a week too.’
‘Thanks to your approval, miss.’
‘Thanks to your improvement, sir.’
They gazed in bemused admiration at each other, puffing smoke in tandem.
‘They will ask about cultural capital. What does that mean?’ she frowned.
‘Must mean taking the most cultural student to the capital. Done.’
‘Oh, good. By the way, how did that grant application go?’
He scowled. ‘Takes twelve weeks’ fucking processing time.’
‘So you’ll have an Easter miracle,’ she smiled.
‘More likely to be an egg on my face.’
‘Next it says, Ofsted will ask about any prejudicial racial behaviour—’
‘I’ll have to tell them about Luxton, yes.’
‘What happened to her video by the way? I saw it was taken down?’
‘It was getting too many comments mocking Shaziya—’
‘I saw those.’
‘Which made the Begum family threaten their own defamation case against Luxton. Even though you couldn’t see even the girl’s face for all the blood…’
‘Her lower leg was sticking out where the fabric was ripped.’
‘Exactly, and they didn’t like ankle flesh to offend Muhammed, as well as 3000 commenters who were actually laughing at Luxton’s bingo wings. Anyway, Luxton has made a public apology - well, page fifteen of the Asian Express that no-one reads - and volunteered to a six-week community stint in a Muslim centre in Beeston.’
‘Oh. Wow. Glad you’re not in trouble,’ she said, with a drag on her cigarette, bringing her phone back up. ‘So it says that Ofsted will ask about records and analysis of sexual harassment or sexual violence…’
‘Good job there’s no records or analysis.’
‘Do you think Miss Barnes might talk?’
‘What, of exploiting me?’
‘No, about being pinned down and frotted over a pommel horse on school grounds by the Head drunk on whisky, dressed as Santa on the whole events budget—’
‘How do you know that word, frotted? I don’t remember teaching you that.’
‘Well there’s no-one around if you still want to.’
‘You are growing to be a most impertinent thing. Good Lord, I can’t have them turning up to a school of you after all. As for Barnes, she was practically being frotted by her new ripped boyfriend this morning. Snogging his face off, right in front of my Merc.’
‘Does she know you have new Headmistress totty?’
‘Oh yes. I made sure she knew the first day she came in.’
Natalia rolled her eyes.
‘Do you fancy Mrs Coleman?’ she now asked curiously.
He screwed his nose. ‘No, I’m not interested in Coleman’s mustard. Why?’
‘Saw her standing looking mournful when you drove off like a rocket from the school just now. Think she wanted you to come recite literature upstairs so she could get her tongue round the harder bits.’
‘Ha! You, minion, are too saucy!’
‘So what did you do to her recently that was inappropriate?’ as she handed him her finished fag end and he stubbed them out into the burger wrappers. ‘I once heard Mrs Williams on the stairs saying you did something and I was wondering what…’
‘So am I. We’d be here all day trying to remember my every inappropriate action.’
‘Don’t say that to Ofsted—’
‘Except with you…’ he frowned now.
‘What?’
‘With everything I do with you,’ he sighed, ‘my memory works absolutely fine. Why is that?’
‘Erm, I’m not sure…’
‘Like what I’m going to do to you in ten seconds’ time. I’ll bet you that I’ll be able to remember it a week from now.’
‘Huh?’
‘Five seconds…’
He was looking behind them, then out behind her, then through the windscreen.
Her eyes widened. ‘Neill—’
His knee creaking into leather, all of a sudden he was in her face, both hands gripping her head, and she gasped as his lips planted right on hers with an impudently hard, unapologetic wet push of his tongue straight into her mouth. London flashed through her mind like a kid’s kaleidoscope, as this man, tenfold the breadth of Ryan at the back of the Merrion Centre, infiltrates her senses like glaring headlights into a quiet country lane, and she blinks open again to find him sitting back, flipping opening his Marlboro packet again.
‘How’s about that then. Ask me in a week, and I’ll tell you that exactly at’ - he checked his watch - ‘1.28pm, you tasted like a rushed bag of Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps, and after pecking a boy goodnight on the lips down at the picture-house, you still react like a startled hare to the tongue of a real man.’
She stared, her lips twitching as he leant over, stuck a fresh cigarette between them and struck the lighter.
Dazed, she faintly inhaled as she took it between her fingers.
‘Do continue,’ he motioned his hand at her phone.
She blinked back down at her screen.
‘‘Discrimination…’’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, knee back up, blowing smoke out of the window. ‘But you are a single pearl amongst driftwood duds.’ He turned to her. ‘And that adorable little moan you make whenever I kiss you and that stare you do right after is like nothing from any woman.’
Her eyes faltered and she sighed, before she blinked up and asked curiously:
’Have you… ever had a rapport with a schoolgirl, like we have?’
‘Rapport? You’re funny.’
‘You know what I mean…’
‘I have never. But I’ve made mistakes. I’ve shagged a teacher before, in a school.’
‘Oh? Who?’ She raised her fag as a useful shield for what might be coming next.
‘When I was a Deputy down at RUT - quite aptly, in Richmond - there was this gorgeous woman who taught History, I think it was. She looked like Joan Severance, with these stockinged legs strolling the corridors like some femme fatale, always blinking at me with these fuck-me eyelashes. One day I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I asked her to come with me to examine the paper supply—’
‘As you do.’
‘Oh, she knew what was coming. She could feel my knob already sticking into her back when I unlocked the stockroom. It was dark in there and I couldn’t find the light, but I bunged her in and my throbbing cock into whatever orifice presented itself first. As I wasn’t wearing a johnny I just hope it was her arsehole because any kid would be resigned to hearing her nails-down-a-chalkboard laugh for all of its fatherless life.’
Natalia facepalmed, as he dragged, sighing:
‘I was like a dog that had been kept indoors too long and was taking a week’s worth of urination up a tree. Lucky I was quick because she was making a din like a garrotted mule, the blonde bastard. I could have lost my job thanks to her. …Fag ash, Natalia.’
‘Huh? Oh…’
‘So what’s next on the list?’
She blinked back down. ‘‘How are students’ interests identified and developed?’’
‘In other words, do you want to hear another dirty story?’
‘Let me guess, there’s another teacher you had.’
‘Technically an assistant. She was French. I brought her home specifically so I could ejaculate over her spectacles. She looked like one of those librarian girls in pornos, with plaited hair and a big woolly jumper. A bit like you, but ten times worse—’
‘Pardon?’
‘Sorry Natalia. Not really like you. She was a pure piece of meat. She would peer at me in the staff room like a deranged doormouse just dying to bob on my knob. So one day I approached her and asked, do I have something on my face? When she said no, I asked, do you want something on yours?’
‘Wait, what,’ she cringed, ‘you actually said that? She probably thought you were going to help her with her language skills…’
‘Oh she wanted her tongue round my harder bits, to steal your line, thank you—’
‘You’re welcome.’
He nodded back. ‘Because then I asked, tu veux être ma petite salope? and she was scrambling to say oui, oh oui! She wanted it, and she wanted it trés vite—’
‘Vite. I just learnt that for the GCSE, but salope…?’
‘She wanted to be my little bitch and she wanted it fast, basically. Once I got her in bed I got so fed up of hearing her scream Baise-moi, monsieur Neill! so I stuck it in her gob and that’s how I got the perfect money shot over those jam jars. I took them off and invited her to lick them clean, I was only joking but the gullible frog actually did it.’
Something between titillation and nausea brought a lump of masticated fries back up Natalia’s food pipe, although she’d spent most of Saturday reading Memoirs of A Woman of Pleasure and the description of a penis as a ‘furious battering ram’ hadn’t left her.
‘So, did anyone ever find out about either of them?’
‘No,’ he exhaled. ‘I got away with the stockroom stockings, and Frenchie, well, that was my private business. There might have been a couple of supply teachers along the way too. The only comeback I’ve had is…’
‘Your spunk bouncing off the French girl’s glasses?’
He gazed impressed. ‘Good one. I was going to say, the pearl necklaces left on the rear end of the ugly ones.’
‘I think there’s a variety of comeback lines to the comeback line,’ she laughed.
‘You’re learning.’
They stubbed out their cigarettes.
‘Next. ‘How are you checking that students know what they have learnt?’’
‘Well, I wouldn’t need to send an inspector to your knickers to know you’re moister than an oyster at Borough Market after the stories I just told you.’
‘Oh my god… Neill…’ she gasped, dropping her phone and burying her face into her knees.
‘That means you definitely are. Next one.’
‘Health and safety. They’ll ask about the nut incident,’ she said, mouth muffled in her knees without looking at her phone.
‘Just told you two. Can you sit back up please, so I can see that you’re still blushing redder than the McDonalds fries cup?’
She bolted upright defiantly.
‘Oh, I was right,’ he remarked. ‘So they’ll be as stained as the ones I saw in London.’
Natalia gasped again as her face fell back into her knees.
‘Come on Natalia,’ he chuckled, nudging her as a low moan emanated from her buried head. ‘Concentrate or you’ll end up with lines again. In your face, that is, the way you’re squashing it—’
She huffed back upright. ‘You’d better be serious if you want me to help. So, how well have you got to know the other pupils in the school?’
‘There are other pupils in the school? …I mean, yes, quite well.’
‘Shall we compare notes on who are the troublemakers and the swots in each year?’
‘Fire away.’
She reeled through names of students from Year 7 all the way up to Year 11.
‘Bloody hell! How does Billy-No-Mates-Except-Her-Clit know all this?’
‘From people watching. I have a lot of time.’
‘I’ll try spotlight those you mention. What physical things in the school might the inspectors notice?’
‘Graffiti on one pole of the school sign? A hole in the fence at the far end of the playground about two foot from the hazard sign on the railing?’
‘Good Lord. I have a handyman on call today so text me if anything else comes to mind. Are there used sanitary towels stuck to the girls’ toilet doors since I got extra cleaners in?’
‘Nope. But round me up a small army of Ofsted ninjas and we’ll spruce things up straight after school. How’s about that then?’
‘You are most potent in plotting. I’ll handpick the most dutifully docile ones and have them wait for your command in the hall at hometime.’
‘Perfect,’ she smiled.
‘Good girl! Finish up that fag and let’s get back. Better wash your clothes before tomorrow - all your clothes, and yourself - stinky fingers!’
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*
Hurrying back through the hall on the way to form, she met with Ryan.
‘Hey! Didn’t see you at form this morning?’
‘Yeah, I were late.’ He gazed at her face. ‘I liked the other night. It were…’
Natalia looked around, ushered him into a corner, and standing on her tippy-toes, she grabbed his face into her hands and kissed him, sliding her tongue in with an extra yank on his neck.
‘…Almost as good as that was,’ he chortled. ‘You’ve been smoking haven’t ya?’
He stared mesmerised at the fullest smile Natalia had ever given him. Then they quickly composed themselves upon the click-clack of heels coming across the hall.
‘I’d stick one in your mouth now,’ Natalia murmured, ‘right in front of Miss Francis’s face, and set off the fire alarms to royally exterminate the last lesson.’
Ryan burst out laughing.
‘Move along to form, please, guys,' Miss Francis chimed in passing.
‘I like you. You cheer me right up,’ Ryan whispered as they walked on. ‘Dad’s with Mum at Auntie Jackie’s tonight. You wanna come on the bus back to mine and watch a film?’
‘Oh. Well, I’ve got some things I need to do,’ Natalia frowned, ‘Ofsted are coming tomorrow, you know, the big scary inspectors, and Miss Patrick begged me to help look at her paper supply. Text me your address and I’ll get the bus over for 5.’
‘Alright babe. See ya.’
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*
Miss Patrick came in surprised to find Natalia the first in Art, neatening a pile of sketchbooks.
‘Natalia! I’ve seen you with Neill…’
Natalia’s heart thudded as she turned to her.
‘He didn’t happen to say he was leaving early today, did he?’ she sighed. ‘What with Ofsted coming, we’re all running round like headless chickens—’
‘Oh! I can go check?’
‘Would you? My legs are done in. Can you pop these papers to him?’
Natalia ran off like a shot, knocking loudly at Neill’s door as though the papers in her hand were a burning torch admitting legitimate entry.
‘Come in!’
He was alone as she’d hoped.
‘Hi Neill!’
‘You knocked like a bailiff!’
‘Miss Patrick asked me to give you this…’
‘Well, I know which Miss Woolley Edge I’d rather get it from,’ he said eyeing her coat. ‘Thank you darling.’
‘You look calmer,’ she smiled. ‘All set for tomorrow?’
‘Almost. Just got back from a nice fag and shag chinwag over lunch with a colleague which settled the nerves.’
‘And she’s already being your Ofsted ninja!’
‘So very good,’ he sighed. ‘I’m about to round up your crew of cronies. Goodness, I’m exhausted and it hasn’t even started yet. When I get home I think I’ll collapse straight into bed.’
‘Me too. I’m seeing Ryan,’ as she turned to the door.
‘Wait, what?’
She turned round to see him staring.
‘I’m going out with Ryan again tonight,’ she repeated.
‘No no—’ he raised his hand, ‘that’s not what you said just then,’ he glared. ‘Not going out, but going in.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, he’s having a hard time at the moment, and…’
‘Hard time! Natalia, lock the door and sit down.’
She smirked, imagining going straight out to irk him, but somewhere between curiosity and obedience - and fearing excitedly that he might chase her down the corridor - she turned the keys, put them down on the desk, and seated herself as his gaze fell upon her.
‘Aren’t you…’ she began, ‘too busy with this Ofsted panic for a heart-to-heart?’
‘Forget that,’ he frowned. ‘This is panic, this is heart attack! You didn’t tell me earlier that you’re going back to Ryan’s house?’
‘Well, we just arranged it, dad…’
‘Listen. For all intents and purposes I am your proxy father.’
She blinked. ‘I might go to his—’
‘Do not go to his house.’
‘Why, do you think he’ll expect sex straight away?’
‘I should very well hope not! I expect you both to be reciting Brontë and playing hopscotch at sunset at Tremble’s Newton over a bag of Skittles… months, years, before he dons a Durex thicker than him!’
‘Says Deputy Dog Dick, urinating up every stockinged tree trunk in sight!’
‘Those were mistakes, all in the past.’
‘Like hounding the PE teacher just last month?’
‘Her buttocks were so tight she almost doesn’t count…’
‘And Joan? How soon did you sleep with her?’
He paused. ‘You’re being very forward, Natalia — ’
‘Oh! Sorry! I meant, how fast did you fuck her? Come on, Lewd Rage Head, let’s shag-chinwag!’
He looked sheepish. ‘First date.’
‘Well you’re not doing much justice to your argument, mister Nail, other than to knock the C off chaste!’ - as she watched him suppress a hoot of laughter - then she added: ‘The same could happen with Ryan, if I play my cards right.’
‘Natalia! I am a grown adult—’
‘Animal!’
‘That too…’
‘I’m sex-teen,’ she grinned.
‘Uh, so clever. But oh, so not ready for that.’
‘Oh? And how do you know?’ she blinked, her indignation like soft-whip ice cream with raspberry streaks of curiosity.
‘Natalia,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve kissed you, and I have held you in my lap. Several times, now. And I know that you’re not ready.’
She gazed back.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. He motioned a finger to his lips.
The person at the door tried the handle.
‘Cheeky mare!’ Neill frowned, till footsteps were heard, and he resumed.
‘As I was saying, young lady. On our field trip, I did the field research, and I say that kissing is the limit. As your proxy guardian… yes!’ - at her narrowing eyes - ‘I forbid you to go any further.’
‘I can’t believe you…’ she both smiled and glared.
‘And kissing for no longer than a minute.’
‘Why, what happens after a minute?’
He blinked.
‘We did it for two… so?’
A reluctant smile grew on his face. ‘Two minutes then. With breaks, as we did.’
‘What, for Maths equations?’
‘You could try, but he’ll be as stumped as you even before you start the kiss.’
‘So at two minutes… it gets dangerous and we need to find a pub toilet?’
‘Pardon?’
‘For a shit, you know.’
‘Oh he’ll be shitting his pants alright, when I come along and yank him away by his ears like Miss Trunchbull!’
‘How do you know when I’m ready anyway?’
‘Maybe in a couple of years.’
‘Two years? Oh? When this precious, stinky-fingered pearl gets its oyster opened by a suitable five-starfish suitor?’
He erupted in laughter. ‘Darling, that plankton won’t even find your pearl. Clearly you are the mermaid in those paintings you so deeply identify with, and until her tail turns into two legs may you mingle with the seamen. And she may - politely - ask to come dock in my lapping shore every full moon till I declare her ready to sail.’
‘Really. And what if she breaks your rules, Captain?’
He sniffed. ‘She won’t.’ He nudged the keys. ‘Ofsted you go, ninja. Run along and ponce up the school.’
‘Humph. And what do I get in return for my work?’
He looked up. ‘You’re instigating a deal now, are you?’
‘Damn right.’
‘That’s my girl,’ he sighed, sitting back.
‘Well, I want…’ she took up and squeezed the keys in her hand, scratching one coyly round her mouth.
‘What? A lesson for one-minute kissing with Ryan?’
‘No lesson…’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘…No less’on two minutes,’ trying not to blush at her own audacity.
‘Why, of course,’ he smiled. ‘But we have to be on the way to a Good,’ he added. ‘Otherwise you won’t get the goods.’
‘When do you get the result?’
‘Thirty days.’
‘What!’
‘Relax. I’ll know from the wrap-up meeting how we’ve fared. And if in thirty days it turns out we were wrong, well, I’ll have a refund of the two minutes back.’
She laughed, waltzing backwards to the door.
‘Go, ye giddy goose.’
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*
‘Sorry, Miss Patrick. Neill’s fault, he talks too much.’
She smudged a 6B pencil into the waves of a siren’s hair. She whispers so softly like a child, I’d have to take her into my lap like one of your washed-up Waterhouse mermaids, was what Neill said of Miss Doris. Like a Virgin. Like a Prayer. A prayer to be a virgin no longer, like every other 16-year-old girl putting a hairbrush handle up her vagina to see what a penis might feel like. What was this thing that girls were so desperate to have inside of them, and men so smug about putting inside of them, so she could make a din like a garrotted mule squatting in the cucumber patch?
A battering ram, a terrible spitfire machine, a home-driven wedge - in the 18th-century world of prostitute Fanny Hill. Even a librarian doormouse screams for it: oui, oh oui, she wanted it trés vite, till she’s muted and blinded by it in her face instead. She knew Neill was trying to be funny like an overgrown Merc-driving schoolboy braggart, but why did the hateful language turn her on, and how could he be so smug to know that she was reeling from these anecdotes, that she had no choice from being plonked like slimey rocks into the delicate crabbing net of her wank library?
And now he’d held her in his own lap like a Little Miss Doris, ‘several times now!’ and declares her a child, not ready for sex, in a way that was agitatedly embarrassing but at the same time, so charmingly true, it tip-tapped the icicle of her clitoral bulb into a drip-drop, dear sweet daddy declaring ‘I have kissed you, and I know you’re not ready…’
Oh god, the damned perceptive creature, who never preyed on her in the hotel room, and yet throws smut at her like fags ends on the floor, boiling up her kettle of sweet tea to bubbling overflow? If this was grooming, it was exquisite! For now he forbids sex with Ryan, and it delightfully exasperated her. Regularly sit in his lap till he diagnoses she is ready? She could only dream he was serious! To hold her hand all the way to the day she goes all the way? You now qualify for adult animal intercourse, to be urinated on by this dog bladder that can’t bare it any longer; off you go into our shared hotel room, slipping over your moist oyster straight into bed with Captain! Good girl!
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Her pencil finished the mermaid and desecrated her bottom. She’d screw up this drawing and screw, who, Ryan instead? It fluffed up her fur coat pride when Ryan said she cheered him up. She liked the idea of cosying up on the couch and having another little kiss and lounging with her feet against his without the bombastic tension of the cinema. But what Neill said: Do not go to his house. The sober look in his eye said: when you go into a male’s lair, you’ll get dashed up on his rock. What if Ryan began fumbling at her little breasts till she was texting help to ‘N,’ the capital cock, who knows I’m not ready to cap cock with neither cunt nor ‘gagging, struggling’ mouth… send Skittles! Drag him away by his ears, Mr Truncheon!
Her thoughts scattered like the pupils upon the home bell. She was supposed to be readying for Ofsted and all she could think was Ofsex. She leapt down to the hall, daunted to see six girls and two boys waiting - mostly lamb-like Year 7s and 8s.
‘What we doin’ then? The cleaners’ jobs?’
‘No,’ frowned Natalia, catching a whiff of Marlboro from her own jumper, as she blew out her chest and announced: ‘We need to fly around neatening tables, stationery, shelves, paper trays; write nice stuff on the boards! We need to add the je-ne-sais-quoi, the magic touch! Right! Are you ready to impress Neill and the inspectors?’
Soon they were flying around all the departments to the pleasant surprise of the teachers in each classroom, and a string of praise was directed Natalia’s way.
Natalia was in the middle of rubbing out ‘Ronnie is a gimp’ from an English blackboard and chalking up a Haiku poem adorned with flowers, when her phone beeped:
‘Soz but dad is coming back home with mum so can’t do today x’
Ah sweet relief, Ryan was out of her hands. She could spend an extra twenty minutes being Neill’s ninja.
‘Broken pommel horse in the gym. Probably was you. I reported it Miss Barnes, she reported it to your handyman.’
- ‘Thank you angel!!!’
‘Good luck for the next couple of days. If there’s anything else I can do just text x’
- ‘YOU are an angel xx’
Oh. Baise-moi, Monsieur Neill.
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