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Window rolled down, hot aircon blasting into her face, Neill sped them down the lane with a lit fag in his mouth, passing it over to her as he went straight through a red light.
‘Oh my god Neill,’ as she took it sceptically looking around, ‘do you want to be caught speeding, and smoking, with a school pupil in your car?’
‘It’s fine. There’s no speed cameras in Broken Britain, no coppers up this posh way, and you’re my daughter.’
‘Follow the A64 onto York Road!’ blared the map. Natalia groaned, tentatively puffing and passing the cigarette back.
‘Just please drive sensibly, wherever we’re going!’
‘Ok, ok,’ as he braked. ‘Let’s put some calming music on, shall we?’ He hit the system button and a loud punk song clanged on. ‘Whoops, sorry, don’t have any!’ After a suck on the cigarette he harshly accelerated again, flinging Natalia back in her seat to Joe Strummer hollering:
‘London calling the zombies of death! Quit holding out, draw another breath!’
She yanked the cigarette out of his fingers, stubbed it out in the middle well, and turned the volume down.
‘What did you do that for?’ he whined. ‘That’s The Clash. Back when music had far more balls than you have!’
‘London Calling,’ she read off the screen as he braked for more traffic. ‘So didn’t you have a good enough time joyriding down there and back?’
‘I did. Apart from getting a red raw cold that’s worn me out.’
‘Me too, I’m flaked out.’
He glanced down at her crotch. ‘What, are you red raw again?’
‘Yeah… that,’ she hastily crossed her legs, ‘but also knackered from your new twice-weekly PE! Sam said she wants to give you a piece of her mind! I see there’s only two Science lessons now?’
‘Twice a week like all the others,’ he nodded, ‘don’t need to split them into Chem-Phys-Bi, it’s just Science dual award, as per the exam. Yet another obvious change from someone who has a brain at Thornwood, even if it means working Barnes and Winterbrook to the bone.’
‘Don’t they want a pay rise?’
‘They’ll get it out of the Science teachers’ pay drop. Falling faster than their tree needles, Merry Christmas! Mr Khan won’t mind because he doesn’t celebrate it. So how was your crimbo?’
‘Well, it was nice after I got some unexpected presents including a new phone…’ as she pulled it out.
‘Oh, Good Santa indeed! And he even gave you one with protection!’
‘What?’
‘Plexiglass screen,’ he nodded down. ‘If it drops only that will crack. Costs a fiver.’
‘Oh, clever,’ as she peered at his shiny new infinity screen Samsung S8 in the cradle. ‘Very suave. The problem is with these things - will I ever have the attention span for the rest of your box’s contents?’
‘You would have if I didn’t put the power lead in.’
‘Or leave Candy Crush on! I’ve never actually played games on a mobile till now—’
‘Candy what? That something like Tinder?’
‘It’s a game where you match the fruit into rows,’ she giggled. ‘You left it on the apps!’
‘Oh. Must be something I thought would keep me entertained waiting on waiters and traffic jams, like now,’ as they crawled through a red light.
‘You could have done with it, laid up ill with your red raw nostrils…’
‘No, I’ve been busy perusing a red tome of Harrogate and the Yorkshire Dales circa 1950s.’
‘Oh!’ she laughed. ‘I hope my note wasn’t too cheeky.’
‘It was very cheeky. Which is why I stuck it up on my fridge.’
‘Really?’
‘How else am I going to remember Jean’s name?’
‘Joan! Of Arc?’ she suggested.
‘Joan of Arse. No need to stick it up, to speak! Well, I came home from awful holiday traffic jams, felt myself getting ill and knew I’d caught whatever my sister had. Got in, opened your letter with the book and somehow felt glad to be home. Home up north, can you believe it.’
‘Didn’t you have a good Christmas down south?’
‘Oh, it was alright. Had a lovely dinner. Even took them a fine bit of beef for Boxing Day. The usual frolics, booze and a Bond on the telly.’
‘Nice, we watched that too. But no Jingle All the Way?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Sitting for twenty years in your mum’s cabinet.’
‘Oh! Ha, nope. And so I don’t end up gathering dust on the shelf myself, I’ve got my first date with Mrs Head-Turner tomorrow.’
‘Thought you’d be engaged by now!’
‘No no, both been far too busy with Christmas. We’ve only spoken on the phone. Problem is she’s 39. A divorcee like me, but she has a son. She’s two years older than I am and I don’t usually go for older women, in fact never. But she’s a bit different. Famous for being the youngest Head in the country when she started five years ago. She upstages me for sure! A fast riser, as they say.’
‘Well you’re a fast riser too then.’
‘Guess we’ll see this weekend, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Ah… oui, monsieur,’ she bit her lip. ‘So, how is it you know French so well?’
‘We lived out there in my teens as my mum worked in Paris for a while. Lost my virginity to a French girl actually. Learnt most of my rude words from her.’
‘I dread to think…’
‘I could make your face redder than the book and my nostrils combined… Ah, Mercedes!’ as he pulled onto a sliproad, and Natalia looked up surprised at the huge lit-up Mercedes sign against the darkening sky. ‘Here we are!’
‘Cars?!’
‘Wait - BMW next door! Let’s go there instead,’ as he swung back out again, ‘and have a little browse, shall we?’
‘Er, what?’ Natalia looked around. ‘How can we do that with me here?’
‘Hush, it’s fine.’ He wedged his car in between a row of black BMW saloons. ‘See? We blend in completely.’
He got out, slammed the door and appeared at her side, opening her door to the cold dark breeze.
‘Up, up—’
She climbed out, shivering as he took her hand.
‘Do your coat up. All the way up.’
She sighed and began buttoning it. Then he took his hands to tug at her collars, like a peremptory father wobbling a child under his grasp, crossing her asymmetric coat flap to do up the final large button there with a satisfied grunt.
‘See? Twenty years older.’
‘Twenty fucking seconds older.’
‘Your coat’s quite nice,’ his eyes ran down her. ‘Sort of 50s style. Grab your bag too.’
She reached for it coyly. ‘But why—’
‘Sling it over your back,’ he fussed his hands over her. ‘There we go.’
Natalia was looking nervously to a short dark-skinned man in suit and tie smiling and walking over, as Neill turned and enthused: ‘Good evening!’
‘Hello sir, I’m Jason. Can I be of help to you today?’
‘Well my good man, it’s so cold and dark I may indeed require help finding what I’m looking for,’ Neill put out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, my name’s Richard…’
Natalia kept well back as Neill drifted forward into a rambling chat with Jason, composing herself with the most relaxed face she could, trusting that in a second, Jason would go away and leave them to their after-hours car-ogling in the dark. But a minute later, her heart pumped to feel his hand grip her wrist, pulling her toward Jason, and now like a glassy-eyed waxwork staring right into Jason’s face, Neill had each his hands on her shoulders from behind, purring:
‘If we could take this one in for a hot cup of tea. She likes it well-brewed but milky with two sugars.’
Natalia’s smile flickered like a broken doll.
‘Of course!’ Jason beamed back, as Neill gave her shoulders a parting squeeze that shot a laser into her belly. ‘Well sir, I can go get the keys to one of the new i8s we have in right now. Only 85 in the country. The Protonic red edition.’
‘Oh, perfect.’
‘Just go down that way, Mr Richard, we keep it behind the lock-gate, can’t miss it. I’ll take you in for the tea, madam, and we’ll see you in a second.’
Natalia was now walking with Jason to the glaring bright doors without the chance to turn and say anything to Neill, to even check, who she’s supposed to pretend to be? Daughter? Wide-eyed waif of a wife?
‘Milk and two sugars is that right?’ he chirruped. ‘Or would you like hot chocolate?’
Maybe he does think daughter then.
‘Hot chocolate sounds good,’ she grinned, then added in a deeper tone for good measure: ‘For a night as cold as this.’
They entered the sparkling, vast white showroom where phone ringers tinkled, salesmen pottered and a receptionist with bleached ringlets smiled over. Natalia bristled anxiously as she watched Jason pop off a plastic cup by the drinks machine and fill it with steaming brown water that groaned out a consolatory white froth topping.
‘Here we go, miss! It’s already quite sweet so you won’t need sugar. But if you do, they’re just here—’
‘Oh thank you, sir,’ Natalia enthused, wondering whether the address made her sound maturer, more like a schoolgirl or a toss-up between both, as he dashed off and returned with a clipboard and keys.
‘I guess you’re coming out to see the i8?’ he smiled.
‘Ah, yeah, might as weh— I may as well.’
They walked outside to where Neill was loitering by the most extravagant red sports car she’d ever seen.
She gaped at the gleaming, sculpted strawberry-red spaceship now flashing at four corners as Jason click-unlocked it, and she stared even more as the door swung up vertically.
‘Dihedral doors, sir. Or scissor doors as they call them,’ Jason grinned.
‘Well, well, what a stunner!’ chuckled Neill. ‘No need to watch a James Bond movie when you can star in one yourself!’
‘Neill—’
‘Let’s get in and start her up. It’s two-door Natalia so you have to slip in through here…’
‘Yeah, so I can see, Mr Richard,’ she muttered. ‘Wait, are we gonna…?’
‘Chivy, chivy, chivy, chivy!’ he ushered her forward and she clambered in, with an undignified tumble of her thick-coated backside against Neill’s waiting thigh as he held the front seat back. Penning her in with a satisfactory lodge and click, he and Jason climbed into the front, humming down the sci-fi doors with muttery manly chit-chat.
‘Red double-stitching, exclusive carbon fibre and ceramic trims…’
‘She’s a beauty.’
‘Well I just need to see your essentials…’
A swish of papers, Neill’s ID plucked and replaced from his wallet, and the signing of a pen on paper: it was clear. He was about to drive this thing. Oh, dear God.
The key was inserted and the loudest, most guttural engine sound shot through every bone and muscle in Natalia’s body.
‘Well well, hello i8,’ purred Neill. ‘You say this thing’s got what horsepower?’
‘369 HP sir.’
‘That’s 369 Rochesters, darling,’ Neill called to the back.
‘Err, oh…!’ She couldn’t hear herself think.
‘Wait till the engine quiets down,’ added Jason, ‘now off we can go.’
Neill’s foot delivered an almighty growl, swinging out onto the dual carriageway, already jolting Natalia as she hurried to stow her drink cup into the side door before it leaked everywhere.
‘Nought to sixty in?’
‘4.4 seconds sir.’
‘Think that was 2.’
They laughed.
Still in a daze of what on earth Neill was doing, she trusted that he’d at least be sensible with someone else’s car. As faces gawped from passing hatchbacks watching the conspicuously red supercar weave in and around them, Natalia thought, thank God she was deposited in the back with a window no bigger than a submarine’s.
‘Flicks between electric and petrol. Gets well over 50 miles per gallon,’ said Jason. ‘Go down this way, avoid the rush hour traffic,’ he gestured, as Neill glided them onto the M621. ‘Watch out for the cameras down here though, mate…’
‘Lovely,’ remarked Neill. ‘Talk about red roar! I’ll have three.’
‘Think one’s enough,’ chuckled Jason. ‘So what is it you do sir?’
‘I work with disadvantaged youths.’
‘Does that pay well?’
‘It does after I’ve financially disadvantaged them on top of everything else.’
Jason chortled. ‘You can go just up this way, and then—’
‘Oh I need to test it a bit further. Down the A61.’
‘Er, ok—’
‘And then the A64.’
‘Well you’re taking it for a good spin sir. A few minutes though and we’ll need to get it back.’
They were caught in queuing traffic for a few minutes, then Natalia watched as the familiar fire station came up on the right, and he began to slow and turn.
‘Er, Nei— er, Rich,’ she began… or Daddy, or sir, or what?
Neill accelerated even faster as the familiar road leading to Natalia’s neighbourhood approached.
‘A lot of speed bumps down this way, sir,’ Jason motioned a little nervously, ‘you have to be care—’
‘Whoops!’ Neill went too fast over another, and another, cranking a deliberate loud growl of the engine between each one, coming closer to the turning that led to Natalia’s street, as she closed her eyes in disbelief.
‘Well well, this surely does make a grand show, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh, er, you’re certainly putting it through its paces!’ smiled Jason, who despite his mask of professionalism, seemed mostly on board with Neill’s test-driving spirit which was probably the most exciting thing he’d seen all week.
Neill swung and pulled over not far from where he’d dropped Natalia off after contraband. ‘Just a moment,’ he muttered. ‘Just got to drop off… how do I open this bloody thing?’
‘Just that little button there, sir…’
The door swung up, as Neill arose and cranked back his seat.
‘Darling.’ He clicked his fingers.
Natalia grabbed her drink, climbed out, and stood looking at him.
He took the cup from her hand and had a large swig. ‘What do you reckon?’
She blinked up at the erect, red skyward door against the dark sky over Gipton, feeling like she was in a bizarre dream.
‘Er, yeah, it’s lovely…’
‘Nah,’ he handed the cup back to her. ‘Far too loud for this street. Sticks out too much. Skids like a teenage boy’s pants. Mine’s perfectly discreet, oh and safe, I’m sure you’d agree?’
She stared.
‘Goodnight Natalia.’
‘You’re fucking unbelievable,’ she hissed.
‘And you fucking love it.’
She stood incredulous as he roared off with an ostentatious brum-brum and a royal wave of his hand out of the window at two boys spinning wheelies on bikes who stopped and stared.
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Her mum was sitting quietly watching Look North.
‘You’re back late.’
‘Sorry yeah, forgot to text.’
‘Dinner in the oven.’
Natalia sat forking mac-and-cheese into a mouth oscillating between grinning glee and sighing disapproval. What Neill had done wasn’t just risky but reckless, driving so near her own house - what if her mum had been staggering up with Aldi shopping? - and yet, it was such seduction, that had so unbelievably landed in her boring life, this shit street of all places, like Jesus himself riding through with boys waving palms, healing her phone and delivering her home after ‘extra-curricular’ teachings. He hailed from a whole different social world, throwing around a car that even he couldn’t afford, for he had the sales assistant, her school, and the world it seemed, under his spell!
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*
Mum was ‘on the raz with Daz’ again, leaving Natalia to laze on the couch staring through whatever mindless Saturday TV she chose, combing her fingers through her pubes whilst talking to herself out loud about her Neill quandaries, farting and burping as loud and repeatedly as she wanted till she heard a key in the door and bundled herself back upstairs as quick as a flash.
New man grunts. Mum had brought Daz home from the raz then. Cackles and guffaws, so they were pissed already then. The sound of stumbling around the kitchen and eventually a waft of detestably cold, smoky air drifting up under Natalia’s door.
She held off braved coming down for a bedtime snack, till she could hold it no longer, and was greeted at the kitchen door by a moderately built, tracksuit-wearing forty-odd-year old, with a boot-like nose. Blonde bleached hair that was growing out dark roots, framed hard green eyes - red from weed? - that squinted at her.
‘Ah, here comes Trouble. You’re Mary’s girl?’
‘I’m Natalia.’
‘You’re at high school then? Which one you at?’
‘Thornwood High. Excuse me, I need to get something to eat.’
‘I might ‘av demolished a few things in there, soz!’
She saw that only the ends off the bread loaf were left. Opening the fridge, she discovered her ham gone.
‘Yer mam said she’s nipping to Asda in the morning,’ Darren skulked at the door. ‘Fancy some Twiglets? There’s two bowls in the lounge—’
‘Urgh, stinky. No thanks.’
Back upstairs, later came the sound of another man’s voice from the front door, and till 1am, more cold wafts of smoky air and sporadic football shouts peppered the walls and floors, chorused by the occasional high-pitched exhortation from her mum. God, it makes the whole house feel even less homely than normal. She hoped they would go soon, trusting this social charade of her mum’s was rare.
But the following night, a school night, Darren was back, and going downstairs for dinner, the fridge was bare.
‘Mum?’ Natalia came into the stuffy living room to see the table lined with beer cans, kebab boxes and ashtrays.
A seedy looking 80s film was playing on the TV. Darren looked round at her with an asinine grin whilst her mum asked without turning:
‘What is it love?’
‘There’s nothing to eat.’
‘Oh, sorry love. Pull out a frozen meal. Might take a bit longer in the oven. Chuck one in for us too.’
Darren’s idiotic kookaburra laugh reverberated through her wall that night. Great, he’s made it upstairs. Then a rhythmic squeak of the mattress began. Jesus God, no.
Earphones and phone, quick. She’d hook out songs that reminded her of Neill. What was that Doors song? Soup Kitchen, she almost typed. And what was that punky one in the car Friday night? London’s clashing? Oh and that 80s coach song she was chauffeured home to in a reverie! Just Can’t Get Enough of these three songs, on repeat, till the coast was clear for her eardrums to come out and sleep.
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*
‘Hey. Happy new year. Been off ill?’
Ryan had appeared in school for the first time this term. Now that she’d finally achieved speaking terms with the Neanderthal, she thought she’d offer a genial word as they exited morning form.
‘No. Well, yeah. Well, it’s my mum,’ he suddenly looked like he was welling up. ‘She’s been taken to ‘ospital proper now, and…’ He blinked and stopped.
‘Oh. Do they think she’s gonna…?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know, alright.’
‘Right. I’m sorry.’
‘Nahh… I am. Did y’ave a nice Christmas?’
‘Yeah, it was ok. Listen, how about we go for that fag you wanted? At lunch?’
‘At lunch?’ he smiled faintly. ‘What if we get caught?’
‘I know a place. Inside the bike shed. Perfectly safe and discreet. Meet me there at 1.’
He stared.
‘Might help you give you some perspective.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know, blow away your worries.’
‘Alright,’ he grinned and walked off. Shit, she thought, she hoped he didn’t think she was going to crouch down on her knees and suck him off. And she hoped she hadn’t botched a possible chance Neill might call her up to lunch. She assumed he couldn’t be inviting her up to his office all the time, especially on a Monday. He was always in demand like some celebrity on Mondays.
A flash of a hello from him, fashionably cream-suited - oh god, don’t stare - as he passed by with a throng of three paper-waving teachers on the top floor corridor, confirmed that was the case.
Jeez. What would those fawning teachers think he they knew he’d joyrode the school geek into Gipton in a red BMW last week?
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*
Ryan turned up ten minutes late.
‘In here, in here,’ Natalia beckoned him in beside the old bike wheel and shut the door.
‘So you got some fags?’ he murmured.
‘Er, no. Don’t you?’
‘You said you smoke?’ Ryan grinned.
‘Yeah… but, I’m not 16 yet. I can’t buy them myself.’
‘I got one left. I owe Bernard one—’
‘Fuck him. Let’s share it. Let’s sit down in the corner well away from the door.’
He laughed as they sat down, knees crossed, and lit up.
‘So yeah my mum, they say she’s got two months to live. But two years ago, they said my Uncle Rob had three months to live.’
‘Oh wow, and he’s still going?’
‘No he died last year.’
‘Oh… so he lived for another year?’
‘Eight months.’
‘Oh, er, still good.’
‘Lung cancer from smoking too much,’ as he puffed on the fag and handed it to Natalia - who took it with a wince. ‘We’re tryin’ to tell mum not to give up but the cancer is grade A, or grade 4 whatever it is. The worst. They say even removing her wotsits won’t work cuz it’s spread.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Glad I’m not saving this cig for Bernard,’ he took it back and puffed. ‘He’s a proper dick. Laughed at me for crying.’
‘That’s not nice.’
‘No, it in’t. Sometimes I don’t like boys for playing ‘ard all the time. If me mam goes, and it’s just me and me dad, it’ll be like that all the time. Pretending to be fuckin’ hard.’
‘Well it’s the opposite for me. My dad walked out years ago. Too much soppy softness with just my mum and nothing gets done. Like the broken bath tap, it’s like she’s waiting for it to fix itself.’
‘My dad’s mate’s a plumber. Maybe he could do it. Ere, what’s your number?’ He pulled out his phone, and she hers, and they exchanged numbers.
‘We’re gonna stink in last lesson,’ he grinned. ‘Are you scared your teacher will smell it?’
‘No!’
He laughed.
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*
‘We don’t have any photos of me with dad,’ Natalia mused as they watched Corrie. ‘Only with you. Why’s that?’
‘Cos he always took them,’ Mary waved her hand. ‘Told him to bloody give over, when half the time I didn’t have me slap on. Is that kettle boiled yet?’
When she wondered what life would be like with her dad instead of her mum, she would find herself unable to imagine much when she didn’t even know what he looked like. Would it be all action but no emotion; swings and roundabouts as they say, but what attention to her emotions did her mum even give her other than cynical and cold retorts? Or might ‘Daz,’ in some ghastly nuptial turn of events, end up as her proxy replacement?
Her heart sank that evening when his tracksuit flashed again at the door. The silver lining was that the fridge was restocked with various Asda packages, and Natalia ensured two armfuls of it were conserved up in her own room. More smoky-shouty-scoffing till 11pm. Was dippy Daz going to be a daily fixture?
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‘Continuous heavy rain saturates the soil till it can’t absorb any more water, increasing surface run-off and making a flood likely,’ droned Mrs Tracey as rain pattered the windows in Geography. ‘If this continues, the River Aire will be the first to overflow.’
‘My aunt’s cottage in Hebden Bridge was flooded three years ago,’ called Gemma. ‘Everything was destroyed.’
‘Yes, Storm Desmond I believe. Calderdale was traumatised.’
Natalia sat in Geography with her head in her hands at this most boring of all boring drivel. Storm Eleanor, now bloody Desmond. The only thing flooding her home and their toilet seat right now was Storm Daz. Could she say something to her mum without ruining her newfound happiness?
She pulled out her phone, hovered over her mum’s name, then from sheer desperation, texted Storm Neill instead.
‘Hey… are you around?’
She frowned to herself for the next ten minutes of no response, thinking she shouldn’t have written that. Who was she to text ‘hey’ to the Head?
But when her phone rumbled, she smiled down to read:
‘Hi! Are you ok?’
She answered:
‘Feeling :(‘
- ‘What’s happened?’
She hesitated, then wrote:
‘Can I talk maybe sometime…’
Her eyes lit up to see his reply:
‘Lunch? Let me clear some things, reply in a mo…’
Mrs Tracey frowned over. ‘Natalia? Are you working?’
‘Yes Miss.’
She lodged her phone into her skirt at her groin.
A few minutes later Neill’s reply was vibrating. Waiting till Tracey was looking away, Natalia nudged out:
‘Come up at 1.’
Oh my golly-goodness. Her clit just made her a lunch date with the heady master. And somehow she knew this was going to be a tad more exciting than being a squatting shed smoker, trying not to splutter like a novice or frown too much at Ryan’s low IQ.
Keeping her face up at the board, and typing with an ultra-discreet finger below, she looked down to see:
‘ye s’
- ‘O k’
Oh, talk about saturating her soil. Was he going to give her his lunch again? She was hungry only for his company again! Would he lock the door? She’d lock it herself and throw away the fucking key!
Slap-bang on 1pm she knocked.
‘Come in if it’s Natalia.’
Oh my giddy-golly-goodness, that’s a good goosepimple start.
There he was having his fag out of the window, just like the first time she met the new Head.
She stepped toward his desk. ‘Hi, Neill.’
He stared at her hangdog face. As the door clicked closed, he knocked his fag ash and gestured:
‘Go lock it.’
Wish granted, then. Almost too easily. With a beating heart and a suddenly frail-feeling hand, she turned the bunch of keys and pulled them out.
‘Come here now,’ he said.
Face pinkening at a crossroads of exhilaration and panic now, she placed the keys on the desk, and loitered by her chair where she expected him to ask her to sit.
‘Come right here,’ he said, still smoking at the window.
She padded over tentatively, trying not to tremble, thinking again of their first meeting when she’d crossed this forbidden zone. And she stared into his outstretched palm for which she had no report card this time.
‘You want the keys? They’re back on the tab—’
‘Your hand, silly,’ he murmured.
Her smile flickered as she hovered her palm over his like a reluctant participant in a seance.
As soon as her skin met his, he took firm hold and pulled her right into him - suddenly enough to make her stumble as she gasped forward - but tactful enough to catch her right into him; his thick arm now hooping round her shoulder, then her neck, like a tentacle scooping her up into his chest so her face was pulled toward his. Her wide brown eyes shot all over his blue eyes, mouth and cheekbones in utter shock, not able to think clearly or even breathe fully for how fast it all was, as he uttered:
‘Share this.’
’S-sir?’
Turning around the cigarette he just dragged on, he gently force-fed it between her lips, its tickling end on her tongue, and she, like a rabbit in a trap, could do nothing but inhale the smoke into her chest that right now felt rigid like plastic. Her skin pulsing beneath her clothing, she was hooked, dunked, all warm and awash in sweet-faggy-cologne Neill scent, whilst her bloodstream was flying, warming and cooling in all directions, and finally she was convinced she would melt into a pool on the floor if it weren’t for him holding her upright, caught in place by him.
Exhaling the smoke back into his face, lamely but enough to please him, which he softly squinted at, as a low murmur crackled from his lips:
‘Good.’
Blinking incredulously, she watched him drag on the fag himself, as he loosened his hold on her. His arm still around her, she watched him finish and stub it out on the window ledge, pushed the window open wider, then turned his face again to her.
‘You’re looking paler than the ghost of Christmas past,’ he said softly. ‘Not so happy new year? Talk to me…’ His hands came now to cradle her head, tilting himself to look into her eyes like a doting parent as he stroked each of his thumb tips down her cheeks.
‘I, I…’
Her pelvis was like a bubbling kettle. His thumbs were playing at the corners of her lips, pulling them into a smile, which of course, brought on a real smile, rolling her eyes away and suppressing a giggle.
‘There we go, my little joyrider. Smiling again.’
‘Yeah, but…’
There was a knock on the door. She jumped, still caught in the cup of his hands, as he swept a thumb across her lips and gazed intently into her eyes:
‘Just ignore it, they’ll go away.’
Natalia stared transfixed as a female teacher’s voice began:
‘Neill? Neill?’
‘Sh-shall I go?…’ Natalia’s inner wet lip made the tiniest brush-contact with his skin, tasting an infinitesimal tang of his ciggy thumb tip whilst her body flashed with what felt like pools of molten fire.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he whispered, a faint, pleasant scent of tandoori chicken wrap wafting from his mouth, inches from hers, ‘I always lock the door when I’m busy. They’ll get the message and bugger off.’
They knocked again.
‘Ok well, guess I’ll just tell them.’ He raised his chin and shouted: ‘Bugger off!’
He reverberated through his hands into her temples as silence fell outside followed by footsteps.
Natalia, both relieved and amused, stared as he dropped his hands from her and gestured to the chair at the desk.
‘You were saying. Something about yeah-but. Hardly my eloquent Natalia. So sit.’
‘I… I don’t know where to start,’ as she toddled over and sat down at her side of the desk, her head feeling all cold and bare now.
‘Start anywhere.’ Sweeping aside some papers, he pulled up his chair and sat square-on to her, all his attention seemingly waiting upon her deep dark problems.
What were they again? Let’s start with deciphering you have just done to my insides, and for her fear of laughing in confusingly contrapuntal glee, she lay her face downwards onto her jumper arms across the desk with a long low moan - which made him think something worse was wrong.
‘Natalia…?’
She brought out her face to reassure him, sighing and laying her cheek sideways on her arm, waiting for the wild waterfall of adrenalin to settle down inside her again; to cool into a stable enough formality to find her words. Any words. Words for how generally shit life is when she isn’t with him?
‘I’m just down and depressed,’ she chafed her cheek on her sleeve. ‘Winter is dragging on so slowly it feels like this place will never end.’
She couldn’t say ‘I’ve missed you’ even after his new level of taboo affection just now. Raising her eyes at him, she wondered if it might communicate itself, that he would read her mind like he often seemed to do.
He was sitting with arms crossed tight enough to crease his suit in seven places, squinting at her with a forlorn, faraway look.
‘Is it just school pissing you off as always?’
‘Home, too. Mum’s got this new boyfriend and he’s not doing her much good. They just drink all evening in the living room, and I can’t go in there. I have to make myself dinner and then they’re making noise till midnight. Sunday night was the worst. They were actually having sex. Gross.’
There was a light chortle amidst his sigh. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I hope next Sunday’s going to be better. It’s my birthday. I’d rather go to church than stay round home—’
‘Oh!’ His arms unfolded as the corners of his lips raised. ‘Your birthday! You said it was January. What with Christmas, I almost forgot. So you’re sweet sixteen on Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ she smiled faintly.
‘How nice!’ His eyes were smiling now. ‘And who are you spending it with?’
‘I have no friends as you well know.’
‘Other family perhaps? Or Sam and Laura, they’re… sort of, friends?’
‘I’ll do something enjoyable by myself. Till the day I get some decent friends, if that day ever comes.’
He looked at her for a few seconds, sighed, got up and wandered to the window where he gazed out.
‘School is an odd place, for people like you. Once you’re out of here you will see that you can have friends of any kind you want. There’s people out there who will be your tribe, your genuine company.’
He turned to her. ‘This is just an arsehole anomaly of a place.’
‘It’s five years of masochistic driftwood that feels as long as twenty.’
‘Now we’re talking. Tea?’
‘Yes please.’
He filled and boiled the kettle then sat back down and continued. ‘I do miss my own friends back in London. Now they are the kind of people I know you will meet one day, probably at uni. The kind of likeminded intelligent folk who speak and do interesting things.’
‘Oh, I can’t wait to go to uni, even just to get away from Leeds.’
‘How funny, I was watching some documentary link last night, one of my friends in London sent me,’ he frowned. ‘I thought he was taking the piss at first. It was about how Leeds, in terms of ancient symbolism, is the mouth of hell.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you believe I moved up to a new post in the mouth of hell?’
She shrugged. ‘Beats being born here.’
He rose to the kettle which had clicked off, and poured the teas. ‘Two sugars, as you like,’ as he set them down and she thanked him. ‘But sorry, it’s long life milk today.’
‘Hmm.’ She sipped gingerly, pretending to care. It could be fairest-traded finest tea from High Harrogate with milk fresh from the udders of pedigree, Jersey-Joan-of-Arse cows and she still wouldn’t be able to taste it. She was being satisfied only by this exhilarating, naughty new heart-to-heart with Neill for which she’d prepaid handsomely with a hundred hours of thinking and wanking and waiting and wanting. She cupped her hands warmly round the mug and extolled:
‘Makes me think of Jane again. ‘I long for a power of vision that might overpass this limit… reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen…’’
He smiled. ‘There she goes again. Reciting lines like a pro.’
She sipped. ‘You said you read it the other week ill in bed?’
‘Finished the thing off when I was ill. Well, I stopped just after they wheel the mad lady out, but I got the gist.’
She laughed. ‘Wish I could resign my own mad lady to the attic just as easily.’
He gazed forlornly and sighed again, ‘I wish I could do more to help you. I wish I could give you great friends and a great family life and everything else you want. Not just a couple new teachers and a box of books.’
‘And a phone,’ she added.
He grinned.
‘And er, unbelievable privileges in school…’ she continued, ‘picking the school trip, a new receptionist, books in Haworth, rides in your car, bags of sweets, illicit weed… well, a complete laundry list of groom— well, brushing, really.’
His face suddenly looked stricken. ‘Would you rather I stopped?’
Her eyes met his as she answered promptly: ‘No.’
He chortled, holding his gaze with hers for a few moments.
‘I think it’s just a shame you can’t do the same to my mum’s unkempt fucking birdnest hair,’ she smirked.
He threw back his head and laughed.
There was another knock on the door. Two voices now.
‘Neill are you in there?’
‘I can hear him in there…’
‘Neill?’
Natalia stared with her tea mug mid-suspended to her mouth.
‘Shoo!’ Neill shouted - his eyes right on Natalia’s - ‘I’m on the phone!’ As they retreated he muttered: ‘God, two of them, like skulking cats.’
She continued to sip her tea as demurely as quaffing fine wine, whilst he took a defiant breath, back in thought.
‘Well, I’m glad you don’t care for the outside perception. All those things might have put a smile on your face but clearly we’re going to have do something bigger to bring it back.’
‘Oh, really…?’ She bit her lip.
‘Oh. Really. I’ll groom, brush and disentangle every hair on your head till it’s shinier than that new phone screen.’
He was leant forward, as she stared over her mug rim, enchanted.
‘So we’re going to do something on your birthday,’ he leant back with a creak of his chair, ‘Tremble Nuisance? Haworth? Fucking Bridlington to take pictures of water?’
‘Oh! Well, erm—’
‘In fact, fuck it!’ He slammed his hand on the desk, still keeping his voice low with a glance to the door:
‘Why don’t you come with me to London? We can have better fucking tea than this!’
‘Wh-what?’ Sour tea backwashed over her tongue. By his words alone she would laugh it off as a joke, but he sat forward, looking as earnest as anything.
‘It’s pretty fucking obvious, isn’t it? Come with me this weekend, birthday girl!’
Her heart was shot like a rifle. ‘What? I don’t know, really? Would it—’
‘Come with me to London, and meet my friends, and spend your birthday far, far away from here. Do you really want to spend your sweet 16th in the mouth of hell? Well?’
She stared, then her hanging breath fell into a giggle.
Eyes glinting, in a sweet whispering exhortation: ‘Come on, come on! Say yes Richie.’
‘Ohh, well of course I want—’
‘Just say yes, or I’ll take your bloody tea away.’
‘Ok, yeah? I would love to come!’
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