All is not what it seems

Leading up to the end of that summer term, Hannah found herself being tossed around at the behest of her moody and demanding lover, never knowing which way she would be thrown next. Maybe in some sort of perverted way she had begun to enjoy his unpredictability as if it leant some level of excitement to what could be just an average mundane existence.
After one of his choir practices one evening, Justin walked into the kitchen whilst Hannah was preparing some supper. The children were both safely tucked up in bed asleep and as he had already consumed more than a drink or two, he was looking forward to some food.
‘Why don’t you go and change into something more relaxing?’ she suggested, noticing he was still in his work suit.
‘Good idea,’ he agreed, as he half-staggered towards her bedroom to change.
When he walked back into the kitchen several minutes later wearing just a T-shirt, Hannah giggled helplessly: an erection was sticking out from underneath his shirt. She continued to prepare their food whilst Justin lounged on the settee at the back of the kitchen, one arm propped behind his head and his erection standing proudly in the air. From time to time, she went over to lick him.
‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed suddenly, looking up at the small kitchen window once she had finished a round of mutual pleasure. ‘There’s someone looking in at the window!’
Three faces, all strangers, physically straining for viewing space, stared down at them like some sort of peep show. The two lovers giggled, plainly incapable of appreciating the seriousness of their unexpected predicament: two middle managers, one a housemistress, the other a deputy head of a large department, engaging in a public display of inappropriate behaviour, in school accommodation! Whatever next?
Fortunately, the three men quickly disappeared once they had been spotted but on quick reflection Hannah realised that Justin must have seen them all along and had said nothing. So why didn’t he stop her? Did he enjoy the thrill of voyeurism? And what if they were both reported to Adams and lost their jobs? ‘Bringing the school into disrepute’ or something like that, she imagined him saying to them. Hannah only prayed for one thing that evening: that the three men, having appreciated the risky frolicking, would sentence their viewings to an everlasting silence.
When Justin returned from what was lauded as a successful school camping expedition to the Yorkshire Dales in the last week of the summer term, Hannah assumed the tetchiness he displayed towards her stemmed from his physical exertions on the trip. She could not have been further from the truth and she was about to discover which end of the spectrum Justin’s moods had reached during a telephone conversation after the final staff meeting of the academic year.
Terry Adams’s opening statement at the assembled staff meeting shocked most people in the room into a sombre silence. There was no doubt what he announced had to be said, particularly as rumours frequently abounded around the teaching staff.
‘Firstly, I’d like to talk to you about something very serious, concerning the amount of drinking and socialising going on between staff and pupils. I understand your need to relax of an evening but I would ask that you do it in pubs which pupils from the school do not frequent.’
Hannah quietly looked around the room to judge the reaction of the bachelors: Fat Boye, Justin, Grunt, Burper and Flirt. They must have been seething at the announcement but everyone else seemed to agree with Adams’ sentiment, with the occasional nod of the head from some of the older, more experienced members of staff.
‘Secondly,’ continued Adams, confidently, ‘I would ask that you do not engage in any inappropriate relationships with pupils.’
No one expected this announcement! And certainly no one dared to look at each other because everyone knew who Adams was referring to: Burper, Grunt, and Flirt, the naughty bachelor boys, always chasing the female pupils. Hannah blocked her mind from the prospect that Justin could be included in that group as well; hopefully, their relationship had earned him some respectability in the eyes of the senior management, despite his decidedly guilty past and the fact that they knew about his relationship with Phoebe a few years back whilst she was still a pupil at the school. She wondered why Adams had made his declaration at that particular meeting, after displaying inertia on the issue for so long. Had something been going on behind the scenes, which she and others knew nothing about? When she rang Justin later that same day, she soon found out the answer to her question.
‘What did you think about the head’s announcement today? What was he referring to?’
There was a momentary silence on the other end of the telephone, as if Justin was weighing up the pros and cons of answering her direct question.
‘He was referring to the camping expedition in the Yorkshire Dales.’
‘Really? I thought you said it went well? And I remember you saying how much you enjoyed the conversation with pupils around the campfire. So who was Adams referring to then?’
‘Grunt, Burper and Flirt,’ he replied, flatly.
‘The usual suspects, then,’ laughed Hannah, relieved it did not involve him. ‘Senna the German assistant was there as well, wasn’t she? So what did she do during the socialising and drinking?’
‘She just watched.’
‘I suppose there wasn’t much she could do about that!’ replied Hannah.
Poor Senna! Because no other female member of staff had been interested in going on the expedition, the German assistant had reluctantly volunteered for the job. Since Grunt had taken over as the school’s expedition organiser, camping had become a no-go area for most decent staff who usually liked to get involved, especially the female ones. Dodging Grunt’s acid or sexist comments was an exhausting process, so it was better to avoid him altogether.
‘Anyway, I was really annoyed he’d spoken about such matters in open forum when he could just have simply talked to those people he was referring to on their own!’
‘Look!’ Justin suddenly shouted down the telephone. ‘It has nothing to do with you, at all! So quit talking about it!’
Hannah was taken aback by his sudden outburst, sensing an urgent need to tiptoe around his anger and steer the conversation away to something else.
‘Are we still going to the Leavers’ Ball tomorrow night?’
‘No, we are not!’
‘But what have I done this time? I only expressed an opinion. Is it still on between us, Justin?’
She knew instinctively it was over again, at the drop of a hat.
His silence had spoken for him.

After returning the academic hood Hannah had borrowed from Justin for Speech Day, Lorna could see from their body language that the relationship had gone pear-shaped again.
‘Why’s he ignoring you this time?’ she asked, as they both helped themselves to the post-Speech Day buffet lunch for the leavers and their parents.
‘It all started with Adams’s announcement at the staff meeting yesterday,’ replied a fractious Hannah, nervously glancing over towards her lover to see if he was watching her. It always unnerved her when he did. ‘All I did was to pass an opinion about disciplining staff in open forum and he didn’t like it.’
‘So, is he still going to take you to tonight’s Leavers’ Ball?’
‘I doubt it because he’s called it all off again. I’ll probably just have to stay at home.’
After lunch, Hannah was determined to change his mind about their relationship. After all, the Leavers’ Ball was a means of saying farewell to the leavers in her house and it was better to do this is in a happy and jovial atmosphere rather than in one which had been soured by his tantrums.
‘Hi. It’s me,’ she said, as soon as he answered his mobile telephone. ‘What are we doing about tonight’s Ball?’
‘Well, I’m going,’ he replied, curtly.
‘Look, Justin. I’m very sorry if I upset you yesterday but I only passed an opinion. Are you down the The Maid Marian?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘May I come down and have a drink with you?’
‘Yes.’
His sudden change of heart towards her meant her luck would be in and although they were eventually allocated different tables for the meal that evening, he more than made up for it by being surprisingly attentive towards her throughout the whole event.
‘What I can’t understand is why she keeps running back to him?’ one housemaster was overheard to comment that evening. ‘She’s far too good for him! Why doesn’t she get someone better?’
By the end of the evening, Justin was legless and unable to string two words together. In the past, he would have been all over her when he was drunk, romantically whispering sweet nothings in her ear, but now he was a silent wall of frostiness as they sat together on the packed school coach winding its way back to Queensford. Her thoughts lightly touched on his wooing Jessica Riley, one of the parents, on a similar coach journey a few years back, and the loving things he had said to her at their reunion in Cambridge. All that had now quickly dissolved away to nothing.
When Hannah reluctantly attended the common room barbecue a couple of days after the end of term, it was only then did she realise she needed to break away from the petty politics of school life. Every comment and every look from any one of the bachelors seemed to be aimed directly at her; they must have all hated her in some way or another for the restraining effect she had on Justin’s naturally exuberant behaviour when he was with ‘the boys’.
‘Why don’t you share a seat with Hannah?’ suggested a very merry Grunt to Burper as he looked for a chair in the common room garden, whilst Hannah sat quietly with Justin eating some barbequed food.
‘I’m not going anywhere near her,’ Burper replied nastily, so loudly that most people at the party could hear him.
There was an awkward silence and Hannah could see Burper visibly withdraw his body away from her. Immediately, she felt humiliated. She knew he resented her for getting Michael’s housemaster post and that Justin often told him what had been going on in their relationship. But was this an excuse to behave in such a way, in front of everyone else?
But, unbeknown to Hannah then, fate would later present an opportunity for her to get her own revenge not only on Burper but on all of the bachelors in Justin’s circle of friends.
When the plot had precariously thickened.

When the librarian retired after several years of devoted and faithful service to Queensford, her farewell party became a flagship for the beleaguered female staff at the school, mostly because her leaving speech took a clever tongue-in-cheek dig at the male-dominated establishment, much to the chagrin of the men present, especially Terry Adams and the Bursar, whose combined notoriety for wielding their manly might was beginning to acquire a legendary reputation. More importantly, the speech spoke of times past and present at an English public school.
‘When I first arrived at a male-dominated Queensford School many years ago,’ she began, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I looked forward to updating an outmoded library. It was a challenge. However, my illusions as to why I had been employed were quickly shattered by the Bursar’s suggestion that I might be better occupied if I learned how to make a good pot of tea and rock cakes before I set about doing any serious work.’
Faint laughter of understanding, all-round.
‘When I informed him that I was a highly qualified librarian, with an honours degree to boot, he apologised for his appalling mistake and suggested Black Forest gateau might be more fitting for my station and aspirations.’
A lot more laughter.
‘Having got over this hurdle, perfecting my tea-making skills in the process, my next challenge was the senior common room. To ensure the all-male teaching staff got the message that I was serious about my intention to modernise the library, I found myself arriving at school each day in a black trouser suit, waistcoat and tie, and a pair of black Doc Martin boots to die for.’
Laughter, particularly from the women.
‘When I finally donned a false moustache, booked in for an emergency sex-change and started using the male toilets on a regular basis (there were no female toilets in those days), the president of the common room interjected, explaining he thought my male colleagues had got the point.’
A lot more laughter, all-round.
Eventually, after a couple of years, I returned to my normal feminine mode of dress and my male colleagues began to take me more seriously. From that day on, I enjoyed a more fruitful and fulfilling relationship with them: the sly looks at my legs as I seductively worked the buttons on the photocopier, the quick furtive glances at my breasts as they brushed past me in the archives, and even their pretence of picking up some imaginary item from the floor so they could look up my skirt as I teetered precariously on my librarian’s ladder.’
A lot of laughter.
‘It was a good job I was divorced in those early days. If I’d had a husband, he would surely have been in to sort them all out, right ‘n proper! Yes, it would be right to say, my first ten years at the school were a constant battle to preserve my dignity. Luckily for me, there weren’t any opportunities to apply for internal promotion. I could never imagine how I would have coped with a knife in my back, carrying all those heavy books up and down my ladder all day. The prospect of a mere extra pittance just didn’t seem worthwhile.’
Sounds of breath sucked in, from the men.
Sounds of hilarious laughter, from the women.
‘As the years rolled by and I began to quickly lose my youthfulness, figure and looks, I found myself considering other options to keep the flagging interest of my male colleagues. Should I cake my face in layers of make-up, like some sort of latter-day Barbara Cartland, to hide the lines which had begun to eradicate my once-beautiful features?’
Some of the women looked at each other, semi open-mouthed. She’s not, is she?
‘Or should I resort to wearing masses of jingling jewellery, to divert their attention away from my dwindling talents and abilities?’
My goodness, she is!
‘Or should I don a different designer outfit for each day of the year, to dazzle them with my fashion sense and personal wealth?’
She’s referring to Brunhilde!
Sounds of breath sucked in, from the men.
Sounds of hilarious laughter, from the women.
‘I was confused and I didn’t know which way to turn. In the end, my mind was made up. I’d sleep with them all – it was far easier that way.’
No sound from the men.
Sounds of hilarious laughter, from the women.
The retiring librarian had made her point about life at Queensford and how to get on in one’s career.
Brilliantly.

It was sad to see the Campbells leave after just three years at the school and although they were locked in a legal argument with Terry Adams who had succeeded in pushing them out, they managed to retain a supreme professional dignity to the bitter end.
‘We’re having a leaving party tomorrow night for just our friends. Why don’t you come along?’ suggested Davina.
‘That sounds great!’ Hannah replied. ‘May I bring Justin with me?’
There was a moment’s hesitation and Hannah knew instantly the reply to her question.
‘No,’ returned Davina, with brutal honesty. ‘I don’t want him there.’
‘Oh, OK. That’s no problem. I’ll come on my own.’ Hannah never mentioned the incident to Justin, knowing he would have blown his short fuse.
The party itself went very well despite the discomfort she felt in the presence of Horace Samuels, the new chaplain. He was a strange man but one who was very popular not only with the pupils but also with most of the teaching staff. He rarely talked directly to Hannah yet alone ever gave her eye contact and he was no different at the small, select gathering at Fraser and Davina’s boarding house party that evening. Hannah consciously pushed her observations of the man to the back of her mind, thinking her unpopularity with the bachelors could possibly account for Horace ignoring her. But there was far more to his behaviour than she gave her instincts credit for. Horace knew Hannah was an intuitive observer and thinker. He felt uncomfortable in her company. And he had reason to be.
Over the hot summer, Justin uncharacteristically spent most of his time at Hannah’s flat, completing jigsaws and eating her carefully prepared dinners. It was as if he was hiding behind the protection of her skirts, but when he reneged yet again on a holiday in Spain together and continued to excessively drink himself stupid, Hannah knew he had abused her hospitality once again.
When September arrived, there was a new housemaster to take over from Fraser in School House. Iain was a fiery dwarf of a man from the Irish flatlands who no doubt would rise to the challenge of raising the reputation of School House from its lowly grave to greater heights but his excessive drinking would soon destroy not only his marriage but his career as housemaster as well. In addition to his arrival, tales of bad behaviour on the school’s recent South African rugby tour also travelled rapidly around the school.
Financed by the godparent of one of the boarders in Ewan Hogg’s house, the rugby tour had set off for the Johannesburg townships for a month-long stay over the summer break. The godparent, a certain William Walker, frequently subjected Hogg and his cronies to his financial generosity, paying for sports’ equipment, dinners in posh hotels, and the like. Over time, the more William spent the more the school became reliant on his generosity but when it widened to include his sponsorship of the school’s first rugby squad to the tune of many thousands of pounds, tongues began to wag. Fearful that Terry Adams was setting a dangerous precedent in allowing the godparent to have so much financial power over the rugby team, teaching staff began to air their concerns to Gordon Chester, the deputy head, hoping his renown common sense would rub off on Adams. But it did not seem to make much difference. Adams was only exploiting what went on in many an independent school up and down the country: money talked and bought what you wanted, irrespective of who was involved.
‘Do you know what some of my boys overheard when they were waiting for the ‘plane at Heathrow on their way out to South Africa?’ announced Iain, on one of Hannah’s visits to see him and his wife Becky, in their School House flat.
‘No?’ she replied.
‘They heard two lads from Hogg’s house saying ‘What are we going to do now? Who’s going to buy our drinks if William’s not coming on the tour with us?’ My boys were disgusted because these two lads hadn’t taken any money with them. They’d got so used to William splashing out his money they assumed he would be there to pay out for their drinks and spending money!’
‘That’s absolutely disgusting!’ exclaimed Hannah.
‘I know! But the worst part of it all involved Harry Ballsworthy,’ Iain continued.
‘Why? What did he do?’ asked Hannah, inquisitively. She knew the boy well and, for a sixteen year-old, was as arrogant as he was trouble and a much-disliked pupil at the school.
‘He only went missing for two whole days in Johannesburg!’
Hannah’s jaw dropped. ‘Missing in Johannesburg! What happened?’
‘Well, he got very drunk one evening, argued quite violently with someone, apparently he’s got a bit of a vicious temper, and then did a disappearing act. Hogg and the other members of staff frantically looked for him for two whole days: in every bar, every park, and the police station. They even went to the hospital morgue and the cemeteries to see if they could identify him in case he had landed up there!’
‘So where did they eventually find him?’ asked Hannah, disgusted to think a little shit like Harry Ballsworthy would be so unthinking. Even though she did not respect Hogg, he did not deserve this.
‘Still drunk, under a park bench. He’d been living rough for two days!’
Hannah would never forgot the day she brought up the issue in front of Harry and his classmates when they had all returned back to school at the end of the summer break.
‘And what has it got to do with you, Dr Thompson?’ Harry sneered down his arrogant nose, his agitation clearly visible at the mention of his disappearance.
‘It has everything to do with me, young man,’ she retorted back, calmly. ‘Bringing the school into disrepute is what I think they term it. I have every right to mention it so that others in the school don’t think they can repeat that sort of behaviour again.’
And with that, she wallowed in the knowledge of having had the last word.

Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing during the events of 9/11. Hannah had been doing some washing in between breaks in her daily routine when she overheard the television commentary on the destruction of the first tower through an open door in one of the pupil common rooms. She rushed to ring Justin but he had already left his office for home.
‘Justin! Switch on your TV!’ she garbled, unable to get the words out fast enough when she finally managed to catch him on his mobile telephone.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just switch it on! Someone’s flown a ‘plane into one of the Twin Towers and it’s collapsed.’
And that was the last she heard from him until he arrived at her flat later that evening.
‘No!’ he screamed, as they watched replay after replay of those momentous events. ‘Why? Why? Why?’ he repeatedly asked. Hannah could not give him an answer. He never seemed to be the same after that, as if something had snapped inside.
‘Everything was fine here until women arrived,’ he suddenly concluded one evening when they were quietly reading in bed. ‘Why don’t people just leave each other alone?’
Hannah frowned as she glanced up from her book. Yes, she thought, and that’s why you’ve got away with things. Isn’t that right, Mr Predator? She did not have the nerve to ask what had prompted his outburst; she had heard him moan and complain once too often in the past to be interested. During these times, his inner frustration would frequently reach boiling point, digging up events which had caused him pain in the past, like the time she had asked him to live with her, and her job applications.
Arriving slightly worse for wear back at her flat after a night out with the bachelors, Hannah did not realise how drunk he was until she recognised the signs he was going to be sick in her bedroom. Catching the vomit in her hastily grabbed dressing gown, she reflected on the last time he had behaved this way, only a few days ago when he had vomited into the flower beds on Middle Lawn after accusing Fat Boye of spiking his drinks. It was clear; someone or something was upsetting him because his drinking had significantly worsened.
She did not see him for several days after that and as he was refusing to answer her telephone calls, she drove to his cottage to see if she could find out what was going on. It was his choir rehearsal evening so she guessed he would be at home having something to eat before going out. When he failed to answer the front door, Hannah walked around to the back of the cottage. The kitchen light was on but no one seemed to be around. After waiting a few minutes in her car for him to show up, she peered in through the back kitchen window once again precisely at the moment when Justin’s head suddenly appeared from behind the breakfast bar. He had been hiding all along, crouching on all fours, waiting for her to go! When their eyes silently locked, his face contorted into shocked rage. He had been discovered.
‘Go away!‘ he screamed, dismissively waving his hand at her.
Hannah immediately felt humiliated. Who was this man standing before her? There must have been something dreadfully wrong.
Justin was having yet another emotional crisis.

When he eventually had the strength to ring her a few days later, the conversation skirted around the events of the last few days, events too sensitive for either of them to mention. They agreed to meet up for supper that evening.
‘I had a dream about you last night,’ he began to explain, once they had finished eating.
Hannah’s ears pricked up at the prospect of hearing something nice said about her, for a change.
‘You were singing on stage and I was in the audience and then suddenly, out loud, in front of everybody you said ‘Hi, Justin!’’
Hannah laughed. ‘Well, that’s something good, isn’t it? I was being friendly!’
‘No,’ he replied, emphatically. ‘It wasn’t good, at all.’
There was no doubt, the dream only proved one thing.
She embarrassed him.

When a friend rang to invite her to a birthday party, Hannah was over the moon.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he said, when she told him of Laura’s invite to the party over the telephone.
‘But why not?’
‘I just don’t want to go.’
‘What’s wrong, Justin?’
‘Nothing. I just don’t want to go.’
‘Well, I’ll go on my own, then. I don’t mind. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?’
‘No,’ came his final answer. 
The cat-and-dog chase continued in his office the next day. It was the usual scenario: her standing in front of his desk talking, whilst he continued to sit at his computer, ignoring her, typing.
‘Your mother did you no favours,’ she pronounced cruelly, frustrated his moodiness had yet again spoiled the promise of an evening out together.
‘I’m very sensitive about my mother,’ he replied calmly, oblivious to how his behaviour was a direct result of the dysfunctional relationship he had with his mother and the way she had spoilt him. ‘And I’ve known our relationship was wrong for a long time.’
Hannah’s stomach churned.
‘I knew it was wrong from the very first day,’ she countered quickly, despite having already said too much. ‘Otherwise, don’t you think I would have married you when you asked me?’
He looked at her, visibly shaken by her throwaway comment.
‘And you let it go on?’ he asked incredulously, as if he hadn’t done the same thing.
‘Well, I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with you, did I?’
They had talked like this before, each not setting out to fall in love with the other. It had just happened that way.
‘And apart from that, you were never faithful to me, ever.’
‘I was with Phoebe.’
Hannah looked at him. It was her turn to be visibly shaken.
‘I’ve been a good woman to you,’ she said, in a quiet and resigned manner.
‘I don’t have a good woman.’
And with that she left his office.
On the evening of the party, Justin still insisted on staying at home.
‘Please come with me,’ she asked on the telephone before she showered and changed into her party dress.
‘No. We would only argue in front of people and I don’t want that.’
‘But we very rarely argue in front of people and if we did it was only ever when Fat Boye was there!’
Their problem was obvious: they had kept their own company and that of his cronies for so long that neither of them now felt at home in the company of others: she, because he was so demanding of who she talked to and he, because she cramped his style, of flirting with the skirts with the promise of sex from whosoever was willing to give it. Although Hannah had painfully tried to widen their social base, Justin had resisted, all the way. And tonight was no exception.
As Hannah stood chatting to people at the party, champagne glass in hand, she tried to keep the emptiness within her from spoiling her evening. When she could stand the feeling no longer, she quietly left to drive to his cottage. Parking her car outside, she noticed Ali through the evening gloom, getting into a taxi with two of her female friends. She knocked quietly at his front door. Surprisingly, he let her in: it hadn’t always been that way.
‘I’ve called to see if you’ll come to the party with me.’
‘I’m not bothered,’ he replied, sprawling out on his sofa, a large glass of red wine by his side.
‘We’re having a great time. There’s only champagne to drink!’
He looked at her, his pupils even larger than normal. He seemed quite depressed.
‘Right,’ she said, finally losing her patience with him. She had seen him like this before. ‘I don’t want you there, anyway. You can just sit here and feel sorry for yourself.’
When she arrived back at the party, the dancing and drinking had got into full swing. Suddenly, Hannah stopped in her tracks: Ali was standing with her two friends talking to Laura on the far side of the room. They both smiled at each other. After all, they had always got on reasonably well together and it was neither their fault that they had the misfortune of getting entangled with someone like Justin. Maybe Justin knew Ali was going to the party, she thought suspiciously, which would possibly explain why he had wanted to stay at home.
‘Hi, Ali. I didn’t realise you’d know anyone here.’
‘Laura is a good friend of one of my friends so I got dragged along as well!’
‘Look, I’m sorry about that evening when I came to ask you if you were having an affair with Justin,’ said Hannah, stepping more than half way towards bridging the gulf between the two women. ‘I only visited you because I loved him.’
Hannah noticed Ali’s strongly apologetic body language, nervously twisting her small chubby hands before offering her arms in a conciliatory embrace. She knew she had wronged Hannah, remembering her angry responses to Hannah’s calm and dignified questions, and how she had lied to her husband about needing a knife for protection. She knew that her lies were her best form of defence but that Hannah was only exercising her right to protect her man.
‘That’s OK. I understand.’
With their differences forgotten, the two women embraced in forgiveness: Hannah for her accusation, Ali for her guilt.
‘This is Ben,’ introduced one of her female friends, as several partygoers joined up in a large circle to dance to the loud disco music in the kitchen area.
‘Hi,’ replied Hannah when the handsome, smart young man moved in on her to dance. ‘Who do you know here?’
‘I’m friendly with Laura’s sons. We go to college together.’
Hannah looked over towards the group of young males, all strangers to her, resplendent in their smart suits donned for the special occasion.
‘How old are you, then?’ she shouted above the loud music, interested to know more.
‘Twenty two.’
Hannah smiled. She was enjoying herself, the memory of the miserable and difficult man in her life quickly fading as they danced and kissed each other in time with the music. She was savouring the feeling of desire Ben created deep within her.
Suddenly, Ben’s inexperienced hands fumbled their way towards her breasts. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, releasing herself abruptly from his grip. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Staggering out into the fresh autumn air, she remembered how Justin had let her down. Before common sense could stop her, she had arrived outside his cottage for the second time that evening. The whole village was in total silence and darkness and she was dreadfully drunk.
‘I’ll show the bastard,’ she hissed angrily, dragging her car key along the side of his car.
‘I hate you, Justin,’ she slurred into his telephone answer machine when she finally got home in the early hours of the next morning, wishing she had consumed a lot less champagne than she had done.

Hannah’s daughter, Charlotte, had also been at Laura’s party that evening and because she had stayed the night with Laura’s daughter and friends, it wasn’t long before rumours of her mother’s intimacy with the young man in the suit quickly reached her attention.
‘But mummy, he was only fifteen!’
Hannah was distraught.
‘But he told me he was twenty two!’ Hannah complained desperately, feeling ashamed of her moment of weakness.
But even though Ben had lied to her, Hannah realised that she, too, must have been attracted to young flesh.
Like so many of her colleagues around her.

She had heard nothing from Justin all week and it was highly likely she would have to sit it out whilst he dictated the timescale of a continuance of their relationship. So, she rang him.
‘Would you come over on Sunday? I’ll leave the back door open for you. I’ve got something to tell you.’
She greeted him as pleasantly as she could when he eventually arrived at her flat. ‘Thanks for popping in. I only wanted a quick word so it won’t take much of your time.’
She watched his face closely; he knew what was coming.
‘You missed a really good party last weekend. It was a shame you weren’t there.’
‘The fact you said you didn’t want me there was enough for me,’ he replied grumpily, forgetting Hannah’s patient attempts to convince him to go along with her.
‘Well, I had a great time! I even pulled a fifteen-year old, although I didn’t know that at the time! I figured if I could do that, then I could pull anyone, so I’ve decided I don’t need you anymore and I don’t want to see you again.’
It was only the second time she had ever ended the relationship, the first being after Fat Boye’s barbecue when she discovered he had been seeing Phoebe at the same time as her.
‘So my relationship is ending because I couldn’t show my love,’ he complained bitterly, a definite tinge of regret in his voice. He was looking for sympathy, his emotional immaturity being used as a reason for his bad behaviour. She remembered how loving he had been in the first year of their relationship together and she felt herself harden towards his excuses. She was pleased he was hurting.
But little did she realise then that her willingness to impress Ben upon him would get her into so much trouble later on.
In just a year’s time.

Over the half term break, Hannah was missing Justin dreadfully and so she decided to call in at the music department, unannounced, to see him. The door leading into the corridor alongside his office creaked loudly on her way in but that did not worry her unduly until suddenly, she heard a familiar voice. She stopped dead in her tracks for several seconds, hardly daring to breathe, thinking what to do. Fat Boye! She did not want the housemaster to know she was there; that would have been far too uncomfortable to bear.
‘Vamona and Danny have just bought a printer for £1000!’ came the envious tones of Justin’s voice from within the depths of his office. ‘They spend so much money. It’s not fair!’
Hannah silently crept into one of the practice rooms off the corridor to hide, to give her some time to think of a way out of her predicament; she was shocked at Justin’s complaints about somebody else’s possessions. He had plenty of money of his own which he chose to drink and pee away!
Stuck in the small room, just feet away from her moaning colleagues, Hannah had to think fast, figuring that if she tiptoed back out through the creaking door, Justin would immediately come out from his room to investigate who it was, exposing her presence in the process. The only alternative left was to go back out through the door and pretend she was coming through it for the first time. Perfect!
‘Hi,’ she said quietly, after carrying out her daring plan. ‘I’ve come to see you. I came earlier on but I could hear voices so I went. Look, come and see me. I didn’t mean what I said the other day.’ She gently grabbed him by the arms in a genuine display of affection.
‘OK but not now. Later,’ he replied. He silently signalled with a nod of his head that there was someone in his office, someone he did not want to overhear what they were saying. A knowledgeable look passed between them.
In her flat later that day, they agreed to see each other once again, although Hannah knew it would never do to go on like this.
‘When you asked me around that Sunday, to tell me it was all over, I looked around your sitting room knowing it might be the last time I would ever see it,’ he announced, dramatically.
‘I didn’t mean what I said, Justin. You know I love you and that I said those things to hurt you. My God, Justin, you were a bastard after all!’
‘And you,’ he piped up, ‘are a good actress.’
As usual, they left the discussion at a point at which no further good could come of it, to allow their disgruntlement with each other to fester and deepen. Behind the facade of getting on with their lives, they had both secretly recognised but not accepted that it was over between them.
When their lovemaking had turned to the following, Hannah knew it was a serious wake-up call. Suddenly pushing himself up onto his knees to straddle across her, Justin grabbed his long, blood-gorged penis in his right hand and began to move it slowly back and fore. Hannah looked on, confused. He had never masturbated in front of her like this before, even though she knew he often did it in private. She had even walked in on him on one occasion when he had just finished, with toilet paper soaked in semen unashamedly strewn across his bedroom floor. But here, in her bed, that was something different. Then, without warning, his wanking became more vigorous and his knees, having gradually edged their way further up either side of her shoulders, had her completely pinned down. She was trapped and at a loss what to do next. When his balls finally reached her mouth, she felt obliged to move her tongue and lips backwards and forwards gently over them.
Until he climaxed in her face.