Still not certain of herself, Joely said, ‘Probably the latter?’
‘Mm,’ Freda murmured. ‘I suppose it’s not really possible for you to give an intelligent answer, is it, until you know what happened after the piano lesson.’
Smarting at the intelligent answer Joely reached for her notebook and recorder as any good ghostwriter should.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I shall not be the first girl in our year to lose my virginity, but I shall be the first – and only one – to lose it to Sir. No one knows that. I’m not stupid, I realize he could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out and I’d hate for him to be sent away. I wouldn’t want to go on living if that happened. I’d be like Cathy in Wuthering Heights after Heathcliff left, it would make me very ill and when I die Sir will have visions of me until he dies.
A savage book.
I don’t believe they were vampires.
I wonder if Sir thinks they were. I shall ask him when we have our next private piano lesson.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since the first one. I’m so full up with thoughts of him that I can’t listen in my other classes and I’m not interested in my friends. They don’t understand what it’s like to be in love, I mean really in love. They’re too immature. The boys they like are unformed men whose voices are squawks and who have no idea how to behave with a girl.
Sir didn’t kiss me at the end of our last lesson but I know he wanted to, and he would have if we hadn’t heard Mandy Gibbons and Tricia Hill giggling outside the window.
How childish they are.
After that Sir said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but I’m not sure what he was sorry for. His cheeks were red and as he turned away from me I saw his hands clench tightly closed. I think it’s because they wanted to touch me, but he had to make them stop.
I want him to touch me more than anything. I lie on my bed imagining it; I go through lessons almost feeling the brush of his fingers on my skin and his mouth on mine. While I was at home for the weekend I wrote him letters to tell him how much I was missing him. There were lots of other things I wanted to write, but I didn’t quite have the nerve.
My parents went out to an exhibition of photographs taken by the friend of a friend who knows the Beatles. Left alone in the house I took off all my clothes and walked around talking to Sir in my mind and imagining him watching me. I saw myself as Juliette in my parents’ favourite old film, And God Created Woman. My hair is blonde like hers, and my legs are long. My nipples stand out large from my breasts and when I touch them I pretend my fingers are Sir’s.
I enjoy being naked almost as much as I enjoy thinking about him.
I play a game writing both our names on a sheet of paper and striking out all the letters we share. I go through those that are left, he loves me, he loves me not and it ends with he loves me.
I’m going to keep that piece of paper forever.
I’ve decided that when I go for my next piano lesson I will keep my hockey kit on after the practice game that comes before. The pleated skirt is very short and I can open my shirt buttons so he can see my bra. I won’t wear the boots. I’ll change back into my plimsolls and short socks and I’ll pretend I didn’t have time to go back to the dorm to put on my uniform.
It’s the night before my private lesson and Sir has come into the boarders’ recreation hall where most of us fifth formers, after finishing an hour of prep, are playing our records and dancing. (First-to-fourth-year girls have already gone to bed and the sixth formers are either in their cubicles or their common room.)
‘Bend Me Shape Me’ is on the turntable and I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or sorry that he didn’t come in before while we were playing ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’. We’d all be put in detention if anyone heard us playing this record so it’s quite scratched because of how often we have to whisk it off and turn it over to ‘Ruby Tuesday’.
I think Sir would have been embarrassed if he’d walked in on us dancing to that, but I don’t think he’d have given us detentions.
He’s blushing now because a couple of the girls are gyrating up to him and trying to get him to join in to ‘Bend Me Shape Me’. I can tell he thinks they’re juvenile and wishes they’d leave him alone.
‘Come on, Sir, we know you can dance, Sir.’
I carry on as if I don’t know he’s there, jerking my arms and legs to the beat, writhing my hips and throwing out my hair. I think of him bending and shaping me however he wants me, and me telling him that as long as he loves me … A hand touches my shoulder. As I turn around I’m singing ‘… it’s all right.’ And then I can’t find my words because I hadn’t realized it was him.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he says in my ear. The music is loud and some girls are singing along at the tops of their voices. That could be one reason he’s so close to me …
My heart is pounding like the drum in the song and I can feel certain eyes on us. Eyes that belong to jealous and gossipy girls who’d kill to have Sir talk to them.
His hand is still on my shoulder and he’s leaning in to me again. He says, ‘I’m afraid I have to cancel our lesson tomorrow,’ and when I realize what he’s said I want to shout No! You can’t. I won’t let you. I see myself in my hockey skirt, my shirt open, his eyes on my skin, his hand moving on my thigh … It all flashes in front of me and I realize everyone’s looking at us. There’s fire in my cheeks, and shaking in my hands.
He says something else. I don’t catch it so he says it again, softly and very close to my ear. ‘Better run girl,’ and only as he walks away do I realize it’s a line from the song ‘Young Girl’.
CHAPTER NINE
Joely had finished ghosting her first pages for Freda’s memoir, pages that had contained no sex, explicit or otherwise. In fact, to Joely’s mind, they didn’t contain very much at all. Apart, she supposed, from a further glimpse into young Freda’s character, and the blurring of lines around who was the real seducer.
Perhaps there was more there than she was allowing for, something more subtle that would gain its proper significance the further into the memoir they went. As it was, having been given so little information during their discussion it hadn’t taken Joely more than a day to produce the few paragraphs she’d felt it warranted. After, she’d gone back over them several times, comparing them with Freda’s opening chapters to check that the style was similar enough for Freda to deem them worthy of use as a first draft. (It was Joely’s secret hope that Freda would find them so convincing that she’d feel confident enough to let them pass as her own work.)
In the end, having decided that her efforts portrayed young Freda in the light her older counterpart had intended – vain and arrogant, certainly naïve but perhaps now there was the suggestion of her being as much a victim as a predator – she’d handed over the pages for inspection (feeling a little apprehensive she had to admit given how keen she was to impress).
Freda had thanked her politely, said she would read with interest and had promptly taken herself off to her room.
Twenty-four hours later she was still there.