Extra Curricular Studies
Chapter 1: Jenny's request

Stephen

"Why do those two bitches keep looking at me? Normally they shun me or take the piss, or at least Clarissa does. Jennifer's not so bad when she's not with Clarrie, but even she never looks me in the face. After being in the same class for over three months you would think they would be adult enough to come to terms with my disfigurement but no, they and the group of boys they associate with, delight in trying to humiliate me by calling me Scarface, Monster Man, Troll, Beast, Ogre and any other derogatory names they can think of. Most of the others tolerate and accept me but even they tend to keep their distance in case they are ridiculed. Perhaps it is also because I'm older and not into partying and boozing but of course, the main reason is my looks; my face. Only Su Lee will actually sit and talk to me. She's nice and treats me like a person and not something from outer space. Perhaps that is because of her Chinese ancestry? An honour thing? I know I'm a mature student but still I'm only eight or nine years older than most of them. Shit, it looks like Jenny is getting ready to come over here. Bet she wants some help with the coursework. She only got a C- in the pre-Christmas mocks. Clarrie didn't even get a grade. I think I'll pick up my tray and head out before she gets here. Damn, she's coming over. We won't be able to talk much with the noise level in this cafeteria especially with the hearing aid in my left ear turned off, and I daren't turn it on with the amount of background noise."

"Stephen, can you spare a moment?" Jennifer asked looking at my chest rather than my face.

"Sorry Jennifer, I have an online appointment with a client at 1:30 to try and sort out his network problem. If it's important, come and see me at home at four. My housemaid will be there then and we can talk for an hour before she has dinner ready. I must go now though." I handed her my business card and she looked very surprised when I walked off. Perhaps flabbergasted would be a better word.

It was true, I did have the appointment but I could easily have spared ten or fifteen minutes to discus her problems, However, it would be easier if I had her on my home ground and not with the eyes of a hundred or more students on us, each wondering why a girl like her would deign to speak to me. It is also nearly impossible to hold an intelligent conversation over the high noise level in the university dining room. In any case it would give me some idea of how desperate she was for my help if she had to make the effort to come to my home. If she came on her own without Clarrie, then I suspected she would treat me fairly reasonably like she had on a couple of other occasions when she'd asked for help but if Clarissa was with her, then she'd have to keep up the appearance of animosity and dislike towards me.

During my slack periods that afternoon, my mind went through what I knew about Jennifer Watkins. I thought she was attractive even though she wasn't the glamour girl type. At 22 or 23 years old she was a couple of years older than Clarissa and had worked in an insurance office for two years before enrolling on the IT course. Most of the others were students straight from college and were around twenty years old.

By the way, I'm Stephen Faulkes, twenty-nine years old, 6 ft 3" tall and broad shouldered with it so at fourteen stones (a little under two hundred pounds for those who think our system is antiquated) I'm a big man. My size might have earned me some respect from the other students had it not been for the fact that my appearance is marred by severe scarring to my face, chest and left arm and leg, the result of a horrific accident when I was three years old. A petrol tanker driver working longer than the legal amount of hours, fell asleep at the wheel and crossed the central reservation and ploughed head on into the car my father was driving. We didn't have seat belts in those days and I was thrown through an open window and rolled into a ditch. The fire from the leaking petrol rapidly spread but the flames never quite reached me. The fierce heat though burned all the parts not protected by the water in the ditch. My parents died in the inferno and it was only the skill of the doctors at Great Ormond Street and other hospitals that I survived, but there were many times during my growing period that I wished I hadn't. Every few months I returned to hospital for skin grafts and other operations to save my skin becoming too tight and splitting. The burns also impaired the hearing in my left ear and whilst at school I had to wear a cumbersome hearing aid but now, with modern technology, it is almost invisible.

Life at school was pretty lonely because my appearance scared other children and being frequently absent for operations, I fell behind in my schoolwork. I would probably never achieved anything had not it been for a friend of my father's, Pete Gatliff, a computer engineer, who took me under his wing and who not only introduced me to the inner workings of computers, he brought my schooling up to and above the standard of the others. I will always be grateful and in his debt for the evenings and weekends he gave up to tutor me.

Meanwhile, granddad and grandma looked after me, and granddad took it as a personal challenge to get compensation for my injuries from the multinational company that owned the tanker. He succeeded and the income I get from it means that I do not really have to work. Six years ago Pete helped me set up a company where I assist people to set up web sites or deal with computer problems by using the Internet, thus I never have to face my clients. The business has been successful and, although I could expand it further, I decided to keep it as a limited one man company; a company as much for my amusement as to bring in an income. Even so, I earn as much or more than the average skilled worker.

Last year I saw the local college branch of the area university offered a two-year degree course in computer technology and decided it would amuse me and help my image if I became Dr. Stephen Faulkes so last September I started the first module. At first it was scary, like in my early days at school but being older and being at least as experienced as the tutor in many of the fields, I sailed ahead without many problems apart from the social one of relating to my fellow students.

Long ago I learned that teenagers and up to about 25 years old are the worst for tormenting me, especially if they are in a group and, unfortunately, the other students in the class fell into that age group. They have no conception of the mental pain they cause or if they do, they delight in adding to it. Over the years I've tried to ignore their remarks but it is difficult when you have to work close by. Older people look at me in shock at first, then usually with some sympathy and rarely remark on my disfigurement. I think they try and put it to the back of their minds and shut it from their vision.

Granddad died soon after he obtained the compensation deal and grandma passed on a few years later and left me the house where I'd been bought up. I live and work there alone except for Helen, my babysitter from years ago and now my 'housemaid', who comes in five days a week at the end of the afternoon to cook a meal for me and do a little cleaning. She's divorced and in her fifties now and more or less the mother I never remember.