"Dr. Michael Irving?" I nodded and frowned at the smartly dressed woman who'd parked her expensive 4 x 4 across my driveway and was marching purposefully towards me. "My daughter needs you to tutor her on the bugs and creatures she studies. She will pay you £10 an hour to do so. When can she start?"

I took an instant dislike to the domineering woman whose car was blocking my way. "Madam, I don't take on students outside of the university and I have enough to do with my own researches and with teaching undergraduates. I'm off to teach an evening class now so if you'll move your car..." My angry retort was cut short. A young girl clambered awkwardly out of the high vehicle and walked in an ungainly manner towards us; her right leg swung in an arc at each step and as she approached I noticed that her head was rather distorted, being somewhat longer than normal but only noticeable when the wind blew her long black hair away from her face. Tears were in her eyes as she said, "Please."

One word, but the pleading and sadness in her expression made me change my mind. But I didn't give in straightaway, not after the way the pompous woman had spoken to me. Feeling a bit of a heel in refusing to help a disabled person, I played for time. "What time do you get home from school tomorrow?"

"Ten-to-four Sir."

"Come and see me then but no promises from me."

"You'll have to get your grandmother to bring you Emily, I'll still be in London. She encourages your nonsense but maybe you'll grow out of it soon and do something sensible with your time." Her scornful tone and sharp manner showed she had little love for her daughter and her abrupt dismissal of my words indicated she had little regard for me, or what I did.

A little before four o'clock the following day, a small VW car parked at the roadside in front of my house, an elderly, white haired lady got out and helped her passenger on to the path. While the girl waited and looked anxiously at my window, the woman opened the rear door and took out a box and gave to the girl. Immediately I recognised it as an entomological store box. That in itself, was a surprise; the box was of a type used by serious entomologists. "Maybe she is serious or maybe it is a box that someone gave her?" While I watched and speculated, the pair made their way slowly along my drive. At about 5' 5" the older woman was several inches taller than her granddaughter.

"Good afternoon Dr. Irving, I'm Marion Webster and this is my granddaughter Emily Webster. I understand my daughter-in-law asked you to tutor Emily yesterday ... or more likely, she instructed you to tutor her." The woman smiled and held out her hand. "I gather you weren't too thrilled with the idea but perhaps we can change your mind." Again a nice smile, a smile that contrasted with the rather worried look on Emily's face.

"Come in Marion and you too Emily, I'm Michael to everyone including my students, the doctor title is only for official publications. I'm a pretty down to earth sort of bloke." Marion stepped over the high sill into the hallway, turned and carefully took the box Emily held horizontally, and waited for her to climb in too before returning the box. Her attitude to Emily's disability showed a marked difference to her mother's.

"Go through to the conservatory and I'll make a pot of tea." I indicated the way through the kitchen to the conservatory that served as the lounge, the main room of the house having become my laboratory.

"Show me where the stuff is and I'll make the tea and you can talk to Em. I know she's dying to speak to you and ask all sorts of questions that I can't answer. She's still very apprehensive and rather shy at the moment so it may take a while before she says much." Emily nodded slightly but I didn't know which statement she was agreeing to.

Thinking that if we were going to look at what she'd brought, we'd be better in the lab where I had the microscopes set up, I directed her there. "Are you studying a particular group of insects or just anything that you find?" I asked the girl when we were settled and she'd thanked me several times for seeing her.

"I thought it would be best to do a general study of all the groups to start with but I tend to specialise in the coleoptera especially the staphs. I also have an interest in the diptera and hymenoptera." Her reply floored me. It was not the sort of answer I expected from a girl who looked about fourteen years old. Later I had to revise her age.

We talked for a bit about her interests and her methods of collecting. "Where do you do most of your collecting?"

"In the garden. We have a large garden with a pond and small copse so the environment is varied and I suppose I could spend a lifetime studying the fauna there. Our gardener is pretty knowledgeable on the bigger things but only knows the local names. He makes fun of me at times but leaves my traps alone and even helps me to set them up when it is difficult to do it alone and things like the Malaise net that I have to take down when he needs to mow the lawn." While we spoke I kept glancing at her face and wondered what had caused the distortion and noticed that it looked like she'd had a certain amount of plastic surgery. It wasn't really grotesque but her features were certainly odd and a little out of balance, especially when seen close to, and I wondered how she coped with life outside her home. I tried to put the thoughts to one side and concentrate on what she was telling me and, seeing she'd been carefully holding the box during our chat, I asked to see what she had brought. By then Marion had brought the tea and returned to the kitchen. In the background I heard the noise of crockery being washed but it didn't register at the time; the material Emily brought was much more interesting.

After our previous conversation in which she showed a far greater knowledge than some of my colleagues and students at the university, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the way the insects were mounted. "These are only temporary mounts," she explained, "When they've dried and I've identified them, I'll put them on proper card mounts in the insect cabinet." That was the standard entomological procedure and temporary mounts or not, they were neatly done and had the all important collection data with them. "Can you help me identify these two staphs? The couplets in the keys assume you have all the beetles in that group and can compare them. It says 'thorax broader' but if you don't have both to compare, that's as far as I can get. The German keys don't give one of them." That led to a discussion and, working through my keys and checking with specimens in the beetle collection I'd inherited from the family of a coleopterist friend when he died, we finally arrived at a determination. The time sped away and I all but ignored her appearance.

Marion popped in after we'd been working together for nearly two hours and chided us for not having drunk our tea and asked if she could make sandwiches or anything. Usually I went to the cafeteria before a class but it was a bit late for that and in any case, this young girl intrigued me. "Yes please Marion, I'll show you where the bread is."

"No problem, I've already found it and some ham and cheese."

Emily and I went back to discussing her beetles until Marion came in, "I've made the sandwiches and more tea and put them in the conservatory so I hope you can stop what you are doing and come and eat them. I know what Em is like and you sound just as bad. Once she gets into her little lab, almost nothing will get her out!" She grinned as she said it and to my amazement the kitchen was clean and tidy when we went through. I tried to apologise for not having cleared it but she swept my apology aside and just told us to go and eat.

Our conversation was much more stilted when it came to talking about things other than insects and I learned little about them although Marion kept talking and joking. By the time we'd finished it was almost time for me to leave but I agreed to see them again on Saturday and if the weather was fine we'd go to a nearby wood and do some collecting. Emily asked to go to the loo and while she was away Marion enquired if she could see me on her own the next day. Quickly realising we'd only talked about 'work' and that I knew next to nothing concerning the problems I might have with a girl with obvious disabilities, I agreed.

"It happened at her birth and that was a pretty traumatic event," Marion started to explain when we were comfortably seated in the conservatory and she'd again made the tea. "Charlotte, my daughter-in-law, was nearly forty when she became pregnant for the first time. My son Kevin married her when they were both twenty-eight and neither wished for children preferring instead to further their careers. They are well known lawyers and earn disgusting amounts of money. That's their main interest. They take cases where the compensation is likely to be high and rake in their cut or high profile cases that get their names in the papers or on TV. Neither of them had much interest in sex and I'd given up hope of ever becoming a grandmother so it came as a surprise when Charlotte told me she was four months pregnant. She couldn't believe it and when she missed her period, she assumed it was because she was starting menopause. Kevin couldn't believe it either and suspected his wife had been unfaithful but DNA tests showed it was his baby. From what they've said, it probably happened after they'd had too much to drink at a reception in New York but all Kevin remembers of the affair was waking up naked in bed with his naked wife. Normally they sleep at least in separate beds, if not in separate rooms."

"They didn't go for an abortion?"

"No, it was a bit late then and she put it off further because of a case she was working on. She was eight months gone when she had to fly to Singapore to work on a high profile case where the son of a lord was charged with having sex with a young boy. It was only an initial meeting so she flew home a few days later. Somewhere over the Atlantic and few hundred miles from Heathrow they ran into a storm with a lot of turbulence and even in first class the passengers were thrown about in their posh seats and had to belt up because the plane shook and dropped without warning. Emily must have thought, 'to hell with this, I'm getting out'." Marion joked about it but she went on in a more serious tone. "At the height of the storm Charlotte's water broke and she went into labour. The cabin crew put out an appeal for a doctor or a nurse but none came forward. The cabin staff are trained for such an emergency but none had any real experience. After a further appeal, a woman with a young baby came forward and so did a mother of five children. At the enquiry they said they had great difficulty in even getting to the first class section because of the violent motion of the plane and to try and deliver a baby under such conditions was almost impossible. Nevertheless they did what they could but just as Em emerged, the plane tilted and dropped and the woman holding her head slid across the cabin. Being nearly a month premature, Emily's bones were not fully hard and her head became distorted and her right leg was rotated so it pointed backwards."

"And yet she didn't die."

"No. Apparently Charlotte was in a lot of pain and didn't want to know her baby, Emily was almost unconscious but the woman with the baby put her to her breast and, although she didn't suckle properly, seemed to derive some comfort from it. Of course the airline radioed for help and when they landed an ambulance was waiting to rush them to hospital. Emily was in intensive care for months and later had many operations. During that time Charlotte hardly visited but I went when I could. When she came home, Charlotte employed a nanny to look after the baby and I had her when the nanny had time off."

"What about Kevin? Did he acknowledge his little girl?"

"Not until she could walk and talk but like his wife, he was away for considerable periods and her welfare was left for the nanny and me to decide. Financially she is better off than we are but they have little real concern for her wellbeing except in as much that if anything happened to her, it might reflect back on them and their careers. She can afford to buy almost anything she wants and some of the things she's bought for her bug collecting have been expensive, but otherwise she is not extravagant, certainly she doesn't bother too much with fine clothes and jewellery. Em turned out to be a bright kid mentally and far ahead of the others in her classes at school. We thought at first this was because she couldn't take part in many of the physical sporting activities but we soon realised it was more than that. She had a capacity for learning and if told once, would remember and recall it when required. Some of it may be inherited because both Charlotte and Kevin are academically very bright, they had to be, to become the prestigious lawyers that they are."

"From what I know of schoolchildren, that wouldn't have pleased the others. Did they bully her?"

"Unfortunately, yes and it got worse in secondary school until I found out and bluntly told Charlotte to do something about it. The main boy got a warning, which he ignored, and Charlotte using the heavy hand of her lawyer training, had him up in juvenile court. They put an injunction on him to stay away from Em with the threat of further penalties and possible incarceration if he breached it. That must have had some effect because it seems that the bullying more or less ceased."

"Does she have any friends?"

"There's a girl, Denise, in her class who pushes her around in her wheelchair and comes home with her at times. She seems a friendly, down to earth girl but struggles with her schoolwork and at times Em helps her with that."

"She uses a wheelchair?"

"Oh yes. She can only walk a few hundred yards at the most so unless there is a decent path she won't get far into the woods tomorrow. It's not just walking, she can't stand for long periods, hence the need for a wheelchair at school." I sat and thought for a short while and I guessed I would have to alter my plans a little. The wheelchair thing hadn't come up before and, while I didn't expect her to walk miles, it now seemed that more than a few yards was going to be difficult. The entrance gate opened and the path was wide enough for a wheelchair but the ground was very rough. Fortunately it was dry at the moment. "Will you be coming with us?"

"Yes, as long as I'm not expected to pick up bugs and spiders!"

"I was thinking more as a chaperone."

"Are you afraid she might cry rape? I'm sure she's unlikely to do that but until I get to know you better and she does too, I'll stay with her. If it ever gets to the stage where you both want to be alone together, then I'll stay out of the way. She's an adult and nearly seventeen although she doesn't look it but she's rather immature in her ways with boys. Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but she is on the pill. Charlotte had to deal with a horrific case concerning the rape of a helpless woman in a wheelchair by a teenage boy some two years ago now and put Emily on the pill soon after. She might not have any love or affection for the girl, but if you were to rape Em, Charlotte would put all her efforts, and they are considerable, into seeing you were put away for many years. She'd take it as an affront to her especially if it looked as though she would get a bad press reception from it."

After repeatedly assuring Marion that I had no intention of raping the young girl and in fact I hadn't even considered her in any way other than an intelligent student that had a great interest in the same subjects as myself. Her appearance, her general demeanour, small size and lack of noticeable breasts, sent out no sexual signals that I picked up on.

"I believe you Michael, but I had to bring it up when you asked and, for the time being at least, I will hold to that opinion but continue to watch over the pair of you. I would hate to see her mentally hurt after all the physical pain she has gone through over the years. I also know that for many years she's longed for someone to love her, not necessarily like a lover's love but as a parent or brother might love. I'm probably the nearest she gets to that but I'm so much older, in fact at seventy-four, I should be putting my feet up instead of looking after a teenager."

She smiled and I remarked, "You don't look half that age."

That night I contemplated my relationship with Emily. I'd known her only a few hours and yet we were already empathetic with each other although, with me at least, it was more an attraction of two people with compatible interests.

Over the next few months we became much closer and, as the pleasantness of September gave way to the dreariness of November, we spent more time indoors sorting material we had collected. Every Wednesday afternoon, Marion and Emily came round to mine and we either went out or worked indoors. We did this by arrangement with her school. Wednesday afternoons were set aside for sporting activities and because of her disability she got special dispensation to miss the lesson. As her trust in me grew, Marion several times disappeared to go shopping and left us alone for an hour or so. Emily's trust in me grew too and we would talk about our lives and things that happened at her school and at university. Increasingly I looked at her and wondered what lay underneath her bulky, unflattering clothing but I never had a glimpse of any bare flesh. I'm sure she too looked at me, and a couple of times I caught her looking at my crotch but, she quickly looked away and we carried on with what we were doing.

More frequently now, I lay awake at night wondering if there was any future for us. I knew my feelings for her had grown but were they the feelings a father might have for his daughter? Or a brother for his sister? I was neither but, being only ten years older than Emily, I could easily be her lover. There were times when I would have cuddled her but held back in case the cuddle was misinterpreted and I felt the wrath of her mother and father. I'd met both and knew they looked down on me and placed me on the same level as the insects I studied and, had it been possible, they would have squashed me underfoot like a crawling bug. Would they accept me as a son-in-law? I very much doubted it. Certainly they showed no interest in the work we were doing or the fact that Em seemed much happier and more mature. Marion commented on the way she now frequently smiled and laughed but Charlotte and Kevin were too wrapped up in their own little world to see anything outside its well-defined boundaries.

Christmas came and Marion invited us to Christmas dinner with her. Her son and daughter-in-law had taken themselves off to some exotic location in Switzerland and abruptly told their daughter that she could play with her bugs and look after herself for a few days. She looked very sad when I picked her up on Christmas morning and hardly spoke on the journey. Not surprising really when your parents leave you alone to fend for yourself on Christmas day while they enjoy themselves. Marion was as cheerful and sprightly as ever and when we entered the dining room she pointed to a sprig of mistletoe over the doorway. I knew what she intended but I kissed her instead before turning to Em and saying, "Your turn now dear." The word 'dear' just popped out but I know it made an impression on her. The hug and kiss I gave her lasted a little longer than Marion's and would have been longer still had I not felt her body tense up.

The day passed very pleasantly and all three of us exchanged presents and in between eating, played board games. "You're not talking bugs today, so put your minds on the game," Marion laughingly reprimanded us at one point. We did our best and enjoyed ourselves. I half expected Em to stay over with her Gran, and indeed she was invited to do so, but she insisted on going home. Halfway there she said, "Michael?" I looked across at her and she had that look of apprehension I seen on our first meeting. "Michael," she repeated hesitantly, "Can I spend the night with you? At your house, I mean."

"Yes, of course you can," I answered wondering if she really meant she wanted to spend the night in my bed and then didn't want to ask directly and changed the wording. "Do you want to pick up some stuff from home?" She did so it was fairly late by the time we got in and the central heating had gone off but with the gas fire on, the conservatory soon warmed up. Em dumped her stuff in the back bedroom while I made a hot drink for us. Shyness again overcame her when we sat on the settee in front of the fire and she kept to the far end leaving a gap between us. Perhaps I should have pushed things at that point but I was still uncertain of how she would react and I decided to let her set the pace. I did give her a goodnight kiss when she left for her room but it was only a quick peck before she fled away.

For the longest time I lay awake mulling over the events of the day and, knowing a young girl I had feelings for was sleeping in the room across the landing, I wondered if she was asleep or lying awake pondering what to do next or maybe even waiting for me to go to her. Again I decided it was in my best interest for her to take the initiative.

The hallway clock struck twelve and each quarter after and then one. Sometime between then and the next quarter I must have dozed because the next thing I heard was my bedroom door squeaking open and a quiet voice saying, "I'm cold Michael, can I... ?