The Headmaster's Flame - Lolly

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The whole hall was in hysterics. Even Marcia stared open-mouthed at the photo now displayed on the overhead projector. The teachers shrieked and wrung their hands as the kids chanted:

‘Neill and Ma-loner, kissing in a tree! She rides his dick whilst he drinks her wee!’

‘The brainbox isn’t a virgin?’

‘Her only brain now is her box!’

Miss Patrick is handing out clipboards and everyone is painting the photo, all distorted on the projector now, their kissing faces intermingled drips. Neill, say something! Never be embarrassed! But Neill was scarlet, standing going snort, snort, snore!… like the Mad Hatter as the police arrive. ‘Arrgh, dead arm!’ he croaks, as they grip hold of him.

‘Neill, I’m so sorry… it’s my fault! I should’ve come when you texted!’

‘What?’ A grunt brushes her ear as the din of Assembly melts away. ‘Sweetheart you’ve been turned the other way all night, curled up like a shrimp! Are you still feeling sick?’

‘Just a bad dream about exams,’ as her eyes flick open.

‘You’re trembling, and all clammy,’ Neill pulled off the covers and felt her head. ‘Are you good for school?’

‘Yeah… but you go shower first.’

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She heard the sink filling with water and the pat-pat of shaving cream and knew she had at least ten minutes before he came out. She usually liked to watch him, stood up on the bath rim behind the glistening shower drops on his thick freckled shoulders but right now her head was bent into her phone. Google Shopping suggested nine-carat cuffs could be worth more like £300, not the measly £50 that GoldForCash quoted her last night when she’d crept to the toilet and tap-tapped in the dark.

A quick Reddit search suggested she could get more at a jeweller’s. She looked up the number of one in town. Phone to her ear, their answerphone said they’re closed. Of course, of course. What did she expect so early in the morning?

Too early.

‘Neill, your clock says 7am,’ she squinted into his car dash. ‘You haven’t put it forward!’

‘Yes I have. We have to get in an hour early for that blasted Year 7 Easter Egg Cunt. Didn’t you hear me say upstairs?’

‘Oh. I was miles away.’

‘Not in bed,’ he groaned as he thrust the stick into drive. ‘You may have been facing the other way like a frozen prawn all night but I’ve an ache in my hip right here from where your bottom was stuck into me.’

‘You’re my starting blocks for the Egg and Spoon Race! So what does it involve?’

‘Hunt, darling, hunt - it’s not Sports’ Day yet. Year 7 lay eggs all over the school like a brood of fetid hens. Twenty or thirty stickers that win you a Cadbury’s Creme Egg. But two are golden eggs - one for £50 cash and the other £50 for a charity of your choice. You pay £5 entry fee at morning form before you go scratching around the dusty old school to claim them, Bog help us all.’

‘Bog?’

‘Russian for God. You should know.’

‘Who sanctioned that idea of chaos?’

‘You talk like a staff member darling. A more witting one than yours truly, who sanctioned it not thinking too straight. A girl from Year 7 came knocking - Lucy Jenkins was it - right after I shagged you over the desk with the tangerine stuffed in your mouth.’

‘Wait! Lucy Jenk—’

‘She proposed the idea to me whilst I, in a post-come blur just said yes, yes - and as she turned to the door I saw that yellow unicorn ball hanging like the sad severed gonad of Homer Simpson. I imagined your mouth stuffed full of said Simpson gonad, oh so much better than that wizened satsuma - and swooped up behind her like a gentleman to open the door and promptly unlatch it from her bag.’

‘So much for getting it from Lost Property!’

‘I don’t make a habit of stealing, but I dare say I’ve put it to remarkable use.’ He pulled up at her stop.

‘Give us five quid to enter then.’

He drew one out.

‘And lunch money please.’She stuck out her bottom lip as he drew out a ten pound note.

‘That’s more than enough for lunch isn’t it? The peasant is getting spoilt!’

‘You said to always get the meat option and sometimes the beef bolognese has too much gristle so I get two chicken pasties instead. And I like to get two desserts. Apple pie with the cream Cathy makes is so good…’

‘You’ll get plenty on holiday. Now scram.’

‘Hmm.’ She rummaged in her bag and found a hair tie. ‘How much more will you give me, if I—’

‘Your bus will be here in a sec,’ he tapped into his phone.

‘Unzip your fly, right here in the car. And pull out your cock, and give it the filthiest in-car sucking you’re ever had…’ She’d found a second hair tie, and parted her hair as he carried on tapping and frowning.

‘Dinkey’s sick. Clarkey says plasterer can’t get in till 11. Walls worse than he thought - he’s having a bash himself, good grief—’

‘Fast enough to make you come within a couple of minutes actually, explode quickly, right down my throat like I know how to do?’

‘Ohh, you vixen,’ he sighed to the windscreen. ‘I can’t risk getting soiled, I’m down to my last two pressed suits since jacking our cleaner in, and you know I have to go chase this board delivery if Clarkey can fill these cracks in time—’

‘So very tight and tidy in my mouth, nowhere to spill. Because my lips are so tight round your cock, and my hand is so snug around your balls, and I clean it all up really well, like a little licking dog, so literally not a single stain of saliva or come is anywhere on your trousers, and I put it all back again like a very good girl—’

‘Natalia.’

‘And I zip up your fly, and during the whole time, you literally don’t have to move a single finger, you simply put your hands back on the wheel and drive?’

His breath on her right ear told her he’d finally turned to see her hair, plaited tight in two pigtails. For a moment all that was heard was the hum of the engine.

He grabbed the stick, yanked it into reverse, then slammed down the accelerator and jerked the car back - she laughing and clinging on - as the car launched, wiggled them wildly left down the next obscure country lane, and steered them up onto a bushy, overgrown passing place.

Neill turned off the engine, produced his wallet and fanned two more tenners in his fingers without looking at her.

‘Do this properly or I’ll spank you raw with the ice scraper and send you hopping up the road to fetch me a new suit.’

Plucking the notes from his hand, she pulled up onto her knees. Resting his arms wide open in waiting, she glanced down and saw his belt, a belt she hadn’t seen before and looked as complex as the dial on a safe, having her suddenly wondering about the ambitious logistics of what she’d promised. No time to waste.

She leaned into his trouser slade of navy blue, determinedly uncoiling the stiff leather from the silver fascia, looking to his wordless countenance that maintained vigilance on the surroundings with the nonchalance of a customer waiting for a delayed Drive-Thru meal. Her throat tickled with longing as she suddenly thought of the gleefully laughing Miss Lovelace in Deep Throat, tonsil-dunking the doctor’s huge thick girth sprouting from his dark pubis.

Better not laugh now. Her mouth needed to be as scrupulous as his Dyson hoover down the back of the couch seat. She tugged open his fly like a tightly taped Christmas gift and fingered through his boxers to gently hurry out the hibernating softness of that central, tentacle interest of man, slipping in her other hand round his hot-warm, lazy balls, weighting herself equally upon them to get balance.

Catching and holding it in the cooker of her mouth, the first breath of its owner broke through, his hand gingerly at the back of her head as though they were in Temple Newsam again and she were the shy weed-shirker who didn’t know what dogging meant. Her salivary glands began to flow, his helmet arose to her rhythm; swallowing the saliva as promptly as a dental assistant would suction it, in the promise of the quickest, tidiest, tightest friction, her progress punctuated by his moans, his cock spasms, in time to his thumb stroking up and down the glen of her pigtails’ parting.

He moans her name and the F word as though they always belonged together; her bolstered ego drives faster as his fingers drive deeper into the muscles on her nape till the F word is her surname, then her forename, then replaces her name entirely, and she is pure fuck, uttered in that way she knows he’s near.

Don’t fuck this up, she thought, her sardonic mental commentary taking place of his in the silence, cradling him in readiness, staking herself for dear mercy, as far as she could till the spurt came at her tonsils… good god don’t gag girl, as her tongue fought gravity with an almighty swallow that munched down on his shaft, losing her grip for a moment - and there was more coming, because she hadn’t emptied his balls that morning… god, it’s all that dream’s fault, it’s all Sam’s fault. She swallowed the next ooze, and gulped and gulped and gulped a neverending flow of salty cake frosting till that last belly judder at her ear.

‘Now put it all away and say thank you.’

Reversing slowly out of the small tornado of his balmy panting, her work wasn’t done till she’d carefully pushed his spent genitals back inside, and weaved his belt on the fifth hole she’d memorised from earlier, till there, hands back on the wheel, was one lighter and brighter Headmaster hopefully not late for school.

‘Just as you said…’ He inspected his crotch with a final rasp of exhaustion to have laid back whilst she’d done jaw-sit-ups for ten minutes. ‘Now that deserves a tip. Lolly for lolly…’

He reached into his wallet and passed another tenner.

‘So I’ve been your pupil, pretend girlfriend, pet - oh, peasant - and now prostitute?’

‘I’d say it’s necessary, poet…. pedant. Pretty, precocious, princess.’

‘And you’re… predator? Pervert, paedo? …Wait, I don’t mean—’

‘You can call me whatever you want if you do that to me every morning,’ his red-streaked forehead turned to reverse the car, ‘you’re my little bus stop brass.’

‘Thought you weren’t a fan of paying your lady?’

‘A lady doesn’t braid her hair like that. In fact that might be your new way to get your lunch money. If I could call you up to my office for a ‘nice ‘n’ tight ‘n’ tiii-dy’ - she whacked him - ‘blowjob like that, where I can walk out five minutes later into a meeting without so much as a spot on my trousers, I’d give you a fifty quid tip every time.’

‘I’ve only got £45 here?’

‘I’ve only tens and twenties left— hey!’

‘£55, that’ll get Alana a ticket on the Hunt too! Best cashpoint ever!’ She chucked back his wallet.

‘I’ll have to find a real one later, not quite as alive as yours,’ as they arrived back at the bus stop. ‘I must dash, whilst you’ve got an hour to kill. Don’t spend it all at once!’

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‘Sign-ups for the Egg Hunt!’ Clayton called at form whilst Lucy Jenkins stood next to her like a mute toddler. ‘You may only cash in a sticker if you buy a named ticket now. No Johnny-come-latelies, in Neill’s words!’

‘Don’t tell me Johnny-cum-Bollock is in charge of chocolate eggs filled with white cream!’ Dean sniggered.

‘Johnathon Pollock,’ said Clayton wryly, ‘has been banned from anything of the sort since the fair.’

A commotion ensued through the room. ‘So what happens if someone who hasn’t bought a ticket finds the fifty quid egg?’

‘They sell it for a tenner to someone with a ticket!’

‘Did anyone think this through properly?’

‘They’re Year 7s, what do you expect?’

‘Was this Neill’s idea?’

‘It was Mr Noble’s, Neill said! He set the rules - all stickers in corridors - no classrooms or the gym. Would give PE classes unfair odds!’

Natalia stood in line, eyeing up the stacks of fives and tens that Lucy accumulated in the cashbox. Thoughts of stealing, is this what she’d been reduced to? But she wouldn’t make a habit of it, she dare say she’d put it to remarkable use!

No theft required. His Thighness would know.

‘So where’s the fifty cash egg hidden? X’

- ‘No idea sorry! X’

‘Didn’t you watch them this morn??’

- ‘They sprang about like horseflies. I was busy spanking the drinks machine’s backside. Canteen I’d say, so it gets found later? Trusting you’ll reign supreme of course. Xx’

Put the pressure on, why don’t you Neill. She’ll get it from Queen horsefly’s mouth. In the few seconds left she didn’t have an exact plan, but she’d have a stab at it.

‘Hi Lucy, two tickets for the hunt please.’

‘Sure.’

Natalia looked down at Lucy’s bag. ‘Oh. Are you missing a unicorn keyring?’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘I recognised it in the Lost Property, and—’

‘Really? I already looked! I’ll go back.’

‘No, no, it’s gone. But I know who took it,’ Natalia lowered her voice, ‘it was that Johnny Pollock.’

Lucy’s smooth forehead wrinkled, suddenly dissipating her dumb look. ‘Why would he take it?’

‘I saw him, bouncing it against the playground wall till it split, then he said he was going to chuck it into the beck…’

Lucy looked at Natalia suspiciously. She followed up quickly:

‘Neill was just coming out, and saw it too. You can ask him - he didn’t know it was your keyring, but I bet if you tell him, and back me up as witness, he’ll tell Johnny off and have him buy you a new one. He’s really big on things like stealing.’

‘Always knew Johnny’s a loser. I’ll go see Mr Neill, thanks.’

‘No problem. So any clues,’ she smiled, ‘on where you put the big prize?’

‘Oh, we have to keep that under wraps of course. Till person could feast their eyes on it.’

Natalia smiled back benignly.

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As they headed out of form she pressed a ticket into Lana’s hand.

‘Oh, thanks, hun. I’ll keep my eye out but there’s no way I’m rooting around with everyone like a desperate Dan for a bit of chocolate.’

‘Oh I know,’ nodded Natalia, who was rather hoping for a promise of commission if she found it. ‘But I reckon the cash prize is somewhere less obvious.’

Her twittering response faded as Natalia hung back.

‘Missing your old form?’ called Lana, who’d turned to see Natalia waiting for Williams’ door to open.

‘Catch you up Larn, I just need to speak to someone…’

Sam spilled out promptly toward her human cashpoint.

‘Got today’s twenty?’

‘Here’s fifty,’ Natalia encased her fist into Sam’s palm. ‘That would be seventy quid I’ve given you in total. How about you just take this now and delete it?’

‘No deal, Noel. You know the Vapors are 150.’

‘Right. I’m working on it for Friday.’

‘Friday’s a Bank Holiday, y’know.’

‘Right,’ Natalia’s jaw clenched more, having forgotten. The Head’s girlfriend surely shouldn’t need reminding.

‘You haven’t shown anyone Sam, have you?’

‘I’m serious. Ninety quid more.’

‘Eighty quid, jeez. Basic Maths.’

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As they walked to Geography, the Egg Hunt was truly on. Teachers wrestled through bottlenecks of pupils in corridors, moaning that it was like the Grotto again, except this time it involved boys crawling on their bellies like snakes along the bottom of doors and skirting boards.

‘I found one, miss!’

‘Oh, goodie,’ Mrs Tracey’s face of disgust flashed by.

‘Me too!’ Sam was peeling back a sticker from the corner of the ‘O’ of the ‘Gorpy Egah’ Geography display.

‘If it’s the charity fifty quid,’ whispered Natalia at Sam’s ear, ‘I’m a rep for Crisis UK.’

‘You daft cow.’

Natalia watched Sam mingle with another stupid Creme Egg winner. Never had she such little taste for Cadbury’s chocolate right now. Just to add to the chaos, Mr Clarke was stepping out from the Geography classroom in overalls, with a stepladder and bucket of white plaster that Ryan reversed into and nearly sent flying.

‘Steady on mate!’ Clarke motioned to the gaping gap where the old Geography board had been, new plaster shining in the walls. ‘Don’t touch, don’t touch, everyone!’

‘Clarkey’s filled your holes, miss!’

‘Bernard!—’

‘…And they’re still wet!’

‘All done and ready for the new erection!’ Clarke grinned on his way out.

‘He’s so gross,’ whispered Lana as her arm slipped through Natalia’s. ‘Sit with me, Nat?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

Waiting for the class to settle down, and for Mrs Tracey to have talked enough about river erosion to look safely sane again, Natalia ventured a request for the loo. There, she pulled her phone from her knickers to re-dial and smile.

‘Bexley Coutts Pawnbroker, Adie speaking, how can I help?’

Natalia proceeded to tell ‘Adie’ in a quasi-adult tone that she has a pair of nine-carat gold cufflinks, and would like to pawn them for the best available price that ‘sir’ can offer. Then, sounding increasingly like a stumped schoolgirl on every question that Adie rattled off - about origin of purchase; are they alloy, are they hallmarked - her hopes finally died upon a girl in the next cubicle shouting ‘I’m taking a shit, Shaz!’

Adie’s final dry word was to ‘bring them down and we’ll take a look. We’re on Kirkgate. You’ll need ID to show you’re over 18. Or a parent to accompany you.’

‘Oh.’

So much for that then, as she slipped back down next to Lana, who began whispering about a handjob she gave Alex in a long soapy bath whilst her parents were out, and all Natalia could think, was it too late to ask her for that fake ID?

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‘Sorry Larn. Gotta speak to Sam about something.’

‘Guess she’ll get more words out of you than I got in Geography!’

A huddle was gathering in the hall to cash in their Creme Eggs. Natalia pulled Sam aside just as she was aiming her mouth for the brown top of hers.

‘Hey, get off!—’

‘Tit for tat, I have something to show you. A piece of gold jewellery worth three hundred quid. You can take it now and pay for your trainers.’

‘Ooh! Let’s have a look.’

Natalia brought out the box and opened it like a dodgy proposal.

‘Hand cuffs?’ Sam squinted.

‘Cuff links, daft cow.’

‘Like for a man! What the frick am I supposed to do with those?’

‘Sell them.’

‘Did you just go nick them off Mr Neill’s shirt?’

‘No, I fucking didn’t.’ Natalia watched Sam submerge her tongue in her egg. ‘Listen, the pawnbroker down Kirkgate will take them.’

‘For thwee hungrwed pown?!’

‘Yes, £300 they’re worth. Give me back all my money, delete the picture now, take them and go buy both Vapors! One to keep clean, one to get dirty, you know what it’s like with trainers!’

Sam swallowed solemnly, gazing into her egg. ‘Hmm. I don’t know.’

Natalia felt like pushing her nose into that fondant, but instead she lowered the box into Sam’s hand. ‘Take this on top of the cash then.’

She pushed it away. ‘No. I don’t like going into town anyway, they never accept my bus pass on the 50A. You do it.’

Natalia stuffed it away and glared through the swathes of pupils at break. She’d not yet seen a sticker that hadn’t been grabbed within a second by someone else, and certainly didn’t want Lana to see her looking like a Desperate Dan. But it wasn’t long before the corridor rang with a buzz of excitement.

‘Someone’s found the fifty quid!’

‘Who?’

‘Riggsy in Year 9!’

There was more than one ‘that’s a blessed relief’ from passing teachers, as Natalia took a detour to Reception, eager now to get these stupid cufflinks posted and hope for £50 to bless her barren bank account in 24 hours - cutting it fine on the last day of term - but she needed something to soothe her fluttering insides.

‘Morning love.’

‘Morning Becky. Do you have a padded envelope? I need to pack something to take to the Post Office after school.’

‘Will this do?’ She pulled a jiffy bag from her drawer. ‘It’s used but you can stick paper over. What’s happening, anything I can help with?’

‘I’m, er… posting something to get money to pay off Sam.’

‘Oh, love. You know you should tell Neill.’

‘I can handle it. I have a deal with her.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t help you myself. I’m broke with my new kitchen and all. Cowboys laid the stove without using a level. Only noticed when my bacon was sizzling in the fat like a fajita and I can do without the extra calories, what with—’

‘Shit, shit shit!’ Natalia dropped her phone whilst wrestling with a strip of sellotape that had folded stuck, just as the school bell rang.

‘Listen love, you go to lesson. I’ll post this for you.’

‘What? Becky, are you sure…’

‘Yes, yes…’

‘Thank you so, so much! Take this fiver for the postage at least—’

‘No, no…’

‘Please. Take it.’ She pushed it down Becky’s cleavage as she shrieked in surprise.

Shit. She’d really done it, she’d pawned Neill’s cuffs. Was this stealing? Or saving his bacon so he could sizzle her fajita in coastal Wales?She’d play those watercolour houses right now for some visual inspiration and moral support as she sat down to English.

‘Portmeirion… famous Welsh town where ‘The Prisoner’ was filmed’!

Moral support indeed.

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Aisha bustled into English, late to school - Lana pairing right back with her. Sam was sitting with Laura, whilst Natalia was in her usual place right at the front, alone, but which had never felt lonely since being blessed like a Hollywood handprint in Neill’s wrist-grabbing cameo here last October when his irises declared he wanted her.

If she cashes £50 tomorrow, she needs another £30 from somewhere. What chance had she of getting it at home tonight when Neill keeps his wallet more protected than his back passage when she joke-rummages her fingertips at either? Neither could she rely on pigtails working their magic for another morning if his wallet didn’t get replenished after buying Ryan’s oil.

Chatter from the back row made her ears prick up.

‘The fifty quid ticket was fake—’

‘Fake?’

‘No, it was the charity one - thicko Riggs didn’t read it right!’

‘He’s dyslexic, don’t be cruel!’ came Aisha’s voice.

‘So it’s still in the school?’

‘Come lunch everyone’s gonna be hunting it!’

‘It will be like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!—’

‘Year 11! Settle down!’

Natalia shot up her hand.

‘Miss, can I go to the toilet?’

‘If you must.’

‘She’s always going to the bog!’ snorted somebody.

‘Russian for God!’ she called back.

In the corridors, she wasn’t the only one who’d had the bright idea. Two more Desperate Dans were wandering that very corridor looking for the golden egg. One mock-wrestled the other to the floor and gave a too loud idiotic hoot of laughter, as a door flew open.

‘James! Adam! Don’t tell me you’re looking for eggs in lesson time!’

Natalia slipped down the stairs before the ruckus followed, heading for the cheesy stink of lunches being prepared. Neill suggested canteen; Lucy had said ‘keep it under wraps.’ Under. Uncanny language, because Natalia suspected it would be under a table. ‘Till person could feast their eyes on it,’ Lucy said with that babyish face. ‘Till person.’ Idiot. You should say, ‘till people could feast their eyes on it.’ Or, ‘till the winner could feast their eyes on it.’

She couldn’t believe it. Another four zombies were wandering the ground floor, and another three swinging through the canteen doors.

Natalia charged through. Knowing they had precious minutes before teachers turned up, she began ducking her head to the underside of every table, as the other pupils began to do the same, and the dinner ladies cackled to watch. It must have looked like a mental asylum to the teacher whose exclamation suddenly echoed around them:

‘Melissa! …Daniel! And Natalia! It isn’t lunchtime!’

Natalia, ducking her head as many more times as she could before Mrs Clayton’s click-clack descended upon them - looming now a metre away - just as she realised, Lucy wasn’t as stupid as she thought.

‘Till Person!’ …Till Person could feast their eyes on it!

Jerking her head so sharply to the right that she almost felt whiplash, her hands lunged in slow motion at the cash register, literally throwing herself at it with Clayton’s coffee breath in range - she almost expected to be pulled by the ear - then found herself head to head with Melissa who’d darted to the other side, exchanging a determined stare as they fell to their knees to the underside of the till unit.

Four arms scrambled to a shiny glint just as Clayton stalled Melissa’s shoulder, and for the second they both had it, Natalia gained advantage to pull and peel it.

‘You win £50!’ Natalia read.

‘Hey! That’s mine!’ squealed Melissa.

‘No way!’ scrabbled back Natalia. ‘You didn’t even know to look under the tables let alone the till!’

Melissa, breaking from Clayton’s hand, advanced toward her like a giant lunatic spider, catching hold of Natalia’s ankles before jumping right on top of her. One wild arm holding the ticket flailed in the air, whilst Danny hovered and grinned, plucking the ticket from Natalia’s fingers - till she elbowed Melissa in the stomach, headbutted Danny in the balls, then watched the ticket flutter straight back into her cupped hands.

All the while, their ears were deaf to - or deafened by - Clayton screaming hoarse, now hauling Melissa and Natalia into each hand, seizing the sticker from Natalia and marching them off to the stairs.

‘Hey! What about him!’ Natalia yelled, looking back at Danny left howling and grasping at his crotch.

‘I’ve only got two hands, and both of his are occupied! We’ll go tell the good old Neill what a bad old egg of an idea this Egg Hunt was, shall we! Ending Lent with sheer violence! Worse than the greedy kids in the Roald Dahl book!’

Natalia, ribs winded, wrist-gripped by Clayton, smiled like she hadn’t seen Neill in days.

Their knock was answered immediately. Neill must already be amused by what he saw on camera.

The girls were dragged in by Clayton as Neill’s gaze fell and lingered upon Natalia’s one pigtail fallen away, the other stuck up in the air. Look away, Neill, for God’s sake - he may as well have love hearts protruding from his pupils.

‘Well well, ladies.’ His eyes moved stiffly to the other two, whilst Natalia’s wandered to the red cashbox on the end of his desk. ‘I am Oz, the great and powerful! What can I do for you?’

Clayton was exhorting an explanation in rather more apologetic tones than she had been seething along the corridor - of how the girls were caught scrapping ‘like wild cats’ over silly stickers - prompting Natalia’s snort of rage.

‘I didn’t fight anyone! I got it clean first then Melissa jumped on me like a cat!’

‘Quiet!’ Clayton cried.

‘Now, now, Susan,’ Neill sat back in his chair, hands laced over his stomach. ‘Nothing wrong with a healthy bit of competition, but it’s true Noble let this one get rather out of hand.’

‘Shall we just split it?’ Clayton sighed, ‘and put an end to this Easter egg in our faces?’

‘No, no - a winner is a winner. I’ll put both their names into a hat, or rather a pen pot.’ He tore two notes off a memo pad. ‘Melissa and… Dorothy isn’t it?’

‘Natalia, sir.’ She pulled out the one dishevelled pigtail.

‘Choose one please, Susan.’

Mrs Clayton picked one. ‘Natalia,’ she read.

Melissa huffed. ‘So she’s going to win fifty quid for being out of lesson, and I get what, detention?’

‘No, no—’

‘Wait, miss,’ Natalia put up her hand, ‘I’ll opt to put it back into the funds. I shouldn’t have been out of lessons, I’m sorry, and sorry Neill, and Mel.’

‘Ok, thanks Natalia, and Neill,’ said a relieved Clayton. ‘And the charity prize was claimed, Neill?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded to the sticker laid on the cashbox. ‘Bradley Riggs in Year 9 who can’t choose a charity to save his life.’

Clayton made a piggish snort. ‘Good it’s all over! Lucky Dinkey, missing all the fun today. How much raised for the PTA?’

‘Oh, 580 after the cash prizes.’

‘Worth it in the end then. Bye Neill. Straight back to lessons, girls.’

Natalia threw Neill a look as she followed Clayton and Melissa out, down the corridor till they were out of sight. Then she swiftly returned to Neill’s office, locked the door, strode to his desk and prised open his fist where he’d crushed the other paper inside.

Of course, both had her name on.

‘Ah, justice reigns, and so does my Dorothy - all as I expected. Now let’s get rid of these quick,’ he crumpled them up.

‘Wait! Let’s do this properly!’ She reached into his pocket for his lighter.

‘Oh! I do have time for you to do this properly.’ He reversed his wheels of his chair to the window, hoisted it open and drew out his fags. ‘But how properly can you do it? Show me on that stapler again.’

He took the lighter to the papers as he watched her watching the flame; feverishly licking his black plastic stapler with her red angry tongue like flames of hot fire.

‘Ohhh-k,’ he dropped the burning notes into the bin and nodded down as she crawled smiling to him, ‘but be polite, like I taught you. You’re at school after all.’

She raised puppy dog eyes as he lit up his fag. ‘May I?’

‘Yes you may.’

Once his fly was open, ‘may I?’

‘Yes you may—’

‘But I’m not doing it like in the car,’ she pouted. ‘Pull these trousers to your ankles, sir.’

He grunted and obliged, plonking back on the seat as she climbed into the saddle of his hanging pants gusset, cosying between his footballer shins.

‘Oh, licking them like that will get him up in no time,’ he caressed the wavy hair that fell from the pigtails, smoking leisurely out of the window, in their orchestral rhythm of puffs, licks, and besotted gazes, she pushing apart his femurs, his free hand sporadically petting her head, till someone knocked at the door and his hand’s weight doubled.

Motioning his finger to his mouth, as though the fat one in her mouth weren’t enough to subdue her, but rather the shush ‘O’ of his lips was more to direct hers to stay wrapped tightly as she waited.

Resuming business, a minute later his phone rang. He stubbed out, pushed his chair over with Natalia suctioned on for the ride, who handed him the receiver with one stuffed cheek.

‘Yes, this is he. …What! The boards were supposed to be arriving today! Well I should very well hope so! What time tomorrow!’

Exasperation quivering him like an arrow, his anger pumped directly to the opening bursting like a pimple on the back of her tongue. God, this was going to be another wet one, and a furore of sensation built in what felt like three clits in her body, rising pleasure like a cup fast filling… a wave of heart quickening, moving curiously over her body in time with his own euphoria dribbling down her oesophagus just as a corresponding one came downstairs. Filled with his spirit, all hours of the day.

‘Ok,’ he panted, as she whipped his comb from his drawer to redo her hair, ‘now clean it all up and put everything away… hey!—’

Ankle-tangled in his pants and trousers, he watched her at the cashbox, pulling out five twenties before reaching for the door handle.

‘Donated to Amnesty UK!’

‘Fuck’s sake, don’t unlock the door till I’ve—’

She waited till he had done up his trousers, then sighed at him. Launching herself over his desk, she straightened his tie and whizzed the comb over his head.

‘Now say thank you,’ she nodded.

‘Ok, ok, thank you, thank you.’

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Natalia raced back to English, wiping her mouth on the cash before stuffing it down her knicker hem.

‘Sorry miss, a fight broke out on the way to the loos!’

‘Oh?’

‘The fifty pound egg was found…’

‘Oh—’

‘Aw, shit!’ - ‘Is that what Mrs Williams laid?’ - ‘Who got the cash!’

‘Quiet, boys!’

‘Yeah miss, Neill had to deal with it. He’s donating both fifties to charity.’

‘A good conclusion I must say,’ said Coleman as the class murmured in dismay. ‘Ok, thank you Natalia. Back to your seat.’

Pupils were rustling papers, whispering about grades. Evidently the essays from yesterday had been returned. She saw Sam, face all squashed in her hands. Can’t have got higher than a D.

And what about her own essay that Neill had desecrated with cock and balls? Natalia glanced nervously down at the brown envelope with a note from Coleman:

‘A* as your cousin predicted. Please look after your essays from now on!’

She finger-hugged the money in her skirt. £150 for Sam, with £20 lunch money to boot. She had reigned supreme!

‘I have the rest of it,’ she edged over to Sam’s table when the bell went. ‘Meet me in the loos, left corridor, alone.’

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Natalia waited till the door finally squealed open.

‘Finally got rid of Loz. Told her I’m drinking more water to dehydrate…’

‘Rehydrate.’

‘She drinks like no water, she’s never in the loos…’

‘Here,’ Natalia pushed her into a cubicle. ‘The eighty I owe you. £150, all done.’

‘Where did you get this from? The fifty was given to charity?’

‘It’s all borrowed. So go on. Delete the picture.’

Sam counted the money slowly, then drew out her phone even slower. Natalia gnawed her knuckle in impatience as Sam stared into her black screen. What was she doing? Be gentle now…

‘Sam, delete the picture. Is your phone even on? We have French now, hurry.’

‘Hold your horses. I am.’

The main toilet door squealed open.

‘Sam? Are you still in here?’

‘Just coming out Loz! Meet you in French I said!’

The door shut again.

‘Laura’s so nosey, you’re lucky I don’t tell her.’

Natalia fell to the floor to check there were no other feet in the toilets, then bounded up again.

‘Done,’ said Sam. ‘Deleted.’

‘Wait, I wanted to see you do it!… Show me your camera roll for Monday!’

‘Here, here—’

‘Right. Now empty your trash. And let me check your gallery again. You didn’t copy it into another folder? Click on them all. What about emails? How do I know you haven’t sent anyone it? What email do you use?’

‘Gmail. Here.’ She clicked on her Sent items.

‘I saw a Hotmail icon. What about that?’

She showed her the Hotmail Sent items.

‘It’s gone. Gone, alright?’

‘Right. Right.’Natalia, chin raised in exorcism of breaths of relief, felt the strands of orgasmic sensation from half an hour ago re-stir in her pelvis as Sam stared.

‘Are you… alright?’

‘Yep. I’m fine. Let’s go—’

‘But what now? Will he… kiss you again?’

‘No, no, it’s all a mistake. He apologised to me a million times. He doesn’t even fancy me.’

‘Oh?’ Sam laughed faintly. ‘So he could do it to anyone? What if he tries another girl?’

‘No, I didn’t mean like that. He likes women, not girls, he said. He knows it was wrong, and cares about the school. Look we’re even now. Enjoy your Vapor Flies.’

‘I’m getting the Streets.’

‘Whatever.’

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Natalia took in the sorry sight of Sam in French, her lank yellow hair hanging over red earlobes as she took in an E grade. Every lesson now bore the urgency of impending exams; Judgement Day dawning for everyone’s destiny to be spelt with the first six letters of the alphabet. Yet there Sam was, more desperate for a pair of trainers than a brain she wouldn’t find if she had a thousand pounds to get to the Wizard of Oz.

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Now that the sun didn’t set till half past seven, there’d be at least an hour of light before Neill came home. Today a triangle of sun licked over the front of the cottage and spilled into the top landing, warming the carpet there like a sandpit - already enjoyed by Ras, sprawled speed-drying his licked white fur tufts. She’d strip off next to him and practice her yoga with the same carefreedom of mum-home, whilst the curtains drawn downstairs in the dark lounge burned its lamp burning like a torch ready for the evening.

Shedding her nylon tights, the scent that arose from Bridge and Child poses would normally tempt the session into something else upon the floor. But today she towered tall in Warrior and Tree, knowing the light gleamed off the tiny diamond-leaded window in a way that no-one would discern her from the driveway.

Then it was stop, shower time - before blow-drying her hair and donning the first tie-waist frock he’d bought her. She rather liked that they had no nosey cleaner anymore. Their shared man-girl, cat-cookie aroma had no Wednesday policing bleach scent barging through. It felt like the cottage was theirs, and although her triumph this evening was privately hers, it would shine all over him like the last of the sun over the dirty plates she now stacked in the dishwasher.

Stuffing the stripped bedsheets into the washing drum was a smug goodbye to this morning’s nightmare. But having never made a king bed before, several tries on stuffing the humongous duvet into its cover, she grumbled and gave up. Humming Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, she pulled out the corner desk in the lounge, lay out her revision books and texted:

‘Sexiest man in the WORLD, when are you home!?! XX’

She’d boiled the kettle before she got the reply:

‘Home in 22 minutes wild cat!X’

She smiled and lit the fire, then leafing through the post she’d put on the windowsill, saw an envelope with the imprint:

WEST YORKSHIRE POLICE.

Wild cat almost dropped her tea.

‘Ras, ohh Ras, shit what is this!’ He sniffed its edge like a flower, whilst she stared as though the answer of doom would appear at the transparent window. Should she open it? And do what? Pay the fucking police the £50 gold cuffs cash to stop Neill being cached in silver ones?

She tried to prise back the paper under the window but couldn’t make out the text.

Sitting and counting down twenty two minutes watching the fire, humming ‘you and me could write a bad romance’ now like a funeral dirge, she fan-flicked her Science Dual Award textbook what must have been ninety times before she heard the key. Would this be the last time she sees him coming round the corner of the lounge?

If it was, he looked lovelier than he ever did.

‘Ah, such a studious young lady! With the fire on, and the place looking spotless!’ He leaned down to her. ‘And what a gorgeous little thing I get to come home to. The gorgeousist thing I’ve ever been lucky to manhandle.’

His lips felt her weak reciprocation and stiffened in query.

‘What is it! Has Bisto Bert been round?’

‘This,’ she said palely, as he plucked it from her hand. ‘It says police.’

‘Oh? It can’t be anything.’

She folded her elbows round her ears as if he were opening a firecracker.

‘Thirty eight! I mean, THIRTY EIGHT!’

‘Photos? Years in prison? …Schoolgirls?!’

‘Let me guess, those A64 roadworks? …Speeding fine, darling! Thirty fucking eight miles per hour! Haven’t had one for four years. They’re offering me a speeding brainwashing course for £80. BASTARDS!’

His bark trembled the beams and sent Ras running. Natalia sat down in her red chair, weakness passing through her bottom and out of her heels.

‘A64…’

‘When I drove back on Saturday,’ his voice as mellow as a marshmallow again. ‘Your fault really, for telling me to hurry.’

‘Oh. Oh, thank god…’ Her last forty minutes of panic dropped into a housewife smile as he planted his arms around her as though the letter, already sat on by his keys and fag packet, had never interrupted them.

‘So what’s this? Sciences? Where’s the sex and reproduction part?’

‘This is Chemistry—’

‘Oh it is, and the most important part of it,’ he smouldered at her cheek.

‘If you want cock, cunt and contraception,’ she smiled, ‘that’s in this Biology volume here, although there’s nothing about whisky…’

He was pulling the girdle off her dress and bringing it over her eyes.

‘What are you doing—’

‘I’m your examiner, of course.’ He tied it around her head. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘I cannot see.’

‘Good.’ She heard the pages flicking. ‘Ah. Here we go. Male and female bodies. Rather pathetically drawn. Nowhere near stunning like you and I, of course. But there’s a man’s part, looking rather textbook, and as you’re always so textbook, Natalia - or used to be - you’ve got three chances to take your tongue and put it on Ryan’s chipolata, no cheating or peeking.’

‘You want me to pin my tongue on the p—’

‘Time starts now.’

She leaned her tongue down hesitatingly.

‘Ahh, no - that’s the woman’s head. You’re licking her ear like a blind lesbian, rather like Luxton without her varifocals. Try again.’

She re-hovered her tongue.

‘Nope, that’s the contraception glossary. The closest you’ll get to having a condom in your orifice again on my account. Try a bit more, to the right… and up—’

She landed it again.

‘Oh, you’re on his leg, good girl! Lick upwards, up, up, to his balls, as you’re so good at—’ as she traced it in a laughing spasm - ‘Oh you’re right there, keep going… there we go’ - just as her tongue hit against something round, wobbling and foil-wrapped.

He pulled off the blindfold. She’d already guessed what it was.

‘A Cadbury’s Creme Egg is my reward?’

‘I hope that cheers you up after that police letter scare, because now you’re going to be taught a lesson for your behaviour today, young lady…’

He wrapped the blindfold back on, pushed her forward, then grabbed each arm - folding them behind her back, starting to tie them to the hanging girdle.

‘Hey!—’ She moaned as that familiar pulse began inside her, and the girdle pulled her head back, making her exert effort to keep her arms up. ‘All my behaviour today was exemplary!’ the executionee implored the ceiling. ‘I’ve had a whole day of raising lolly!’

‘Indeed. And the gift of the egg was in turn gifted to me at lunchtime during a little visit from our dear mutual friend Miss Jenkins…’

‘Ohh, no.…’

‘Ohh, yes. I found myself having to paint a lie by numbers, all about Johnny Pollock - that he whacked her novelty ball against a wall till it broke, when in reality, it’s wedged against your tonsils whilst I whack my cock up your cunt every morning.’

She squealed in laughter.

‘I don’t so much mind having to lie, that was easy as pie. What I struggled with was the hard-on I got from thinking about it. If I had to stand up for any reason, three of those Creme Eggs in Lucy’s mouth wouldn’t have stopped her from screaming the place down that the Headmaster got a hard-on from talking to an 11-year old. I’d be down the slammer quicker than you can say jingle jangle jewellery.’

‘Oh I’m so terribly sorry, Mr Neill…’

‘But given you’ve been working so hard on your revision,’ he gripped her left breast with one hand, turning the pages with the other, ‘I’m going to test you on three questions, and give you a chance to redeem yourself. Now let’s see… Asexual reproduction? Who wants that? Let’s go back to the normal nooky… Right! How many chromosomes are present in human gametes?’

‘I know this! Forty six.’

‘Correct! Next question. Let’s make this harder. How many daughter cells does meiosis create? And what the fuck is meiosis?’

‘Meisois is a process where a single cell divides twice to produce… four cells.’

‘Bloody hell!’

She giggled.

‘Too fucking clever. You should lose no sleep over exams! Let’s see if you can score a hat trick then. Which four bases are DNA made up of?’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘What are they, numbers, or words, or…?’

‘Letters.’

Silence.

‘Oh wait, I know it! A, C…’

‘Yes…’

‘…G and D!’

‘G and what?’

‘D. D for… dime. Dainty.’

‘Nope, wrong! It’s T.’

‘Oh! That’s what I said. T for… time. Tainty!’

‘Time for tainty alright. Up you get, onto the table.’

‘Oh, fuck…’

Hauling her by her tied arms, up onto her belly so she was laying blindly her across her desk, he threw her dress skirt over her back and pulled down her knickers.

‘What are you going to do to me?!’ her ankles bobbed in excitement.

Just then the doorbell went. Her head jerked sideways to the window, making her arms flinch in pain as Neill paced to the curtains.

‘Shit, it’s Ocado. I forgot about the 6pm delivery.’

‘Untie me quick!’

‘No. Stay right there and don’t move.’

He went out and closed the lounge door. Muffled talk at the front door with the delivery man till it closed again, Neill rustled in with the plastic bags. The cold air wafting from outside, the van banging shut outside and the fact that Neill went straight into the kitchen to unpack the bags and flap the cupboard doors, made her wriggle in unrest.

‘I wouldn’t kick the chair if I were you!’ he called. ‘You’ll have nothing for support!’

‘How long are you going to leave me here?! Till you’ve unpacked the shopping, roasted a chicken and watched Battle of the Bulge all the way through?’

‘Till pub kicking out time!’

‘Don’t you dare! All this for a T?’

‘I didn’t say I was boiling the kettle,’ footsteps came to her side, ‘but I have something here for you.’

‘Yes. I want your cock!’

‘Here, here,’ he stroked her face. ‘Open—’

Something cold and smooth slid into her mouth.

‘Ummph!’ She dropped it straight to the floor. ‘Not a banana!’

‘Oh, no, no. Do you want a retest so you can get what you want?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘Then you can hold this in your mouth. And it wasn’t Battle of the Bulge. It was Aces High, 1976. Malcolm McDowell, Christopher Plummer. Horrors of the Flying Corps in the Great War. Aces not so high for you, but you can be my little twenty-minuter…’

‘Ok, ok, yes please—’ She wagged her tongue.

‘But because you dropped it, ten minutes it goes up somewhere else. How lucky you have a pot of lube right here.’

She heard foil unwrapping as a finger muscled at her anus.

‘Oh… wait! Cunt, at least!’

‘Your poor cunt is healing from thrush, remember. And Mr Yellow here is only a little one. How lucky for you that Ocado gave us the Funsize!’

Now fiddling, prodding and assumedly biting off the top of the Creme Egg - ‘Christ, these are sickly, where’s the ashtray’ - ‘No, give me it!’ - then kissing it to her mouth, before a globulous sticky finger returned to her rear, warmed with her juices, before pushing the moistening end of the banana in incremental determination through her sphincter back and forth repeatedly until the opening surrendered.

She’d never made so many noises sucking a dollop of Cadbury’s chocolate before.

‘How does that feel?’

‘Uhhh— my god!’

‘It needs to go up more. Relax. Take a deep breath…’

Another inch and another, upon her sharp breaths, until a good two inches - but what felt to her like four - was wedged up big and unrelenting like a backed up turd.

‘How’s that?’

She groaned, ‘it’s… ok, but I’m tensing because… my arms, they’re getting so tired, pulling on my neck…’

He pressed his stomach up against the banana to hold it there as he untied her arms, leaving her blindfolded. Then he rooted for a pen from under her hip, the nib of which she now felt brush through the hair at her anus. He was marking the banana skin.

Both her hands were grabbed and cupped onto it.

‘Hold tight, my little Lolly! Your examiner will be back shortly, don’t let it a centimetre or I’ll know. Lay forward and think of Wales!’

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He’d only been a few minutes out the back door, but her own had numbed out from keeping so dead still. Numbness was reaching her chin now, driven into the desk to keep her balance. If it weren’t for the tense defence of her hands, her prone position threatened to relax Mr Yellow almost completely out from his fondant trajectory. She only knew the banana was in the right place by feeling for where the cool air hit the skin, and began to wonder whether she’d lost the line, or whether Neill had toed it completely - when came the sound of a distant humming like an airplane.

It was coming from her bag, and the motion of her head to detect it, caused the banana to slip before she steeled it back in with a double groan - she forgot her dad was calling today! Was that him now? Dear god, she hoped Neill doesn’t come back in at this moment and rifle for her phone. The sight of her dad’s name blaring on Messenger might end this rather riveting sex game but at least she’d be able to pull that trapped prickling pube from inside her arsehole.

A door slam, shoo of the cat and Marlboro-breezed footsteps behind her, a cool hand arrived between hers.

‘Mm. Good.’ In a flash, Mr Yellow had left the building.

‘Uuu-arhhh!’

‘There we go. All out.’

Then of course, what could she expect but his return under her nose, aromatised in sweet creme faeces.

‘Open wide - now’s your chance. Don’t worry, the banana isn’t brown. Just nice and ripe.’

‘Oh, m…ulhhlp—’ as a generous amount of banana was clamped in, as he turned it left and right. ‘Arms by your sides. Ten minutes till the end of this paper—’ now she felt the pen brush her elbow, circumscribing her upon the pages of the book as though she were a hit and run outline, ‘and then we’ll test you again, yes?’

He resumed his clanking of oven trays in the kitchen. All the while she lay blinded with the banana locking her laying face sideways across the desk, her passages leaking all together now, the peculiar soft throb of her anus like a percussion to the tambourine of her clit, whilst upon her tongue sat an impudent echo of the two blow jobs she’d delivered him today. Their triumph, compounded with the relief when Sam finally said the picture’s gone, gone alright!… and the knowledge that Sam was too lily-livered, too lackadaisical to say anything to a teacher without the anchor of that picture anymore, made the curious aerobic quickening move over her body again… she squirmed with it, danced to it in her debasement; her breaths deepened as she began rocking from her vulva tickling, aching, screaming for touch.

By the time he returned behind her, the first touch of his hand shot a volt of electricity shot her - a flare he knew meant fucking touch me now. Grasping her buttocks, seizing her with his tongue like a barbecue rib, probing right into where the banana had been, lapping in her copious fluid in and around it, her ten-second long grunt flowered into mews, her trembling sacrum batted his nose, till her rush of nasal breaths had him pull the banana from her mouth as though he was the solvent to the glue that held it. Propped back in her chair, blindfold off, she blinked like a mole tinged pink from ear to ear.

‘Well what do you expect from a mock test?’ Neill stood smiling by the fireplace.

‘I guess you want me to say thank you?’

‘If you’d like the real exam. You get to pick the subject. Three questions and if you get them right, you can have whatever you want.’

‘And if I get any wrong?’

‘Then I will fuck you up the arse. Proper and relentless sodomy, mind. You will lose your anal virginity in the same clamorous way most women do, and I will stuff the rest of that disgusting Creme Egg inside your mouth to keep you quiet if I have to.’

He nodded to where the egg was sitting leaking over the Biology woman’s breasts.

‘Such a romantic, so test me on Jane Eyre—’

‘No Jane Eyre.’

‘Then, er…’

‘We’ll do Maths.’

‘No way!’

‘Choose then.’

‘Geography. Causes of flooding.’

‘That’s very specific?’

‘I’ve just been revising it.’

‘Very well. Hand me the book.’

She picked it up and flicked to the page.

‘Yah-ah! No last minute peeking. Give it here.’

‘You have to make this fair,’ she insisted. ‘Keep the questions reasonable. A funsize banana as inert as Miss Doris was tame, but your mansize plantain going at 60mph is not the same.’

‘What a rhyme! Ok, here we go. ‘What happens to a river if it rains for a long time?’’

‘Ok, let’s see… the river becomes saturated, and can’t be soaked up, so it runs along the surface, which is known as surface run-off.’

He frowned. ‘How are you reading the book from there?’

‘Told you I’ve revised it.’

‘Bloody hell, it’s all regurgitation, isn’t it. Rather like felching.’

‘What the hell’s felching?’

‘What I’d be doing right now if I took a straw to suck the glucose syrup from your rectum. Right, that’s the first question correct. But there’s two more - plenty chance for me to go aces high and you arse up. From the causes of flooding, regurgitate the whole paragraph under the subheading Geology.’

‘What!’

‘You said you know it.’

‘I need a bit more of a cue than that!’

‘It’s about rocks—’

‘Oh yes - impermeable and permeable rocks.’

‘And?’

‘Permeable rocks allow water to pass through pores and cracks, whereas impermeable rocks do not. If a valley is made up of impermeable rocks, there is a higher chance of flooding as there is an increase in surface run-off.’

‘The fuck!’

‘Told you.’

‘Chances of me fucking your arse before dinner are getting slimmer than you. Better make this third one a turd one, or my cock won’t be.’

‘You’ll make it as fair as the first two!’

‘If you get this right what are you going to ask for?’

‘Some peace and quiet before the holiday.’

‘Now you sound far too much like a staff member. You’d be disqualified by the examiner with that answer, and it will revert to my choice of activity—’

‘I want a bath with you.’

‘A baff… with me?’

‘Yes, a very dirty one, of course.’

‘To wash your sticky bottom I guess. But the bathwater will dry up all your lovely juices like it did on Saturday. I had a mission spanking and wanking those back.’

‘And I thought you were imaginative!’ she scoffed. ‘I only lost my virginity two weeks ago today - and I have gazillions of ideas of what I’d do to you in the bath—’

‘Ohh, I’ve had sexual intercourse in the tub before, young lady!’

‘Ohh! Rath-er, you fine fellow, but not with me! And with that haul of new shower gels you got there,’ she nodded to an Ocado bag of toiletries left by the lounge door, ‘I have double, triple ideas. I haven’t given you a proper handjob yet have I? All parts of us, will get slippery and soapy and I will wriggle all over you like a slutty mermaid, doing as many dirty things as we want and coming out daisy clean for the fresh covers I put on the bed. Well, almost.’

Without blinking, his gaze dropped to the book.

‘What’s rain.’

‘Huh?’

‘Easy enough isn’t it?’

‘Well. It’s water from the sky, obviously.’

He hesitated. ‘Think we need a bit more than that…’

‘It’s water that falls from the clouds, when the clouds become… full. Saturated!’

‘Technically, it’s liquid… ’

‘…Precipitation,’ they both said together.

Silence.

‘Rain is liquid precipitation condensed from atmospheric water vapour which then falls under gravity,’ said Neill smoothly.

She frowned. ‘It doesn’t say that in the book!’

‘Those were my own words. I know what rain is, I don’t just felch it like you youngsters.’

‘Well, felching book after book is what we’re taught to fucking do!’’

‘Anyway. Let’s review what your answer was…’

‘I said it. Liquid precipitation that falls from saturated clouds in the sky.’

‘You didn’t say atmospheric water vapour—’

‘Clouds. Same thing!’

‘Or falling from gravity—’

‘What’s that got to do with it? You asked me what rain is, not what fucking pulls it down. If you ask me what a cock is I wouldn’t wax on about a cunt!’

‘Technically, a cunt has a lot of bearing on the meaning of a cock—’

‘Says the man angling to put it up my arse!’

He cracked into laughter. ‘I don’t know who wins on this one. We need a tiebreaker.’

She flew to her feet, as he looked up from the book in surprise.

‘The only tiebreaker I’ll take today is you untying my fucking arms from my eyes! It’s me that deserves to win! Not only do I sit daily in a building a man once called an ‘arsehole anomaly of a place’ - but then I spend ten minutes sucking on a banana that the same smart-arse flavoured with my own arsehole!’

He grew a huge grin as she went on:

‘So my reward for memorising all this fucking crap about cells and rivers, is to take our fucking cells into your funsize river upstairs,’ she stamped her foot, ‘I’ll show you what fucking rain is, when I sit on your fucking face and give you shower gel, and what gravity is, when my clunge comes down on your cloud of liquid precipit-fucking-tation and hurls it to the ground!’

She swiped the book from his knee and launched it into the fire.

They watched as the pages streamed orange into grey shards. Then Neill’s eyes closed, chin raised as if inhaling the burning air.

‘Ahhh.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘I’ll run it myself, Venus. After we have dinner.’

‘Venus, as in… shit-filled fly trap?’

‘Goddess born from the sea, of course.’

‘Not before youeat this, fly trap—’ She tossed the banana at him.

He smiled most approvingly, peeled it, then ate it looking at her all the way through.

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The bathroom was balmier than a tropical rainforest. Towels were laid all around the tub, as they lay digesting their lamb moussaka, a glass of wine perched on one side and her breasts soaped in his hands. She’d only asked him why he wanted to go into teaching, and he was twenty minutes into an anecdote of his first time with a girl in France when he was thirteen.

‘We were living in Toulouse, but I would go out to meet her where she lived in a little French village, Sorèze. She would braid her hair…’

‘Ah!’

‘I think it was the way she taught me to finger her, right in a certain spot inside her, and the way she spoke and approved of me with every stroke, that made me want to go into teaching… just so I could hear that same tone in every sentence I used every day.’

She turned her chin to him. ‘You mean you wanted to lend a hand to a bunch of little cunts and get into a flap every day?’

‘Ha. Probably not for much longer. I had a vision for a school that doesn’t exist. My thrice-great Uncle Arthur was in a different world when he headmastered Summerhill. That Johnny kid - he’s one I naively thought, like Arthur would, I could heal from the errors of his ways by letting him live out his desires. Throw him a few fags, he’ll get into the work by being pals with the Head. But all I’ve done is given him a doormat to dance on.’

‘Oops, sorry. Now I’ve made him bust another move.’

‘He was already in the doghouse for truanting twice down the White Rose Shopping Centre, drawing a pair of huge lopsided tits on a toilet door, and doing almost zero homework since he started high school.’

‘You didn’t like that the tits were lopsided?’

‘I had him write out 82 types of tit bird species for detention.’

‘Seriously?!’

‘It made him laugh just like that, but doubt it will do much more.’

‘It’s out of your hands if they have it tough at home. Sam said their dad walked out, remember.’

‘He may be about to see his next best one follow suit. But we’ll see what happens when Ofsted finalise their investigation.’

‘If it goes pants up, you’d leave Thornwood?’

‘I’d leave Leeds entirely.’

‘Oh!’

‘Are you going to leave Leeds with me?’

‘Yes,’ she flapped her feet, ‘oh, a million times yes!’

‘But I don’t know if you’re ready. Shall we practice in Wales…?’

She turned over like a tornado. ‘Oh, my god, yes…!’

‘Ooof, watch my balls!—’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ She began to soap him better, as they conjoined lips and glided twenty fingers over every inch of flesh of each other in reach.

‘This is gloo-rious,’ he purred, ‘how silly we haven’t done this yet, hmm? How could I think anything could dry this up…?’ His hand took hers beneath her swaying dark fronds to her cave hole spinning silk, softer than cotton in the water, and as they drew up their fingers together, the water and suds dripped away to reveal the true magnitude of the slow-flowing silk, stretching aces high.

She turned the other way and took the shower gel bottle.

‘I think you’re right. I don’t know what rain is. Is this it?’

She squirted a trail over one shoulder. And then took the conditioner.

‘Is this it?’

‘What are you up to?’ He caressed her hips between his knees.

‘But I know what gravity is…’

Green and pink and translucent drips were travelling down her spine, as she pushed her bottom up and forward, sticking out of the water. He watched how they travelled toward her bum, and gently stroked them to her sacrum.

‘So… you’re saying we both won the exam?’

‘I’m saying your cock won it.’

His slippy finger pushed in and out of her anus, lubing it within, then two fingers.

‘Hold onto the taps.’

She feels him splash and pump his cock with his hand, then the tip is rubbing against her wet, slippery anus - too slippery, as they laugh and manoeuvre, till he finally directs it with applied force against the slipperiness, and she gasps, feeling that fleshier, fatter version of the funsize banana, that feeling of wrongness going up a one-way street where excrement normally descends.

And now he’s sitting up, and softly, slowly thrusting as she leans forward, her bottom up into the air, gripping the taps, groaning with a kind of helplessness, but he treats her tenderly, nothing like his threat earlier: ‘Is that ok, is that ok, baby? Best thing about anal in the bath is… I can wash this right off and stick it back up your…’

‘Best there for now, because he’ll meet oncoming traffic after that dinner!’ They laugh and slosh around, and she straddles him, hugging him and riding him, the towels on the floor soaking, as she reaches her fingers down his perineum, and pushes two fingertips.

‘You naughty thing, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘But everything is slippy in here, and remember that the test bestowed equal rights!’

‘The only equal rights I believe in,’ as he firmly took away her fingers, ‘are the right for me to fuck your cunt and arse to the same degree.’

He laid back, limbs sprawled in the water as she sat goosepimpled on the toilet seat.

‘Make sure you wipe before you come back in!’

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Anton had tried calling twice. Wrinkle-fingered and toed, her bottom feeling rather strange, she sent:

‘Sorry! Just been a bit tied up!’

He sent back a laughing face.

There was a bellow downstairs. ‘Natalia! Since when does the wooden chopping board go in the dishwasher!’

‘Sorry!’ she called.

‘Fag o’clock! Come feed this feline and watch the fire! You’re brave enough to watch Last Tango now, get it ready!’ - followed by the slam of the back door.

She hit call. Why not make it a most perfectly brave day?

It rung once.

‘Well, hello, Natalia.’

Her chest flipped. His voice was deep. Deeper than Neill’s.

‘Hello. This is… well!’

‘It is,’ he sighed, ‘such a pleasure to hear your voice. My, my! Sixteen now then, Natalia? 14th January wasn’t it?’

He had a twang of foreign accent. And he remembers her birthday.

‘Oh! Yes!—’

‘And your hair!’

She laughed. ‘Oh! Did you see that!’

‘I almost thought you were Britney Spears!’

They both laughed. ‘Well I’ve got the brown eyes. I remember Mum saying that brown eyes tend to dominate when one partner has blue.’

‘Yes, you have her eyes.’

‘So where do we start? Talking about her, about you two… everything, I mean… it’s been a long time. I don’t have a long time to talk right now, but…’

‘Indeed I would like to apologise for how long it’s taken to speak with you. And I would like to meet you. Really, we must.’

The phone trembled in her hand. ‘Yes I would really like to. But I’d rather not… you know, tell her.’

‘Tell…?’

‘Mum, you know.’

‘Oh, yes, as you wish. In these situations, where there’s a gap of many years, there’s no knowing what other people will think.’

‘But also, it’s a bit tricky for me to travel.’

‘Oh, I will come to Leeds, of course I know it well.’

‘All the way from Birmingham?

‘Are you free on Friday?’

‘Well, I’m at school…’

‘The evening, dear. I finish work early, so I can make the trip, if you would like to join me for a meal.’

‘Oh! Yes I will.’

She heard the back door slam downstairs.

‘Right, well I have to go now—’

‘I will speak to you soon about the arrangements. Good night, Natalia. Thank you for talking to me.’

‘It’s ok… you too.’

Just in time to spring downstairs and feed the cat as Neill flicked on the TV. ‘Where’s the film!’

‘I took a bit longer on the loo. Your fault.’

‘Oh, but you look positively revitalised by taking it up the Gary! Or was it the Epsom salts?’

‘Gary who?’

‘Gary Glitter. Shitter. Arsehole.’

She looked blank.

‘Cockney rhyming slang,’ as he poured his wine. ‘Speaking of paedos and arseholes, Panorama: The VIP Paedophile Ring is on. Edifying viewing, I’m sure, but I’d rather watch a film about a grown woman being raped.’

‘Did we buy any popcorn?’

‘Butterkist would be most apt, but I’m afraid we’ve only got crisps, a Swiss roll and a bag of cashew nuts,’ as the saxophone of the film credits of Last Tango in Paris oozed on, paired with a painting of a man lounging on an orange chair, his face all mangled Cubist-Fauvist style.

‘That looks like my dream last night!’

‘Portrait of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon.’

‘Frarrn-cis Bacon,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, I wish you were my art teacher instead of frump Patrick.’

‘I don’t know art history like Frump does darling. I just read an article on how the director Bernardo Bertolucci wanted the same hues of orange and sense of intense pain in his main character.’

‘All this painful talk of Tango and orange hues is making me thirsty. Do we have any?’

‘Certainly not, I drew the line at Sprite. Either quaff wine with me like a grown girl, or take one of my whisky mixer Fevertree ginger ales if you must.’

They watched as Paul, a middle-aged American, began dating 20-year old Parisian woman Jeanne.

‘Oh, she’s French!’ said Natalia eventually.

‘You just figured?’

‘It’s not me that’s thick, it’s these posh handcooked Piper’s crisps I couldn’t hear over crunching.’

‘You couldn’t tell from the French street signs, Parisian roads…?’

‘Could be Kensington for all I know. And he even looks a bit like you, but not when you were thirteen…’

‘I look like Marlon Brando?’

‘He has harder eyes and an ugly Roman nose in profile.’

‘Rather shit hair too.’

They watched as Jeanne spends time with her younger, sensible fiancé but continually returns to Paul for her secret liaison, in which he never tells his name nor wants to know hers. Laying on a mattress, he plays his harmonica as Jeanne frolics around topless.

‘Now she’s gorgeous,’ Neill remarked on a close-up of Jeanne’s curly red hair and big doe eyes, ‘sort of a chubby-faced Julia Roberts, with wonky tits rather like Johnny’s toilet drawing.’

‘Well he’s nothing like you, I actually hate him. Smarmy fucker just told her to shut up about her childhood and now he’s talking for three hours about his, with his sticky-outy chin and puny little voice!’

‘Puny? The Godfather?’ he chuckled. ‘One of the most famous actors as well as fuckboys of all time. He was openly bi well before it became fashionable.’

‘I don’t care. He mumbles like a serial killer meets Kermit the Frog.’

‘Ha! He’s an arrogant git playing a troubled old cunt. There he goes, crying into his dead wife’s manky little lampshade.’

They watched in silence till Natalia cocked her leg and let rip.

‘Jesus.’

‘Your fault,’ as she examined a patch of bathwater inside her robe. ‘Neill, do we have any plans on Friday?’

‘Nothing but the usual TFI Friday night with you darling. There’s a Leeds championship game on, Dinkey’s been yapping on about it because his cousin’s a player for Bolton—’

‘Can I go out with Lana and Aish? Just for a meal. Nothing risky.’

‘Is that what you’re been saving all this money for? Because Alana’s birthday is in September, Natalia. I saw it in the files.’

‘Ok, that was a little white lie. I actually want to treat them to a posh dinner, you know, like we had with your friends…’

‘What time and where?’

‘Not sure yet.’

‘Wherever you’re going on a Friday night, it’s best to book a table. Else you’ll be eating a baguette on the floor like him. Ah look, it’s the famous scene…’

Paul asks Jeanne ‘are you scared?’ before pulling her jeans down and climbing on top of her, spreading butter onto his hand as she whimpers beneath him.

‘Is that what you did to your French girl?’

‘Well I didn’t give her a knob of butter.’

Natalia squirmed. ‘Can’t we watch The Wizard of Oz instead?’

‘Well, he’s giving her a wizard’s sleeve. But for her the yellow brick road is paved with Lurpak.’

They watched as Paul seizes Jeanne’s arms and making her repeat words after him as she begins to struggle and cry ‘non!’

‘I’d laugh,’ Natalia said, ‘but apparently those tears were real.’

‘Don’t worry. He gets her to put her fingers up his arse later.’

‘Oh really! Even the Godfather takes it!’

‘Oh, but he’s puny Kermit, remember. Apparently Brando never learnt his lines but insisted on spreading cue cards on set. He even asked if he could write them on Maria’s butthole.’

‘Didn’t you almost pen mine?’

Paul was groaning heavily, cursing as he comes, Jeanne sobbing into the floorboards.

‘Shame she’s not British,’ Natalia licked the last crumbs of the Swiss roll. ‘A Creme Egg would turn that frown upside down.’

‘Now you’re talking my language,’ Neill held out his arm as she threw back his last mouthful of wine, burped and fell back into him. ‘Wet hair, wet bottom - keep that robe wrapped both ends, there we go.’

Natalia drifted off to sleep on him till he remarked:

‘He’s asking her to finger-bugger him now. Not so much my language.’

She opened one eye.

‘You won’t be able to be free of that feeling of being alone until you look death right in the face. Until you go right up into the ass of death. Right up in his ass…’

‘Another one who confuses Bog for God,’ she murmured, falling asleep again till she was woken by a gunshot.

‘Sorry, honey, sorry… this lugubrious so-called erotica is nearly over.’

She stirred now to see Paul staggering dead onto a balcony, Jeanne holding a pistol. ‘What a pair of ahhh, ahh, ahh-rses,’ she yawned.

‘Classic love story of misfitting, childhood-traumatised neurotics not so creative as us. Now come to bed and cuddle me, my little misfit.’

She clung to his neck up the stairs and fell limp onto the pillow, curling tight into a prawn again on every gust as he shook the unfinished duvet into place. By the final spread of the kingsize net she was fast asleep.

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Now this was a better night show. The pastel colours of Portmeirion, where Neill was not The Prisoner, but she His as it should be, dancing with one hand in Neill’s and the other in Ed’s, being swung into the air like a child, laughing and cringing, instilling her with a sweet peace upon waking - what a blessed contrast to yesterday’s! - inhaling that feeling now as she straddled him, not even 6am, and his eyes, still closed, are like he’s swinging with her still in the dream.

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Her eyes were wide at the combination of dregs in the toilet bowl that morning. Both orifices this time, with a rather trumpeting fanfare Neill wouldn’t hear over his coffee grinder. Degassed, dressed and downstairs, she stared again in surprise. Of all Neill’s attire she hadn’t seen this combination.

He wore a powder blue shirt, beneath a waistcoat of tan-copper matching his trousers, with tie and jacket in a deep golden, silken orange like caramel carrot fire. Set off by his blonde hair, which had grown a tad ragged again since his haircut, his whole look was that of a stout, bronzed tiger in brewed tones of cider, but no man would set off the look so well as the way he put one hand in his pocket and levelled his cool blue stare at her, a shimmer from one jaw muscle.

‘Guten morgan. Wish to take a picture?’

‘Oh, no no…’ she blinked away to the fruitbowl.

‘I’m joking, silly.’

‘Well I would, of course,’ she laughed faintly, ‘I mean… was it the American Arsehole in Paris last night and its Frar-ncis Bacon hues of orange that have you dressed like the Headteacher catwalk? Is it so you can stand looking like a zaddy on the last day of term and upstage the new boards arriving?’

‘Last clean suit left. Zaddy?’

‘Older man with swag, what someone once called you. Gen-Z speak.’

‘Blimey, it would get you 19 points on Scrabble. Sehr gut!’

‘Gut…’

‘German,’ he nodded. ‘For very good.’

‘Yep. But I just remembered something I wanted to ask you. Lana said the pill’s not good for your gut…’

‘Oh, it will be as trim as Barnes’ with how much I’m doing you.’

‘I think she means my gut.’

‘Pish.’ He stepped over, separated her arms, plucked her skirt waistband between two thumbs and turned it up by an inch. ‘You’d sooner get flab on those bony little wrists.’

‘Neill,’ she frowned as he walked on to the door, ‘she means the digestive system, the gut flora!I heard her telling Aisha the pill is a divorce from nature—’

‘Says the girl who doused my purebred darling’s hair follicles in hydrogen peroxide.’

‘Well, you know, a bit of bad has its uses…’

‘Precisely! Listen, wearing this suit is a divorce from nature. So too these stiff leather shoes, walking me now up these concrete stepping stones, out of my gated enclosure into a wheeled machine to take us down miles of tarmac divorcing soil from the sun. The earth is but a sterile promontory, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours! Life is mingled yarn, good and ill together, our purpose to explore the distress and necessity of being cleaven, divorced - nay! banished! - from the good mother earth till love-devouring Death do what he dare.’

‘That the Bard speaking again?’

‘It’s my coffee. Meanwhile—’ lowering his voice as he flash-unlocked the car, ‘my spermatozoa can hunt down your eggs as frantically as half the school did yesterday, but they’ll be kept slammed shut—’ he timed it with the door as they got in - ‘…in your two red cashboxes where they should stay till your frontal lobe’s developed for you to even comprehend the sound of a baby’s gurgle.’

‘Astute, from the man who touted whisky as the world’s greatest contraceptive.’

‘Nothing wrong with chalkboards till you get the fancy new ones fitted.’ He adjusted his rear view mirror and licked back his hair.

‘In that case, let’s fit something fancy and new here…’ She yanked his USB jack from his phone port into hers, before he could protest, had the speakers pumping with ‘Ga-ga, ooh-la-la! What I was listening to when you nearly run me over!’

Within a minute, they were both mah-mah-mah, ooh-la-lahhing.

‘I want your horror, I want your design!’

‘Cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine!’

Stopping on those words she flopped out her Maths book. ‘Ok if I shove what I don’t need today under the car mat?’

‘As always bunny. Need your PE kit?’

‘Oh yes, it’s first lesson!’ She dived into the back seat, rummaging bottom up, as he tentatively pulled down her skirt hem.

‘Since when are you so happy to frolic with that dystrophic doyen we call our PE teacher, on a Thursday, your least favourite day of all - maungy, Maundy Thursday, no less?’

‘I’m not. I’m just not scared anymore.’

‘Well, my Dorothy with a lion’s courage! You might suck balls at netball, but since sucking my balls, you have balls, and what is there to fear?’

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Unusually, Sam was the first in the changing rooms, with a face hanging just like a pair of unsucked balls.

‘Gooo-ten morgan! Ordered your foul and pestilent Vapors yet?’

Sam didn’t respond.

Natalia peeled off her coat. ‘Bad night?’

‘Dad hasn’t been back for ages now and mum’s flying off the handle at Johnny at the tiniest thing. Neill’s put Johnny on detention like for the third time when everyone thought our great new headteacher didn’t do detentions. Anyway.’

‘I just think he’s seen the errors of his lax ways.’

‘Like snogging schoolgirls?’

‘Like I said. He’s making up for mistakes he’s made. His great-great-great uncle was A.S. Neill, you know, the guy that let all the kids do what they want. That was in the 60s, but 2018 is a different kettle of fish.’

The rest of the girls spilled into the changing rooms and Laura flung down her bag.

‘I’m ready before you two have even got your kegs off. Why don’t you ever just come in your kits?’

‘Because we’re not dirty like you Laura,’ winked Natalia. Sam didn’t smile.

‘Bye then,’ Natalia said to Sam, about to go over to Alana, before Sam swivelled Natalia’s arm to the lockers and whispered:

‘Listen. I’ve still got it. You and your great-great-great secret.’

‘What?’

Sam glimpsed open her bag where upon her phone screen was Neill as large as life as ever, smooshing Natalia in one arm, lips on hers. There it was - a curse restored - as something caught in her throat and her anus started stabbing.

‘Vapor Flys are hot pink, Vapor Streets are off white,’ Sam drolled,‘I don’t know which I want. You said I should have both. You had that idea. Now I know, I want one I can get dirty and the one pair I can keep clean. Dirty to clean, guess you know about that!’

‘Saa-m!’ Natalia could barely breathe.

‘It’s easy for you. A*s, loads of money. Probably off Mr Neill. Everything’s alright for you. It’s not every day I have a chance like this. Mum’s ballistic at my grades.’

‘We had a deal. We had a deal…’

‘Well you’ve got the whole Easter holidays to save up the other £150 so I can get the Flys too.’ Sam banged shut her locker.

‘There’s no way, no way!’ Natalia lowered her head, gritting her teeth as Aisha and a crowd of girls passed through. ‘I can’t be shitting myself all holidays! I just can’t, I won’t!’

‘Tough titties I guess.’

‘I can’t believe you!’ Tears stung her cheeks. ‘I’m not loaded with money, I fucking worked for it! And all this time I’ve spent crawling up to you, being bled dry of street cred too! Lana even thinks I’m friends with you again! The likes of you, a dopey, double-crossing, absolute D for dunce!—’

Now Sam gasped, almost dropping the key as Natalia snatched at it, seething. ‘He would strangle the likes of you! He’s right, you’re just a snivelling, tatty little tattle tramp tongue!’

She quickly turned away as Luxton came round the corner.

‘Girls! What are you doing, powdering your noses? We’re all outside already!’

‘Coming, miss.’ Sam hurried off with Luxton, but stopped to stare as Natalia stormed the other way.

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She knew, amidst her rage, what she had to do; her outburst just now had divined it. It had been bubbling in her brain like bathwater, and now it overflowed onto the towels on the floor. That drip needed to be hung out to dry once and for all.

‘Ariel! Surely you’ve got enough dollar for three lobster dinners by now?’ Neill was just locking up his office, flashing jacket arms in the very colour of aphrodisiacal boiled crustaceans.

‘Neill, go back in. I need to tell you something urgently.’

‘What is it? I’m headed for M&S sandwiches for the installation men,’ he frowned, unlocking again. ‘Boards are all go for the afternoon. Promised Kate Coleman a tzatziki wrap, she’ll be devastated!

‘Fuck Shingle, unless you want us wrapped!’ She jostled him in, banged closed the door and relocked it. ‘Listen—’

‘You look rather sexy in those PE leggings. Come here and I’ll make it crotchless, no scissors needed.’

‘Shut the fuck up. Sam’s got a picture of us.’

His face fell. ‘A picture? Of…?’

‘Of us kissing—’

‘Wha—! Jesus! When did—’

‘But don’t worry,’ her heart sank to watch his brow darken, ‘because I have the perfect idea of how to sort it. All her grades are rock bottom, and it’s the bane of her life because her mum bangs on about it, so just promise her top GCSE grades, and do it fast, because—’

‘Hang on, hang on, hang on,’ he flumped into his chair. ‘Good grief! When and where was this picture taken?’ His eyes darted at his camera surveillance. ‘Come closer, keep your voice lower…’

‘As the classroom door was closing on us, kissing. On Monday.’

‘Oh? That was rather hot.’

‘It does look hot.’

‘Blimey.’

‘But listen. I did everything I could…’

‘Let me guess, she’s quids up?’

‘Yeah, about three lobsters. But—’

‘You knew this all day yesterday and didn’t tell me?’

‘Because she wanted a pair of trainers, and that’s all she cares about! I gave her all the money she wanted, and she deleted the picture right in front of me. Checked her gallery, emails, everything. But this morning she’s still got it and she wants a second fucking pair of trainers! Who knows what she’ll want next! Now I know the one thing that’ll do it is—’

‘Natalia, has anyone else seen this picture?’

‘No, I don’t think so. She’s been threatening to tell if I don’t pay—’

He sighed heavily. ‘So much for your Amnesty. Why on earth didn’t you let me sort it.’

‘I took care of it! Until she fudged it! So can you fudge her GCSE exam grades? Can you? Please, please say—’

‘See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle, will you come and join the dance? Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you…’

‘Neill!’

‘The Lobster Quadrille. Don’t you know your Wonderland, Alice?’

She sighed. ‘Can you fake exam results?’

‘No. No I can’t.’

‘Fuck. Fuck!’ She collapsed face-down the table.

He leant forward and stroked behind her ear, ‘Natalia, darling.’ She groaned as he tapped her temple. ‘Look up. Look at me—’

Wiping his thumb at the mascara under her eye, he said softly: ‘She won’t know that till Results Day in August.’

Her lip curled up in exact momentum with his.

‘I can tell her she’ll get As and Bs and I’ll even bump up her estimated ones.’

She flew up. ‘As long as we get the picture deleted! Call her up now!’

‘Do you really wish to witness the bullying of a girl far less competent than you, by a man adept at both emotional and physical manipulation as well as outright porkies of gargantuan level?’

‘Fuck yes.’

‘I’ll get Becky to extract her from PE—’

‘They’re outside today,’ she nodded.

‘Hm. Becky hates going outside.’

‘Becky’ll do it. She likes me. Mention me!’

He frowned at her, looping his finger in the phone wire. ‘Ah hello, Becky… I need to speak with Samantha Pollock, could you fetch her from the netball pitch. I have Natalia Molova here, and I require them both. Make sure she brings her bag with her. …Blimey,’ as he put the phone down. ‘Can smell the smoke trails on her heels from here.’

He sat back twiddling his thumbs, whilst she fidgeted with a paper on his desk.

‘So now we just wait for Tweedledum.’

Silence fell as she watched Neill’s face cloud over in thought. A part of her wanted desperately to say sorry.

‘Sooo…’ she began, watching his frown shift to her. ‘So, when you sent that video of Portmeir-on—’

‘Port-meiri-on. In Wales yes.’

‘A recommended video came up of what’s nearby. A Victorian seaside town, Llandudno—’

‘Lland-did-no, is how it’s pronounced.’

‘It’s where the real Alice Liddell spent her holidays, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll.’

‘Oh, sweet. Hope we get chance to drop by… Liddell.’

‘I hope so too.’

She smiled faintly.

‘She’s taking her time,’ he grunted down at his watch. ‘Shit - what have you told Samantha about the situation between us?’

‘I said it’s a mistake, you’ve apologised to me and will never manhandle me again.’

His eyes screwed.

‘For fuck’s sake, she thinks you’re a paedo. I had to assuage that!’

‘Well, it sounds like that worked.’

‘Like I said, she only cares about—’

‘She’s here, she’s here,’ he stared at his screen. ‘Look sharp.’

A sheepish knock came at the door as Natalia went to unlock it.

Sam came in, white-pale against her black PE leggings, hugging her bag and coat. She gave one look at Natalia, then to Neill.

‘Do come in, Sam. Close the door, Natalia.’

‘Hi, s-sir…’ Sam turned, eyes widening at Natalia who was re-locking the door. ‘Is… is it just us?’

‘Yes. Sit down, please. And how are we?’

‘Er, fine…’

‘Natalia tells me you have a penchant for espionage.’

Sam stared blankly, looking back at Natalia who stood with her arms crossed.

‘And photography. Can you show me your phone please?’

‘W-why…’

‘Just show him the picture, Sam.’

Sam’s head ping-ponged between them, before slowly dropping her things to her feet and rummaging for her phone. Hand shaking, she tapped and held it forward.

‘Closer please. Closer—’

Neill leaned forward with a lip-lick and frown. His arm raised toward it, just as Sam drew it back hastily.

‘So… er, are you two doing something wrong? Nat… Nat says you aren’t, anymore, but… you never know, I mean… there was a programme on the telly. P-paedos in government…’

‘Panorama, yes Samantha, I saw that too. Terrible. Now sit down, please.’

She stuffed her phone back in her bag, then cradled the bag in her lap as she sat down.

‘Well…er, Mum said they should get the death penalty. I mean, I know you’re not one of those, but when I took that picture, I was worried you were guh…guh… grooming Natalia…’

Natalia rolled her eyes, as Neill took a sharp breath.

‘Some situations in life are complicated, Sam. Natalia is sixteen and at age of consent. We have developed a relationship outside of school, yes, and we are very much in love. We have not slept together, mind, not till we’re married later this year.’

Natalia swallowed and stared, watching as Neill leaned forward to Sam with the most delicately Machiavellian pout, and whispered: ‘She doesn’t know that yet. She doesn’t know I’m going to propose.’

Neill’s gaze didn’t avert from Sam, as though Natalia wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. She felt like she was inside a smoothie mixer, seeing him in that suit of blazing orange, hearing those words. Outright porkies of gargantuan level! God but she wished it was Lana sitting there.

‘So, Sam, listen carefully. If you report this photo, or it gets into the wrong hands, I will be questioned by the police, possibly arrested and sacked. Natalia will not only lose her fiancé, but her alcoholic mum will be discovered for several counts of neglect, and Natalia will get taken into care. She’ll likely botch her grades, in fact the whole Year will suffer a delay in exams for a year, when the entire school goes down the pan from losing its Head and having its funding immediately pulled.’

Silence.

‘Meanwhile, you, Sam, will be questioned repeatedly by the police who will want to know every detail of your life, whilst scouring Natalia on hers until she is broken. These matters they take so seriously that should they find your evidence misleading, as it most certainly is, they will haul you across the coals on tabloid covers across the country, tainting the lives of your closest friends, and almost certainly your family’s, which the snazziest pair of trainers in the world won’t help you run from.’

There was a small croak from Sam. Meanwhile Natalia’s face was a whirl of awe and alarm.

‘You can save all this happening in an instant by bringing that picture up right now and deleting it. And here’s an idea. I know your estimated GCSE grades are Ds and Es. By my powers I will ensure you get As and Bs. Imagine the relief of your parents. For one I know your dad Mark will be pleased.’

‘Ohh…’ Sam finally murmured.

‘Write down what grades you want,’ he swept over a pad, ‘as high as Natalia’s if you desire. I will sign you a deal right now, and this will all be over.’

Sam was staring down at the pad.

‘Sam?’ Neill said softly, a glint in his eye growing steadily like a furnace.

What sounded like a sob came from Sam.

‘Does that not make sense, Sam?’

‘Mum, she’s applying for a job,’ she sobbed again, ‘and she’s turned the loft upside down looking for her exam certificates. She says how important GCSEs are, they stay with you for life…’

‘Yes,’ Neill nodded. ‘She’s exactly right.’

‘Ohh, but… but… oh god no…’

‘What?’

Sam’s head fell forward, rocking like she had period pain, whilst Natalia stood frozen. Was Neill doing far too well with all this and giving her a heart attack?

‘What is it, Sam?’ asked Neill. ‘Do you need a glass of water?’

‘I, I…’

‘What, Sam?’ Natalia frowned.

‘I… emailed…’

‘Emailed?’ Neill rapped.

‘I emailed it.’

‘Emailed? The picture? To whom?’

Natalia stormed behind Neill’s desk, taking in Sam’s red-rimmed eyes as she trembled:

‘M-M-Mr… D-Dinkey.’

‘You did what!’

*Go now to www.headmastersflame.com to read the NEXT chapter of The Headmaster's Flame!... and to be updated on new chapters FIRST, on my all-free, dedicated, slick website created especially for mobile phone screens, and you can subscribe your email for a free Kindle book.*10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡChbP6XwwIb

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