Chapter 2

"You what?!"

Lois was half shocked, half laughing when Sera finally managed to tell her about the impromptu modelling session. It was the first day of the new school term and they were on their way to the art room.

"It was no big deal. Only for a few minutes," Sera said.

Her best friend couldn’t stop laughing. "Only you, Sera, would deal with some rude idiot by taking your clothes off. For God’s sake don’t try that here."

Sera could hardly imaging doing so before Mr Billings, who taught art and history of art. He was a very conservative man who suffered agonies over works featuring scantily-clad nymphs or the Virgin nursing. From what they could work out he’d spent three years at art school painting nothing but bowls of fruit and vases of flowers.

"I can just about manage to keep my clothes on in front of Billy," Sera said.

"No one would be more relieved to hear that than him. So what was it like?"

"What was what like?"

Lois rolled her eyes. "Posing nude in front of people. Weren’t you embarrassed? Weren’t you cold?"

Sera actually had to think about it. Had she been cold? "No, there was a small electric heater there." Now she remembered that the teacher had switched it on and positioned it towards her just before she slipped the kimono off. He had been capable of some small consideration at least.

"And the nude thing?"

"Weirdly it was okay," Sera told her.

Lois tossed her curls. Their chestnut was currently streaked with strands of purple, blue and maroon. Lois’s elder sister was a hair stylist so Lois often played guinea pig for her more experimental designs. "I hardly see how. You get embarrassed just wearing a swimming costume to the pool. I don’t see how you managed to flash your fanny at a roomful of perfect strangers."

Put like that, nor did Sera. "It was weird. It wasn’t like being naked normally: exposed in a vulnerable way, with people judging your body. It felt more like being a shop dummy or a statue. Anyway, they were all gay or women. Except for one bearded bloke, who looked like Mr Billings."

Thinking about it, there was only one man in the room who had seemed fully red-blooded and capable of that kind of attention.

The art teacher himself.

Sera remembered how the look in his eye had changed the moment he realised she wasn’t a model. Suddenly he had seen her as human again, and female. She tried to explain this to Lois. "It’s like the gender dynamic suddenly returned."

"You mean he eyed you up?" Lois asked.

Nothing quite that blatant. "It was more of an awareness. I probably read too much into it because I was so aware of him. Honestly Lo, if he hadn’t been such a horrible, rude, angry idiot he would have been incredibly attractive."

Lois gave her a knowing grin. "You mean he was both, don’t you? Admit it."

Sera hated to admit it but Lois was right. "Maybe."

"I wish I’d signed up for the course now. If he ever goes out to that pub with you, you’ll have to invite me along," Lois said.

It didn’t seem likely. He had appeared more like the kind of teacher who kept his distance and didn’t become over friendly with his students.

Mr Billings wasn’t there when they arrived, so she and Lois set themselves up in their preferred places. The aroma of art through the ages - or at least the couple of decades the art room had been in use - swirled around Sera. Oil paint, clay dust, charcoal and paper: she found it strangely intoxicating. It helped transport her to another world where she could forget about school and family and university applications and simply lose herself in lines and colours.

"Where’s Old Billy Billings?" someone asked.

"No idea."

Sera was just fiddling with a piece of putty eraser in her pencil case when she heard the teacher arrive. Chairs scraped on the floor as people sat up and a murmur went around the room.

Sera looked up.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

It couldn’t be. Her mouth fell open, she froze.

Tall, dark and furious, it was her art teacher nemesis from the other night. Once again he was glaring at her, his gaze hostile.

As quickly as he had lost his composure he regained it. "I’m Mr Marek. I’m replacing Mr Billings who as some of you may know has taken a sabbatical." No one knew this, faces around the room wore surprise and curiosity. "For today, so I can see your individual styles, you can sketch…" his eyes hurriedly looked around the room for an object, and fell on a hideously painted urn that a previous student had abandoned years before. He picked it up and slammed it down in the centre of the main table. "This. Pencil, charcoal, I don’t care. And you," he pointed directly at Sera, "can see me outside."

Lois was boiling over with curiosity but Sera couldn’t explain.

"You can’t be in trouble already?" her friend Joel hissed as Sera, her face burning, made her way outside. She had no time to gather herself together before the irate Mr Marek stood before her.

He seemed to tower over her. He was well over six foot - over a head taller than her - so it wasn’t surprising.

"So? I repeat, what the hell are you doing here?" His eyes were slate grey, unyielding.

This was at least easy to answer. though Sera pushed back a strand of hair nervously. "This is my art class, I’m a pupil at St Christopher’s," she told him.

Mr Marek was silent for several moments. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen." Just like pretty much everyone at the start of September in their final year of school.

He swore. "Underage? And you thought you would compromise my class like that?"

"You asked me to. Demanded, in fact." Sera’s confidence was returning as she now grew angry as well.

"Clearly you should have had the common sense not to comply, given your age, if nothing else."

None of the others had said anything. "It’s not illegal. Look at Page Three." The British tabloid newspapers regularly featured topless models like Samantha Fox who were as young as sixteen.

The art teacher winced. "Life drawing is hardly glamour modelling. Regardless, I don’t deal with minors."

Sera, still annoyed, felt emboldened. "It didn’t seem to bother you the other night when you arranged me on your couch."

She met his gaze. There was a brief flicker in his eyes of something she couldn’t define. Was he recalling the scene? She could smell the same faint scent of cologne or deodorant that he had worn the other night, and it brought it all back vividly into her mind.

To her surprise he gave a low laugh. "Trust me, if you think that was me arranging you on my couch, you have a great deal to learn."

Sera’s stomach gave a strange flip at his tone.

He continued. "Seeing as I am apparently stuck with you as a pupil in both my workplaces, you will behave appropriately from now on. No messing around. Concentrate on your work. You will call me Mr Marek here and at the community centre, regardless of how the others address me. Now get inside and join the class."

He turned abruptly and went back into the room.

Sera was left beyond outrage. How dare he speak to her like that? She was one of the most conscientious students doing Art A-level, as so much of her future depended on the result. Yet he had already judged her to be some kind of troublemaker.

She knew Lois was going to be absolutely burning to know what was going on. Sera was also burning to vent, so they both spent the lesson looking at the clock and willing its hands to move faster.

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