Selling the Drama (13 page)

He was not the only one who had spotted her
though, and Charlotte cringed as Pervy Porter looked over in her
direction. Adopting what he probably thought was a casual manner,
yet Charlotte knew was anything but, he wandered over to her,
taking a seat right beside her, despite the emptiness of the stands
and the complete lack of a need for him to even be sitting down
during training. His nearness made her skin crawl, as did his every
manner. She'd had enough creeps perving and trying to feel her up
to last a lifetime, but she had always been able to put an end to
their unwanted attentions. Even though sometimes that end had taken
a nasty little turn - as had been the case with Damian, but he had
been the only one so far who had ever hurt her on account of being
rejected; most just resorted to jeering words knowing it was never
going to happen before moving on.

Porter was an entirely different matter
altogether. For a start, he was a teacher, not one of hers
thankfully, she had stopped doing HPE back in year ten, but still,
he was at her school in a professional capacity, and he was also
her boyfriend's football coach for the interschool team. Another
fact about him that gave her cause for concern was that he was a
man. An adult male who, if she had to hazard a guess, was probably
in his late twenties. Her unease at his attentions was closely
linked to both of these factors and she did not feel at all
comfortable with her ability to hold off his interest. One could
not merely tell a teacher to fuck off because he was creeping you
out. Likewise, his age intimidated her. He was no teenage boy who
could be dispensed with in the usual manner. The complications were
clear. He was very clever too, or perhaps insidious was a more apt
description. He was not overly obvious, was discreet with his
targeting of her, picking his times and places quite well, such as
now, an opportunity he obviously had no intention of passing up.
Charlotte could not help but wonder if he had become a teacher
purely for the opportunity to get his rocks off by perving on
teenage girls.

"Hello, Charlotte."

She refused look at him, returning his
greeting with a lacklustre enthusiasm.

"Been working out again?"

She swallowed back the taste of bile,
keeping her gaze trained on Toby. "Yes. Training more than working
out."

"Right, my mistake. Toby mentioned you
competed in gymnastics. Acro, that's what I believe he told me your
discipline was. Nice."

She felt her stomach turn over. He was
pumping Toby for information about her. He really was a stalking
creep. She reached up and grabbed at her shoulder, the tension she
was feeling at his nearness making her already tense muscles lock
up even further.

"You must let me know when you next compete.
I'd love to come and watch."

Charlotte bit back the response she really
wanted to make and remained wordless. Five more minutes. Fuck it,
she would just go wait in the car, heat be damned. She would rather
fry than endure another minute of this. His hand came to rest at
the back of her neck, squeezing lightly, working at the muscles,
moving across to her shoulder with the same massaging motions.

"You must get sore; gymnastics is a
demanding sport. I used to coach it, back when I was at uni. I
could help you, if you wanted. One on one; it really is the best
way to learn." As he spoke, in that smooth tone he always adopted,
he continued to work at her shoulder and neck, his hand
insistent.

Sweat prickled her palms and her underarms;
her stomach churned and clenched, nausea shifting within. She
wanted to tell him to stop touching her, to get his hand off her
and to never dare put it on her again. She wanted to get up, walk
away knowing she had put him in his place, confident that he would
not approach her again. Instead, she sat frozen, on the verge of
passing out from the fear he was generating, gripping the seat
either side of her so hard her hands were stinging. This was how
you ended up molested, Charlotte thought, by people like him who
knew exactly what they were doing and how to get away with it.

He removed his hand then, leaning closer to
her ear. "Think about it. You and I would make a great team. There
are a lot of things I could teach you, Charlotte." He stood,
jogging back out to the field for a post training debrief.

Charlotte closed her eyes briefly, trying to
quell the rising tide of vomit that was working its way up her
throat. This was bad. This was in over your head kind of bad.
Opening her eyes, she stood, waiting impatiently for Toby to finish
up. Porter was talking to him, had his hand on Toby's shoulder as
he leaned in, demonstrating some move with his free hand. He could
make things difficult for Toby, if she did anything about this. He
could kick him off the team for a start, make some bogus excuse as
to why he had done it. Fortunately, Toby did not study HPE either,
so at least he had no grade that would suffer at Porter's hands;
despite loving sport, he'd had to compromise when making his
subject selections, too many other choices that worked in with what
he wanted to do in the long run winning out. As Charlotte watched
Toby walk towards her, laughing with his fellow team mates, she
knew, with a certainty born out of experience, that there was no
way she could not tell him about this. Fall out be damned. He'd be
furious if he found out later, and with an uneasy realisation,
Charlotte had to acknowledge that the idea of Toby being
disappointed in her lack of action initiated a greater sense of
trepidation than any possibility of further proposition from Porter
could have.

Toby was eating at a pace that bordered on
inhuman, his food was disappearing that rapidly. Charlotte, in
contrast, could only pick at her dinner, her appetite
non-existent.

"Charlotte, what is wrong with you? You
haven't done more than push your food around your plate. I hope you
don't think you're going on a diet for this competition you've got
coming up. You burn too many calories with your training for that
sort of nonsense, now hurry up and eat before it gets cold." Iris
motioned with her fork in Charlotte's direction, sending her a
fierce look.

Charlotte pushed the plate away though, not
intimidated by her mother in the slightest. "I'm not dieting. I'm
just not hungry."

"Why?" Iris pressed her, typically not
letting it go at that. Sweat the small stuff, ignore the huge. That
was Iris all over.

"I don't feel well." Charlotte slumped in
her chair. She saw Toby look at her out of the corner of his eye,
felt his knee press against hers. Before Iris could say anything
else, Toby put his fork down and pushed his own plate away,
although his was scraped clean, not a morsel of food left.

"She's upset," he announced.

Charlotte turned to him, her eyes widening
in alarm. "Toby!"

He ignored her and looked at Royce.
"Charlotte was sexually propositioned by my football coach this
afternoon. A teacher. At our school." He let his words sink in
before continuing. "I'm going with her to see the Principal
tomorrow so she can make a formal complaint, but she's worried that
if she does, I might lose my position on the football team. What
she fails to realise, is that I don't want to play on a team with a
coach who likes to perve on students, so it's not even a concern
for consideration."

Charlotte pointed at him, shaking her head.
"You are not quitting the team because of this! Because of me!"
They had been over this already and she thought she'd made herself
clear to him.

"I didn't say I was quitting. I said I
wasn't going to play on a team with him as the coach." Toby's tone
was firm, his eyes serious.

"That means the same thing! It isn't fair if
this pushes you out of the team."

"It isn't fair that you can't sit and watch
me without some arsehole who should know better putting his hands
all over you and inferring that he'd like to fuck you on a gym
mat!"

Charlotte's eyes grew wide at that and she
glanced at her parents. They were both staring at Toby, mouths
open, forks poised in the air. Her father was the first to find his
voice, but it was not to chastise Toby on his language at the
table.

"Are you serious?" He was addressing Toby,
his face dark with a look Charlotte had never seen on him
before.

Toby nodded. "Of course I'm serious!
Charlotte, tell them what he said to you. What he did with his
hands."

Charlotte though, was mortified. It was one
thing to tell Toby; something else entirely to tell her parents at
the dinner table. But Toby was not going to be discouraged. He
picked up her hand and squeezed it, just shy of too hard, yet it
got her attention and she looked up at him.

"This is not your fault. You've done nothing
wrong and he has. Now tell them what he's been doing." He kept hold
of her hand and waited for her to speak.

Charlotte dragged her eyes away from him and
turned to face her parents. She outlined Porter's advances in as
much of a concise manner as possible, ending on a word for word
recital of what he had said to her that very afternoon. When she
was done, her mother's expression was one of outrage, but her
father's, it was something else again. Charlotte could not come up
with any other occasion upon which she might have seen his face
look that way. Toby squeezed her hand again. She was grateful for
his presence beside her.

Royce appraised Toby, a knowing look coming
over his face. "You have a plan, don't you?"

Toby nodded. "Yes, I do. Charlotte has the
right to attend those practices to watch me, and to walk around
that school without fear of him propositioning her. I have the
right to play on a team that is not being coached by a paedophile.
If we all go in together tomorrow, using the right terms and making
just the right amount of demands in the right tone of voice, then
there's a way for us to get what we want. They aren't going to want
the public to know they have a teacher who is a paedophile on
staff. It's all about how you present your case. About how you
approach them."

Iris sat back, smiling widely at Toby.
"You're a smart young man! Royce, isn't he brilliant?" She turned
to her husband with a nod in Toby's direction.

Royce nodded. "Indeed. Nicely played, Toby.
We'll go in first thing in the morning." He looked at his daughter
then, a look of sadness settling onto his face. "But only if
Charlotte wants us to."

Iris protested immediately. "Don't be
ridiculous! You can't let that man get away with this! She's going
to report him, and that's that." She looked at Charlotte with
warning. "Don't you dare even think of not saying something! This
is a travesty against women, that we have to put up with this sort
of thing, all the time, in every setting we grace, it's always the
way."

Charlotte rolled her eyes. She could tell
her mother was just starting to get wound up. She would be quoting
Germaine Greer within minutes if Charlotte did not end this now.
"Relax, Mum. I'll stand up for all women everywhere." Her sarcasm
was not appreciated by Iris though.

"You mock now, but you wouldn't be so
flippant if he raped you."

"Alright!" Royce interjected. "She's agreed,
that's it. Please." He looked at Iris, imploring her to not proceed
with this any further. Charlotte was not sure what her mother saw
in her father's eyes, but she backed down, standing abruptly and
walking around the table to pull Charlotte into a fierce
embrace.

"I can't believe you had to endure that,
what a horrible experience! You poor, darling girl. We'll fix this
for you, don't you worry." Iris placed a kiss on Charlotte's
forehead before straightening up. She turned her attention to Toby
then, resting her hand on his shoulder, patting him with
appreciation. "Thank goodness she has you. Otherwise, who knows
what she'd let people do to her." Iris began to clear the table
then, swiftly removing all of the dishes and taking them through to
the kitchen.

Charlotte rolled her eyes in her father's
direction. He smiled at her knowingly. Iris had a unique way of
making you feel both loved and like shit at the very same time. He
stood and left the table, no doubt heading to his couch upstairs in
order to read the paper. Charlotte glanced at Toby, her hand still
encased within his.

"You aren't a lawyer yet, you know," she
said with a dry tone, a little peeved with his tactics.

He grinned at her, pulling her hand up to
kiss her on the knuckles. "Maybe not, but you have to admit, I'm
probably going to make a damn brilliant one."

She couldn't help but smile at his
enthusiasm. She had no doubts about that whatsoever.

The suspension of Porter from his position
at the school generated a feeling of such euphoria within Toby that
he could compare it to only one other thing.

Leaving the office after the meeting, they
all stopped on the path outside to convene. "That was a good
outcome." Royce smiled widely before adding in a more sombre tone,
"Shame about the football team though, it may take a while for them
to find someone else to commit to coaching."

Toby shrugged. "I'll ask around at the club.
It doesn't have to be a teacher. The training and games are all out
of school hours. Someone might help out." He was unconcerned about
this. The guys could all train on their own anyway. It was just the
coordinating and logistics of the games they needed someone else
for. There was a possibility too that a teacher could be convinced
to act as a coordinator if someone else was actually doing the
training aspect. Toby had a few potential leads he could
approach.

Iris leaned forward to give Charlotte a kiss
on the cheek. "I have to go to work now. I'll see you later this
afternoon." She reached out to give Toby's arm a squeeze as she
took her leave.