The Not Gate (Tom and Alice #1) (2 page)

ROMANTIC HERO

Friday
15
th
September

A
lice Chambers…

No.

Mrs Alice Chambers…

It had a lovely ring to it… she laughed at herself. What an absolute moron! Was she seriously sitting in her bedroom on a Friday night practicing what her signature would look like if she were married to him? It was
so
year ten, but she didn’t care.

He had been her tutor for four days now and oh my goodness what a confusing four days. The initial attraction had only grown more and more real for her. Her ability to function around him, impossible. Mr Chambers was indeed the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

Every morning that week he’d taken registration. He had called their names aloud, his rich voice liquidising and flowing into her blood stream, under her skin, solidifying there, as a Mr Chambers epidermis that she couldn’t remove or didn’t want to.

She’d watch his magnificent chiselled face concentrating while he taught his English class and the way he’d often push his hand through his thick hair (a little habit she thought) and grin at something one of the boys had said despite himself.

Alice found herself leaning forward on her desk and almost falling from her chair on Thursday afternoon as he chalked something onto the board. His trousers tight against his bum as he moved. The little bit of skin that was visible between the collar of his shirt and his hairline had her transfixed. It was so smooth and lightly tanned… she wanted to kiss him right there.

The best part about him though was his smile and his dimples. She wanted to cry he was that perfect. Knowing that she was a sixteen-year-old in his A-level class and that sad fact meaning she would never be able to have him, to call him hers and he would never see her in the same way she saw him devastated her.

She now knew what all her friends moaned about when they fancied a boy that didn’t like them back. It was horrible and totally insane to think that a person can get themselves into this state just by a bunch of feelings that they have conjured up within themselves. With no help from the other party in question at all.

It was crazy to think that perfectly sane women, like her, spent hours each day thinking about and analysing men that they hardly knew. The sense of mystery being all the more exciting.

What aftershave does he use? What his hand would feel like holding yours? What his mum was called? Does he have a pet?

Crazy…

Maybe on Monday she would feel differently? Maybe she would notice that he wasn’t as attractive as she first thought. He might have had a bad haircut over the weekend or she might catch him chatting up a male teacher and realise he was gay...

Maybe?

‘What’s your new English teacher like, darling?’ her mum asked her over a plate of homemade fish pie and broccoli that evening. Alice had nearly choked when her mother had spoken because only moments before she had been daydreaming about what he would look like naked.

‘He seems nice,’ she managed.

‘Nice? Mr Chambers is lush!’ Stephanie, her sister added with gusto.

‘That’s enough of that talk, young lady,’ her dad said shaking his head at his youngest offspring, ‘You shouldn’t talk about your teachers like that. It’s not natural.’

‘Whatever! It’s so natural. He’s totally buff and all my friends agree.’

‘He’s got a nice smile,’ Alice said without thinking, her cheeks turning pink suddenly.

‘Has he now?’ her dad replied looking up from his fork of cheesy haddock.

‘Yes, I suppose so. That’s what you meant isn’t it, Steph?’ she shifted in her chair awkwardly.

‘It wasn’t his smile I was looking at,’ Stephanie laughed. She really didn’t care what she said in front of their parents.

‘That’s nice dear, now finish your dinner,’ her mum said trying to change the subject.

‘You wait till parents evening, mum, you’re going to be like… so fit.’

‘Well let’s wait and see shall we. I’m sure he won’t be my type,’ she joked, smiling at her husband and rolling her eyes.

They continued dinner in silence. Alice now unable to get the picture of her mum mercilessly flirting with her Mr Chambers out of her head.

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS

Monday
18
th
September

H
ow did he look so perfect every day? But really… how? Alice stared at him from where she sat three rows back from the front, the desks split into pairs, all facing his desk.

Today he was wearing a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up in his trademark style and no tie. His hair looked less groomed than normal. It seemed even thicker and it gave him a younger look. He appeared tired, but in a drowsy sexy way. Alice thought he must have had a late night. Then thinking of that made her angry because he could have been with another woman.

She watched as he moved along the desks handing out a photocopied sheet of questions about
Jane Eyre
, the text they were currently studying. Alice couldn’t help drawing on the similarities between Mr Chambers and Mr Rochester from the novel, he was a strong, very sexual, worldly male too. It made her blush now when he read aloud passages from the book, however innocent the content, because she understood its deeper meaning. Alice had become captivated by Charlotte Brontë in a way Mrs Atkins could never have achieved.

Mr Chambers placed a sheet on her desk next to her hand.

Before he came to the school Alice would have excitedly grabbed at the sheet, revelling in the thrill of a test and filling in the answers before he’d even returned to his desk. But now she left the A4 sheet untouched and continued to follow his body with her eyes. His fingers peeling sheet after sheet from the stack and placing them in front of uninterested students. His back was wide and manly, the soft white cotton of his shirt pulling against his muscular shoulders with every movement.

‘Okay, you have ten minutes to answer as many questions on the handout as you can. Then we’ll go through what you have together. Please make sure you add any answers you don’t have as this will act as a good revision tool come exam time,’ he said, perching on the edge of his desk.

Alice reached for the paper and scanned the first few questions.

Fairly easy.

She figured she had at least two more minutes of staring time before she had to start filling out the form. She held her pen against her mouth in an ‘I’m thinking’ sort of way, as she gaped at his beautiful thighs when he pulled a chair over and rested one foot on top of it.

She imagined kneeling on the floor in front of him. A bit like the way you did at primary school, huddled around your teacher’s legs listening to the afternoon story and desperate to be the one to sit closest to them. But she wasn’t waiting for a childhood fable, she imagined herself waiting for him to look at her with his snowstorm eyes and in his seductive voice, instruct her to do his bidding.

She shook her head and started to scribble answers down hurriedly. She had to stop these irrational thoughts, what the hell was wrong with her? She’d never pass anything if she couldn’t shake this feeling.

‘Right let’s see how you’ve done then. Let’s have hands up for the answers please.’ Mr Chambers started working his way down the list of questions.

‘What was the topic of the book Jane was reading at the start of the novel?’ he asked.

Alice offered her hand in the air. He looked around the room and asked Robert for the answer.

‘What was the nature of Jane’s first encounter with Rochester?’ the words rolled off his tongue.

Again Alice’s hand was up and he picked someone else. But by the end of the quiz he’d strangely not asked her for a single answer. He would glance up from the sheet of paper and pick someone else. What made it even worse was that on two occasions he had asked Robert for an answer and both times her hand had been up and she knew he’d seen her.

It struck her then like a bloody sledge hammer. That in her clear like (love) for Mr Chambers, she had blindly and stupidly missed his total disdain for her. In fact, thinking about it now, during his entire first week he’d barely even looked at her.

‘Well done guys, good job,’ he said, jumping from the edge of the desk.

‘Essay question for homework, title: Is Jane a likable protagonist? Why or why not? You have four weeks before it’s actually due, so please make it impressive.’

Alice felt suddenly flustered. How was she going to fix this? No teacher had disliked her before and now the one that she was fast becoming obsessed with, couldn’t stand her?

‘Any questions?’ he continued.

Alice looked up at him again. He was making notes in his folder, his head down and his hand working quickly over the page.

Please don’t hate me.

THROUGH THE WINDOW

Wednesday
4
th
October

Q
uestion: At what point does watching someone become unacceptable voyeurism?

Answer: When that someone is a sixteen-year-old pupil, it’s always unacceptable.

Tom knew this, like he knew the back of his hand but could he fucking stop?

He stood by the window of his upstairs English room and looked out at the playing fields. He had a free lesson and instead of the marking he should be catching up on, he kept wandering over to this window every few minutes. Pretending to himself he needed to stretch his legs, grab some air or tidy a bookshelf. Basically whatever bullshit he could convince himself of.

He would glance out at the day which was overcast, grey and depressing. He’d then try his very best not to look towards the students playing hockey on the pitch below him. But he lost the battle every time and he would cast his eyes over at them, guiltily they would fix, like a homing device onto the small blonde.

This was absolutely insane. His body was on flipping autopilot. It had to stop. Never in his whole teaching career had this happened. You were warned at length at university about student crushes and how to deal with them, but they didn’t really go into much depth on pervert teachers. He imagined it wasn’t something anyone felt comfortable talking about and it was definitely not something he was comfortable feeling.

He had spent two weeks trying to rationalise this strange attraction that had seemed pretty instant in its arrival and grew ever stronger with every graceful swish of her wheat coloured locks.

He wasn’t even technically single. He with someone, dating for about a month and he really liked her. If it wasn’t for this weird attraction he’d be pretty happy. Worse though last night he thought about Alice whilst having sex, it made him feel sick thinking about it afterwards, but at the time it had charged him with testosterone so strong that he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager.

Alice had the hockey ball now. She ran energetically up the wing, her small body agile. The curve of her breasts were more visible with the wind blowing against her thin white polo shirt.

He moved closer to the window.

She ran forwards a few more steps and launched it at the goal, it travelled the short distance but was defended away by the goalkeeper at the last second. Alice spun around towards her friends, laughing at herself and lifting her hands in the air.

Tom smiled.

She pulled the hair band from her hair and started to retie the ponytail, her fingers moving skilfully and quickly at her practised task.

She looked up suddenly then straight at his window. He froze but couldn’t back away. Their eyes locked for a second… then a friend shouted something stealing her attention and he bolted out of sight as quickly as he could.

Holy Mary…

Tom slammed back into his chair. A slow anger boiled just below the surface of his skin. This was stopping now he’d let it play out for too fucking long already.

She’s your student.

Tom grabbed the next book from the pile to mark, clicked the top of his pen and continued.

What’s the matter with you?

He did not get up again. He would not get up again.

A MASTERCLASS IN SEDUCTION

Thursday
19
th
October

F
ive weeks had gone by and Mr Chambers, Tom, as she’d found out had uttered no more than ten words to her. He was always detached and never wanted to make eye contact or any kind of bloody contact with her.

Alice was heartbroken.

She felt that he hated her. Or worse, that she just didn’t figure on his radar at all. You’d think this would be enough to put her off, but alas the feelings that it seemed she had no control over, ruled and they firmly dictated that he was
everything.

Alice, now a slave to her sexuality found herself listening to love songs over and over again, lounging on her bed on a Sunday afternoon, the butterflies growing because she would see him in the morning.

She had started to take forever to do her hair in the mornings. She made sure her clothes were ironed perfectly and her lashes always carried a little mascara. She even withdrew £30 from her TSB savings account and in 1995 that was a lot for a teenage girl. She hadn’t touched that money in three years, squirreling away her wages from her Saturday job at ‘Just for You’ the high street florist. It was her university fund or at least the start of it.

She went to buy perfume in her lunch break. She wanted to smell more like a woman, desperate for him to notice her.

The lady in the chemist assured her that the little peach oval shaped bottle that smelt like jasmine was a new fragrance, but she was sure it would become a classic. Alice had to agree it was lovely, even if she did think the lady just wanted to shift a lot of new stock.

She could smell it on her neck and wrists all day long and when she wasn’t near him or in his class it reminded her of him.

In doing all of these things she’d felt ashamed and more than that she had felt stupid. She’d never thought of herself as immature and if you asked any of her friends to describe her they would probably start with sensible, kind, hardworking followed up with loyal, and trailing way behind that, maybe… complicated or something? But it was immature that she feared.

Please don’t be like every other girl.

But she was, and she knew it.

She wanted to confide in Ellie, so badly. To tell her that she thought she was in love with Mr Chambers, but really
in love
. She felt saying the words out loud would tarnish them, cheapen the way she felt and make it just another silly teenage crush. She didn’t want reality to spoil her fantasy.

Fantasy was what fed her now, it nourished her. Imagining every night, his hands in her hair, pulling her to his lips, kissing him, touching him and even screwing him.

Not that she had any idea what that would be like? Her only reference was a stolen viewing of her parents’ copy of
Basic Instinct
during a sleepover last spring. But watching Michael Douglas, heaving and humping all over the screen and Sharon Stone flashing her pants, or lack of, she was sure wasn’t what it was really all about.

Alice had searched through her parents’ video collection again this weekend looking for any material she could use to try to lure him.
91/2 Weeks
, although being quite a hot film offered no more insight into the inner workings of the adult male than if in doubt use food as foreplay.
Fatal Attraction
confirmed that she was indeed a bunny boiling stalker and
Indecent Proposal
said, if all else fails offer to pay for it.

All she knew for sure about this feeling, when she was alone in her room, when she closed her eyes on the world, she felt the pull, the hollow emptiness at her core. She wanted him so badly and of that fact there was no doubt. No magic answers could be discovered and there was no cure.

She loved him.

It was bitterly cold even for October. The wind cut through you like tiny knifes pricking your body. Any skin that was exposed was at risk of frostbite and your teeth rattled uncontrollably. Children shrieked as they exited buildings despite their massive winter coats and crazy windswept hair was the order of the day.

The last lesson before lunch was English.

Alice walked deliberately slower than Cara and Ellie, who tried to hurry her along complaining about the weather. She kept searching in her bag pretending to look for something, not wanting them to suspect anything.

‘You guys go on ahead I don’t want you to be late too, besides I really need a wee now, this wind…’ motioning with her free hand to the heavens, then panicking, ‘...um don’t tell sir that though. It’s embarrassing, just say you don’t know where I am,’ she said turning for the nearest toilet.

‘It’s Mr Chambers, you don’t want to be late, you know he doesn’t like you,’ Cara informed her, pulling no punches.

Everyone noticed it then? She was definitely not favoured by the object of her obsession.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll only be a minute,’ she shouted pushing open the door to the ladies, using her shoulder as the wind worked against her.

Once inside she breathed in and out slowly, counting to ten she moved to the mirror and deftly applied lip gloss and brushed her blonde hair back into place. It wasn’t great, it still looked messy but it would have to do.

Today she had a new plan. It was simple really, she was going to start doing things so Mr Chambers would be pushed into making direct contact with her. Like being late for lessons and maybe not trying her best in class. It was totally against everything that she’d done in the last five years of school, but at least Tom would have to pull her up or ask why she’d changed? Surely any good teacher would have to find out?

To help her along in this endeavour he had fast earned himself the reputation of being quietly strict and authoritative, never missing any insubordination or tolerating it.

Stay calm.

She held out for ten minutes in the cold, quiet loos before she decided she wasn’t brave enough to do any longer.

Walking down the long, now deserted corridor of the English block she felt odd. All her peers were in lessons. As she walked she past closed doors, hearing teacher’s voices high pitched and engaging, floating out. She thought, this is what it must be like to be one of the rebellious kids. Those who just decided before each lesson if they would attend or not. Slipping out of school for a cigarette when the mood takes them, or like this, simply walking the halls because they don’t fancy doing PE.

In this small moment she slowly became aware of the funny type of freedom she had stumbled upon. By deliberately choosing to be late for a lesson she had somehow suddenly discovered her own free will.

For Alice, who had never questioned the authority of the teaching establishment in her life, this felt alien and at the same time pretty exhilarating. She felt like a whole person. Understanding that the world we live in and the things around us can appear very differently if we’re able to observe them from an alternative perspective.

She looked down at her small feet, one moving in front of the other. Her thick tights, her navy pleated skirt, her thin waist. Noticing momentarily how other people must view her and she felt a small – maybe misplaced – confidence in her youth. She smiled to herself at that thought, but wasn’t sure why?

Room six didn’t have a window in the door as many of the others seemed to so she had no idea what was lurking behind it. Nerves hit her now and a slight panic. All the confidence she felt quickly slipping from her, she breathed in and out slowly.

Should she go to the sick bay and fake illness? Pretend she was running an errand for another teacher? Or should she just stick to the damn plan?

Alice held out her hand and placed it on the handle. The creek it made when she pushed down amplified in her head tenfold. Bowing down slightly she skulked in… but her eyes were met with darkness.

In the corner of the room a large television and VCR were mounted on a massive stand with industrial type wheels. She knew from experience it took at least two people to manoeuvre it through a doorway. It was showing a video. The second part of a
Jane
Eyre
adaptation
they’d started to watch last week. The changing light spilled over the faces of pupils who were clearly chuffed to bits that it was a video lesson and no real work would get done today, many hadn’t even bothered to remove their coats.

For Alice it was worse though. She scurried to a chair, frantically pulling her bag from her shoulder. Some people glanced around to see what the disturbance was. So much for the cool, bad girl attitude she was hoping to exude.

Alice couldn’t see Mr Chambers as she scanned the room quickly. Maybe he’d popped out and she could get away with being late and forget all about the stupid plan she patently didn’t have the nerve to carry out?

Someone moved a chair behind her then. That metal scraping on a wooden floor sound that school chairs distinctively make…

He was behind her. She knew it and she closed her eyes tightly. His unmistakeable footsteps that she hadn’t realised she’d memorised until just now, started to close in on her.

He stopped at her side, his brown trousers brushing her coat. Glancing around shyly her eyes meet with his crotch area.

Oh my…

For a second he didn’t move he just waited for something unseen. He held a pen and a reporter’s jotter in his right hand. The top of the pen had been chewed.

She bit her lip and wanted to jump up out of her seat. Feeling like a coiled spring, nerves jangling, thinking desperately of what to say? She wanted to run, but all she could think about was the smell of his aftershave, mixed with beautiful male cleanness and the top of that pen.

He crouched slowly down next to her, balancing on his hunches and rested his hand on the back of her chair. He turned his face towards her and she had to look at him then. He’d just issued a silent order.

‘Are you okay, Alice?’ his face was concerned. His voice so whispered that only she could hear it. It thrilled her that this exchange was just between them. Only she could see his face in the darkened room inches from hers. His breath smelt of chewing gum and the shadows the television cast made his cheek and jaw bone ever more pronounced. But his face was not by any means skinny, it was just all angles. Male pride and arrogance… hot arrogance.

‘Fine sir, thank you,’ she whispered back. Looking down at his trousers stretched tightly over his thighs.

‘Are you late for a reason?’ he whispered.

Shit.

‘No,’ was all she could manage.

‘No?’ he paused ‘Right then, okay… try not to do it again,’ his face looked slightly troubled, but he smiled and tapped the back of her chair twice.

‘Yes, Mr Chambers,’ she looked away as he stood up and tried to force back the tear that pushed its way from her eye.

Nothing. Nothing.

He didn’t even give a shit enough to tell her off. How the hell could she make these feeling go away? Because right now she really didn’t want a single one of them.