Tuesday Afternoon marking

You could go home on Tuesday afternoon but instead decide to work in your office again. You find working in the office leads to less distractions, so everything gets done quicker. This time you’re marking essays by the Lower Sixth, their first submission of the year. It shows, to you the sixth form is as much about teaching the girls how to write professionally and succinctly than it is about imparting facts. Before they were tested on regurgitation, your role is to show them how to interpret. Most of the essays don’t have conclusions.

All these facts make your head hurt and makes your mind drift. Back to the lessons this morning. Back to Brianna sitting in the class, her eyes watching you. Back to the weekend, with Brianna naked and kneeling, her pussy weeping for attention. No, stop thinking about that. You have essays to mark.

Coffee would help you concentrate. There’ll be coffee in the Staff Lounge. You leave your desk, lock the classroom door, then head to the Staff Lounge. It’s empty, but there’s a pot of coffee on the hotplate and you pour yourself some. Drink it. Top up your cup. Then head back to your office.

Walking the halls when lessons are on is a surreal experience. The halls are quiet, with only the whisper of lessons reaching out when you pass classroom doors. You wonder what’s going on in them. The doors and thick, no windows to the corridor, no sign of what is going on inside.

You fumble at your classroom door. The key won’t turn in the lock, because it’s already unlocked. You locked the door. Are you mistaken? No. You locked the door. It’s unlocked now.

You didn’t lock the office door. In fact, you left it open, and it’s open still. You enter the office. Everything appears as you left it. The pile of essays to mark has not changed. You glance back into the classroom. No, nothing untoward there.

You go back to your desk. Put your coffee down. But you can’t shake off the suspicion.

There’s one obvious place you haven’t looked. The door to the washroom is shut. You always keep it shut. You don’t particularly want the smells of the toilet percolating into your office. You try it. It’s locked.

You knock. “Open this door.” No sounds. “I have another key. I can unlock it if you won’t. But if you unlock it now, I might overlook this intrusion.”

Nothing. You might be talking to an empty room. Then you hear the key rattle in the lock, and the door opens. Behind it you see a familiar figure. You shouldn’t have been surprised at who’s standing there. But you are.