The Mistress - Jill Childs

One

I didn’t turn up uninvited. He summoned me, with a text. The last thing on my mind was killing him.

My hands shook as I got ready. Not too much make-up; just a little eyeliner, a hint of blusher and lipstick. He didn’t like painted ladies. That’s what he called them. He laughed, quoting someone. Shakespeare, maybe. It usually was. That was Ralph all over. He didn’t just teach literature, he lived and breathed it.

When he made love to me, it wasn’t just the two of us between the sheets. We were Romeo and Juliet. Troilus and Cressida. Antony and Cleopatra. He let slip little lines, little phrases from all the poetry stored in that handsome head. A lass unparalleled. Or, she makes hungry where most she satisfies. I learned them by heart and googled them after he left, marvelling at how much he knew. He made me feel like someone special. Someone beautiful. Someone else.

I parked the car in the next street, to avoid notice. It was a warm night, but I pulled on a wide-brimmed hat that shielded my eyes, and strode briskly, head low, down the road and along to the house.

His street was deserted. The pavement was littered with spilled blossom from the spindly trees, as if I’d missed a wedding. It was still light and next door’s curtains were open, offering me a wide view of their sitting room. I took it all in with a quick glance, making sure no one had seen me, then strode past.

He’d left the gate open. He always did when he expected me because of the way it creaked. I slipped through like a shadow and crept down the path to the front door. It gleamed in the mellow evening light. Black and recently re-painted. Helen had organised the painter, of course. She organised everything, including Ralph. He joked about it sometimes, if it came up. Not quite poking fun. He respected her too much. It hurt to admit it, but I could tell there was feeling there, even now. Not love, exactly. Certainly not passion. A grudging admiration. A sense of duty.

He’d once read out a poem of his at the school writing group about Odysseus and Penelope, a love poem of sorts. That was in the early days, when I was still trying to resist him. But thinking of nothing but him. My breath catching in my throat like a teenager when I went up to the Upper School, his territory, for a meeting. My senses so keen as I walked through the corridors, scanned the main hall from the first-floor windows, that I thought my sexual longing for him must radiate from me like nuclear energy, illuminating me for everyone must see. The pain of disappointment if I headed back to my classroom, back to the Lower School, without even seeing him, was just as visceral.

His poem asked who was the real hero – Odysseus, waging war with a sword, or Penelope, waiting for him so faithfully, weaving and unravelling and again weaving to preserve her honour?

I asked him, afterwards, as we gathered up our coats, keeping my voice low, pretending not to be leaving with him but knowing, we both knew, that he’d hurry after me and walk by my side to the Lower School car park, chatting as we walked.

I asked, ‘What inspired you to write that?’

He smiled, his eyes crinkling, his gaze so direct, so full of feeling, that it made me shudder.

‘What do you think?’

And I saw in a moment that it was for me, his lyrical, passionate poem. It was a salute to my chastity, to my struggle to stay faithful to Matthew, the boyfriend who’d left me nearly two years earlier and broken my heart. I realised then that when he looked at me, he saw something no one else saw. He saw the real me.

The following week, when he walked me down to my car after the group and asked me out, yet again, for a drink, I was ready. I blushed and couldn’t meet his eye and said, ‘Yes.’

What made me think of that, now? I ran the palm of my hand over my eyes, drying them and saw a streak of light flash across the glistening paintwork, a reflection from my watch, and stood still for a moment, concentrating on my breathing, trying to steady myself.

I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know why he’d texted me. I was hollowed out. I hadn’t eaten – I hadn’t really