Window rolled down, hot aircon blasting into her face, Neill was speeding down the lane with a lit fag in his mouth, and passing it over to her as he went straight through a red light.
‘Oh my god, Neill,’ as she took it sceptically, looking around, ‘do you want to be caught speeding, and smoking, with a school pupil in your car?’
‘It’s fine. There’s no speed cameras in Broken Britain, no coppers up this posh way, and you’re my daughter.’
‘Follow the A64 onto York Road!’ interrupted the map. Natalia groaned, tentatively puffing and passing the cigarette back.
‘Just please drive sensibly, wherever we’re going!’
‘Ok, ok,’ as he braked. ‘Let’s put some calming music on, shall we?’
He hit the system button and a loud punk song clanged on.
‘Whoops, sorry, don’t have any!’ After a suck on the cigarette he accelerated again wildly, as Natalia flung back in her seat, to Joe Strummer hollering ‘London calling the zombies of death! Quit holding out, draw another breath!’
She yanked the cigarette out of his fingers, stubbed it out in the middle well, and turned the volume down.
‘What did you do that for?’ he whined. ‘That’s The Clash. Back when music had far more balls than you have!’
‘London Calling,’ she read off the screen. ‘So didn’t you have a good enough time joyriding down there and back?’
‘I did. Apart from getting a red raw cold that’s worn me out.’
‘Me too, I’m flaked out.’
He glanced at her. ‘What, are you red raw again?’
‘Yeah that… but also knackered from your new twice-weekly PE! I see there’s only two Science lessons now?’
‘Twice a week like all the others,’ he grunted, ‘don’t need to split them into Chem-Phys-Bi, it’s just Science dual award, as per the exam. Yet another obvious change from someone who has a brain at Thornwood, even if it means working Barnes and Winterbrook to the bone.’
‘Don’t they want a pay rise?’
‘They’ll get it out of the Science teachers’ pay drop. Falling faster than their tree needles, merry Christmas! Mr Khan won’t mind because he doesn’t celebrate it. So how was your crimbo?’
‘Well, it was nice after I got some unexpected presents including a new phone…’
She pulled it out.
‘Oh, Good Santa indeed! And he even gave you one with protection!’
‘What?’
‘Plexiglass screen,’ he nodded down. ‘If it drops only that will crack. Costs a fiver.’
‘Oh, clever. I see you have a Samsung S8 now,’ as she peered at his shiny new infinity screen in the cradle. ‘Very suave. The problem is with these things - is will I ever have the attention span for the rest of your box’s contents?’
‘You would have if I didn’t put the power lead in.’
‘Or leave Candy Crush on! I’ve never actually played games on a mobile till now—’
‘Candy what? That something like Tinder?’
‘It’s a game where you match the fruit into rows,’ she giggled. ’You left it on the apps!’
‘Oh. Must be something I thought would keep me entertained waiting on waiters and traffic jams, like now,’ as they crawled through a red light.
‘You could have done with it, laid up ill with your red raw nostrils…’
‘No, I’ve been busy perusing a red tome of Harrogate and the Yorkshire Dales circa 1950s instead.’
‘Oh!’ she laughed. ‘I hope my note wasn’t too cheeky.’
‘It was very cheeky. Which is why I stuck it up on my fridge.’
‘Really?’
‘Well how else am I going to remember Jean’s name?’
‘Joan! Of Arc?’ she suggested.
‘Joan of Arse. No need to stick it up, to speak! Well, I came home from awful holiday traffic jams, felt myself getting ill and knew I’d caught whatever my sister had. Got in, opened your letter with the book and somehow felt glad to be home. Home up north, can you believe it.’
‘Didn’t you have a good Christmas down south?’
‘Oh, it was alright. Had a lovely dinner. Even took them a fine bit of beef for Boxing Day. The usual frolics, booze and a Bond on the telly…’
‘Nice, we watched that too. But no Jingle All the Way?’
‘What?’
‘Sitting for twenty years in your mum’s cabinet.’
‘Oh! Ha, nope. And so I don’t end up gathering dust on the shelf myself, I’ve got my first date with Mrs Head-Turner tomorrow.’
‘You haven’t seen her yet? Thought you’d be engaged by now!’
‘No no, both been far too busy with Christmas. We’ve spoken on the phone. Problem is she’s 39. A divorcee like me, but she has a son. She’s two years older than I am and I don’t usually go for older women, in fact never. But she’s a bit different. Famous for being the youngest Head in the country when she started five years ago. She upstages me for sure! A fast riser, as they say.’
‘Well you’re a fast riser too then.’
‘Guess we’ll see this weekend, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Ah, oui, monsieur. So how is it you know French so well?’
‘We lived out there in my teens as my mum worked in Paris for a while. Lost my virginity to a French girl actually. Learnt most of my rude words from her.’
‘I dread to think…’
‘I could make your face redder than the book and my nostrils combined… Ah, Mercedes!’ as he pulled onto a sliproad, and Natalia looked up surprised at the huge lit-up Mercedes sign against the darkening sky.
‘Here we are!’
‘Cars?!’
‘Oh, BMW next door too. Let’s go there instead,’ as he swung back out again. ‘We’ll have a little browse, shall we?’
‘Er, what?’ Natalia looked around. ‘How can we do that with me here?’
‘Hush, it’s fine.’ He wedged his car in between a row of black BMW saloons. ‘See? We blend in completely.’
He got out and went round to her side, opening her door to the cold dark breeze.
‘Up, up—’
She climbed out, shivering as he took her hand.
‘Do your coat up. All the way up.’
She sighed and began buttoning it. Then he took his hands to tug at her collars, like a peremptory father wobbling a child under his grasp, crossing her asymmetric coat flap to do up the final large button there with a satisfied grunt.
‘See? Twenty years older.’
‘Twenty fucking seconds older,’ she grumbled.
‘Your coat’s quite nice,’ his eyes ran down her. ‘Sort of 50s style. Grab your bag too.’
She reached in for it. ‘But why—’
‘Sling it over your back,’ he fussed his hands over her. ‘There we go.’
A short dark-skinned man in suit and tie was smiling and walking over, as Neill turned and enthused:
‘Good evening!’
Natalia blinked nervously.
‘Hello sir, I’m Jason. Can I be of help to you today?’
‘Well my good man, it’s so cold and dark I may indeed require help finding what I’m looking for,’ as he put out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, my name’s Richard…’
As Neill drifted forward into a rambling chat with Jason, Natalia kept well back, composing herself with the most relaxed face she could, trusting that in a second, Jason would go away and leave them to their after-hours car-ogling in the dark. But a minute later, Neill was reaching for Natalia’s wrist and pulling her toward Jason, and now like a glassy-eyed waxwork staring right into Jason’s face, Neill had each his hands on her shoulders from behind, purring:
‘If we could take this one in for a hot cup of tea. She likes it well-brewed but milky with two sugars.’
One side of Natalia’s smile flickered like a broken doll.
‘Of course!’ Jason beamed back, as Neill gave her shoulders a parting squeeze. ‘Well sir, I can go get the keys to one of the new i8s we have in right now. Only 85 in the country. The Protonic red edition.’
‘Oh, perfect.’
‘Just go down that way, Mr Richard, we keep it behind the lock-gate, can’t miss it. I’ll take you in for the tea, madam, and we’ll see you in a second.’
Natalia was now walking with Jason without the chance to turn and say anything to Neill, to even check, who she’s supposed to pretend to be? Daughter? Wide-eyed waif of a wife?
They advanced to the glaring bright doors.
‘Milk and two sugars is that right?’ he chirruped. ‘Or would you like hot chocolate?’
Maybe he does think daughter then.
‘Hot chocolate sounds good,’ she grinned, then added in a demurely deeper tone for good measure: ‘For a night as cold as this.’
They entered the sparkling, vast white showroom where phone ringers tinkled, salesmen pottered and a receptionist with bleached ringlets smiled over.
Natalia bristled anxiously as she watched Jason pop off a plastic cup by the drinks machine and fill it with steaming brown water that groaned out a consolatory white froth topping.
‘Here we go, miss! It’s already quite sweet so you won’t need sugar. But if you do, they’re just here—’
‘Oh thank you, sir,’ Natalia enthused, wondering whether ‘sir’ made her sound maturer, more like a schoolgirl or a toss-up between both, as he dashed off and returned with a clipboard and keys.
‘I guess you’re coming out to see the i8?’ he smiled.
‘Ah, yeah, I might as well.’
They walked outside to where Neill was loitering by the most extravagant red sports car she’d ever seen.
She gaped. The gleaming, sculpted strawberry-red spaceship now flashed as Jason click-unlocked it, and she stared even more as the door swung up vertically.
‘Dihedral doors, sir. Or scissor doors as they call them,’ Jason grinned.
‘Well, well, what a stunner!’ chuckled Neill. ‘No need to watch a James Bond movie when you can star in one yourself!’
‘Neill…’
‘Let’s get in and start her up. It’s two-door Natalia so you have to slip in through here—’
‘Yeah, so I can see, Mr Richard,’ she muttered. ‘Wait, are we gonna…?’
‘Chivy, chivy, chivy!’ he ushered her forward and she clambered in, with an undignified tumble of her thick-coated backside against Neill’s waiting thigh as he held the front seat back.
Penning her in with a satisfactory lodge and click, he and Jason climbed into the front, humming down the sci-fi doors with manly chit-chat.
‘Red double-stitching, exclusive carbon fibre and ceramic trims…’
’She’s a beauty.’
‘Well I just need to see your essentials…’
A swish of papers, Neill’s ID plucked and replaced from his wallet, and the signing of a pen on paper: it was clear. He was about to drive this thing. Oh, dear God.
The key was inserted and the loudest, most guttural engine sound shot through every bone and muscle in Natalia’s body.
‘Well well, hello i8,’ purred Neill. ‘You say this thing’s got what horsepower?’
‘369 HP sir.’
‘That’s 369 Rochesters, darling,’ Neill called to the back.
‘Err, oh…’ She was barely able to hear her own voice.
‘Wait till the engine quiets down,’ added Jason, ‘now off we can go.’
Neill’s foot on the accelerator delivered an almighty growl, swinging out onto the dual carriageway, already jolting Natalia as she hurried to stow her drink cup into the side door before it leaked everywhere.
‘Nought to sixty in?’
‘4.4 seconds sir.’
‘Think that was 2.’
They laughed.
Still in a daze of what on earth Neill was doing, she trusted that he’d at least be sensible with someone else’s car. As faces gawped from passing hatchbacks watching the conspicuously red supercar weave in and around them, Natalia thought, thank God she was deposited in the back with a window no bigger than a submarine’s.
‘Go down this way, avoid the rush hour traffic,’ gestured Jason. ‘Flicks between electric and petrol,’ he explained as Neill now glided them onto the M621. ‘Gets well over 50 miles per gallon. Watch out for the cameras down here though, mate…’
‘Lovely,’ remarked Neill. ‘Talk about red roar! I’ll have three.’
‘Think one’s enough,’ chuckled Jason. ‘So what is it you do sir?’
‘I work with disadvantaged youths.’
‘Does that pay well?’
‘It does after I’ve financially disadvantaged them on top of everything else.’
Jason chortled. ‘You can go just up this way, and then—’
‘Oh I need to test it a bit further. Down the A61.’
‘Er, ok—’
‘And then the A64.’
‘Well you’re taking it for a good spin sir. A few minutes and we’ll need to get it back.’
They were caught in queuing traffic for a few minutes, then Natalia watched as the familiar fire station came up on the right, and he began to slow and turn.
‘Er, Nei— er, Rich,’ she began… or Daddy, or sir, or what?
Neill accelerated even faster as the familiar road leading to Natalia’s neighbourhood approached.
‘A lot of speed bumps down this way, sir,’ Jason motioned nervously, ‘you have to be care—’
‘Whoops!’ as Neill went too fast over another, and another, cranking a deliberate loud growl of the engine between each one, coming closer to the turning that led to Natalia’s street, as she shook her head in disbelief.
‘Well well, this surely does make a grand show, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh, er, you’re certainly putting it through its paces!’ smiled Jason, who despite his mask of professionalism, seemed mostly on board with Neill’s test-driving spirit which was probably the most exciting thing he’d had all week.
Suddenly Neill pulled over, not far from where he’d dropped Natalia off after contraband.
‘Just a moment,’ he muttered. ‘Just got to drop off… how do I open this bloody thing?’
‘Just that little button there, sir…’
The door swung up, as Neill arose and cranked back his seat.
‘Darling.’ He clicked his fingers.
Natalia grabbed her drink, climbed out, and stood looking at him.
He took the cup from her hand and had a large swig.
‘What do you reckon?’
She blinked up at the erect, red skyward door against the dark sky over Gipton, feeling like she was in a bizarre dream.
‘Er, yeah, it’s lovely…’
‘Nah,’ as he handed the cup back to her. ‘Far too loud for this street. Sticks out too much. Skids like a teenage boy’s pants. Mine’s perfectly discreet, oh and safe, I’m sure you’d agree?’
She stared.
‘Goodnight Natalia.’
‘You’re fucking unbelievable,’ she hissed.
‘And you fucking love it.’
She stood incredulous as he roared off, with an ostentatious brum-brum and a royal wave of his hand out of the window at two boys spinning wheelies on bikes who stopped and stared.
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*
Her mum was sitting quietly watching Look North.
‘You’re back late.’
‘Sorry yeah, forgot to text.’
‘Dinner in the oven.’
Natalia sat forking mac-and-cheese into a mouth oscillating between grinning glee and sighing disapproval. What Neill had done wasn’t just risky but reckless, driving so near her own house - what if her mum had been staggering up with Aldi shopping? - and yet, it was such seduction, that had so unbelievably landed in her boring life, this shit street of all places, like Jesus himself riding through with boys waving palms; healing her phone and delivering her home after ‘extra-curricular’ teachings.
He hailed from a whole different social world, throwing around a car that even he couldn’t afford, for he had the sales assistant, her school, and the world it seemed, under his spell!
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*
Her mum headed out Saturday evening, ‘on the raz with Daz' again, leaving Natalia to laze on the couch watching whatever she chose, combing her fingers through her pubes whilst talking to herself out loud about her Neill quandaries, farting and burping as loud and repeatedly as she wanted, till she heard a key in the door and bundled herself back upstairs as quick as a flash.
New man grunts. Mum had brought Darren home then. Cackles and guffaws, so they were pissed already then. The sound of stumbling around the kitchen and eventually a waft of cold, smokey air drifting up under Natalia’s door.
Eventually she braved coming down for a bedtime snack, to be greeted by a moderately built, tracksuit-wearing forty-odd-year old, with a boot-like nose, blonde bleached hair that was growing out dark roots, and hard green eyes - red from weed? - squinting at her.
‘Ah, here comes Trouble. You’re Mary’s girl?’
‘I’m Natalia.’
‘You’re at high school then? Which one you at?’
‘Thornwood High. Excuse me, I need to get something to eat.’
‘I might have demolished a few things in there soz!’
Only the ends off the bread loaf were left. She opened the fridge to see her ham gone.
‘Yer mam said she’s nipping to Asda in the morning. Fancy some Twiglets? There’s two bowls in the lounge—’
‘Urgh, stinky. No thanks.’
Back upstairs, there later came the sound of another man’s voice at the front door, and till 1am, more cold wafts of smokey air and sporadic football shouts, with the occasional high-pitched exhortation from her mum. God, it makes the whole house feel even less homely than normal. She hoped they would go soon, trusting this social charade of her mum’s was rare.
But the following night, a school night, Darren was back, and going downstairs for dinner, the fridge was bare.
‘Mum?’ Natalia came into the smokey living room to see the table lined with beer cans, kebab boxes and ashtrays.
A seedy looking 80s film was playing on the TV. Darren looked round at her with an asinine grin whilst her mum asked without turning:
‘What is it love?’
‘There’s nothing to eat.’
‘Oh, sorry love. Pull out a frozen meal. Might take a bit longer in the oven. Chuck one in for us too.’
Later she could hear Darren’s idiotic, deep kookaburra laugh reverberating through her wall. Great, he’s made it upstairs. Then a rhythmic squeak of the mattress began. Jesus God, no.
Earphones and phone, quick. She would hook out songs that reminded her of Neill. What was that Doors song? Soup Kitchen, she almost wrote. And what was that punky one in the car Friday night? London’s clashing? Oh and that 80s coach song she was chauffeured home to in a reverie! Just Can’t Get Enough of these three songs, on repeat, till the coast was clear for her eardrums to come out and sleep.
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*
Decidedly glad to get off to school after the oasis of calm in her own bedroom had been intruded on, she caught sight of Ryan for the first time since getting back.
‘Hey. Happy new year. Been off ill?’
‘No. Well, yeah. Well, it’s my mum,’ he suddenly looked like he was welling up. ‘She’s been taken to ‘ospital proper now, and…’ He blinked and stopped.
‘Oh. Do they think she’s gonna…?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know, alright.’
‘Right. I’m sorry.’
‘Nahh… I am. Did y’ave a nice Christmas?’
‘Yeah, it was ok. Listen, how about we go for that fag you wanted? At lunch?’
‘At lunch?’ he smiled faintly. ‘What if we get caught?’
‘I know a place. Inside the bike shed. Perfectly safe and discreet,’ she smiled. ‘Meet me there at 1.’
He stared.
‘Might help you give you some new perspective.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know, blow away your worries.’
‘Alright,’ he grinned and walked off.
Shit, she thought, she hoped he didn’t think she was going to crouch down on her knees and suck him off or something. And she hoped she hadn’t botched a possible chance Neill might call her up to lunch. She assumed he couldn’t be inviting her up to his office all the time, especially on a Monday. He was always in demand like some celebrity on Mondays.
A flash of a hello from him on the top floor corridor as he passed by with a throng of three paper-waving teachers, confirmed that was the case.
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*
Ryan turned up at 1.10.
‘In here, in here,’ Natalia beckoned him in beside the old bike wheel.
‘So you got some fags?’ he murmured, as she shut the door behind him.
‘Er, no. Don’t you?’
‘You said you smoke?’ he smiled.
‘Yeah… but, I’m not 16 yet. I can’t buy them myself.’
‘I got one left. I owe Bernard one—’
‘Fuck him. Let’s share it. Let’s sit down in the corner well away from the door.’
He laughed as they sat down, knees crossed, and lit up.
‘So yeah my mum, they say she’s got two months to live. But two years ago, they said my Uncle Rob had three months to live.’
‘Oh wow, and he’s still going?’
‘No he died last year.’
‘Oh… so he lived for another year?’
‘Eight months.’
‘Oh, er, still good.’
‘Lung cancer from smoking too much,’ as he puffed on the fag and handed it to Natalia, wincing as she took it. ‘We’re tryin’ to tell mum not to give up but the cancer is grade A, or grade 4 whatever it is. The worst. They say even removing her… whats-its, won’t work cuz it’s spread.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Glad I’m not saving this cig for Bernard,’ as he took it back for a puff. ‘He’s a proper dick. Laughed at me for crying.’
‘That’s not nice.’
‘No it in’t. Sometimes I don’t like boys for playing ‘ard all the time. If me mam goes, and it’s just me and me dad, it’ll be like that all the time. Pretending to be fuckin’ hard.’
‘Well it’s the opposite for me. My dad walked out years ago. Too much soppy softness with just my mum and nothing gets done. Like the broken bath tap, it’s like she’s waiting for it to fix itself.’
‘My dad’s mate’s a plumber. Maybe he could do it. Ere, what’s your number?’
He pulled out his phone, and she hers, and they exchanged numbers.
‘We’re gonna stink in last lesson,’ he grinned. ‘Are you scared your teacher will smell it?’
‘No!’
He laughed.
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*
Natalia often wondered what life would be like with her dad instead of her mum. All the action but no emotion; swings and roundabouts as they say, but what attention to her emotions did her mum even give her other than cynical and cold retorts? Or might ‘Daz,’ in some ghastly nuptial turn of events, end up as her proxy paternal replacement?
Her heart sank that evening when his tracksuit flashed again at the door. The silver lining was that the fridge was restocked with various Asda packages, and Natalia ensured two armfuls of it were conserved up in her own room. More smokey-shouty-scoffing till 11pm. Was dippy Daz going to be a daily fixture?
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Tuesday was raining, and possibly the most miserable looking day of the year, or of winter full stop. Natalia sat in Geography with her head in her hands, wondering what she could say to her mum without ruining her newfound happiness.
She pulled out her phone, hovered over her mum’s name, then from sheer desperation, texted Neill instead:
‘Hey… are you around?’
She frowned to herself for the next ten minutes of no response, thinking she shouldn’t have written that. Who was she to text ‘hey’ to the Head?
But when her phone rumbled, she smiled down to read:
‘Hi! Are you ok?’
She answered:
‘Feeling :(‘
- ‘What’s happened?’
She hesitated, then wrote:
‘Can I talk maybe sometime…’
Her eyes lit up to see his reply:
‘Lunch? Let me clear some things, reply in a mo…’
Mrs Tracey frowned over.
‘Natalia? Are you working?’
‘Yes miss.’
She lodged her phone into her skirt at her groin.
A few minutes later Neill’s reply was vibrating. Waiting till Tracey was looking away, Natalia nudged it out:
‘Come up at 1.’
Oh my golly-goodness. Her clit had just made her a lunch date with the heady master. And somehow she knew this was going to be a tad more exciting than being a squatting shed smoker, trying not to splutter like a novice or frown too much at Ryan’s low IQ.
Keeping her face up at the board, and typing with an ultra-discreet finger below, she looked down to see:
‘ye s’
- ‘O k’
Was he going to give her his lunch again? She was hungry only for his company again! Would he lock the door? She’d lock it herself and throw away the fucking key!
Slap-bang on 1pm she knocked.
‘Come in if it’s Natalia.’
Oh my giddy-golly-goodness, that’s a good goosepimple start.
There he was having his fag out of the window, just like the first time she met the new Head.
‘Hi Neill.’ She stepped toward his desk.
He stared at her hangdog face. As the door clicked closed, he knocked his fag ash and gestured:
‘Go lock it.’
Wish granted, then. Almost too easily. With a beating heart and a suddenly frail-feeling hand, she turned the bunch of keys and pulled them out.
‘Come here now,’ he said.
Face pinkening now at a crossroads of exhilaration and panic now, she placed the keys on the desk, and loitered by her chair where she expected him to ask her to sit.
‘Come right here,’ he said, still smoking at the window.
She walked over tentatively, thinking again of their first meeting when she’d crossed this forbidden zone. And she stared into his outstretched palm for which she had no report card this time.
‘You want the keys? They’re back on the tab—’
‘Your hand, silly,’ he said with a comical air of correction.
Her smile flickered as she hovered her palm over his like a reluctant participant in a seance.
As soon as her skin touched his, he took firm hold of her hand and pulled her right into him - suddenly enough to make her stumble as she gasped forward - but tactful enough to catch her right into him; his thick arm now hooping round her shoulder, her neck, like a tentacle scooping her up into his chest so her face was pulled toward his; her wide brown eyes flickering all over his blue eyes and mouth and cheekbones in utter shock, not able to think clearly or even breathe fully for how fast it all was, as he uttered:
‘Share this.’
Turning around the cigarette he just dragged on, he gently force-fed it between her lips; its tickling end on her tongue, and she, like a rabbit in a trap, with a pelvis like a bubbling kettle, could do nothing but inhale the smoke into her chest that right now felt rigid like plastic. Her skin pulsing beneath her clothing; she was hooked, dunked, all warm and awash in sweet-faggy-cologne Neill scent, and her bloodstream was flying, warming and cooling in all directions, and finally she was convinced she would melt into a pool on the floor if it weren’t for him holding her upright, caught in place by him.
Exhaling the smoke back into his face, lamely but enough to please him, which he softly squinted in familiar reaction to, as a low murmur crackled from his lips:
‘Good.’
Blinking incredulously, she watched him drag on the fag himself, as he loosened his hold and dropped her slightly down.
His arm still around her back, he finished the fag and stubbed it out on the window ledge, pushed the window open wider, then turned back to study her.
‘You’re looking paler than the ghost of Christmas past,’ he said softly. ‘Not so happy new year? Talk to me…’
His hands came now to cradle her head, tilting himself to look into her eyes like a doting parent as he stroked each of his thumb tips down her cheeks.
‘I, I…’
His thumbs were playing at the corners of her lips, pulling them into a smile, which of course, brought on a real smile, rolling her eyes away and suppressing a laugh.
‘There we go, my little joyrider. Smiling again.’
‘Yeah, but…’
There was a knock on the door. She jumped, still caught in the cup of his hands. He swept a thumb across her lips as he gazed intently into her eyes:
‘Just ignore it, they’ll go away.’
Natalia stared transfixed, as a female teacher’s voice began:
‘Neill? Neill?’
‘Sh-shall I go?’ Natalia’s inner wet lip making the tiniest brush-contact with his skin, tasting an infinitesimal tang of his ciggy thumb tip whilst her body flashed with what felt like pools of molten fire.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he whispered. ‘I always lock the door when I’m busy. They’ll get the message and bugger off.’
A faint, pleasant scent of tandoori chicken wrap wafted over her from his mouth, inches from hers.
The person knocked again.
‘Ok well, guess I’ll just tell them.’ He raised his face and shouted: ‘Bugger off!’
His bark reverberated through his hands into her temples as silence fell outside followed by footsteps.
Natalia, both relieved and amused, stared in bewilderment as he dropped his hands from her and gestured to the chair at the desk.
‘You were saying. Something about yeah-but. Hardly my eloquent Natalia. So sit.’
‘I, I don’t know where to start,’ as she went over and sat down at her side of the desk, her head feeling all cold and bare again.
‘Start anywhere.’
Sweeping aside some papers, he pulled up his chair and sat with arms folded, square-on to her, all his attention seemingly waiting upon her deep dark problems.
What were they again? Let’s start with deciphering you have just done to my insides, she thought deliriously, and for fear of laughing in confusingly contrapuntal glee, she lay her face downwards into her folded arms on the desk with a long low moan - which made him think something worse was wrong.
‘Natalia…?’
She brought out her face to reassure him, sighing and laying her cheek sideways on her arm, waiting for the wild waterfall of swirling blood to settle down inside her again; to cool into a stable enough formality to find her words.
Any words. Words for how generally shit life is when she isn’t with him?
‘I’m just down and depressed.’ She chafed her cheek on her sleeve. ‘Winter is dragging on so slowly it feels like this place will never end.’
She couldn’t say ‘I’ve missed you’ even after his new level of taboo affection just now. Raising her eyes at him, she wondered if it might communicate itself, that he would read her mind like he often seemed to do.
He was sitting with arms crossed tight enough to crease his suit in seven places, squinting at her with a slightly forlorn, faraway look.
’Is it just school pissing you off as always?’
‘Home, too. Mum’s got this new boyfriend and he’s not doing her much good. They just drink all evening in the living room, and I can’t go in there. I have to make myself dinner and then they’re making noise till midnight. Sunday night was the worst. They were actually having sex. Gross.’
There was a light chortle amidst his sigh. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I hope next Sunday’s going to be better. It’s my birthday. I’d rather go to church than stay round home—’
‘Oh!’ His arms unfolded as the corners of his lips raised. ‘Your birthday! You said it was January. What with Christmas, I almost forgot. So you’re sweet sixteen on Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ she smiled faintly.
‘How nice!’ His eyes were smiling now. ‘Who are you spending it with?’
‘I have no friends as you well know.’
‘Other family perhaps? Or Sam and Laura, they’re… sort of, friends?’
‘I’ll do something enjoyable by myself. Till the day I get some decent friends, if that day ever comes.’
He looked at her for a few seconds, sighed, got up and wandered to the window.
‘School is an odd place, for people like you,’ he stood speaking with his back to her. ‘Once you’re out of here you will see that you can have friends of any kind you want. There’s people out there who will be your tribe, your genuine company.’
He turned back to her. ‘This is just an arsehole anomaly of a place.’
‘It’s five years of masochistic driftwood that feels as long as twenty.’
‘Now we’re talking. Tea?’
‘Yes please.’
He filled and boiled the kettle then sat back down and continued.
‘I do miss my own friends back in London. Now they are the kind of people I know you will meet one day, probably at uni or something. The kind of likeminded intelligent folk who speak and do interesting things.’
‘Oh, I can’t wait to go to uni, even just to get away from Leeds.’
‘Funny, I was watching some documentary link last night, one of my friends in London sent me,’ he frowned. ‘I thought he was taking the piss at first. It was about how Leeds, in terms of ancient symbolism, is the mouth of hell.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you believe I moved up to a new post in the mouth of hell?’
She shrugged. ‘Beats being born here.’
He rose to the kettle which had clicked off, and poured the teas. ‘Two sugars, as you like,’ as he set them down and she thanked him. ‘But sorry, it’s long life milk today.’
‘Hmm.’ She sipped gingerly, pretending to care. It could be fairest-traded finest tea from High Harrogate with fresh milk from the udders of pedigree, Jersey-Joan-of-Arse cows and she still wouldn’t be able to taste it. She was being satisfied only by this exhilarating, naughty new heart-to-heart with Neill, for which she’d prepaid handsomely with a hundred hours of thinking and wanking and waiting and wanting. She cupped her hands warmly round the mug and extolled:
‘Makes me think of Jane again. ‘I long for a power of vision that might overpass this limit… reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen…’’
He smiled. ‘There she goes again. Reciting lines like a pro.’
She sipped her tea. ‘You said you read it the other week ill in bed?’
‘Finished the thing off when I was ill. Well, I stopped just after they wheel the mad lady out, but I got the gist.’
She laughed. ‘Wish I could resign my own mad lady to the attic just as easily.’
He gazed again in that forlorn way. ‘I wish I could do more to help you,’ he sighed, ‘I wish I could give you great friends and a great family life and everything else you want. Not just a couple new teachers and a box of books.’
‘And a phone,’ she added.
He grinned.
‘And er, unbelievable privileges in school…’ she continued, ‘picking the school trip, a new receptionist, books in Haworth, rides in your car, bags of sweets, illicit weed… well, a complete laundry list of groom— well, brushing - really.’
His face suddenly looked stricken.
‘Would you rather I stopped?’
Her eyes met his as she answered promptly:
‘No.’
He chortled, holding his gaze with hers.
‘I think it’s just a shame you can’t do the same to my mum’s unkempt fucking birdnest hair,’ she added.
He threw back his head and laughed.
There was another knock on the door. Two voices now.
‘Neill are you in there?’
‘I can hear him in there…’
‘Neill?’
Natalia stared with her tea mug mid-suspended to her mouth.
‘Shoo!’ Neill shouted - his eyes right on Natalia, as she smirked - ‘I’m on the phone!’
As they retreated he muttered: ‘God, two of them, like skulking cats.’
She continued to sip her tea like quaffing fine wine, whilst he took a defiant breath, back in thought.
‘Well, I’m glad you don’t care for the outside perception. All those things might have put a smile on your face but clearly we’re going to have do something bigger to bring it back.’
‘Oh, really…?’ she blinked.
He leant forward. ‘Oh. Really. I’ll groom, brush and disentangle every hair on your head till it’s shinier than that new phone screen.’
She stared over her mug rim, enchanted.
‘So we’re going to do something on your birthday,’ he leant back with a creak of his chair, ‘Tremble Nuisance? Haworth? Fucking Bridlington to take pictures of water?’
‘Oh! Well, erm—’
‘In fact, fuck it!’ He slammed his hand on the desk, still keeping his voice low with a glance to the door:
‘Why don’t you come with me to London? We can have better fucking tea than this!’
’Wh-what?’
She blinked five times in succession. Sour tea backwashed over her tongue. By his words alone she would laugh it off as a joke, but he sat forward, looking so earnest:
‘It’s pretty fucking obvious, isn’t it? Come with me this weekend, birthday girl!’
Her heart was shot like a rifle. ‘What? I don’t know, really? Would it—’
‘Come with me to London, and meet my friends, and spend your birthday far, far away from here. Do you really want to spend your sweet 16th in the mouth of hell? Well?’
Her hanging breath fell into a giggle.
He looked at her with eyes glinting, in a sweet whispering exhortation: ‘Come on, come on! Say yes Richie,’
‘Ohh, well of course I want—’
‘Just say yes, or I’ll take your bloody tea away.’
‘Ok, yeah? I would love to come!’
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