Page 27 of Indecent Temptations

"Oh, I’ll leave," she replied. "But I thought you should know that I’m going to be putting in a formal complaint about you. I can’t in good faith let someone like you teach at this school any longer. It’s just not right."

And with that, she marched out of the office. As soon as the door closed behind her, the tears started to flood down my face. I could hardly feel them; it was as though I was utterly numb, removed from what was happening to me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I could only panic, panic, panic knowing that everything that I had made such a precious part of my life was about to come crashing down around me, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it happening.

I begged off work the rest of the day and went home, pulled the covers over my head, and ignored all the calls that came in. I needed time to think. I didn’t know if I could fix this, but if there was some way, some way I could pull it all together, then I had to try.

I had to make an effort. But...but what could I do?

If Rhona had her way, and she had never struck me as the kind of woman who would renege on getting it, I would be painted as a predator, some older woman trawling the halls for my next target as soon as they were out of the school system. Joseph was so far away from me right now, and all I wanted was for him to pull me into his arms and tell me that this was all going to be alright.

But that was what had gotten me into this mess in the first place. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for him. I could have carried on with my life, gone without him, gone apart from him. I supposed that was the part that hurt the most. That this could all have been avoided if I had just been able to keep myself together. I should have trusted my gut when I had found out who he was, told him to hit the bricks and get out of my life because getting involved with him was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

There was still time. I could do that now.

I had to put space between us, and quickly – I had to make sure that everyone knew that we were no longer an item. I didn’t have it in me to outright break up with him, but at the very least I could shut down whatever it was that we had going on, put it on pause for a while and hope that it would be enough. I had no idea if people would buy it, or if they would see through my scheme in an instant, but it was the best I could think of for damage control right about now.

And that was all I could do in the blowup that followed what had happened with Joseph. I tried to put space between us. I didn’t want to, God knows I didn’t, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I just had to make sure that nobody saw us together, that nobody had any good reason to attach us to one another the way that Rhona had.

People at school knew. Everyone knew. I took another day off work the next day, just to avoid the horror of going in and facing them. Even Mallory – fuck, even Mallory would probably be stung that I hadn’t bothered to tell her what was happening between us. I wished that I had, now, then at least it would look like less of a dirty little secret. I wished I could reach out to her and tell her that it wasn’t what it looked like, but it was too late for that. I had to live with the choices I’d made. Even if they scared me. Even if they had put everything that I had worked so hard for for so long on the line.

I had to hide from the world for now. I had to keep it between me and my head. I would have to get out of bed and face it soon. But for the time being, I just wanted to hide from it. And as long as I could, that was just what I was planning to do.

Chapter thirteen

All eyes on you

Icouldn’twalkdownthe street without feeling eyes on me.

And okay, maybe I was just imagining things as worse than they were, but I was sure that everyone in this fucking city knew who I was, and that every single one of them was judging me for what they thought they knew about me.

Yes, Rhona had made an official complaint about me.

Which was to say, she had made my business everyone’s business.

I couldn’t believe she would take this straight to the school, especially since it involved her son, but she had no interest in listening to anything that either me or Joseph had to say on the matter. She was too busy out here ruining lives, not giving a good God-damn how she hurt anyone around her. Rhona was a woman on a mission, and that mission seemed to be mostly centered around how to make my life as difficult as possible.

"You shouldn’t even be here," I told Joseph, as he slipped through the door of my apartment; he was just back from the rig, having caught up on everything that had happened, and he had come straight down to see me as soon as he’d had the chance.

"I wasn’t going to leave you to deal with my mother all by yourself," he replied firmly.

"Why aren’t you at your place?" I asked, and he shook his head.

"Because I know my mum is going to be there waiting for me," he replied. "And I don’t much feel like talking to her right now. Not after what she’s tried to do to us."

He pulled me into his arms then, and held on to me tight, and I buried my face against his chest and let the tears flow.

I had barely been holding them back for most of the time that I had been exposed for. Okay, I had managed to make it back into work, which had been something, but it had been hellish dragging myself through all of that and knowing that everyone was looking at me like I was some sort of creep.

"You know we can’t spare you for all this time," Jonah, the headteacher, told me with a frown on his face. "You’ll continue to work as we conduct the investigation. If we find any wrongdoing, then we’ll have reason to let you go."

I closed my eyes. Let me go. I had worked in this place for so long, and now they were talking about getting rid of me. It wasn’t fair, none of this was. I felt like I was going to scream. How could this have happened? How could I have let this happen? Why couldn’t I have been happy on my own, instead of going out into the world and daring to fall in love with the wrong man the way I had?

Thank God, most of the children were young enough that they had no concept of what was going on, and they didn’t judge me for what they thought they knew. It was a relief to be able to come somewhere every day and know that I wasn’t going to have to explain myself to everyone around me. I was glad to have a little haven, somewhere I could come and know that I wasn’t going to be strung up as the most monstrous bitch who ever dared set foot in the school.

Mallory, of course, was also there for me, which was something; she was hardly the most popular woman in the world for sticking by me, but she made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere.

"I’m sorry, but I think this whole thing is ridiculous," She told me, over a glass of red wine over at her flat late one evening. We would have gone down to the pub, but I didn’t want to run into anyone who might have some opinions to offer on the way I had been living my life lately.

"What are they going to do in that investigation?" She wondered aloud. "Try and prove that the two of you made eye contact in the corridor for three seconds ten years ago and that proves that you were after him since he was in school?"

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