A Night at the Opera: The Final Act

When Maggie suggested they join a Dining Club just before the end of the Christmas term, Hannah burst into laughter. As a work colleague, Hannah liked Maggie very much but she could never imagine joining the queue of desperate singles with her.
‘But I can’t!’ she replied to Maggie’s suggestion. ‘I’ve already gone onto a dating website on the Internet and from the mug shots I’ve seen, they all look as if they’re doing time!’ They both laughed.
‘This club is different,’ Maggie explained, convincingly. ‘They organise dinners and discos and events like that. If you don’t get out there, girl, you’ll never get over Justin.’
Maggie was right. Neither of them had a man in their lives to speak of so it was worth a go. When she told Justin about their plans after dinner one Sunday evening in an attempt to wind him up, he did not give her the satisfaction of reacting adversely to her announcement. So, she went ahead with Maggie’s idea.
In work, Justin had been busy putting on a musical show with the head of drama, Natasha Hudson. They never did get on very well together professionally and Justin made Hannah listen to how he thought Natasha treated him badly during each rehearsal.
‘Natasha’s been telling the kids in the cast that the musicians aren’t pulling their weight. I almost went wild when I found out!’
‘How do you know she said that?’
Silence.
‘Only asking. I’m not really bothered who told you,’ she continued, nonchalantly.
‘I can’t really say because I promised that person I wouldn’t tell.’
‘Gosh! It sounds intriguing! Who was it, then?’
Still silence.
‘As long as you don’t tell her I told you.’
‘I promise.’
‘It was Sissie Singer.’
‘Oh!’
Sissie Singer? But she was a fourteen-year old pupil! What was he doing listening to the word of such a young pupil against one of the most well-respected and talented teachers at the school? And promising her to keep what she told him a secret?
But night after night, Justin would storm into her flat, his frustration with the show spilling over into their precious short time together.
‘Fucking Natasha Hudson! Telling me what to do as if I was a child!’
Justin, you certainly are a difficult person to work and play with, aren’t you, she thought to herself?

As one of Justin’s musical colleagues, Wallace had been a good friend to Hannah when she needed one, particularly around the time of The Anne Affair and Justin’s brief fling with Heidi, but as her acrimonious divorce from a rather amiable man continued to poison every fibre of her body and soul, her company at times could be tedious to say the least. With Christmas just around the corner, the prospect of a night at the opera with colleagues was appealing to Hannah but with Wallace’s unwelcome company on the coach to the opera house, the atmosphere between Justin and Hannah soon frosted over.
‘Boris Arnold is giving me a really hard time at the moment,’ Wallace declared quite loudly as she sat down in front of the two lovers.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Hannah quietly, hoping Wallace would take the hint to keep her voice down low.
‘Well, you know, he’s trying to get rid of me because he says I cause a lot of the gossip and bad feeling in the department and now he’s trying to reduce my working hours by stopping some of my pupils from having their music lessons with me!’
Hannah knew this sort of behaviour had been going on for quite some time but she was amazed how much further Boris had pushed his claws into her friend. Like any bad situation at the school, Hannah wondered how much Terry Adams was pulling Boris’s strings.
‘Are you in a union, Wallace?’
‘A union! I can’t even afford to pay my mortgage, let alone union fees, my dear!’
‘Well, do you know anybody from whom you could get some advice?’
‘Yes, I do but Boris is such a bully and he’s making my life such a misery, I don’t know whether it’ll work! If I lose all of my pupils then there’s nothing else I can do to earn money!’
Suddenly, Justin silently got up from his seat next to Hannah to sit with his pupils at the back of the coach, leaving Hannah to listen to Wallace’s gripes about the mismanagement of the music department on her own. Hannah immediately felt abandoned and with Justin’s lack of effort to come anywhere near her all evening at the opera, not even to enquire where she was, Hannah was left feeling neglected and paranoid. It seemed he preferred the sterile company of Grunt, Vamona and Danny to hers. It was when they arrived back at her flat later that evening that the shouting began.
‘Thank you for such a lovely evening,’ she declared sweetly, her sarcasm towards his behaviour thinly veiled. ‘You made it so special for me.’
‘Look, you were the one gossiping with Wallace about Boris Arnold! You didn’t think I’d want anything to do with that, did you? In front of everybody on the coach!’
‘I wasn’t the one gossiping. Wallace was! You must have seen I was in an awkward position! And anyway, no one else could hear us!’ she shouted back. She was being misrepresented yet again and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it but he refused to listen, as always.
‘Don’t shout at me like you do at your sixth formers,’ he screamed.
Hannah stopped dead, her mouth wide open in disbelief. His professional insult could only have come from one viperous, ill-informed tongue: Fat Boye’s. There was no point in continuing with the conversation any longer. Justin knew full well how his mood swings and temper added to the argumentative atmosphere of the music department and, given his personality clash with Boris, it was two-faced of him to blame Hannah for listening to Wallace’s legitimate moans about Boris’s bullying tactics.
‘What you see is not what you get,’ she had said to her friends on many an occasion. And she was right and everyone knew it. Their argument followed them into the bedroom.
‘I never knew what a good man my ex-husband was until I met you!’
‘Well, go back to him, then! What’s the point of being together, anyway? We don’t go anywhere! Danny and Vamona go lots of places together.’
She thought what he had said unfair; considering her limited funds with bringing up the children and feeding him, they did reasonably well for going out. And Vamona was only well off because she had screwed her faithful, over-generous husband for a vast amount of alimony!
‘And besides,’ he continued to moan, ‘you’re going away for Christmas and the New Year and I’m going skiing. And then you’re going to that stupid Dining Club with Maggie!’
‘Yes!’ she exclaimed, feigning excitement to piss him off. ‘And there’ll be about 150 single men there! I can’t wait!’
As their heads hit the pillow, there was no touching or caressing, although Hannah wished he would make love to her as he had done on virtually every night he had ever slept with her. So much of what had been cruelly said and done between them rushed through her mind.
This time, surely, the relationship was over.

When things were left hanging in the air for more than a few days, Hannah’s frustration reached fever pitch. There was only one source of self-relief: the telephone.
‘You don’t love me as much as you used to. I can tell,’ she said, trying not to be too contentious. She did not want to spoil any chance of getting him back. Just in case.
‘No. I don’t love you in the same way as I used to,’ he corrected.
Hannah became tearful.
‘It’s so sad,’ she sobbed, lost for the right words to convey her anger at how things had turned out for them. ‘People never wanted us to be together.’
True to his usual self, he remained unmoved and distant, as if he had already forgotten the closeness and love they had shared together for so long.
‘You’ve moved on a lot since I met you,’ she said, searching for nice things to say to him. It was difficult.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You read a lot more.’
‘That’s down to you.’
‘Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You have to admit, though, it was a little bit like Tom and Jerry between us at the end but without the humour.’
‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she replied, amazed at how he viewed things so differently to her. After all, he was Tom and look what Tom had been up to!
‘And I know my behaviour caused most of the trouble between us and I’m sorry about that.’
‘It’s too late now,’ she sighed.
I was right all along then, she thought. Thanks for the admission.
He was silent for a while; he had made his peace by admitting his disruptive role in their turbulent relationship. She stifled a desire to scream uncontrollably for the carelessness with which he had handled her emotions.
‘Are we going to get back together again?’ she asked, inwardly desperate but trying to keep an outward calm in her voice.
‘No. I don’t want that.’
‘But you’ve done this to me for the last three Christmases, Justin! And just so that you don’t have to buy presents for us all!’ she accused, remembering his brief Christmas affairs with Kristina, Heidi and Phoebe.
‘You know that isn’t true.’
‘It is true and you know it! You used me!’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did!’ She paused, searching for hurtful things to say to him. It was at that stage in their conversation. ‘Well at least I don’t have to support you anymore and after I’ve moved on from here, I won’t even think about you! When a man hurts a woman, she never looks back. She forgets him. And anyway, the fact that you always hover between me and Phoebe can’t go on forever.’
‘I don’t hover between the two of you at all.’
‘Yes, you do because nobody else apart from Phoebe and I are stupid enough to put up with you! And if you finished our relationship to go back with Phoebe again then I want nothing to do with the social stigma attached to the teacher/pupil thing. Are you seeing her again?’ she demanded.
Hannah had to know. It had been eating away at her over the last few days and she knew how desperate he would be to get his end away somewhere, anywhere, and with anyone.
‘No, I’m not.’
She found it hard to believe him.
‘And I’ve also been advised to have an AIDS test,’ she added for effect, ‘just in case.’
‘Thanks,’ he replied simply, sounding unmoved.
It appeared they were well into the final part of their spiral.

Just a few days before the start of the new term in January, Hannah was working on some lesson plans in her classroom. She was constantly thinking of Justin, reasoning and rationalising his behaviour and, in particular, his surprise telephone call just a few days before. His wild stories of daring tricks to impress his friends whilst skiing had not unduly worried her but when he admitted he did not care whether it killed him or not, it was clear he was crying out for attention and sympathy for his hurt feelings. She felt helpless.
Her thoughts were broken by the mellow sound of the school organ in the background. Someone was in the chapel. She could tell it was Justin. Leaving her classroom to investigate, she could see him through the double glass doors of the chapel, perched on the organ stool, his fingers gracefully moving across the keyboards. Pushing one of the doors open, she walked in with a book in her hand, the one she had been reading avidly for the last few days. He looked up from his playing, his handsome face shining straight at hers. She still adored him.
‘I understand!’ she said suddenly, walking slowly towards him, light shining in her pale blue eyes. ‘After all this time, I understand what you’ve been going through!’
The book was about the survivors of sexual abuse and as she read each page, Justin burst out from every word, every sentence. She was reading about his life and his suffering.
‘You must read this, Justin. You’re in it! You must get some help.’
She meant it from the bottom of her heart; he was in trouble emotionally, in his work, in his relationships, his whole life.
He smiled, weakly, as of one in submission to their pre-destined fate.
‘Place it in my pigeonhole. I’ll read it sometime.’
His reluctance towards seeking help was obvious; he was too scared to admit he had a problem.
She had tried to reach him once more, but again he had refused to be moved.

One day early in January, Hannah bumped into Justin whilst she was crossing Middle Lawn on her way back from the netball courts towards home. Having seen him quite clearly in the distance, she had cleverly engineered their meeting. If it had been up to him, he would have ignored her completely and carried on to wherever he was going.
‘I miss you,’ she said, without any initial conversational pleasantries. ‘Come for coffee.’
Her message conveyed the promise of sex.
He immediately decoded her message. ‘Are you sure? I would only be using you.’
‘I know but I can handle that.’
She wouldn’t and she knew it but she was stupidly trying to get him back, at any cost to herself.
‘You know I miss you, don’t you?’ she said as they sat down together in her sitting room with their coffees.
‘Yes, I know and I miss you, too. But it’s over and I don’t want you to think there’s anything in my being here.’
‘I know that,’ she replied, feeling hurt and disappointed but not willing to show it. ‘It’s the same for me.’
She was lying through her teeth but any contact with him was better than nothing, even though she knew it was no good in the long term.
‘Maybe we could start again and start dating, like a proper couple?’ she suggested. ‘We never went about the relationship in the proper way and there were people who just didn’t want us to be together and did their best to stop us. You know that!’
She thought of Fat Boye’s devious ways to stir up trouble between them and the many warnings of friends and colleagues to stay well clear of him.
She looked straight into his dark eyes. ‘Do you know what really saddens me? The fact that no one ever said we were good together, not even in the early days when things were pleasant. Not one!’
She thought of one of her colleague’s shocked reaction as she pecked Justin on the cheek in The Carpenter’s Arms many eons ago and another friend’s cool ‘Oh!’ when Hannah had told her she was seeing Justin. And then, of course, there was Lorna who had steered Hannah onto the straight-and-narrow with her sharp observations and insightful anecdotes from Justin’s past, to keep her from going insane. But mostly, Hannah’s colleagues had kept their counsel, hiding their shock and distaste of the relationship beneath a protracted silence.
But they both knew it was no good talking around the issue of getting back together. They were in an ever-decreasing circle, with the tide of relationship failure inevitability against them.
‘Are you seeing Phoebe again?’
‘No, I’m not. I told you that not so long ago. You know about my feelings for her.’
‘Your friend Kevin came to visit me over Christmas and said you went missing on the first night he stayed with you. We both wondered whether it was because you were with Phoebe.’
‘Yes, I did go missing but it was because I was bored with the pub and so I went home.’
Hannah knew that was a lie because she had seen his car parked in its usual place at the back of the music department early the next morning. He certainly wasn’t at his cottage or with Fat Boye in his flat, so he must have spent the night with Phoebe.
‘Well, it’s no business of mine anymore. Did you know Kevin propositioned me when he was here?’ she asked, hoping he would rise to the bait and get angry.
‘No! He never mentioned it to me!’ he exclaimed, making Hannah pleased he was cross. ‘What did you say?’
‘Look, you should know me better that! Kevin’s not my type, so I said ‘No!”
‘I would have been annoyed if you’d have said ‘Yes’.’
‘You would have?’
‘Yes!’
What sort of message does that give out, she thought? He’s still being possessive over who I should or should not be going to bed with? As Lorna said, he doesn’t want me but he also doesn’t want anybody else to have me either!
‘We had a good time when Kevin was down,’ Justin continued, his smile returning and his tone softening once more. ‘Both he and Bertie called me a tart!’ He laughed, seemingly proud of his title, giving Hannah the clear message he was getting up to his usual tricks again, flirting and sniffing around the young girls who frequented The Maid Marian in their adolescent drones. Over the years, she had heard enough about his prowess on that score, although she had never seen it with her own eyes. She suspected Justin’s subterranean side of his character was kept for those who really knew him: Fat Boye, Bertie, Kevin, and his other bachelor friends.
‘That night at the opera, the one when you were angry with me, Wallace wanted to talk about Boris not me. I wasn’t saying anything at all but you blamed me for gossiping about him.’
‘But you were listening?’
‘What else could I do? And then there was Vamona who stepped away from me when I came over to talk to you in the bar at the interval, giving out the message she didn’t want to be in my company. It was a very hurtful thing to do and I felt totally marginalised.’
‘Look, Vamona is a friend of mine and she wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
Oh yes, she would and she did, Hannah thought.
But Justin wasn’t going to listen to her side of the evening’s events. His ability to choose decent friends was not the best of his talents, preferring people who were always on the fringe, ostracised for their unusual or unacceptable behaviour and whether he liked it or not, Vamona was one of them. Hannah felt cheated that someone like Vamona had created such friction between them which had finally resulted in their argument that evening.
‘I’ve done some terrible things in my time…’ he admitted, in a unexpected moment of melancholia.
‘I don’t want to know,’ she said, not wishing to hear further declarations of his sexual antics. She already knew enough and what she knew she did not like. How much more was there? Even Kevin had been willing to tell her some stories of Justin’s misbehaviour but she had declined his enthusiastic offer with a firmly raised open hand in the air. Maybe if she had listened, she reasoned, they would still be together today. But did she really want that now? She doubted that she did, otherwise she would have felt inclined to listen and sooth his innermost fears and demons in the process.
Her mind momentarily went back to the first time they watched the film, ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’. She had been quite worried at the time that Justin had taken so much of the film to heart, given its macabre storyline but what struck her the most was his reaction to the lines spoken by Tom Ripley about being locked in a darkened room.
‘I can associate exactly with what he means by throwing away the key,’ Justin had quietly declared, implying nasty things had happened in his life and all he wanted to do was to forget them.
So just what had gone on in his life to say that?
She simply did not have the strength to ask him.
‘If we do go to bed now, it’s only for the sex,’ he continued, changing the direction of the conversation yet again. ‘And I don’t want you demanding any more than that.’
‘I understand. I can handle that.’
A moment of understanding passed between them, one of adult desire as they stood up to kiss.
‘It’s only physical,’ he whispered, his hot breath fanning her ear as they began to touch each other, calmly and purposefully moving towards the bedroom. She chose to ignore his hurtful comment as her physical desire for him reached fever pitch, waiting impatiently for the moment of his entry, to feel once again his gentle yet firm body movement back and fore inside her. As he bore down on her trembling body, her orgasm erased all of her thoughts. She looked up into his familiar dark facial features and, with tears streaming down her face, realised he had kept his eyes closed throughout the whole of their close encounter.
‘I don’t want to have to look at her anymore,’ he thought to himself. ‘I enjoy the sex but that’s all I’m here for.’
Hannah had already deciphered his hidden thoughts in his body language.
It was to be the very last time they would ever make love.

Having filled her head with relationship books, Hannah finally decided there was only one way forward to start the healing process: to return every present he had ever given her and every photograph which reminded her of him. Her plan was simple: she would see him, say very little, hand over her small collection of presents and photographs, and depart. It would make her feel so much better knowing he would get her favourite photos of him…in shreds.
As it was winter, the small village where he lived was already pitch-black and deathly quiet by the time she parked her car in the lay-by opposite his local pub. His cottage was also in darkness as she walked up the garden path to the front door. An outside light shone brightly over Ali’s front garden next door. She knocked on his door.
No answer.
Thinking he might be having one of his early evening naps before his choir practice in the town later that evening, she decided to drive around the area to give him some time to get up and dress. Several minutes later, she knocked on his front door once again.
Still no answer.
Glancing back towards his house, she closed his front garden gate and made her way back to her car, to wait. Suddenly, a light came on in the hallway. She knocked on his door again but still there was no answer.
What was he playing at?
Feeling agitated and wanting to get back to the children whom she had left alone, she found herself walking quickly and quietly to the shared, darkened pedestrian walkway at the back of his cottage. Suddenly, a light was switched on in Ali’s bedroom. Hannah had always suspected her involvement with Justin. Maybe they were having a quick one before Ali’s husband, Dick, came home from work? With her parcel still needing delivery, she returned to her car once again to wait. Then, without at first believing what she saw, a shadow appeared next door, the shadow of a man.
In the dark of the upstairs front bedroom.
A silhouette, unmistakeable against the brightly lit landing behind.
Naked.
Searching around, looking for discarded clothing, left on a bed, or on the floor. Discarded in the throes of passion, maybe. When the man found what he was looking for, he put them on.
A pair of trousers.
Hannah watched transfixed. Suddenly, she froze on the spot, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling. She would have recognised that silhouette anywhere.
It was Justin!
So he wasn’t with Ali after all! He was with the wife next door! She quickly got out of her car to go to the back of his neighbour’s cottage to spy through their back kitchen window. A very tall man, with his back to her, was putting on a kettle of water to boil. But where was the wife? If her husband was there as well then it could well have been a threesome! She instantly thought of Judy and Arnie. Returning to her car to mull over what she had just seen, a car pulled up in the lay-by.
It was the wife!
When the woman finally disappeared indoors, Hannah knew instantly Justin had been with the husband. He had always had a strong sexual leaning towards men and here was the evidence to prove it. With her heart in her mouth, she knocked on the neighbour’s front door to attempt to determine what was afoot.
‘Hi, I’m sorry to disturb you but I’m a friend of Justin’s,’ she began, feeling completely uncomfortable as she stood opposite the wife on the doorstep. The husband whom she had seen in the kitchen was sitting on the sofa inside the small sitting room area. ‘I’ve been trying to contact him. I’ve knocked on his door, there’s a light on but he doesn’t seem to be at home. He doesn’t happen to be here, does he?’
With that, the husband guiltily leaned forward, in a state of shock. Hannah caught his eye but he uttered not a word.
‘I’ve got a parcel for him,’ she explained further, trying to cover up for her deceptiveness in putting the man on the spot. ‘But I’ll probably have to leave it at Ali’s.’
‘Yes,’ said the wife, kindly. ‘I think that will probably be the best thing to do.’
Which, of course, was the one thing Hannah would never do.
With still unfinished business to attend to and with time pressing on, Hannah returned to Justin’s back door once again. There was no doubt her visit that evening was turning out to be yet another bizarre episode in their eventful relationship.
A light now shone brightly in Justin’s kitchen but still there was no sign of him. She noticed a small glass bowl of tomatoes at the bottom of the back stairs. Left to his own mean devices, this must have been his supper: a forty pence tin of tasteless, chopped tomatoes. She thought of all her culinary efforts in keeping him fed over the years.
And suddenly, there he was, walking from the hallway into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks when he caught her gazing in through his kitchen window.
‘I’ve got a parcel for you,’ she said quietly through the glass pane, holding up the bag in her hand.
‘Leave it outside the back door,’ he snarled at her, his agitation instantly apparent from his twisted facial expression and an aggressive wave of his hand.
And that is just exactly what she did.
Remnants of a relationship neatly tied up in a supermarket plastic bag, left on the back porch.

‘Did you get my parcel?’ she asked smugly, when they stopped to talk in the cloisters between lessons the next day. ‘And it was you I saw at the window next door, wasn’t it?’
She was angry at his occasional attempts to make her believe he was with another woman. It had been a man all along! It also explained why she had for the first time in her life started to suffer from cystitis, a complaint so common amongst women whose partner indulged in anal sex.
‘If I could have the choice,’ he replied in a stand-offish manner, his hands stuffed characteristically into the pockets of his worn overcoat, ‘I would choose a woman.’
So, he is guilty! And he hasn’t even asked me what I’m referring to! And why isn’t he denying it or showing annoyance at my accusation? Does this mean he’d have sex with anyone?
‘And how was I supposed to get back home afterwards?’ he calmly added.
‘Well, there’s their back door and their back door is just next to your back door,’ she replied sarcastically, remembering how quickly Justin had appeared in his kitchen after she had asked the wife whether she had seen him or not. ‘You could have easily slipped home without being noticed.’
And just before the wife arrived home too, she thought.
And he knew she was right. Once again.

She was feeling emotionally drained and upset. She wanted to hurt him.
‘You tried to destroy me, didn’t you?’ she blurted out, on the telephone.
Her accusations hit a nerve.
‘And you were a bad mother, leaving your children.’
Bastard, she thought, venomously.

In school, there were snatched encounters, for the entire world to see.
‘You were never there for me,’ she accused.
‘Thanks,’ he replied, calmly.
But it didn’t bother him anymore.
She was out of his life.
Forever.

Did it never occur to you, Hannah, I was feeling as raw as you were?
Did you forget I loved you as well?
And didn’t you think how hurt I felt when you came flying at me. w
With your accusations and theories?

‘Forget the crap, Justin. Remember you admitted your behaviour was the cause of most of the trouble between us. It was you who destroyed our relationship.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she exclaimed, not believing how he still managed to selectively forget what had been said in the past. It was all part of a repetitive pattern of events and conversations.
Behaving like that, Justin, you didn’t deserve to have any feelings.

You’ve read the book!
Couldn’t you understand that I had no idea of the boundary.
Between love and abuse?

‘Have a look at this!’ suggested Sally, one of Hannah’s closest friends at Queensford.
Hannah flipped over Sally’s postcard from Penelope to read what was written on the back.
‘Justin and Fat Boye are going to stay with Penelope at half term?’ Hannah exclaimed.
‘I know!’ returned Sally, clearly disgusted at the intended arrangement.
‘I don’t believe it! After all of Fat Boye’s gossiping behind Penelope’s back, here he is going to stay with her at her new school! The two-faced…!’
Lost for words, Hannah sensed Justin was in for another one of her visits to his office to vent her frustrations. She waited impatiently outside his room whilst he finished a lesson with a pupil and then invited herself into the untidily kept office.
This office, she thought as she looked around, holds so many painful memories for me!
Their conversation started off in its usual civilised manner, but then quickly degenerated into digging-up old accusations, their frustration with each other carefully muted to prevent those around the area of his office witnessing their personal frailties.
‘I’m sorry I’ve had to come to your office but what’s this about you and Fat Boye going to stay with Penelope at her new school?’
‘What I do is nothing to do with you anymore,’ he informed her curtly.
Civilities were over.
‘Look, given the way Fat Boye used to insult Penelope behind her back, don’t you think it’s a little two-faced of him to stay with her? Doesn’t she know what he used to say about her? How can you do this to her? I thought you were her friend? Apart from that, I’m fed up with you going around the place ignoring me all of the time. When you talk on the ‘phone, everything seems to be OK and then when you get into work, it’s the usual cold shoulder. I haven’t done anything other than put up with you, Justin, so why are you treating me this way? I don’t deserve it and you’re not going to do it to me anymore.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said suddenly, looking distinctly uncomfortable during her small speech as he put on his overcoat to leave.
She followed him out into the corridor. It was the usual scenario: he would never let her finish what she wanted to say before walking away from her but on this occasion she was going to have the last word, even if it meant the whole of the music department had to hear it too.
‘I remember that teacher you told me about, at your last school, the one you would occasionally shag when you needed someone, the one who you admitted hated you. You never told me her name.’
She continued to follow him down the corridor. No one seemed to be around; even if there was, she really did not care.
‘Well, it’s just dawned on me,’ she shouted, leaning over the stairway parapet towards him. ‘You have love/hate relationships and I don’t want to be part of that any longer!’
She had begun at last to see some of the light. Justin revelled in that sort of relationship and the woman involved could not help but hate him as a result. As she rushed from the music department and across Middle Lawn to go to lunch, she thought of his illicit relationship with Phoebe. All of a sudden, she quickly glanced behind her and noticed Justin frantically trying to catch up with her. It was clear the confrontation was going to continue in the open and Hannah steeled herself with her best insincere smile so that anyone observing them would witness her happy outward appearance.
The great pretender.
‘You’ll get your comeuppance one day, Justin Rupert!’ she laughed over her shoulder, smelling triumph in the air. ‘You’ll read about yourself in the national newspapers!’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ he spat in an agitated manner, still trying to keep up with her whilst she continued to rush away from him.
‘Try me,’ she spat back, her head held high and pointing determinedly forward.
Later that same day, Hannah went to see Lorna. Tearfully and angrily she related what had happened both in Justin’s office and at the top of the stairs in the music department. Lorna had no time for the man and was well aware of the sort of mayhem he had caused in the ten years he had been at the school. She realised Hannah’s situation had got almost totally out of control.
‘You realise, don’t you, you being with him gave the relationship a certain respectability?’
Hannah looked at her. She knew immediately what Lorna meant, despite being upset by its implication.
‘Yes, I can see that now. But he’s different with me and I can’t understand why he’s so different when he’s not with me! But you should have seen how he chased after me, trying to have his say when I threatened him with going to the newspapers about his affair with Phoebe. God, he hated that!’
She let go a hollow laugh as Lorna listened intently, acutely aware things had gone too far.
‘Mmmm,’ Lorna suddenly said, thinking out loud. ‘The newspapers.’
Hannah did not pay much attention to Lorna’s comment at the time, but over the next few months it would gain a significance beyond anything she could ever imagine.
‘Look, Hannah. You’re going to have to be stronger than this and stay right out of his way.’
‘Yes, I realise that but it’s so difficult and I’m so angry for allowing myself to get to this point.’
Then you will just have to try a little bit harder, won’t you, thought Lorna?