Chapter 11

I didn’t see Tim and Marion again for a while, after that distinctly bruising drink.

I did think about what Marion had said though, as spring grew into summer, but I was distracted by a small school in another part of town advertising for a head teacher. It’s a difficult school in a bad area, and I knew they’d struggle for applications.

The outgoing Head was taking early retirement due to stress, which was a sign of what things were like there, but I felt up to it. They’d get internal applications from staff who were already part of the failed regime, and not much more. I am too young for a Headship, normally, but it didn’t cost anything to apply did it? So I did.

I made a nuisance of myself with my own Head, over any issue I could latch onto, and she recommended me for the job to get me out of her hair. To my surprise I got it.

Meanwhile I still hadn’t said anything personal to Faye, and I lost track of her when she left school at the end of June, which she was allowed to do being sixteen in July. She was supposed to do some training or an apprenticeship for the next two years, but I didn’t know what because she didn’t turn up for her career interview.

Her final exams had netted her a C and two D’s, which didn’t create any opportunities for her. I’d smiled at her when I saw her, but she made it clear she didn’t want to talk to me, and I decided it was best to let her get over us, as she seemed to think too.

I did my utmost to stop thinking about her, and threw myself into my new job, which was quite political, with a difficult set of governors and some staff I immediately wanted to replace. Call me judgmental, but standing in front of a class trying to impose discipline when you’re bulging ridiculously out of your clothes because you so obviously lack the self-discipline to eat sensibly is just not how to be a teacher. You have to respect the kids, and yourself, otherwise they will go after you. The same kids will be well-behaved or a nightmare, for different teachers.

So being Head Teacher, and with new colleagues some of whom I was planning to make very unhappy, I decided it was too risky to carry on with my old ways, and gave up schoolgirls. It was a wrench, I have to admit, but worth it to have the big step in my career.

Trying to do the growing-up thing I did a few dinners and parties, and I met a woman, a very sexy police detective, and we went out a few times and fucked a few times, but we argued too much. I tried again, with a journalist, but there was no magic in it even though we seemed to have a lot in common. Then my first term as Head became too manic for even me to think about women.

December’s end of term came to my rescue at long last, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

But then on the way home on the first Tuesday of the holiday I found I was being followed by a biker. He was brazen about it otherwise I might not have noticed, but he’d had the baffles out of the exhaust and was driving my exact route.

By the time I pulled into my drive and the biker had slowed behind me I was thinking about calling the police, in case it was some suspended kid’s irate brother or something, but before the garage door closed the rider had dismounted on the drive and I saw she was female. As tall as me, and slim, but with a girl’s figure.

She tugged off her helmet and it was Alice! Looking more than cute in black leathers, shaking out her long, wavy dark hair. I beckoned her into the garage and finished closing the door, my guilty conscience making me feel nervous about her being seen here even though she had to be seventeen to ride the bike. Also she wasn’t one of my students, and so she was, technically, all legal. Not that there wouldn’t be the mother of a fuss at my school if somebody said something...

“Hello Alice,” I smiled at her while I wondered what she wanted. Dark green eyes with a lot of dark eyeshadow, a bit of naughtiness in them even now when she was being serious and a little nervous. About six small rings in one ear.

An image of her party legs swam into my mind.

“Sorry,” she started, “I didn’t know how to contact you, just your school, that Faye mentioned,” she was explaining about following me, “and I had an idea you’d rather see me here than there.”

“Yes, you’re quite right, that’s fine, come through,” I led her through to the kitchen, still wondering why she was here. She hadn’t asked Faye for my number or email or address. “Would you like a drink? Cup of tea?”

“Tea?” Mocking smile, head tilted, eyebrows raised; she was challenging, already. She was noticeably older than she’d been in the spring. A bold girl, her nervousness gone already.

“Beer? Vodka? Can I mix you something?” I smiled into her eyes, and she was reacting. A tingle ran through me, and kept tingling, as I opened the drinks cupboard in the corner.

“Have you got any cranberry juice? And orange juice? That’s a drink isn’t it, with Vodka?” She was teasing. So fast.

“It’s called ‘On the Beach’ I think.” I can do ‘fast’ too.

“Oh that’s right,” she leaned on the worktop, cocked a hip and snagged her full lower lip with a perfect white tooth, for two provocative seconds. “‘Sex on the Beach’, now I remember. Thanks.”

I made the drinks and showed her through to the living room. I passed her a glass, with my fingers round the stem. Her little fingertip lingered on mine for a fraction of a second.

We stood there, while the tension crept up towards some impending breaking point. I’d let her decide whether to talk business before, or after. It wasn’t urgent, evidently. The business, I mean. Or was she seeing if I’d ask why she was here? I felt an impulse to out-wait her. In the meantime it was pleasant to just look at her, while her presence filled the room as she sauntered round inspecting it.

“Seems a long time since I was on the beach,” she smiled at me after a full minute.

“Yes, I know what you mean. The sun on your skin, all salty, warm breeze, a swim...”

“Feels great doesn’t it?” She gave a little shimmer up her body.

“Oh sorry, can I take your jacket?”

“Thanks,” she slipped it off, swapping her glass from one hand to the other. I draped the jacket over a chair. Underneath, disappointingly, she was wearing a pullover. Well it was cold outside. The material was at least shaped over two firm-looking teen breasts - small B perhaps.

“Leathers can be quite warm in the summer,” I offered.

“Too right, especially with being lined. Some days I can’t wait to get them off.”

“Do you go to school in them?”

“College. Sometimes. The Principal doesn’t like it though.” She sipped her drink, eyeing me over the top of the glass.

“What does he do?”

“He asks me to remove them.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say get lost you old pervert,” she grinned, “ ... but he’s not hot.”

She was strolling round the room again.

“You’re fussy then,” I said.

“I fuck anyone,” she replied, looking at me very directly from across the room. Testing.