Chapter 1

Mark

I am a teacher.

A high school teacher.

I’ve known thousands of kids; thousands of faces, thousands of names, thousands of prospects, and dreams, and frustrations.

Thousands of characters, some with talent, some with none. Some who care, some who coast, a few who are outstanding. A few who create true beauty in my classroom, a few who can bring life to the canvas.

I teach art, and I love my job. I love being Mr Roberts the teacher. But I’m also a man.

A man with urges.

Mr Roberts the teacher and Mr Roberts the man rarely cross paths. They don’t need to. They’ve never needed to. Until now.

Until her.

Helen Palmer is one of the few true artists. Helen Palmer is my greatest pleasure of all. Helen Palmer is my student.

***

Helen

I slammed my sketchbook closed, guarding it from prying eyes, but my stuttering heart needn’t have worried. It was only Lizzie. She dropped her satchel down by my side and lit up a cigarette.

“You’ll get a wet ass sitting out here,” she said, dropping to the floor regardless. “Grass is damp.”

“And you’ll get suspended if they catch you smoking again.” I held out my hand for the cigarette, and she’d swapped it for my sketchbook before I had time to protest.

She flicked to my current work in progress, and laughed her usual laugh. “And to think a few months from now this will all be over. How are you going to cope? Cold turkey? I’ll take care of you, Helen dearest. At least you aren’t going to forget what he looks like. You could paper the entire dorm with your little sketch mementos.”

“It’s Aberystwyth university, not the moon.” “May as well be the moon.”

“Thanks for brightening my day.” I handed back her cigarette and wrenched my half-finished sketch from her clutches. I resumed my work, soft pencil lines etching out the brooding darkness of his brows. He was concentrating, just like he had been that morning, demonstrating the finer craft of pastel blending to a very unappreciative Harry Sawbridge. He’d been magnificent, so intuitive, so… brilliant. I shaded the perfect contours of his cheekbones and my stomach fluttered at the memory.

“Maybe you’ll finally get over him,” Lizzie said. “Plenty of hot, creative weirdo students to distract you. Even you’ll have to find someone there to your liking.”

“Maybe.”

Lizzie Thomas could say it as many times as she wanted, and she did. She said it all the time, like some kind of mantra, as though if she said it enough it would somehow turn out to be true. But no. It would never be true.

I’d been crushing on Mr Roberts since the very first day he stood across from me in the art room and talked our class through Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory. Since he’d smiled at the doodles on my maths book and told me I had a good eye for shade and colour. Since he’d taken my hand in his and guided my paintbrush to achieve the perfect curve of the apple on my first still life.

I’d been crushing on Mr Roberts since twelve years old, and right now, at eighteen and just a few months from leaving his classes forever, it felt like I’d be crushing over him my entire life. Maybe I’d turn into a bitter spinster with twelve cats and just a roomful of scrappy pencil drawings to remember him by.

My insides knotted. Aberystwyth may as well be the moon, Lizzie was right. What reason would a freaky, obsessive little weirdo like me have for running into her brilliant ex art teacher in the holidays?

None.

The thought made me feel sick and it must have shown all over my face.

“I was joking,” she said. “You can’t not see him in this little shithole of a town. Everyone sees everyone.” “Too little, too late.”

“Seriously, you will.” She flashed me a smile. “Plus, you know where he lives. You could take stalking to a whole new level. You’d be good at it.”

“I’m already good at it.” I closed my book and dropped the pencil back in its case. “You’ll meet someone way before me.

Don’t begrudge me being the third wheel when you score some hot rocker type and I’m left on my lonesome.”

“As if that would ever happen. They’d be the third wheel.” She rustled in her satchel and groaned. “That’s if I even get to Aberystwyth. Our dorm buddy plans might be scuppered. I flunked trig again.” She tossed me the paper, red lines all over the place. “I’m aiming for a C grade now at best.”

“You only need two Bs.” “And I may not get them.” “You’ll get them.”

She flicked the cigarette butt in the bushes and peered around the corner. “Urgh, Sarah Jennings and the bitch brigade at twelve o’clock. Benches, duck-pout selfies.”

“Nice.”