‘Just going out to see Nick, friend from school, might stay over, bye!” Ned and Celia, the family friends I’m staying with, barely look up from their enormous dining table. And I’m out the door. I take the most direct route. Sod being seen. I ring her bell and I’m buzzed in. My Spanish teacher, Miss P – Ali – is standing in the doorway, looking flustered. She grabs my hand and pulls me in, kicking the door shut behind me, and before I can say a word or take off my jacket, she’s kissing me. We stand in the hallway for ages, just snogging. Once or twice she holds my head and looks at me intently, then kisses me again. I forget trying to find words to say and let myself soar.
Then, without hesitation or any look or pause, she takes me to her bedroom and undresses me. I undress her. And there we are, naked. Very naked. I want to make excuses for looking ridiculous with swimming trunk tan lines, and not being built like the first XV boys. Perhaps sensing my self-consciousness, she speaks, and her voice is warm and sexy. “Your hair is lighter.”
“It’s the sun, I expect, and my sister dyed it … it really doesn’t matter. You’re … ” I want to say something nice in return. I don’t care that I’m looking her up and down, I’m probably salivating like a cartoon dog, but I can’t believe she’s all naked in front of me. I say the first thing, anything, that comes into my head. “You’re completely naked and your skin’s all olivey and milky.”
When we have sex, it is slow and gentle. Probably a good thing, because anything more energetic and it would be all over very quickly, for me. Afterwards, we talk for a bit. She tells me she wrote to me not long after I went to Italy for the Easter break to tell me to forget about her and that nothing could happen between us. But then she says that in one of my postcards I wrote about going to a party with some Italian teenagers and she didn’t like that, and then she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I tell her how I felt being so far away and that I was aching to get back, even though I didn’t know what would be waiting for me. We don’t say much more. We look at each other a lot. Then we sleep.
When at last we venture out of the bedroom, it’s already after midday. We don’t bother dressing. Miss P doesn’t open the big shutters, which I find exciting, like we’re fugitives. We listen to music, talk about books, eat and drink and fuck, then, as the sky darkens, we return to the bedroom.
We do exactly the same the next day and night and I’m in heaven. By the third morning, I know all about her family; where she went to school and what she did at university; that she had a serious, long-term relationship when she was in her 20s, but it ended badly; how she fell in love with Spain and would love to show me Barcelona.
I tell her quite a few things as well, but I can’t compete. At 17, I don’t have anything like as much to say about my life. Really, I haven’t started living it properly yet, and she’s 35 after all. So, I tell her mainly about my dreams and ambitions to be a singer or an actor and that, when I was younger, I wanted to be a ballet dancer or racing driver. That I’m excited about trying for an Oxford scholarship next year, but crapping myself about the entrance exams. I tell her again about my parents’ separation and how that came so soon after my mother’s cancer treatment. That my parents enrolled me in this school, or the “top public school” as Mum insists on telling everyone, 150 miles from my home. That she will be moving house in the summer so that I’ll be living with her for my final year. That I haven’t spoken to Dad since Christmas. I tell her about my uncle and that I want to go sailing with him when I’ve finished school, perhaps even across the Atlantic.
That evening I put my clothes back on and, this time, when we hold each other by the front door, I am not sad or frustrated. Everything has changed again, but it feels good.
“See you at school,” I grin.
It is in the spring of 1992 that what starts as a casual flirtation between me and Miss P becomes rapidly more intimate – partnering her in the dance revue, the lift home in her car, the goodbye kiss, and finally, just before the end of term, the invitation to her flat, where one thing leads to another, and an afternoon on her sofa sees a lot more than kissing.
“Have a lovely time in Italy,” she says, as I go out the door, after that first time.
“You, too,” I reply, automatically.
When can I see you again? I want to ask, but I am afraid of the answer. I started to speak but she beats me to it.
“Don’t get seen. Just walk straight out and down the road. And listen: don’t tell anyone.” She grabs my sleeve. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? It has to be a secret.”
When school resumes, every lesson starts with a lecture about how academically crucial this term is. How the exams coming up are of critical significance for our final year and will determine not only what places we might be able to secure at university, but have a bearing of great magnitude on our career prospects, which in turn will impact on the house we hope to buy, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, whom we marry, the holidays we take, the lives of our children and children’s children.
A group of us share stories of our Easter breaks: Tom’s off-piste skiing in Courchevel; Chris’s driving lessons with a promise of a new car if he gets straight As this term; Ant’s National Youth Orchestra tour. I mention Italy but don’t get very far. Everyone wants to talk about Glastonbury: who’s going, who’s got a tent, which bands are playing. I lie back and stare up at the pale, cloudless sky and let them get on with it. They can jump ahead, but I’m quite happy losing myself in thoughts of last weekend.
Nick is speculating about which girls from our year group might be going to the festival. I tune in, but a part of me wants to jump up and yell, Who gives a shit about those girls? I fucked Miss P. What do you think of that? Boom!
The look on their faces would be priceless. Maybe I wouldn’t say fucked; it’s too harsh. Slept with? Made love to?
“What are you grinning about, Joe?” I look up again. They’re all staring at me. “Nothing,” I mumble, then add, “girls.”
This seems to satisfy them, and they return to their conversation. The fact is, I can never, will never, tell them about me and Miss P.
‘So, you’re coming to my sketching classes,” she says, referring to the extracurricular activity she’s going to be running on Thursday afternoons. We’re lying in bed. She’s on her back and I’m wrapped around her, stroking her breasts. I call them breasts now, not tits; more grown up. We’ve been in bed for over an hour and it’s still not dark. We didn’t even finish the first glass of wine.
“Did you get many sign-ups?” I ask, hoping not.
“Actually, only four.”
“Still too many.” I bury my head in her pillow.
“Hey, at least we’ll be spending time together.” She slides out of bed and disappears to the bathroom. I stare at the ceiling and try not to ask myself questions, but they come. Like, what is this? How did it happen? What’s next? I don’t have any answers, so I lie back and distract myself with the sounds in her flat, in her road. The toilet flushes. It’s weird but sort of sexy.
We stay up late, sitting on the living room floor, with pizza and chocolate and wine. “Would you like to watch a film?” she asks, and crawls over to a box by the television. I join to inspect her collection. It’s mostly European cinema and the odd costume drama. We select Manon des Sources and snuggle up on the sofa.
Halfway through the film she asks, “How are you going to get home?”
“Home? What, tomorrow?”
“You can’t stay here tonight, you know that. You’ve – we’ve – both got school tomorrow.”
I’m gutted. “I thought I’d be staying here tonight. Do I have to go?”
“We can’t risk you being seen in the morning. Some of the teachers use this road as a cut-through. You could easily be spotted.” She’s practical when I want her to be apologetic and as disappointed as me.
“I’ll walk, then.” I get up.
“Wait, you don’t have to go yet,” she protests. “There’s the rest of the film.”
“No, thanks, it’s too late. I’d better go.”
I feel hurt and stupider by the minute. I take my clothes into the bathroom and dress quickly. She doesn’t knock. When I come out, she’s standing by the door.
“I’m sorry,” she says and kisses my face. “We just have to be so careful. You understand, don’t you? We mustn’t attract attention.”
“I understand,” I repeat robotically. I leave and walk home, straight through the school campus, smoking.
I’m embarrassed by my behaviour, and it’s made worse when I have Miss P for Spanish, last lesson on Saturday morning. She has the expressionless statue face down to a T, giving nothing away, whereas I’m feeling crap about last night. It was so childish of me to strop out, but I’d waited all week to be with her. She could have said something earlier in the evening, then I’d have known what was coming.
She goes around handing back our exercise books and places mine in front of me. With her body and face turned away, she almost imperceptibly taps the cover twice with her index finger. Something tells me not to open the book, so I put it in my bag.
Back in the house, no one around, I dig it out. I don’t find anything at first but one of the pages catches as I’m leafing through, and out falls a tiny quarter-size envelope with a single “J” on the front. Inside, a little card: Sorry. Come back tonight, for a proper night. XX
It’s November 1992. I stand in her sitting room, in my blazer and tie, my school bag still hooked over my shoulder. Ali’s by the windows, closing the shutters. Despite her efforts, they don’t close fully; there are always gaps. She gives up, drops her arms by her sides, and looks at me, at last.
“I’m pregnant.”
“How?” is all I can ask, my bag slipping.
“You tell me how. Obviously, you weren’t telling the truth.”
“What? What does that mean?” I can hear my voice rising already.
“You said your balls didn’t drop until you were in your teens,” she says, adding, “or something,” sounding equally defensive and on the attack. “And that means, because I read about it, I assumed – ”
“You assumed … what?” I cut her off, my words thick in my throat, slow with disbelief, my neck burning, my bag strap slipping through damp hands.
“That you couldn’t have children,” she says, in a tone only fractionally less certain than before.
I stare at the floor, don’t answer for a whole minute.
I want to scream, “Is this a fucking joke? What fucking planet are you actually on? Instead, I just stand there, my head ringing in alarm.
I dare not open my mouth until the voice in my head has stopped swearing.
“It’s a phrase. A thing you say, that’s all.” I’m struggling to find the right words, made harder by the realisation that this grownup – someone twice my age – a teacher for God’s sake, doesn’t know this. My eyes fixed to a spot on the carpet, I say, “It’s basic biology, Ali. How don’t … I mean … didn’t you study puberty?”
“Yes, but … ”
I glance up. Now she’s staring at the carpet. I haven’t seen this look on her face before. I don’t know what to say or do.
“Shit,” she groans, then sweeps past me into the bathroom, leaving me alone with the distinct impression I’m still on the wrong side of an argument I didn’t start.
“Is this my fault?” I ask out loud, to an empty room.
I stay with Ali after the abortion. She isn’t hungry, so we don’t eat. I run her a bath and listen at the door in case she needs anything. I expect to hear her crying, releasing her emotions now she’s home. But there’s no sound from the bathroom, except for the occasional splash.
In bed, we don’t touch, but she accepts a kiss before turning over to lie on her back. Despite the exhaustion, I can’t sleep for ages. Then, when I do, I’m awoken by Ali moving about, restless.
We say goodbye in the morning, both of us with red-rimmed, sleep-deprived eyes.
“I could stay a bit longer if you like?” I say, although if I’m being honest, I would quite like to go home.
“It’s fine. I probably need some time on my own today.” We hold each other in the corridor by her front door.
“I’m sorry,” we say, at the same time, which is awkward. It’s strange how both saying sorry makes it sound less meaningful, but she manages a fragile laugh. She strokes the side of my head.
“Please, don’t ever leave me, will you?” she says, her eyes searching mine for an answer. “And don’t ever tell anyone.”
“Of course not,” I say. What else can I say?
As autumn gives way to winter, I decide to take my lead from Ali about the abortion. If she wants to talk things through, I’m ready for it, though it’s still messing with my head, and I don’t really know what I can or should say. It’s been six weeks now, and she never brings it up. Instead, she talks for ages about her year groups (which is boring), about some of the other teachers (they’re even more weird than I thought), and what she thinks about the pupils in my Spanish class (mainly about the stack of exams she must mark over the holiday).
“Including yours,” she says pointedly. Finally, she asks, “So, do you think you’ve got a place at Oxford, then?” I’m pleased she’s taken an interest, at last, in the entrance exam I sat a few weeks earlier, although her tone gives her away. She’s obviously not really interested.
“Dunno.” I shrug. “I wasn’t very focused.”
“Huh,” she mutters, lifting her coffee cup to her mouth, looking away as she sips. “Why not?”
I stare at her across the breakfast table.
“Well, because of what happened, just before.”
“What do you mean?” A slight frown appears, and it hits me that her question is genuine. I shift uncomfortably, feeling too big for my chair.
“You know … the baby?”
“Sorry, what?” Ali’s eyebrows shoot up. Her voice remains controlled, low, but the atmosphere in the room cools several degrees. “Are you … please tell me you’re not going to make that all about you. Because – ”
“No, no, of course not,” I cut in.
“Because, just to be clear, that would be inappropriate.”
She looks down at the table, like she’s thinking hard about her next words, like she might be giving me difficult feedback on a homework assignment. She lifts her head. I feel so small under her glare.
“It was my body, and you don’t see me whingeing, do you?”
Later, we make up, in bed, in our usual way.
“Thank you for asking about Oxford, anyway,” I say, when I think it’s safe enough to do so. “I know you’re not that interested.”
“You do understand why, don’t you?” Her hand patters across the faint hairs on my chest.
“No, I don’t, actually.”
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“Seriously?” Her hand pauses. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Erm … ”
“If you go to Oxford, what happens to me? What will I do? Had you thought about that?”
The fact is, she’s probably right. I haven’t had the energy to think about what happens to me and her – us – if I get into Oxford. Does it have to be the end just because I’m not nearby? I figure now is not the moment to repeat my plans for deferring my university place and taking a gap year sailing across the Atlantic.
When I leave the flat that afternoon, my mind is spinning. One minute, I’m on a complete high, fuelled with adrenaline from 24 hours with Ali. Next minute, the rollercoaster is plummeting, because, as usual, I’ve opened my stupid mouth, rammed my foot in it, made a dreadful mess, wasted our precious time with my immaturity. When will I grow up?
If my night with Ali was hard, it’s not much easier when I get home. In fact, it’s never easy these days, since Mum moved closer and I had to leave Ned and Celia’s. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime. The dutiful son back at home, no longer free to roam. Or at least, no longer free to see Ali as much.
As if I couldn’t feel more crap about myself, Mum is waiting for me in the kitchen, with an odd expression on her face. Sort of pity and disappointment rolled into one tilt of the head. In front of her, on the dining table, is an envelope.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her eyes following my gaze to the letter. “You didn’t get into Oxford.”
“What? How do you know?”
“I opened it completely by mistake, sweetie,” she says, very quickly on the defensive.
“Jesus, Mum.”
At Christmas Ali suggests it’s time to “take things further”. I’m excited, but a bit confused, so she spells it out: she thinks we should get engaged. And she doesn’t hang about. By New Year’s Eve, she’s been to a jeweller, and I’ve blown my entire savings, £775, on a ring.
As the spring term gets under way, we reprise our roles at school, maintain a vigilant distance. Like hitting the reset button, except now we’re carrying an even bigger secret around with us. The story is, she had a whirlwind reunion with her – fictional – Spanish boyfriend, Carlos, over the Christmas break and – ta-da! – he proposed.
Meanwhile, I’ve put that “city of dreaming spires” fantasy behind me. As Ali said, what would happen to her if I went to study in another city for three or four years? We’re engaged now; it wouldn’t be fair. For now, I’m keeping everything crossed for an offer from the local uni, which I should hear about soon. The only hitch is Mum, who’s made it clear she still expects me home on time and at weekends, insisting my grades are more important than ever, that this is no time for slacking off.
“Listen, I’ve had an idea,” Ali says one day at school, her voice animated. “I’ve got the perfect solution to kill two birds with one stone.”
“What do you mean?”
She explains quickly, as a low hum of voices and hurrying feet builds in the corridor outside. The two birds are my grades and our lack of time together. Her idea is risky. In fact, it sounds like complete madness.
“OK, so I’m going to write to your mother, or maybe I’ll phone her,” she begins.
“Whoa! You’re gonna call my mum?”
“Don’t interrupt. I’m going to propose giving you some private tutorials to get your grades back on track.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “There’s no chance she’s going to pay for private lessons on top of my school fees.”
“Aha! That’s where you’re wrong.” She claps her hands. “Because I won’t be charging, and anyway, I’ll make it seem like it’s her idea. She’ll feel as though she’s enlisting my help.”
“Hang on, hang on, how — ” I run a hand over my hair and down my neck, trying to keep up. I can’t see how this is Mum’s idea.
“I haven’t got to the best bit. The other bird!” She drums on her desk. “Where do you think these tutorials are going to take place?” She grins.
“At … your place?”
“Wrong! At yours!” She laughs, and my jaw drops open.
“Are you kidding me? That will blow our cover.”
“Not with this, it won’t.” She holds up her ring finger, wiggling it with the pad of her thumb so that the diamond catches the light. “Won’t she be delighted for me, when I tell her the happy news about me and Carlos?”
I’m about to answer, when the door swings wide open and an unstoppable herd of uniforms and bags piles in.
“Right, thank you. Hand it in by next lesson,” I hear Ali call, as I’m spun out of the room by the twist of bodies.
Home tutoring works just as Ali planned – and eventually increases to weekly visits. It’s great, especially when Mum disappears and we can slip into my bedroom, though I have mixed feelings when I watch Mum and Ali chatting away like friends over coffee. I’ve lost count of the number of lies we’ve told, so I can’t tell whether it’s bad or harmless that we’ve pulled Mum into our web.
What I am sure of is that I have split myself in two. I’ve carved out two distinct versions of me. Old me, who goes to school, sits in lessons, does homework, sings in chapel, chats to the lads about nothing important. Other me, who exists in a parallel universe of secrecy orbiting Ali, lying on demand, pretending I’m not a teenager but a real grown-up man.
Then, the worst happens. We are exposed. It’s a couple of weeks before school breaks up for Easter. I’m in the library, working on a German essay about Schubert, which I intend to regurgitate in the A-level written exam next term. From the other end of the long room, I hear the door open and close emphatically, then feet walking hurriedly down the aisle. I look up.
It’s Ali. I’m not overly surprised to see her. She has a copy of my timetable, so that she always knows where I am, if she needs me. In a study period, like today, the library is a good bet. Her face is white, and she’s lost her composure. Furtively glancing around, checking the other bays beyond mine to make sure we’re alone, she sinks into a chair on the opposite side of the table, head in her hands.
“I have just been spoken to,” she begins, her breath catching in her throat as she tries to gather herself, “at break, in the staffroom. A warning. Jesus!” She throws her head back, lips pursed tightly, eyes wet at their rims, wide as though she’s fighting the impulse to blink.
“A warning – about what?” I say, frowning.
“Us,” she says, breathing heavily, staring at me, before wiping her eyes with her hand.
Someone – Mr Roberts, the teacher who spoke to her, wouldn’t say who – told him that someone else had told him that they’d heard Ali had been seen with a pupil. I ask where we’d been seen, by whom, and who are all these teachers spreading this shit?
“It’s a rumour mill,” she says wearily, like it’s not her first time, “and, evidently, it’s on the move, if that many people are talking.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” is all I can say.
“Yes, exactly, shit,” she adds.
Over the following days, paranoia grows inside me. In every lesson, every assembly, at lunch in the dining hall, in the library, I see faces staring at me, eyeing me with suspicion, and I’m convinced they all know, the whole school. Any minute, there will be a summons to the headmaster’s office and that will be that. I’ll be out. And shit, what about Ali – will she lose her job? Or worse, face the police? Ali said once that our relationship isn’t illegal, so they can’t lock her up or anything.
Soon, it hits me; the teachers are ignoring me. They don’t return my greetings in the corridor. When I have my hand up in class, I’m overlooked.
Then Mr Grice makes a snide comment when addressing the German set about final preparations for the written exams. “Everyone needs to pull out all the stops to score highly in these papers. There are no short cuts – at least not if you’re studying German.” He pauses, shuffles something around on his desk, then adds, not looking up. “Perhaps it’s different if you’re taking another language and getting special attention.”
None of the others appear to register the comment, but he may as well have walked over and landed a massive fist in my gut.
Next, my other German teacher, Mr Siddel, someone who, Ali tells me, has always had a thing for her, starts picking on me. He takes any opportunity to single me out with particularly difficult questions, usually around grammar.
“Got a bit of a dandruff problem, haven’t you, Gibson?” he says out of the blue one day. “You want to get that treated,” he persists, as several bottoms shift uneasily in their seats. “Then again, it’s all part of being an adolescent, isn’t it?”
The silence that follows seems to stretch on and on. I try to breathe, calm and steady, hold my nerve. But I fail. I snap.
“I might be an adolescent, but at least I’m not a … cunt.”
The next morning, after house assembly, when all the boys have dispersed, my tutor, Mr Batsford, calls me into his office. I sit, numb, in the chair on the other side of his desk, awaiting the inevitable bollocking.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, he considers me through steepled fingers pressed to his mouth.
“I don’t know what’s going on, and in many ways, I don’t want to know. What I do know is that you can’t call a teacher a – that word. Even if we’ve all been close, on occasion,” he adds in muffled tones.
“Am I going to be expelled, sir?”
“What? Lord no. You’re going to stay, sit your exams, do your best, and keep your head down.” After another weary pause, he continues. “I’ve heard what people, my colleagues, have been muttering, and I have to tell you, I don’t like mutterings, gossip, tittle-tattle,” he says, with feeling. “However, they’ve been hard to ignore, these things that are being talked about … about … you and Miss … So, I decided to speak to her myself.” At this, he hoists himself upright, while I sink lower.
“I am content with what she told me. The extra tuition was requested, I understand, by your mother. I respect why Miss P decided to keep this arrangement under her proverbial hat. She also explained the reason you’ve been seen with her off campus.” His tone changes, softens. “I just wish you’d come to me first, Joseph, when you were experiencing these difficulties at home. I had no idea how your parents’ divorce was affecting you.”
‘I was thinking about you this morning, about everything you’ve told me,” my friend Pete says, one day in the spring of 2010. I am 34, living on a canal boat, out of my depth and on my own for the first time in 17 years. Pete and I have been meeting up every weekend since I arrived on the cut, with me cycling along the canal to his mooring. It’s not therapy, he says, he’s just happy to listen. He’s watched me fall and picked me up, got me back on a level, of sorts.
“You realise, don’t you,” he continues, “if that happened in a school today, there’d be police, lawyers, a court case. It’s a criminal offence and there’s good reason for that. Look at the toll it’s taken on you. No wonder you’re not over it. It’s abuse, lad.”
“Oh, come on, Pete. I let it happen. It takes two – ”
“Don’t even finish that two-to-tango bollocks. It’s not the point. She was 35. You were 17, for Christ’s sake. A kid.
“What I want to know is, what happened next? I mean, you were still with her when you left school. When did it end?” I sip my beer and turn sideways so I can look out on to the bank and the bridge. I stroke my hand across my face and cup my chin.
“About four weeks ago.”
I run Pete through the main events of the intervening years. How she convinced me not to take my gap year and go straight to university. How three years later, aged 21, I stumbled out of there with a second-class degree, a ring on my finger, a sensible haircut, and a one-year-old in a buggy.
“Wait, what? You had a baby while you were still a student?”
“Yep.” I shake my head. “Married at the end of my first year. Baby at the end of my second year.”
“Fuck!” Pete fills the cabin with noise.
“That third year was surreal. Ali was still teaching and I would have to bring the baby into school at break times so Ali could feed him. I’d stand there in the staff room, a pariah, surrounded by my former teachers. I always expected someone to voice their disapproval, make a snide remark. But no, they never said anything. Just blanked me.”
“Wow. Do you think they were in denial?”
“Possibly. That is the default position of those types of schools.”
Ali left teaching as soon as she got pregnant with our second. I think the school was only too glad to see the back of her. How they let her stay when our first was born, I still don’t really know. Perhaps they were anxious about repercussions if they made her redundant, even despite the circumstances. “Posh School Sacks Pregnant Teacher” wouldn’t have been an attractive headline.
After that I changed jobs every couple of years, chasing the bigger salary to keep everyone happy – “everyone” being Ali and her parents. Basically, she made the decisions. We were living according to her plan.
I explain how, eventually, I burnt out. A midlife crisis, I suppose, except it was about 15 or 20 years before most men. The doctor signed me off work with exhaustion. The strain chipped away. As much as I loved being a dad, I was failing as a husband. Failed as a son, too; all those lies.
I was numb inside. Bit by bit, the barrel of my life was emptying and then, something happened. I began to see a new path opening before me. Or, at least, a path that diverged from Ali’s. For years, I still believed a time would come for our adventures. That we would leave the cul-de-sac of our life and try something different with the kids – live somewhere new, another part of the country, another country entirely. But she had no intention of changing her life.
Pete and I sit staring at the deck, both locked in our own thoughts.
“I have to ask,” he says, at last, lifting his head. “While you’re beating yourself up about the past, what’s Ali doing? I mean, does she feel guilty about what she did?”
“Ha! Are you kidding?” I snort. “Not for a second. No way. Lately, of course, she’s just focused on her anger towards me for leaving her. I get that. But Ali feel guilty? Ali take responsibility for how this all started? Not a chance. As far as she’s concerned, this is all on me.”
