“You’re Going To Teach Me To Fish?”

James had been looking forward to this day so much and now it had turned into his worst nightmare. If it wasn’t bad enough that his father and step-mother had caused a scene he then got all sulky in the car and caused a bad atmosphere. Even the sight of Jessica’s legs in her shorts didn’t distract him from his crippling embarrassment. But he was snapped out of his stupor when the car stopped at a large set of fancy iron gates, Jessica pulled a key fob from somewhere then pressed a button and the gates opened up. As they drove in James noted the CCTV cameras and a big sign saying ‘private, residents only’.

“Nearly there,” she said, smiling at him.

They’d driven through Kingston-upon-Thames, a posh part of London where the supermarket that James worked in was, but other than that he only had a passing knowledge of the area, he’d never been to this side of the place and he’d never seen a gated private road like this before either. As they drove slowly up the road James’s mouth fell open at the opulence and splendour of the homes. The Pickford Estate, the sign had said on the way in, was a far cry from the estate where James’ home was.

Jessica watched James’ face as he peered through the window, it tickled her no end to see people's reactions when they saw where she lived, but James seemed especially bemused.

When they pulled up onto the drive of her house James couldn’t quite catch his breath. It was a large white house, with a perfectly manicured circular lawn at the front ringed by a gravel driveway. Pride of place in the centre of the lawn was a stunning olive tree.

“You live here?” He asked as they got out of the car.

“Uh-huh,” she said, smiling.

“Alone?”

“Yes. It was my parent's home, they moved out five years ago, they retired to the Cotswolds and gifted me the house.”

“They gifted you this house?”

“Uh-huh. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

James went inside and found the house to have a very modern black-and-white minimalist style interior with fancy lighting and rare splashes of colour here and there. Just the sight of the large open-plan hallway was enough to have James standing and staring.

“Would you like a tour?” She asked him.

“Yes, yes please.”

The downstairs was comprised of three main rooms, a very large living room, a study and a huge open-plan kitchen. Upstairs were six bedrooms, all done out in the same black and white theme but all slightly different. And each one had its own plush en-suite bathroom. Jessica’s master bedroom was big and as comfy as it was luxurious. Her en-suite bathroom was magnificent, it had a huge bath, big enough for three people he thought. She also had a big walk-in dressing room, in keeping with the minimalist style there were no clothes or shoes on display though, everything was neatly hidden away. Back downstairs she showed him the garden, which she said was kept neat and tidy by a gardener who came once a week. The large windowed doors from the kitchen to the garden were folded back, giving the impression that the back of the house was completely open, letting in a nice breeze with the summer sun. What took James’ breath away most of all was the pool. It was directly outside the kitchen, taking pride of place on the large grey stone patio. It was modest-sized but had a built-in jacuzzi at one end. To the left of the pool was a small building that looked like a miniature version of the back of the house, complete with bifold doors, it was the gym she told him.

James had only ever seen a house like this on the TV. They finished the tour in the kitchen where she made them a coffee each and they sat at the breakfast bar.

“Okay, shall we get the elephant in the room out of the way?” she asked.

James just frowned and stared at her, unsure what to say.

Jessica smiled at him, “Yes, I’ve got money. No, I didn’t earn it, my lifestyle is down to my parents, well my father actually.”

“Erm, okay,” said James, happy that she’d answered the question that had been in his mind for a while now.

But he was still unsure where she was going with all this.

He took a deep breath and said, “Jess, why am I here? We both know that you could have got anyone to fix your phone, or just bought a new one. And for that matter, why did you go on a date with me?”

“It’s true that I was using my phone as an excuse to talk to you in private, I wasn’t lying though, it does need looking at, but…”

Now it was Jessica’s turn to get nervous, she sighed and said, “…I do have something I want to ask you. When was the last time you had a girlfriend?”

The confusion was written all over his face, “Eh?”

“Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this.”

“I’m not sure, I mean, um…I can’t remember.”

“I want to help you find a girlfriend.”

“You want to…I’m sorry, I still don’t understand, why would you want to help me find a girlfriend?”

“I promised myself I’d be truthful with you, but please understand that some of what I’m going to talk about is very hard for me. Do you remember that day we first met, in the supermarket?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, taking a swig of his coffee.

“You reminded me of myself, to be more precise, when I heard those two girls talking nasty gossip about you it brought me back to my school days. We didn’t always have this kind of money,” she said, waving her arm around to gesture at the house.

“My father is a builder. I grew up on an estate not unlike yours. My father took a chance one day and stopped working for other people and struck out on his own. He’d buy old, run-down houses, do them and sell them. He was good at it too and soon he had enough money to send me to a private fee-paying school. His intentions were good but it was the worst thing he could have done to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was happy in my old school, I had friends and was with people who I identified with. I’d done my first year of high school when my father took me out of school and sent me to a very posh boarding school. We had some money back then but nothing like this,” she said, gesturing with her arms again.

“To the other students there I was a kid from a rough estate with a dodgy accent. And it didn’t help that I was a bit of an ugly duckling back then, I had glasses, no dress sense and was all gangly arms and legs. But the real issue came at the end of my first week. We were in PE class, I was wearing a white t-shirt and shorts and we were running up and down the gym when all the other girls stopped and started pointing at me. I’d got my first period and hadn’t noticed the blood running down my legs.”

“Oh my…Jess, that must have been terrible for you.”

“I was mortified. In these situations, a girl needs her mother, but mine was miles away. Any hope I had of making friends at that school went out of the window that day, or so I thought. Over the next year, I became an outcast and the butt of everyone's jokes. I was lonely and the subject of everyone's gossip. There were outrageous rumours, stuff like the only reason I was at the school was because my mother was a whore who the headmaster had fucked and she was blackmailing him. That one persisted for the entire time I was there. Literally, nobody would talk to me, let alone be friends with me. I hated it, I was spiralling into serious depression.”

“So what happened?”

“I’ve never told anyone this before, not even my friend Dani. But it got to the point where I was seriously considering suicide. I’d thought of many ways to do it, I’d even managed to steal a long piece of rope from the maintenance shed and hide it so I could hang myself when the opportunity presented itself. I was contemplating all this one day, sitting in a quiet corner of the grounds by myself and crying my eyes out when Dani walked past and saw me.”

“What did she do?”

“I didn’t know Dani back then, she was a year older than me. She sat down next to me, put her arm around my shoulder and hugged me. She never said a word, she just sat there and held me.”

Jessica’s voice began to break up, she swallowed hard a few times and took a sip of her coffee and held her breath for a second to try and keep the tears at bay, although one single drop did escape that she quickly wiped away.

“From that day on, Dani would come and find me when we had free time and hang out with me. I was suspicious of her motives at first but she persisted. You see, Dani is not only the loveliest person you’ll ever meet, she’s also the most stubborn and very contrary. She loves nothing more than bucking the trend and doing the opposite of what everyone expects of her. Yes, there was genuine heart-felt pity in her motives, but she also just wanted to say ‘fuck you’ to all of her friends who told her not to go near me. That’s the thing with Dani, if you tell her to do something she’ll likely go out of her way to do the opposite. I think she saved my life that day when she put her arm around me. Anyway, whatever her initial motives were we became firm friends. And we still are, I had lunch with her yesterday and told her my plans for you. She thinks I’m mad though.”

“Your plans for me?”

“James, when I heard those girls talking about you my heart broke, I knew what you were going through. When we got stuck in the lift I thought it was a kind of serendipity bringing us together. So I decided to help you.”

“Help me how?”

“Does my story resonate with you?”

“Yes, a lot.”

“Let me guess, you were bullied at school?”

James nodded.

“You’ve got no friends?”

“A few online but…no, not really,” he said, shaking his head again.

“And you’ve never had a girlfriend?”

He shook his head.

“I was nineteen when I first had sex, virginity is nothing to be ashamed of,” she said with a reassuring smile.

Unsure of how to react James just sat there nervously twisting one hand over the other.

“The first thing I need to ask is this, do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said confidently.

“Good. Now I need you to believe me when I say that when I look at you, I see a handsome man with a kind heart and a wonderful personality. You’re a good person James.”

“If you say so.”

“I thought you might say something like that. Words are cheap as they say, it’s actions that count. So the plan, if you agree, of course, is to show you how to be the man I think you can be.”

“And how will you do that?”

“By teaching you things like social etiquette, building your confidence and…and…”

Jessica took a deep breath, in for a penny she thought.

“…and by being your practice girlfriend. Think of me more as a cross between a mentor, girlfriend and fairy godmother.”

“Wait, wait, you want to…I’m not sure I understand?”

“I had Dani, my parents and their money to help me out of the dark place I found myself in. If you believe in yourself you can have a nice life, with a beautiful girlfriend and a fancy house and car. But it’s important that you understand that you can get all these things for yourself. You just need a little confidence and some help to get you started, that’s where I come in. Have you ever heard the old proverb that goes something like, if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. But, if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime?”

“You’re going to teach me to fish?”

“Don’t be facetious, you know what I mean. In this analogy, if women are fish, then yes, I’m going to teach you how to fill your net until it’s bursting, and much more besides.”

“I don’t know what to say?”

“Say yes.”

“I’m not entirely sure what I’m saying yes to, but okay, yes, please, thank you.”

“Good, and for the record, I’m not entirely sure either, but we’ll work it out as we go along. Just trust me and put the effort in okay?”

“Okay, I will, I promise, I won’t let you down.”

“Good. Right then,” she said, finishing off her coffee. “Shall we start with lesson one?”

“What’s lesson one?”

“Sex.”