His Model Student: A Student-Teacher Romance

8. Discussions

[RECAP: Sera has to face her sexy but stormy art teacher Mr Marek in school as well as evening class, and her growing attraction to him isn't helping with the tension]

"He's a murderer," Lois said. "Mr Marek ending up with both those jobs is more than a coincidence. He's clearly done away with Mr Billings and Miss Featherdale for his own career gain."

"Fotheringay."

"Whatever. You need to start investigating the Strange Disappearance of Ethel Fotheringay." Lois made it sound like the title of a detective novel.

Sera vaguely remembered someone mentioning that the missing art teacher's name was Elsie but didn't bother to correct her. "I can think of any number of reasons why he might have ended up with more than one art teaching job. Going down to the job centre and applying for all art teaching jobs for starters."

They were sitting at a table under a tree. It was lunchtime and the weather was fortunately mellow that day. Deep gold autumn sunlight and a clear, icy blue sky. Sera imagined the colours that would be used to paint it, mentally mixing up a palette.

Joel was sketching a coat onto the paper bag his sandwich had been in. "I hardly think teaching us lot would be described as career gain. I wonder why he's really here. He's an actual artist, isn't he?"

"Apparently so." Sera wondered how Joel knew. She hadn't mentioned Jasper's revelation to them, not wanting to give them the idea that she was overly interested in their art teacher. Because she found herself frequently wondering about him despite a determined attempt to keep him out of her head.

"I heard one of the other staff mentioning it. Also you needn't worry about Billy because he is actually on sabbatical. He's doing something in Florence," Joel said.

"Unless it's a massive conspiracy and they're all in on it," Lois said. "Seriously though, what kind of an artist is Sera's Mr Marek?"

"He's not my Mr Marek!" Sera protested.

Lois twisted a magenta strand of hair that she had isolated from the other colours. "He glares at you. I suspect that means he's interested. After all he's seen you in the buff, hasn't he? He probably keeps thinking about it. It must be a bit kinky, him now seeing you in your school uniform."

"He glares at me because he hates me," Sera said. "He also thinks I'm useless. He had to practically redraw my last sketch from scratch."

Joel, dissatisfied with his design, crumpled it up. "I can't comment on him seeing you in the buff, as I haven't personally had that privilege, but he's glaring at you because you're getting to him. Us men are simple creatures. If he merely hated you, he'd find it very easy to ignore you."

Sera picked up the crumpled paper bag and unfolded it. She smoothed it out and gave the design a critical eye. "This is good, you shouldn't just throw it away. I'd wear it."

"In that case it's a total failure then since it was supposed to be a man's coat," Joel told her.

"Let me have a look." Lois grabbed it. "It looks unisex to me. Anyway, back to our new art teacher, I wonder what kind of artist he is? Is he famous?"

Joel shrugged. "I'll see if I can find out."

Sera silently hoped he would find out more information about Mr Marek. She was more curious than she wanted to admit about him. "His first name's Tarquin. His father's Hungarian and he - Mr Marek, that is - has exhibited at the Royal Academy."

Lois shot Joel a smug grin at this. "You have been doing your homework."

"Not me, one of the other people from the evening class found it out. They think there's a bit of a mystery about him," Sera told her.

"If there is, we'll have to solve it. Come on, we're going to be late for class."