Chapter 1

“—But Miss!

“I’m sorry, Mandy, but you’ve gone too far this time. I shall be speaking to Mr McMorrow about this and also about an appropriate punishment. I also expect you to complete the essay properly and hand it in to me on Friday. Now run along to your next lesson.”

I’m Steve McMorrow, Mandy Stillwell’s Year 10 Form Tutor here at school in High Wycombe, in the UK. I’m the school’s Art and Design teacher and I also teach on the Citizenship core course. Speaking personally, I like Mandy a lot, as her cheeky enthusiasm often makes me smile. Unfortunately, although bright, she has a history of upsetting some of her other teachers who maybe have a more traditional approach to teaching than I do. To my knowledge she has never been really rude or malicious, but every now and then she will do something in class that can’t be handled with just a mild rebuke, and then she will find herself having to stay behind in detention after school, or serving one of the other officially sanctioned punishments.

I must say that I was surprised when Noleen Phillips, Mandy’s English teacher, button-holed me in the staffroom to tell me about Mandy’s latest indiscretion, for as far as I was aware, English was one of her favourite subjects and I had never had a complaint about her from Noleen before. She went into her bag and took out one of the school’s standard work books, which she opened to a certain page. I looked at it and grinned:

“Hey, that’s not bad! Maybe a little bit out of proportion, but not bad all the same!”

Noleen is young and quite popular with her pupils, and I’m sure not a prude and someone who has had enough first hand experience to judge the accuracy of what she was showing me:

“Perhaps—but that’s not the point, Steve! I asked the class to write me an essay describing one of their favourite things, and unfortunately a pencil drawing of a penis and scrotum, however anatomically authentic, and underneath it the caption: ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, is just not acceptable! This is an important time in Mandy’s education so I don’t want to blow this all out of proportion—no pun intended—but I, maybe we, need to try and get the message across to her somehow. To my mind, something too punitive will only be counter-productive. So, any ideas, Steve?”

“No, not at the moment, but leave it with me, Noleen. Perhaps I need to talk to a parent: do we know anything about that?”

“Er, not really—but I think there’s just her mother and they only moved into the area a short time before Mandy started here. There is another concern, Steve: like you say, that’s not a bad representation, very lifelike, and Mandy is only 14—”

“Yes, I see what you’re trying to say. I’ll ask the School Secretary if she can arrange a meeting. Thanks, Noleen, I’ll keep you apprised.”

As Mandy’s mother had to work full-time, she asked if it would be possible for me to call at their home, rather than her having to leave work early and go to the school. When I told Mandy to tell her mother that this would be all right, she looked rather uncomfortable but said that she would deliver the message. So on the agreed evening I first went home to change my clothes before calling on them. I’d looked on Google Maps and seen that it was only a short journey of about two miles from my home to theirs—less than five minutes in a car, but as it was a nice evening I walked there and reached the Stillwell’s home in about half an hour. Now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a still rather worried looking Mandy answered the door.

“Come in, Mr McMorrow. Mum said she won’t be long and to offer you tea or coffee.” I followed her through to a somewhat cluttered but otherwise tidy sitting room. “So, tea or coffee, Sir?” I smiled.

“Tea, please—and no ‘Sir’ when I’m off duty, if you don’t mind!” She grinned and seemed to relax.

Mandy was still in the kitchen when I saw her mother on the staircase, which was in the sitting room; or to be more accurate, I saw her shapely bare legs first. When she saw me she smiled and I stood up and held out my hand.

“Thank you so much for taking the time to come round, Mr McMorrow. Now, can you tell me what my daughter has done that warrants a visit from her school teacher? I did ask her, but she said that you would tell me when you got here.”

Now Mandy was undeniably a pretty teenage girl, but her mother was a very handsome-looking woman, who was facially similar enough to see that she and Mandy were related, but with a body such as her daughter’s might become in time. I took the work book that Noleen Phillips had shown me out of my pocket and handed it to Mrs Stillwell: “I’ve marked the page—and please call me Steve.” She smiled again: “And I’m Kathryn, but my friends call me Kat.”

She opened the page, where marked, and looked at the drawing, then at her daughter, then at me, in anticipation of what I would say next.

“As her art teacher, Kat, I’d give her high marks for that piece of work—but unfortunately her English teacher doesn’t share my appreciation. But there is a secondary point, Kat: I am responsible for Mandy’s pastoral education while she is in Year 10, and it was brought to my attention that that picture seems much too graphically realistic for a girl of her age. I don’t wish to imply anything, but can you appreciate that I was obligated to investigate.” The older Stillwell took a deep breath then exhaled.

“More tea or coffee, Steve?”

“Yes, please!”

“Will you do the honours, Love?” Kat said to her daughter, who looked at me and smiled as she picked up the mug that had held my original drink. “I don’t know how much you know about Mandy’s history, Steve, so I’ll tell you some of it.

“I fell pregnant with Mandy when I was 18 and had her when I was 19. Her father, my husband, hung around for a while after the birth, but then he just walked away from us and I haven’t seen or heard from him since that day. Now a woman living on her own and trying to bring up a child needs some sort of legal recognition, so I sought guidance from the Citizens Advice Bureau and was told that, although I could get a divorce on the grounds of desertion, it might be better to petition the court using unreasonable behaviour as the reason. So eventually this is what I did.

“I was living in Welwyn Garden City while I was married to Clive, but I’ve had to move a few times since then looking for better paying work, and I was fortunate enough to get my present job here in High Wycombe just as Mandy was ready to move to secondary education. As you can see, this house isn’t great, but it’s a lot better than some of the places we’ve lived in, isn’t it, Love.” Mandy who had returned while her mother was telling me her story nodded her head in agreement.

“Life hasn’t been easy, Steve, as you can imagine, and although I’ve tried my best to give my daughter the kind of life I want for her, I suppose all the changes that have happened in her young life have been at least partly responsible for her, shall we say, mischievous streak. As you know, Steve, Mandy is quite intelligent, but she is also quite an individualist and can be rather single-minded at times: not in themselves bad qualities to possess, but I suppose not always desirable in a teenage schoolgirl. Have you got anything to say now, Love?” Mandy was sitting near her mother on the sofa.