Unethical

Observe

ob·serve
əbˈzərv/
verb
notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant.
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"Oh." I said as if the breath had been knocked out of me once the taxi came upon the house she grew up in.

The big three floor stone Georgian mansion sat on a massive amount of land and was surrounded by perfectly manicured trees, bushes and lawns.

"Just ignore everything." She said as we pulled into the driveway in the front. I wasn't exactly sure how I could ignore all of this, but I understood she didn't want me to dwell on it.
Her mum had paid for the taxi here already so neither of us had to.

We stepped out and I looked up at the looming mansion with it's entrance surrounded by pillars like teeth ready to swallow us up inside.

"I'm nervous." I admitted out loud. Maybe it was a good thing I told her.

"So am I." I heard her say. I wondered what she could be nervous about, this was the home she grew up in. This was her mother she had always known. Maybe she was nervous about me meeting her.

When we reached the massive red door she took keys out of her bag and unlocked it.

The scent of brand new leather and wood filled my nose, I could only describe it as one vague word, money.
The walls were light blue and very inviting. Even though the crown molding on the walls and ceiling made everything look old and fancy, the paint made it look quite modern as well.
I looked over at Nina on her phone.

"Just give me a second, I'm telling my mum we're here."
I almost laughed at the fact that she had to text her to find her in this house.
"C'mon." She said and lead me down the hall a bit and into a lounge painted in a soft green with a big white fireplace. She sat down with me on one of the two couches. I looked around the room at the paintings on the wall, which some of them looked quite old.
She must have caught me looking at them because she pointed one out to me.

"The one with the girl in the white dress with the butterfly, that's me. A family friend painted it for me for my fifth birthday. And the next one is of me and my parents when I was only one year old."

I observed the painting of her sitting on her father's lap looking up with a smile at him, as both her parents were smiling.
"You look exactly like your father." I told her and saw a bit of a smile on her lips.

"Everyone said that." She replied.

"She even acts like him too at times." A woman came into the room, what I assumed to be her mother.

"Hello, I'm Claudette." She extended her hand to me and I shook it.

"Mum, this is Dan." Nina introduced us.

"I'm sure he is very capable of introducing himself, dear." She snapped at her daughter as she took her seat on the couch across from us.
"I mean he should be, he is a university professor. Emily should be bringing out tea any moment. So Dan, why have you chosen to date one of your students, that must be seen as unethical by the university?"
She didn't seem at all afraid to jump to the rudest question first.

"Mum." Nina snapped at her but she just ignored it.

"The school doesn't know, which is most of the reason behind this catastrophe really." I said.

"I know the school doesn't know, Dan. What I meant was if they did know wouldn't they absolutely forbid it?" It was obvious that she already knew the answer, it just seemed she wanted me to acknowledge it just to be mean.

"It would. I don't see why though since we are both legally consenting adults. What you need to understand though is that I don't do this, I don't just date students right and left." I wasn't afraid to argue with her.

"Of course not." She gave me a vicious smile. Beside me, I could see Nina's jaw locked with an angry glare at her mother.

"Oh! Tea!" Her mother said as a younger woman maybe in her late thirties entered the room with a loaded tea tray.

"Emily!" Nina said with excitement as the woman gave her a kind and happy smile. As soon as Emily put the tea tray on the table Nina got up and they gave each other a tight, warm hug as if they were best friends that hadn't seen each other in years.

"Emily, this is my boyfriend Dan. Dan, this is my mum's assistant and my former nanny, Emily."

Emily seemed like she was in her mid or late twenties , but she also seemed like one of those people who didn't age. She was pretty and seemed graceful almost like Nina did in a way. I could very much tell they were close.

"Thank you Emily." Nina's mother dismissed the woman as she got a cup of tea from the table, but Nina and I didn't. "Shall we discuss what exactly happened?" The room went quiet for a moment.

"Not here." Nina looked at me. I understood she probably wasn't ready to talk with me about what happened with Alex, I wasn't offended at all. I don't think she was ready to talk about it again at all, but she probably had to with her mother.

"Very well, let's head into the office, I need a written statement from you anyway." Her mother said and put her tea back on the tray and stood.

"I'll be right back, okay. Feel free to do whatever you want." Nina told me and I gave her a reassuring smile and nod before she followed her mother off into the hall. I figured it would be a while so I sat there on my phone going through my emails and things.

"She's not the conventional mother, is she?" I looked up to see Emily now sitting on the couch across from me.

"No, definitely not." I chuckled. "I can tell you both are close though."

"I pretty much raised her. I took the job as her nanny when she was about four and I was twenty one." She said which put her in her mid thirties. "She's a very sweet girl."

"She is." I agreed with a smile as I thought about it.

"She's always been more like her father though. Where did you both meet?" She asked me, at this point I had explained it so much that it meant nothing.

"I'm her professor."

"Typical Nina, doing something rebellious." She laughed. "I was hired for her when she didn't seem to be making any friends, that and her parents were too busy for her. She was always so quiet, but that meant to me that she was always thinking, she was so clever and curious. When she was nine she managed somehow to buy a horse on her own that no one knew about for weeks." My eyebrows went up in surprise.
"She kept it fed and taken care of and everything. She had been so mad that we had a stable and no horses and like every typical little girl wanted a pony so badly, but her mother wasn't at all fond of animals. Eventually, the grounds keeper stumbled across it and told her mother who had a fit, it was her father who let her keep it and he was proud of her for actually taking care of it. She named him Gary and he's still out there and he's taken care of by a keeper now, she'll probably show you him. She likes to visit with him every time she's here."

I was so happy to actually know what Nina was like as a child, she seemed almost the same now although I feel like her mother had broken her down quite a bit. It made me sad. It made me so sad to know her father who passed away was the only parent she was close to now she only had her former nanny who her mum seemed a little jealous of.

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Edited by: Josiemakattack198