I tolerated it the first couple of times, hoping he would get bored if I didn’t react. However, when his fourth interruption sent the class into uproar, I raised my arm and pointed to the door. “Go and stand in the hallway, Calum. I’ll talk to you in a minute.”
He stood, scraping his chair back across the floor with deliberate slowness, and sauntered from the room with his head held high. When he shut the door behind him, I refocused on the class.
“Okay, the joke’s over. Start working through page eighteen of your textbook while I talk to Calum.”
Leaving the classroom as they pulled out their textbooks, I closed the door behind me.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Calum in the corridor. Sometimes he took off even in such a short space of time. I looked down at him and pursed my lips. Calum was small for his age. His tie was askew as he leaned his shoulders against the wall and played with an elastic band he had procured from somewhere. No doubt he’d been pinging bits of paper around with it in a previous lesson.
I held out my hand for it. He glowered, but I raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I’m no doing anythin’ with it,” he said.
“Then you don’t need it.”
“It’s to haud up my troosers.”
“Your trousers are holding up fine from what I can see.”
“If my pants and troosers fall doon and I scar the girls for life wi’ ma big cock, it’s your fault.” He handed me the elastic band.
“I’ll take the chance.” I bit back a smile. “Why are you being disruptive?”
“I’m not.”
“You were shouting out stuff you knew wasn’t the answer, then you were just shouting out rude words for the sake of it, Calum. Are you trying to get yourself excluded again?”
“I’m getting excluded anyway.”
“Who says?”
“Mrs Ronson.”
“What did you do?”
“I didnae dae anythin’. Someone put a sign on her door sayin’, ‘Mrs Ronson has a blue waffle.’ She said it wis me.”
I schooled my features. “Was it you?”
“I didnae write the note.”
“But you put it on her door?”
“Aye, ’cause Bobby Craig dared me.” He pointed down the corridor to where Bobby must be in another class.
“Well that was kind of stupid.”
“Cannae back doon fae a dare.” Calum said as he tugged on his hair, clearly upset that a man of my stature didn’t understand the way things worked.
“You can when the dare is sexually harassing teachers.” I said in my calmest voice, bending my knees and trying to make eye-contact with the boy.
“Aw, come on, sir. Naebody likes Mrs Ronson.”
“That’s not the point ... I mean ... there’s nothing wrong with her, and what you did was wrong. Absolutely wrong. And you know it.” I nodded because Calum knew it was wrong.
He stared at his feet for a moment and then nodded as the fast click-click of heels along the corridor approached us. It could only be the woman herself—my boss—Mrs Ronson. No one else walked at that speed, and everyone knew her walk because of it.
Calum looked towards the sound, his eyes wide, then at me and I murmured, “Here’s your chance to apologise.” Turning to the passing whirlwind of dark brown curls, I said, “Mrs Ronson, do you have a moment? Calum has something he’d like to say.”
I expected a muttered sorry, yet to my surprise, the young lad looked her straight in the eye.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Ronson. It was a dare. I didn’t write the note, but I stuck it to your door and that was wrong.” He watched me for confirmation he’d said the right thing, and I nodded.
“Oh, umm, thank you, Calum. That’s a very mature apology. I ...”
Her lips continued moving but no words came out. She looked quite flummoxed, peering at me for guidance. Weird since she was a Head of the Modern Language Department and I was just a teacher.
I glanced at Calum. “Calum, go back into class. Start on page eighteen and remember the date. Trente et un Janvier.”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
The boy hurried back into class, and I returned my focus to Mrs Ronson. “Have you referred him to the headteacher yet?”
“No. I haven’t had time.”
“Are you going to?”
“Rory, this kind of thing ...”
“I know. I explained to him how serious it was, but I don’t think he realises the significance of the content of the note. He’s probably not looked up the meaning of the phrase. He just knows it’s something to do with a lady’s private parts, and he’s at the immature stage where he still thinks private parts are funny. He’s not got the sexual connotations bit in his head yet.”
She looked to the classroom door, then back to me and deflated slightly as her shoulders relaxed. “You’re probably right.”
“Listen, he hates writing out French verbs. I’ll set him a punishment exercise to copy out three pages of French verbs to be handed in to you tomorrow, and if he doesn’t hand it in, then you can refer him.”
“Okay. That sounds like a fair compromise. I’m not sure excluding children like him does any good anyway.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said as I walked back into my room to deal with any mayhem that may have ensued since I left to deal with Calum.
I loved my job.
Chapter 3
Lacey
“ANYWAY, I PULLED ON my jeans and top, grabbed my sandals, and ran out the door as fast as my feet would carry me,” I squealed, grabbing my wine and holding it to my chest as I gazed at my friends. Their faces were lit up like the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day in anticipation of what would happen next.
“Did he follow you?” Olivia asked.
“I screwed up my nose and shook my head. “No, he was wearing nothing but a lacy thong. Quite sure he’d have been arrested for going out in public like that.”
“Have you got back on the Tinder horse yet?” Annie asked, pointing at my phone on the bar table.
“I haven’t been on there for months. I think he was the final straw with guys.”
“But did you get a look at his winkie?” Olivia asked.
I screwed up my nose. “He wasn’t turned on yet, which was a bit insulting, but what I saw wasn’t impressive.”
“Maybe he was a grower, not a show-er.” Olivia lifted her hands and moved them apart to suggest, the increasing sizes of the male anatomy, and I struggled not to laugh.
“I hope for his sake he is,” I said. I met Barry, the taxi driver who liked ladies’ underwear, on Tinder, and we’d clicked until he took his jeans off. Sure, the average penis wasn’t very impressive in its unaroused state, but poor Barry was under-endowed from what I had seen. The lacy thong was as much of an excuse as anything to bolt.
“You shouldn’t let him put you off. There are lots of nice guys out there,” said Annie.
I hummed in acknowledgement but something—or someone—had caught my attention. He was looking right at me.
“Shit,” I hissed. “It’s him.”