Ms Hargreaves

Reading week at Loughborough means five days of unsupervised time that I was absolutely going to spend catching up on biomechanics and did not spend on biomechanics at all. Came home Tuesday. Mum was pleased. Made pasta bake. I slept eleven hours and woke up thinking about Kati, which is a thing that happens now, and had a shower and went out.

Cambridge in October. Leaves doing their thing. Tourists still. Always tourists.

I was in the queue at the Co-op on Mill Road, basket with two meal deals and a Lucozade because I am eighteen and living the dream, when I saw her.

Ms Hargreaves.

She was two places ahead of me in the queue, coat on, basket in hand, completely ordinary. Which is the problem, isn't it. You spend two years watching someone across a classroom thinking certain things, and then you see them in a Co-op buying pasta and washing up liquid and your brain absolutely cannot reconcile it.

She taught us English lit in Year 12 and 13. She's the reason I got a B in my A-level, which I maintain is an undermark, and she's also the reason I spent most of sixth form sitting in the third row on the left not thinking about whatever she was wearing that day and failing badly at it. Mid-forties. Dark hair. Good legs, always, whatever she had on. The kind of woman who stands at the front of a classroom and absolutely knows that half of it isn't paying attention to Keats.

She hadn't seen me.

I could have said nothing. Normal option. Just paid and left.

'Ms Hargreaves.'

She turned.

There's a moment when they clock who you are and then clock that you're not seventeen anymore and recalibrate. I've seen it happen twice now -- Dr Caitlyn-Smith did the same thing in three seconds. Ms Hargreaves took slightly longer. Four seconds. Did the full sweep.

'Finn,' she said. 'Hello.'

'All right.'

'Home for the week?'

'Reading week. Yeah.'

She nodded. 'How's Loughborough?'

'Good,' I said. 'Yeah. It's good.'

That was the sum total of my conversational ability apparently.

She paid. I paid. We walked out at the same time and stood on Mill Road while bikes went past and I held my meal deals and she held her washing up liquid and neither of us went anywhere.

'Do you want a coffee?' she said. 'There's a place round the corner. Or is that strange.'

'No,' I said. 'Not strange.'

It was a bit strange.

---

Café on Petersfield. Busy enough that we weren't conspicuous, quiet enough that we could talk. She'd left the school, last year, moved to something at the university press, editing. She seemed easier than she'd been in the classroom. Less supervised, if that makes sense. Like school had a particular required version of her and this was the one that actually lived in the flat on Mill Road buying pasta.

She'd split up with her husband eighteen months ago. Said it plainly, no particular emotion attached, the way you say *the boiler's broken* -- significant but not raw.

I told her about Loughborough, the track, the morning sessions, the lad Josh snoring through the wall. I told her about Kati and then stopped because I'd told her about Kati without meaning to. Just came out.

She looked at me over her cup.

'The cleaner,' I said.

'Right.' Entirely composed. 'And is that ongoing.'

'Tuesdays and Fridays.'

A pause.

'You've had quite a year,' she said.

'Yeah.'

She looked at me in that way she had, the one where you felt like you were being actually looked at rather than glanced at. In class it had meant she knew you hadn't done the reading. Now I wasn't sure what it meant.

Then she said: 'My flat's five minutes from here. Just so you know.'

I looked at her.

'I'm putting that information out there,' she said. 'What you do with it is entirely up to you.'

'Right,' I said.

'I want to be clear I've never done this before.'

'Okay.'

'I'm also aware that I marked your coursework.'

'B-minus,' I said.

'B,' she said. 'Which was generous, frankly.' She picked up her coat. 'Are you coming or not.'

---

Her flat was books and wine glasses draining on the rack and a radiator that clicked. She put the pasta on the side and didn't offer wine because it was half eleven in the morning, which I appreciated. I sat on the sofa and she sat in the chair opposite and we looked at each other.

'This is odd,' she said. Not a complaint. Just an observation.

'Yeah,' I agreed.

'You were seventeen. Last time I was aware of you properly. Sitting in the third row looking like you were thinking about something other than whatever I was saying.'

'I was thinking about what you were saying.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'Some of the time,' I said.

She stood up and came over and sat next to me on the sofa and I turned toward her and she kissed me. Straightforward. No corridor-checking, no long preamble. Her hand went to my face and she kissed me like she'd thought about it for the exact amount of time she'd needed to and was done thinking about it now.

She pulled back.

'Right,' she said. 'Bedroom.'

---

She was different to Kati. Kati was efficient, like everything was practical. Ms Hargreaves -- Nancy, she said her name was Nancy, which I couldn't quite make stick -- was unhurried in a different way. Like she'd decided to enjoy herself and that was that.

She took her coat off. Jumper. She was in a bra and jeans and I was staring in a way I wasn't even pretending not to and she let me. Dark bra. Full. She reached back and undid it herself and I watched the whole thing and she watched me watch it. Her tits were exactly right -- heavy, real, the kind that move. My brain offered the information that she'd been teaching me conditional clauses in a classroom twelve months ago and I told my brain to shut completely up.

'You,' she said, and pointed at the bed.

I sat on the edge of it.

She went to the drawer by the bed and came back with a stocking. Black, sheer. She looked at me like this was entirely normal, which maybe for her it was.

'Hands.'

I put my wrists together.

She wound it twice round and tied it, pulled the knot snug, then pushed me back onto the bed. She looked at me lying there with my hands above my head looped through the headboard, and she looked satisfied with this, in the specific way she used to look at a good essay.

'Right,' she said, and sat back on the bed next to me, and ran one hand slowly down my chest.

Ms Hargreaves. Two years of third-row staring. Her hand on my stomach.

I was about to say something and she stopped me by doing something with that hand that made the something I was about to say completely inaccessible.

'Quiet,' she said. 'You always talked too much in class.'

She worked me with her hand until I was properly ready, taking her time, watching my face like she was taking notes, and then she kissed down my chest and kept going and when she got her mouth around me I pulled hard against that tie and made a noise she definitely heard.

She was good at it. Patient and deliberate, like she knew exactly where the edges were and was choosing not to go near them yet. Slow, then slower. She'd come up for air and look at me from down there in a way that wasn't clinical at all and then go back and I had my hands above my head with nothing to do except lie there and feel it and stare at the ceiling and lose ground steadily.

She kept me right on the edge for about three minutes, which felt like a year, pulling off just when I got close, and I said *please* at some point, out loud, embarrassingly. Same as with Dr Caitlyn-Smith. Something about this specific situation removes every tool I have.

She lifted her head.

'Please what,' she said. Same as the doctor. Same words. I'm starting to think this is a thing they do.

'Please don't stop again.'

A pause. 'Since you asked nicely.'

She got up, took her jeans off. Plain black knickers. She was mid-forties and real and her arse was full and I'm tied to a headboard watching my old English teacher take her knickers off and it's the best morning I've had in Cambridge since leaving Cambridge.

She climbed over me and reached down and positioned me and sank down slow and my whole body went rigid against the tie and she put her hand flat on my chest to keep me still.

'There,' she said. To herself mostly.

She started moving and I can't really improve on that as a description. She rode me with complete authority and her tits moved with her and I had my hands above my head and nothing to do except watch and feel everything. She put both hands on my chest and leaned forward and changed the angle and my vision went briefly weird.

'Fucking hell.'

'Call me Ms Hargreaves,' she said, and kept going, which is the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me during sex and also somehow the hottest, and I laughed, couldn't help it, and she was almost laughing too and then she tilted her hips differently and neither of us were laughing.

She came first. It came on quickly, she didn't make much noise, just went tight all over and said *yes* very quietly three times at the ceiling and gripped my chest hard enough to leave marks. She tightened around me and I finished about twelve seconds after her, which is the correct order of operations, and I pulled both wrists against the stockings like I was trying to rip them, which I wasn't, and made a noise into the top of her shoulder that I am never discussing ever.

She untied my hands.

We lay there.

'Well,' she said, at the ceiling.

'Yeah,' I said.

She had a small smile that she wasn't quite letting out. The radiator clicked. Outside on Mill Road a bike went past.

'Your biomechanics reading,' she said.

'What about it.'

'Is it done.'

'Not even slightly.'

She turned her head and looked at me. 'You have four days. I'm serious.'

'You marked my A-level,' I said. 'You're not my tutor.'

'No,' she said. 'But I used to be. Old habits.' She stretched, which was distracting. 'Also the B was accurate. Don't start.'

---

She made tea. We sat up in bed and I thought about Kati saying *you'll be alright* and the Hungarian tattoo and this too will pass. I thought about Dr Caitlyn-Smith turning the lock and saying *eleven minutes, just so you know*. I thought about Ms Hargreaves in the third row on the left, Tuesday mornings, standing at the board talking about conditional bloody clauses.

Loughborough is one thing. Cambridge is apparently another thing entirely.

Texted Smiffy: *reading week going well*

He sent back: *tell me everything*

I put my phone face down on the duvet.

'You can stay,' she said, reading the situation with that teacher accuracy. 'Or you can go home to your mum. Both are fine.'

'I'll stay a bit,' I said.

She nodded. Drank her tea. She didn't have a cat. She had a spider plant on the windowsill that had seen better days and a stack of manuscripts on the desk and a pair of stockings looped round her headboard.

Outside, Cambridge did its thing.

Reading week. Best educational experience I've had all term.