The L Word

'Alright, okay, I'm sorry --'

'Don't be sorry, it's not your fault!'

'I'm only trying to protect you.'

'There's your "dad" voice talking again.'

'No,' I said, 'my voice, it's me talking, relating to you.'

'I don't want you to "relate" to me, I want you to speak truthfully when we talk. I want to know the real you.'

'You know who I am.'

'I know you're my driving instructor and that's about it. I don't even know your last name.'

'What does that matter?'

'It's just a show of trust.'

'Oh. Well it's in the book, isn't it?'

'No,' she picked the book up, 'you didn't put it in.'

'I'll put it in there.'

She watched me write my name under the contact details page. An image of Kate flashed into my head.

'What about your mobile number?' Emma asked. I stared at her and she stayed very still staring back at me. Weren't we arguing a minute ago?

'If,' she continued, 'I need to schedule another lesson. Or something.'

'You can do that through the office.' I said, my face blank.

What did I say that for? Didn't I want her to be thinking about me?

I held the pen steady and looked at her. She was trying to appear calm but the tops of her cheeks were red as if she had been hiking in the cold. She was ten years my junior. Now I was speaking in my head like an old man.

I wrote down my number.

'We could arrange something.' She said, shifting in her seat. I stared at her feet just for somewhere to look. She wore a thin set of shoes on her feet but no socks, or socks so small they only showed at the heel.

'Like another lesson. Mid-week.'

My voice was heavy in the throat. 'I could make some room.'

Loads of instructors gave their numbers to their students. It was standard.

'Thanks, this means a lot.' She said, taking the book back.

I looked at the freckles across the bridge of her nose. I smiled at her to get her nose to wrinkle and hide or show more freckles when she smiled back.

God, this was some sort of courtship ritual I was doing! Ten ways on how to seduce your student. There must have been rules about this sort of thing, like time-spent-in-prison rules, or at least promise of a sacking, gross misconduct or whatever for making your student smile at you of her own accord.

'What,' she asked, 'do I have something in my teeth?'

She twisted to check in the mirror hidden in the sun visor above her.

Her profile was amazing.

I dropped her off at home and drove away to get an early lunch.

Was I satisfied with how the morning had gone? And would it be because I thought she had done well, despite flying over the roundabout and nearly hitting some old woman or because I was glad just to sit with her for two hours?

***

For days after I thought about her. At four o'clock on Saturday we were going down the hill in Upper Norwood and I thought I saw her and then I wasn't concentrating on watching the guy next to me and he overtook a bus when we couldn't see ahead properly. I couldn't say anything to him, even though I felt like slapping him afterwards. It was my fault. The whole thing was my fault. I was encouraging her behaviour. She was at an incorrigible age! Me and my perverted predilections; I was old enough to be her very young father.

That night I was round at Ed's.

When we went out for some chips I saw her with a group of people walking to the bar they had opened a few weeks ago on Norwood Road. It was tastefully lit on the inside and it seemed a bit more quiet and upmarket than I thought she would care for. Of course I didn't think she wasn't upmarket or cool enough to get in, I'm sure she was, I just figured she would want something a bit more jumping.

I was by the cashpoint and my friends were in the chicken shop. I suddenly didn't want to eat anything and was really nervous. I had clearly seen her before she had seen me, and her group of friends were all similarly flirty and dressed up and laughing with each other. She did a slow double-take and stopped, her face caught in an incredulous open-mouthed smile.

'Oh my god!' She said.

'What's wrong?' They asked.

'It's... it's my driving instructor.' She said, trying to downplay her initial reaction.

My hands were in the pockets of my jacket and I raised my eyebrows at her in recognition. It was such a nerdy, indifferent greeting. I should've been practically picking her up in my arms she looked so good.

'How are you?' She asked, surprised. She told them who I was.

I nodded but this time I wasn't playing it cool, she was a lot closer and she was stunning looking. I mean, I knew she was attractive but this was something new. She had heels on with many straps covering her feet in a criss-cross pattern; a small skirt that let her legs run to the ground like the earth wire in a plug. She was wearing a shimmering halter top and her hair was combed back to show her pretty earrings. I had seen people dress like her and her friends before and it made them look terrible but they all looked great.

'You awake? What are you doing here?' She asked.

'I'm getting some money out.'

'You live in Norwood?'

'No, further down, nearer West Dulwich station. My friend lives up there.'

I pointed to the fire station.

'He's a fireman?' One of Emma's friend's face lit up. She joined us like an empty bottle hitting your foot on the bus.

'No they just live there. No uniform, no hose, no pole.'

'No pole? That's a shame.' The girl said.

I asked her to excuse me while the cashpoint was free and I slid my card in.

'How have you been?' Emma asked leaning against the wall.

'Good. Have you been reading your highway code?'

'Yes,' she intoned, 'although I stopped because I started this really great book the other day. The Lovely Bones. Have you read it?'

'No I don't know that one.'

I pressed for withdrawal without receipt.

'How much do you get a month?' The friend asked.

'Um... it varies I guess,' I took the card as it came out, 'some months more than others...'

'Alice Sebold. It's about this girl who dies at the start of the book -- she's murdered -- and she exists in the ether around her family, staying with them to follow them as they grow up and away from the horror of their middle child getting killed. It even follows the killer's life. It's beautifully written. Full of emotion and the sensations evoked from watching her sister fool around with this boy she had a crush on when she was alive. It's really disarming, but in a good way. Metaphysical.'

I nodded, wondering here was some real depth in a person where they wanted to talk to me about books instead of all of us having to listen to Andy complain about his pay rise.

I put the money into my wallet and nodded as she was almost leaning on my arm and I was trying to sense whether she had been drinking or not and if she had was she acting like this because she was drunk or was this what she was really like?

'So... have you thought anymore about what car you want when you pass?'

'No! God, do you like never get off work or something?' She said.

'It's a fraternity;' I explained, 'once you're in you can't ever stop being an instructor.' And the nausea I had as I told her that sad line rose inside me and then sunk to the pit of my stomach.

One of the boys in her group had her attention and had her by the arm and she was being dragged away despite protests and I thought I was such boring bastard who was unable to ever solidly engage with girls and what a stunningly thick thing it was to say. We didn't even have fraternities in this country.

Ed and Andy stepped from the chicken shop and I saw them and god, we must've looked lame to her and her cool friends.

Ed gave me a raised eyebrow in response to the group that grew and recoiled like a sea anemone and suddenly Emma was at my side again for a split second, and her whole body clinked with the little bits of jewellery she was wearing and she said: 'Do you want to come with us, we're going to Pullen's and they're doing a thing on Tia Maria? We can talk about books.'

I stared at my feet and I flapped about and said that I couldn't possibly intrude and she pouted and was yanked away on the arm of a boy that looked half my age but twice as dark and handsome.

She made what I thought could have been the phone sign and mouthed "call me", but I wasn't sure of either because I hadn't been expecting it. Then she left.

'Why didn't you ask them back to the flat?' Andy said.

'I thought it would be inappropriate.'

'Who are they?' Ed asked.

'One of them is my student.'

'Are they legal?'

'What? What do you mean?' I said.

'Either they're legal or they're not. We should go in there with them.'

'I thought you were seeing someone Andy?'

'So what if I am? They want to party.'

***

In bed, Sunday morning, I lay awake with a pillow over my face. The kids next door were out in force, whooping and hollering and doing all manner of irritating things that make children make noise when the neighbours gave them sugar.

Light filtered through the tree outside my window and lit up the photo frames on Kate's dresser. She had gone to the office, an unfortunate part of being a partner in the firm's main case at the moment.

Last night I had been drinking water as a substitute for alcohol because I didn't drink much, and when I did it was usually with a meal, but that coupled with the fact that sometime around one o'clock we had been inhaling nitrous oxide from a balloon as well made my head throb. The nitrous oxide was like standing up after having spent ages sitting down and it made your eyes go black as if you had a head rush. It also made you laugh at anything and everything for about three minutes, because it was more commonly known as laughing gas.

We listened to drum n' bass and I was a bad boy.

Lying prone in the bed I felt younger and more reckless than I had for months.

I went to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face and then came back to bed and gambolled under the covers. It was ten. Normally I was a morning person but I was a little lazier today and I lay there thinking about meeting Emma last night. I didn't know what time Kate would be back.

I thought about Emma in the clothes she had on when I met her. Her top was so flimsy it would've come off if the wind had blown the wrong way.

Was she wearing a bra underneath it? She couldn't have been, it would've shown when she turned away. But it was difficult to see last night. She might've had one, or it might've been some new technology that just held them at the front, cupping them like two small hands. It might have been invisible, like a clear plastic that wouldn't have been obvious unless you were right there next to her, breathing in the scent of her, standing a foot taller than her, looking down on the crown of her head, where her hair moved in lines like a heat mirage.

And that guy that was on her arm like a parasite, like a remora fish, like a tick, grabbing for her attention as if she couldn't give it to two or more people at the same time, like he was a dog without his master's voice, like he was totally useless without her watching him all the time, like some child or a mental patient; I mean, who was he?

Was he the boyfriend?

Did she have one and it wasn't him but it was someone else in the group I met last night? Was she just being friendly when she might have said "call me", or mouthed it as I thought she had done?

Maybe the boyfriend, who wasn't the guy I saw her with, wasn't even in the group last night, was actually off somewhere else, being really cool, being the kind of boy all teenage girls swoon over and what if he was surrounded by girls, like a harem of nineteen year-olds and Emma, who was way too good for him, was only one of a hundred of his girlfriends, like some concubine that he slept with when he felt like it, and she was to all intents and purposes unavailable to anyone else, ready and willing for just that one go with a boy not fit to kiss her feet.

And what if she had actually asked me to call her? To save her, take her away from this idiot? What if she had known exactly what she was doing and she wasn't drunk and she didn't mind asking in front of her friends because she thought I was cool and saw something in me that was more mature and interesting than him and any other boys she had met.

And what if she had really wanted to meet up with me and ask me what I read, and what I really wanted to listen to in the car as we stopped at the side of a road somewhere, no cars around us and what if she put her lips on my earlobe and chewed it there as if she were putting on lip balm or trapping a tissue between them to absorb the lipstick or had her fingertips tracing my chest and I could smell her hair as she would lean further into me and put her lips against mine and what if I would feel her nose press against mine and sense the minute movements of her closed eyelids as they fluttered across my cheek as we kissed, open-mouthed, me tasting her tongue and holding her face close to mine and thinking how young and fresh and beautiful she was and having her hands roam further over my body -- feeling the boiling of orgasm between my legs as I jerked off under the white covers of my girlfriend's bedding while I thought of this -- and Emma's mouth would part as the muscles in her body went haywire as she let me into her, inside of her, stretching the walls of her pussy as she let gravity draw her down the length of me, and the rigid strength in her arms as she held my shoulders, experiencing every fraction of my erection as I penetrated her and then went to the hilt, her face astonished, her eyes betraying what she thought of under her own covers, rubbing herself and imagining me doing this to her, her breasts exposed to my teeth and fingers and the roughness of our contact where our legs met and then it becoming a blur as our voices rose and mingled and I wouldn't be able to tell whether it was the right thing to do or not, because I was so much older, and my girlfriend could find out, and what if she did and what if the driving school discovered us, filmed it somehow in the front seat, and would they see me trace the curvature of her ass and slip a finger into her, into the behind of where she was on top of me? And would they watch and report on how she looked so surprised as she came, whimpering with my finger in her ass and my cock inside her, her lips clamping shut to stifle the groan as I held her breast in my grip, biting my lip and spewing inside her, banging my head against the headrest and gasping her name as I held onto her, not letting go like she were my lifejacket in a swell in the sea and I was coming into my hand and over my belly, staining Kate's sheets even as I called out for Emma to keep going, not to stop, me shooting puddles onto the bed and then feeling guilty as Kate would know what I had done oh my god yesss oh god.

Everything went into the washing machine.

Around one o'clock I went on the Internet and checked my schedule for next week. It was generated on Saturday night and it was a grid on a spreadsheet where cells were filled with colours depending on location of client and whether they were new or not. I looked for Emma's usual slot, trying to find it among the reds, greens and oranges. I couldn't find it. Then I reminded myself I wasn't being cool about things and maybe I had been thinking about her too much, fantasizing about her scant hours ago, but now I was in control of my emotions, however runaway they tried to be, and if I was going to ruin my boxer shorts every time I thought about her, that wouldn't do.

As the lock on the front door came undone I glanced up from my perch on the piano stool and saw Kate come in.

'Sweetie I'm back.' She called. It was nice to see her but somehow not as great as it would've been a few weeks ago, had I been out the night before and woke up ready for sex. I moved the mouse to the X in the corner of Excel and saw that my Monday was packed unusually full.

'You had lunch?' I asked.

'There were bits and pieces at the office from yesterday, I'm not hungry, sorry.'

I had closed the laptop out of respect for us having lunch together; Café Rouge or a place near there. Now she wasn't up for it I wanted to know which idiot was stuffing my Monday morning so full I'd have to get up early, as if I had a real job.

Then, looking at my inbox, I received a new rota. An updated one.

That was strange.

'What are you looking at?'

I clamped the screen down again.

'Nothing. Reuters. Outlook. Usual.'

'So I talked to Brian and he said I'd be able to lead the defence in court. He said he was so confident with me that after this one was done I'd be heading up each case assigned to my team alone! I'd be by myself with new clients in court! Isn't that brilliant?'

'Brilliant honey.' I said.

She took off her jacket and bag and hung them on the banister, approaching me.

'I'm going to be entering a new band when that happens.'

'Great.'

'And we can maybe book somewhere to celebrate, once I've got this case over and done with?'

'Yeah I love curry.'

'I was thinking more along the lines of going somewhere further afield... not as glamorous as the Rosendale Road curry house you understand, but how about the Mediterranean?'

'Wow.' I said, not really thinking about the impact of her announcement.

She entered the bedroom and disappeared from my sight. I cracked open the laptop again and looked at the spreadsheet. What was on it was unexpected.

'Sun, sea, swimming, sardines for you...' she came back out and into the front room, 'oh it would be incredible, just what I need. Why has the bed been stripped?'

'Hmm?'

'The bed. Why are all the sheets off? Where've they gone?'

I checked my watch. Thoughts raced through my head. Three hours was it, that'd passed by and it hadn't occurred to me to put the new sheets on? What was I supposed to tell her?

She gave me a funny look.

'I wanked.' I said. 'I woke up and I had a wank.'

'A monster wank that soaked the bed? Good thing I wasn't here.'

She snorted and went back into the bedroom.

At least it was the truth.

I took clean sheets from the spare bedroom's dresser and brought them into our bedroom. Unbuttoning the buttons carefully done up to pack the sheets away I put the duvet covers in and sealed them up. There was quite a lot of dust when I shook them.

Kate called out from the front room.

'What?' I asked. I hadn't really heard her but there was this strange sensation in my chest that hadn't been there a moment ago, like I had run for the bus and missed it.

'Who's Emma?' She asked.

My arms and legs went dead. The duvet flew out of my hands and sailed into a heap on her nightstand.

'What's going on with you two?'

The invisible weight on my chest pressed harder and I tried controlling my breathing. There seemed to be an age before anything happened, me sweating and standing scared over an unmade bed and her in the front room, not saying anything.

'What is it,' I asked, 'that you're looking at?'

'Your rota for next week. You've got her down Monday morning and then again on Tuesday. Is it near her test?'

I swallowed but my throat was dry.

'They've sent this twice. Look -- first one was from last night and now they've sent you an updated one. Is she any good?'

I approached the piano.

'I'm... er... she's okay...?'

Kate nodded slowly.

'That good huh? Well this is all super but I'd rather be on Expedia. Do you mind if I close this?'

She worked her fingers over the keys, navigating away from the now not so secret information.

'Would you want self-catering or a package holiday?' She asked.

I stumbled into the kitchen and ran the tap into a glass.

'Can you at least complete one job today?' I heard her walk back into the bedroom. 'I know it's your day off but I like our room to be nice when I come home from working on a Sunday.'