Free Precocious by Joanna Barnard Page B

textures flowed perfectly, testament to your artistic eye, I supposed. On the walls of your hallway, I was surprised to see your initials at the bottom of three watercolours.
    I didn’t recognise the scenes in the paintings. I wondered where and when you did them.
    ‘Where did these come from?’ I called out. ‘The depths of your murky memory, or your even murkier imagination?’ I jumped as I realised you were standing next to me, holding out a cup of coffee. You laughed and said,
    ‘Most people—’
    ‘I’m not most people.’
    ‘On that we’re agreed. Most people just say they’re good.’
    ‘Well, I expect they’re just being polite.’
    ‘So that’s my attempts at art critiqued. Sit down and tell me what you think of the rest of the house, since you’ve had a good nosey.’
    ‘I sense traces of an ex-wife,’ I lied, because it sounded interesting and as far as I could gather you’d not been separated long, so it seemed a pretty safe bet that the former Mrs Morgan might still be hanging around.
    ‘Where?’ you asked, puzzled. ‘Everything’s been completely changed since she was here. Well, almost everything.’
    ‘Exactly,’ I said quickly.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I think you know,’ I deflected, trying to be cryptic because I didn’t know what I meant. You laughed.
    ‘You think I’ve tried too hard to cover her tracks.’ I nodded gratefully. ‘You might be right. Your little psychoanalyses are really very impressive.’
    I was glad you’d noticed, because for months I’d been working on persuading you that you were seriously repressed and needed to ‘unburden’ yourself on a sympathetic ear, i.e. mine, although now that I was here and listening I didn’t feel so sure.
    ‘I like that wine rack,’ I said, and then moved away and started to rummage in my bag. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
    ‘Oh?’ You raised an eyebrow. I tossed your dog-eared copy of
Lolita
to you, announcing that I’d read it in two days flat. You looked pleased.
    ‘What did you think of it?’
    ‘Well,’ I said tetchily, ‘it’s not exhaustive on the subject.’
    You’d set us some work a couple of weeks ago, ‘a story of no more than 2,000 words about wanting something you can’t have’. You had directed a surreptitious wink towards me as you said this, to which of course I scowled.
    As I sat in front of a pile of blank white paper the night before it was due in, I knew exactly what you would expect me to write: a none too subtle piece about being in love with an older man, hmm, a teacher perhaps? There was no way I would give you that satisfaction, so I decided to do something different. People like my mum and the nuns at school maintained that a ‘grown’ man couldn’t possibly be attracted to a fourteen-year-old girl. But I knew life wasn’t like that.
    So I wrote a fast-moving, and I thought extremely touching, monologue narrated by an ageing, frustrated teacher nursing a tender, secret desire for his most precocious pupil. I called the pupil ‘Jade’, because that was the kind of name I wanted – exotic-sounding and sophisticated – and because in my imaginings she had bright green eyes, so unlike my own which were dishwater grey.
    (I didn’t come up with that on my own, by the way – it was my mum. She was really good at pulling these rare stunts of affection, like a bear hug in the middle of the kitchen when you were trying to wash up, or a soft stroke of your hair while you were watching TV. They’d take you by surprise so much she’d then be able to insult you and disguise it as a compliment. ‘Poor love,’ she’d murmured, stroking my hair I think it was this time, yes, must’ve been, ‘dishwater grey eyes and mousey hair. Good job you have a lovely personality, eh?’)
    Anyway, the story. Jade’s story. It came back with 17/20 (a poor mark for me) and the comment, ‘Interesting, but it’s been done before; see me.’ I waited behind after class and you gave