Free With the Headmaster's Approval by Jan Hurst-Nicholson Page B

for special treatment.  
    He’d also become friendly with Kyle Rudd, the sports master, and they played an occasional - fiercely competitive - game of squash together. The lunches proved beneficial to both Heads and they’d agreed on the need for drug counselling. During one of the lunches Adam was disturbed to learn that some of the girls had acquired a reputation for being easy, something a partly Christian-funded school should not be known for. The Christmas holidays were approaching and with them the opportunity for the girls to be led astray at the numerous parties and functions. He decided they needed a warning about the dangers they faced, and the harm they were doing to their reputations.
    He brought up the subject at the morning break. “What do you actually teach them about sex, Mrs O’Brien?”
    She shifted uncomfortably in her chair and looked round for support, but none was forthcoming, “I teach them the physical aspects of the sexual act, and about contraception and how to use it, and about sexually transmitted diseases,” she said. She went to the cupboard at the end of the room. “I have some posters,” she said, unrolling one to reveal a picture of the male genitalia.
    Annette Woolf looked away in confusion and Eleanor Stannard frowned.
    Barbara Crook informed him. “Kate has to keep it in the cupboard because the girls got hold of the previous one and made some, shall we say, alterations to it,” “They changed the angle ...”
    “Never mind, Miss Crook,” interrupted Eleanor Stannard.
    “Warn me when you’re going to put that up in the classroom,” Adam said. “I don’t want to inadvertently find myself standing in front of it.”
    Kate O’Brien rolled up the poster and placed it back in the cupboard.
    “What do you tell them about the emotional side?” asked Adam.
    “I tell them they should wait until they are mature enough to have sex, or are at least in a long term relationship, but girls are having sex earlier and earlier. Whatever you say to them, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Many of the girls are already sexually active.”
    “But surely not all of them?” argued Adam. “Perhaps if I talk to them it will make a difference.  A man’s point of view might give them a different perspective.  If I can stop just one girl from having sex before she’s ready, it will be worth it.”
    “Well, good luck with that. What magical thing do you intend to say that will stop the flow of teenage hormones?” said Barbara Crook.
    “I can explain how boys think about sex.”
    “Wham, bam, thank you, Mam?” said Barbara Crook.
    “Really, Miss Crook, do you have to be so crude?” put in Eleanor Stannard.
    Adam looked pointedly at Barbara Crook. “From a teenage boy’s point of view, that just about sums it up. They’re just looking to score.”
    “And you know all about teenage boys?” said Jenna Murray.
    He turned to her with a frank look. “I was one.”
    “So how old were you when you first had sex?” asked Barbara Crook.
    “Miss Crook! Please.” spluttered Mrs Stannard.
    “No. I’ll answer that,” he said. “I was two weeks away from my fifteenth birthday. My kid sister’s baby-sitter was nineteen and experienced. I was tall for my age and she thought I was sixteen. Fourteen year-old boys don’t really know what they’re doing. I’ve always been grateful to her.”
    “And so, I presume, were your future conquests,” said Jenna with a tight smile.
    “So what happened?” insisted Barbara Crook, eagerly sitting forward.
    “We got careless. My sister found us in my bedroom and told my parents and I ended up babysitting my sisters for the next six months,” he said with a sheepish grin.
    “Are you saying that boys should have their first experience with older women, and therefore girls with older men?” said Jenna.
    Lauren Mathews butted in, “My first time was a bit of a disaster. I was sixteen and he was twenty. Does that qualify as an older