Interlude

I dropped my briefcase next to the occasional table at home; my keys followed the same downward path, this time landing firmly in the table's centre. I sighed as I unfastened the three buttons holding my 'Gestapo' coat shut. As always the description brought a smile to my face, the name had been adopted when I'd heard one of my students describing the black, full-length leather coat to his friends. "It's just like the Gestapo wear in all the movies."

I half turned to hang the coat up and caught my reflection in the full-length mirror that I normally used for checking my appearance before I departed in the mornings. Now it reflected back my image without showing any of my seething inner turmoil.

I sighed, almost theatrically as my hands automatically positioned the coat in its resting-place. My mind was running through the events of the day once more, events that had unleashed a storm of emotional, and I'll admit sexual feelings that I'd held suppressed for many years.

"Come on, Elizabeth," I admonished myself out loud, "It's not going to happen so don't even think about it." The trouble was I'd done nothing but think about 'it' for the last three hours, ever since my interview with Mister Hayles had come to a somewhat surprising conclusion.

How had that young man managed to turn a simple disciplinary matter into a challenge?

I made my way to the front room and opened the liquor cabinet and poured two inches of Glenfiddich into a crystal whiskey tumbler. My next stop was the icemaker where I added four of the cubes to the tumbler before I drifted out onto the deck to spend my usual half-hour relaxing after work.

I swirled the drink, clinking the ice as I did so and sighed. I'm not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination though I've always liked to think that I'm not what my ex would have described as a dog either. Considering we were married for twelve years I doubt if he thought I was either.

I'm five feet six inches tall in bare feet and weighing in at a perfectly respectable eight and a half stones, I can still get into a size twelve dress and, whilst that might not be the perfect ten, it was close enough for most women, especially at my age.

I sighed again and took another sip of the whiskey, why was I thinking like this?

My body might be better than the average for my vintage but as my dearly departed hubby had stated before he left with that bimbo, my personality acted as a better contraceptive than any doctor's pill could hope to achieve.

I tapped my foot against the cross bar of the teak table, its steady rhythm striking a resonance with my thoughts.

I'd got together with the bastard as we'd gone through teacher training college and ended up married. Soon after we'd ended up working in the same school. Was it love? Who could say? I thought it was at the time but my career was more important than any sort of domestic bliss.

We'd stayed together for ten years before I'd discovered that the bastard was more interested in chasing young totty than me, or in building a career as I intended to. That fact had been thrown in my face when he'd finally left for pastures new.

I gulped down a large measure of the firewater. My feelings, sexual and emotional had been put on hold ever since he'd left.

I drained the glass and stared at the remaining ice cubes, shaking my head at my own weakness as I rose to my feet to make another drink.

What on earth had young Hayles done to me?

He wasn't the most outstanding of students, nor a trouble maker and, to be honest, if he hadn't been a member of the sixth form I wouldn't have known him from Adam. Yet in my office he'd managed to hit buttons I didn't even know I had. By the time he walked out of that door I'd have dropped my knickers there and then if he'd dared me to.

What did that make me?

Even here I can hear his voice battering away at the walls of my resistance, goading me to take up his challenge, to appear at school in stockings.

It wasn't going to happen!

My morning ritual was always the same, out of bed as soon as the alarm sounds then go directly to the gym for a good workout, back home an hour and a half later and straight into the shower. From there it was downstairs to read the day's headlines in the morning paper whilst nibbling two rounds of wholemeal toast and drinking a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

That was my normal routine but that happened after a good night's sleep and that was something that I had missed last night. I'd been plagued by erotic dreams in which I featured prominently, mainly strutting around school in just heels and stockings. To say it was disturbing was an understatement but not as much as how excited I'd felt when I'd refused to perform in that manner and that brat had carried out his threat to beat me with my own paddle.